On the face of it, the author of Ecclesiastes expresses a death wish in chapter 4, the dead are more fortunate than those still alive and, better yet, individuals not born at all (4:2–3). Chapter 6 affirms this stance, where being stillborn trumps the vanity of life. It may come as a surprise to some that among Bible writers our author is not alone in this sentiment. Maybe only of interest to melancholy types, at least four biblical saints and sages considered death a viable option to the frustrating mystery and misery of injustice they observed and documented.

Job, in the unvarnished poetry of his personal pain, cursed the day of his birth along with anyone celebrating it (Job 3:3–26). Death was a welcome host, providing peaceful rest, extricating him from the oppressive misery of desolate face-to-face confrontation with loss and despair. Life was unfair, sufficiently so to warrant death…at birth.

Jonah, also faced with what appeared to him an unconscionable injustice (the wicked Ninevites delivered, after all), twice found the prospect of impending death appealing (Jon. 4: 3 and 8). Although readers know that irony must be basking in this account, Jonah was not amused; in fact, the way the story is told, he may still be waiting on the hillside outside the city to witness a just end to the wicked Assyrians.

Another prophetic figure, Jeremiah, feeling himself the brunt of God’s mismanagement of his personal opponents, cursed not only his birthday but also the messenger who announced it to the neighbors, wishing rather to have died in the womb, his mother forever his grave (Jer. 20:14–18).

In all four instances, a complaint arises about divine unfairness, triggering the death wish. Whether or not we agree, for them something in "the system" had collapsed. A glitch had occurred of cosmic proportions that, if left unattended by God, made life undesirable if not untenable.

What was it that drove the author of Ecclesiastes to ponder the morbid option of death?

Chapter 4 of the book sets out to answer the question and to locate solutions to this life-threatening dilemma. What drives our author absolutely crazy—as it did Job, Jonah, and Jeremiah—are inequities in life. Because God is just, and because God demands justice, and because people only had this lifetime in which to find justice, as far as the Old Testament was concerned, the demands of justice, including God’s, had to happen before death. To plead the case of death and press for it in the face of injustice was a radical statement of commitment to one’s principles, especially since one’s own death would prevent him or her from seeing justice at all. It was simply too much to take—the unconsolable tears of people oppressed by the powerful.

Our author’s dilemma is not unlike that reflected in an intriguing Babylonian document, often called the Dialogue of Pessimism.1 Throughout the poetic dialogue, a servant repeatedly acquiesces with insincere supportive speeches to the wildly changing and at times contradictory demands of his master. But the superficial sham of dutiful obedience quickly gives way at the end of the poem to the injustice of it all. It hurts—injustice and unfair treatment. It hurts so badly that the dialogue ends this way:

"Servant, obey me."
"Yes, my lord, yes."
"Now, what is good?"
"To break my neck and your neck and throw both of us into the river—that is good."

In this case, death becomes the great equalizer between oppressor and oppressed. But is that what Ecclesiastes recommends? Does the book seek justice and equity at this level? Or is the death wish of Ecclesiastes more a rhetorical device illustrating the severe level of his frustration about injustice? And does Ecclesiastes have more to offer than submission to the inevitable and the drive to bring down one’s oppressors at the end?

If Ecclesiastes were to perform a postmortem on stillbirth, what would he find? What lessons might there be for us to learn from it?

Chapter 4 lays out three suggestions for our consideration, offered not with the consistency of a counselor’s list of solutions to life’s problems, but rather with random reflections that don’t always agree with the rest of the book. But if the book of Ecclesiastes is, as some assert, a notebook of collected reflections of the author over time, we should expect this type of intellectual give-and-take. The three recommendations:

1. Avoid envy (verses 4–6). A destructive force, envy transforms work and skilled labor into what so much else in the book becomes—vanity and a chasing after wind. Because of it, fools with folded hands cannibalize themselves and those dissatisfied with their lot chase the wind.
2. Avoid going it alone (verses 7–12). Two of the twenty-three times "vanity" appears in Ecclesiastes occur in these verses—the vanity of living alone, working alone, being alone. Attempting to make it on one’s own is "an unhappy business." To support this claim, our author draws on a number of patently clear observations: toil’s rewards are better for two than for one; taking a fall without someone around to help you up is not good; staying warm is easier with two than one; tag-teaming against an opponent provides an advantage; and triple-braided cords are pretty strong.
3. Go with the young and the restless (verses 13–16). Youth, while not traditionally esteemed highly as opposed to venerable, respectable, honorable old age, wins in this passage. Against the young person is poverty, prison, and impetuous youthful behavior, but wisdom is on his side in the struggle to oppose a foolish king and replace him.

These recommendations might carry the day and rescue our author from his death wish, but, in typical fashion for this book, we read that even the reforms of the young king will ultimately go unnoticed, his work a waste. Vanity returns…and the wind.

Notes

1. J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), 437–38.

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