Look, says the teacher, this is what I have discovered: Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things – while I was still searching but not finding – I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. Ecclesiastes 7:27-28
Imagine a non-Christian friend – a woman – taking you to task
over Ecclesiastes 7:27-28.
You have been encouraging her to read the Bible because it
is, you tell her, “the word of God”, and she does precisely that. But you are a
little taken aback by the heat of her response: “That’s downright sexism! How
do you expect a modern woman – or man, come to that – to react to that sort of
ignorant prejudice!”
How do you respond? How should you respond?
Tradition traces the Book of Ecclesiastes back to King
Solomon, but it’s unlikely that he personally wrote it. And even if he did, his
own personal marital record (a little matter of seven hundred wives and three
hundred concubines: 1 Kings 11:3) doesn’t exactly inspire your confidence in
his opinion of women.
Whatever, however shocked you may be as a Christian by your
friend’s reaction, it’s hard to deny that she has a point, to put it mildly…
I’m not in fact wanting to write about one particular awkward
verse in the Bible (I’ve just picked one out of many that I could have chosen),
and certainly not wanting to suggest a glib answer to your friend’s question.
No: but her response raises a far bigger question: What kind of book exactly
is the Bible? When we speak of it – as I’m sure we should – as “the word of
God”, what does that mean in practice?
Of course it isn’t strictly “a book” at all: it’s a collection
of books, sixty-six of them, written and gathered together over the course of
several centuries. (And some of the individual “books” amount to just a single page,
if that.)
These ancient documents were written in different
languages: the Old Testament almost entirely in Hebrew, the New Testament in
Greek. Which means that if we want to gain as full an understanding as possible
we need people who are experts in these languages. We rely on them to make sure
that translations are accurate and that commentaries and other explanatory
material are correct.
So, though of course there are passages whose meanings are
pretty straightforward, the Bible as a whole isn’t a book anyone can just pick
up and read and immediately understand.
More to the point, the Bible isn’t some kind of God-given
compendium or encyclopaedia which enables us to read off God’s truth on any
particular topic if only we know where to look. That would be to treat it like
magic – and that is, one suspects, exactly how many Christians do treat it.
Going back to Ecclesiastes 7 to see if you can pacify your
friend, you could of course point out that the writer explicitly states that he
made his very negative observation about women at a time “while I was still
searching but not finding”. Well, we can certainly agree with him there!
(And his assessment of his fellow-men isn’t a lot more positive, is it? – one in
a thousand is hardly impressive!)
You could also point out that in 9:9 he recommends
“enjoying life with your wife, whom you love”, which suggests a far less
cynical attitude towards women than the verse we’re thinking about. And what
about Proverbs 31? – had the “Solomon” who wrote Ecclesiastes ever read this
description of a truly “upright” woman?
A basic principle of Bible interpretation emerges from
these thoughts: we must never pluck a single verse out of its context and build
upon it some abiding truth which applies in every situation: to turn it, in
effect, into “doctrine”. To do so is to misuse scripture and to lead ourselves
into error. (While we’re in Ecclesiastes, why not take a look at 9:8? I met a
man once who felt this was indeed a divine command for all time; well, it
certainly made him stand out of the crowd on a Sunday morning…)
In a word: The books of the Bible need to be understood
according to their kinds, having respect for their individual human voices.
Certainly, there are passages of teaching,
especially in the New Testament letters, which essentially address the mind and
are the raw material of doctrine.
But there’s a whole lot more besides… prophecy,
sometimes angry, sometimes comforting, sometimes puzzling; narrative,
whether in the history books of the Old Testament, or the Gospels and Acts of
the New; prayers, as in the Psalms; visions and revelations, as
in Ezekiel, Daniel or Revelation; strange stories, as in Job; strange
poems, as in Song of Songs.
And, coming back to where we started, there’s also wisdom,
as in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. These are books of reflection and
observation, their individual verses intended as thought-provokers or
discussion-starters, not to be nailed down as eternal truths. To point this out
to your angry friend is surely the best response. (Dare I suggest that
Ecclesiastes 7:28 could even be a typically corny male joke?)
Let scripture be scripture! Let’s read it in all its
wonderful variety - and not squeeze it into a mould that was never intended for
it!
Father, thank you for the wonderful variety of
your inspired word, the Bible. Please help me, by your Holy Spirit, to
interpret it on its own terms, and not to force it into a strait-jacket of my
own making. Amen.
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