Original Meaning

THE WORSHIP OF Mammon has been a central feature of the preceding section of Ecclesiastes; now we turn to the worship of God. Worshipers should take care when they enter the temple to remember that God must be the focal point of worship, not the self, and that the Word of God should take priority, not the words of the worshiper.

In worship, the first task of the worshiper is to “go near to listen” (v. 1), with a view to obeying the divine voice (cf. the same language in Deut. 5:27). The activity contrasted with this listening is the offering of “the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.” The second part of this phrase is (lit.) “who do not know to do wrong,” which is perhaps better translated as “who sin without a thought” (NEB). Their sin is natural to them and does not require any conscious design. The whole line refers to those who perform the rituals of worship without any deliberate intention to bring the whole self before God in an attitude of reverence and awe. The “sacrifice of fools” is thus careless observance of religion, unattached to any genuinely Godward movement of the soul and enacted out of custom, peer pressure, or habit. It is the kind of religion frequently attacked by the prophets, who associate it with oppression of one’s neighbor (e.g., Isa. 1:10–20; cf. also 1 Sam. 15:22–23; Prov. 15:8–9; 21:3, 27).

The wise person comes before God carefully and with due attention, for such a person, unlike the fool, knows that God is really God. The wise person listens, therefore, rather than speaks (v. 2); for God is in heaven and is truly God, and mortal beings are mere creatures of dust found on earth. The fool, by contrast, is someone who is not in control of himself. As he sins without a thought, so too his speech pours out of his mouth just because the words are found in his heart (v. 3). It is as natural for the fool to be verbose as it is for dreams to come to those who toil pointlessly in search of gain. “Cares” is Hebrew ʿinyan (as in 2:23), and the phrase is better translated “as a dream comes when there is overwork.” Overproduction is the root problem in both cases. A heart attentive to God multiplies neither toil nor words.

The making of a vow is a particular form of speech and is the focal point of 5:4–6. Temple vows were a common feature of Old Testament worship and involved promises to consecrate such things as sacrifices or money to God in return for granting a request in prayer (Lev. 7:16–17; 22:18–23; 27:1–25; Num. 6). The temptation presented to the worshiper was to avoid fulfilling the vow once the prayer had been answered. Qohelet is insistent, however, on the need for integrity. There is no sin in refraining from speech (Eccl. 5:5), but one must do what one has in fact spoken (v. 4).

Other biblical passages also touch on this topic, emphasizing this same need for integrity (Prov. 20:25; esp. Deut. 23:21–23, with its closing admonition: “Whatever your lips utter you must be sure to do, because you made your vow freely to the LORD your God with your own mouth”). The mouth must be kept under control, or it can lead us into sin when our actions fail to be consistent with our words (cf. Prov. 10:14; 13:3; 14:3; 15:28, for general emphasis on control of speech as an aspect of wisdom). There must be no prevarication when confronted by the temple messenger (perhaps a priest) who comes to remind the worshiper of what has been said. God’s anger is aroused by such dishonesty, and sooner or later this will result in the destruction of the works of the worshiper’s hands.

The closing verse of the section represents a summary of the whole, picking up the vocabulary of verse 3 (the multiplying of dreams and words) and the central thought behind all seven verses (the worshiper must revere the living God), and contrasting the latter with the former. If the meaning is clear, the syntax is, however, admittedly unusual: (lit. trans.) “For [ki] in a multitude of dreams and futilities and many words therefore [ki] fear God.” In the midst of all the foolish behavior that one sees round about, along with its consequences, the reader is exhorted to hold on to reality: “Stand in awe of God” (cf. Heb. yrʾ in 3:14; 7:18; 8:12–13; 12:13).

Bridging Contexts

THE BIBLE DOES not consider the worship of the one true God “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24) to be an easy task. Our human passion is for idols made in our own image. Even when our doctrine concerning God is correct, we all too often deny its truth in practice by what we do and say. Qohelet’s concern for integrity in the area of worship is thus a recurring concern in the Bible.

The book of Deuteronomy insists again and again that the one, undivided God who made the world and redeemed Israel must be approached and related to by one, undivided human person: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:4–5). It is a matter of heart as well as of sight (4:9) and speech (6:7). It begins with deep internalization of God’s Word, which is to be the focus of life in all its aspects (6:7–8). There must be a constant, meditative “remembering” of reality, so that reality seeps into the interior of the being and becomes formative for all of life (4:10; 5:15; 7:18; 8:2, 18; etc.). The consequence should be that Israel, and the individual Israelite, is able “to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees” (10:12–13).

The prophetic books and other Scriptures constantly draw attention, however, to the way in which even biblical religion is in practice all too often merely a matter of externalism and pretense. It is lip-service (e.g., Ps. 50:16; Isa. 29:13; Jer. 12:2), offered by a people whose hearts are far from God. Jesus stands in the prophetic tradition when he criticizes many of his contemporaries for their practice of this kind of religion. In Matthew 23:27–28, for example, he describes the teachers of the law and the Pharisees as “whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” Sincerity, by contrast, is to be the mark of the Christian (e.g., Acts 2:46; Rom. 12:9; 2 Cor. 6:6; 1 Tim. 1:5; 3:8). The New Testament, too, knows of a “form of godliness” that lacks the transformative power of true faith (2 Tim. 3:1–5).

The person who engages in this kind of “godliness” stands on dangerous ground, for he or she is toying with a God who is holy and good and who is therefore dangerous to those who cling to self-centeredness and sin. This too is a biblical theme found elsewhere than in Ecclesiastes. Holiness is, in fact, the characteristic most typical of God in the Old Testament. It refers to that mystery in the divine being that distinguishes God as God and marks him off from what is created, distinguishing him as wholly other (e.g., Hos. 11:9: “For I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you”). To say that God is holy is to say that God is God (cf. Amos 4:2 and 6:8)—that God is indeed in heaven while we mortals are on earth (Eccl. 5:2).

Isaiah 6:1–8 captures well the awe and fear that a vision of God in all his holiness induces when he is encountered by those who are aware of their own sinful condition. Holiness is in fact understood throughout the Bible in terms of a mysterious power that is dangerous, unapproachable, and fearsome. Nadab and Abihu died, for example, because they offered unholy fire before the Lord (Lev. 10:1–3). Many people in Beth Shemesh died when they looked directly into the ark of the covenant (1 Sam. 6:19–20), in response to which others said, “Who can to stand in the presence of the LORD, this holy God?” The people of Israel themselves trembled in Exodus 19 as they stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, as God revealed himself in a thunderstorm; they were right to do so, because they had been told that to come up onto the mountain or even to touch it meant death.

The people likewise had to be kept away from the tabernacle precisely because it was the place where God dwelt (Num. 1:47–53). Each step toward the Most Holy Place was controlled in terms of the people who were allowed to draw nearer to it and those who were not and in terms of the rituals that had to be performed in order to allow access to the divine presence. The rituals themselves were carefully spelled out in terms of what was allowed, who was allowed to perform them and who was not, what they were to wear, and so on. These rituals covered the whole of life. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “our ‘God is a consuming fire’ ” (Heb. 12:29; cf. Deut. 4:24). That is why we must “worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” (Heb. 12:28). Our God is not One who will be mocked, as Ananias and Sapphira discovered to their cost (Acts 5:1–11).

This last instance of lack of integrity is a particularly powerful New Testament illustration of the expectation that our words and our actions should match up. If we speak at all, we should do what we say (Eccl. 5:4–6). The person who understands who God is will, however, be careful with words altogether. In fact, those who know God well understand that it is much more important that he addresses us than that we address him. The first requirement laid on his people in the Old Testament was not “speak, O Israel,” but “hear, O Israel,” and that exhortation is a common and insistent one—both in Deuteronomy and elsewhere (e.g., Deut. 4:1; 5:1; 6:3, 4; 9:1; Isa. 1:10; 7:13; 28:14). Without hearing there can be no understanding of the kingdom of God; thus Jesus repeats, “He who has ears, let him hear” (e.g., Matt. 11:15; 13:9, 43; John 8:47).

A time for speaking may, of course, follow (Eccl. 3:7), but even then human beings are not to manipulate and control God with words, as they may be accustomed to doing with their fellow human beings as they try to accumulate gain. As Jesus taught: “When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt. 6:7–8). The speaking to God that follows on from our listening to God bears always in mind who God is—a Father who knows what we need before we ask. A holy God, certainly, but also a caring Father, whose holiness does not routinely bring destruction to human beings but has redemption as its utmost goal and who characteristically issues an invitation to embrace holiness (e.g., Ps. 51:11; Isa. 6:1–5; Hos. 11:8–9).

The insertion of this passage on the worship of God in the midst of reflections on the worship of wealth and advancement and its deleterious effects on humanness also reflects a broader biblical emphasis. “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matt. 6:24). The first Master commands love of neighbor. The second applauds love of self and the trampling of one’s neighbor. This is why false and hypocritical religion is so often linked with economic sin in the Bible (e.g., Mark 12:38–44). It is also why the presentation of the whole self as a living sacrifice in worship to God leads on to just and neighborly behavior with respect to our fellow human beings (Rom. 12:1–21).

Contemporary Significance

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.1

Silence is undervalued in the noisy, intrusive world that most of us inhabit. Constant traffic and chatter surround us in our public spaces, and where these are mercifully quieted for a time, their place is taken by endless radio music and inanity. We retreat to our homes, but then we voluntarily recreate the noisy world there as well. The TV provides constant background noise, whether it presses on us the fantasies of soaps and movies or the horrors of the endless daily chat shows, with their multitudes who want their chance to speak but in truth have little to say.

The evidence suggests that we are afraid of silence—discomfited by it and unable to deal with it. There must be noise—any noise. I have personally witnessed in our home the panicked disorientation of a young child, visiting for the afternoon, who was unable to locate a TV in our main living space and, without this comforting presence, seemed unsure what to do with himself. We have all met his adult counterparts, and perhaps we ourselves are some of those. We have, in essence, made it extraordinarily difficult for ourselves in all our technological sophistication to “be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

This is a tragedy, but it is also a perceived necessity. Silence gives us too much time to think, and thinking raises too many awkward questions we do not wish to address about the nature of reality and our personal identity and destiny. We live in a culture that therefore feels a deep need to push reality as far away as possible and uses noise to this end. We have become, corporately, the man in the doctor’s waiting room who feels compelled to break the silence with an asinine, jovial comment.

If it is bad enough that the culture should be of this inclination, it is entirely tragic that the people of God, who are called to witness to a different reality, should be found playing the same game. Christians, too, often inhabit all-too-noisy space. Their noise is more religious, perhaps, but it is still noise. “Worship services” provide little opportunity for silent awe in the presence of God but plenty of opportunity for performance on the part of a select few professional speakers and musicians, who fill all the space with their words and sounds. Other gatherings of the church are characterized by relentless activity. It is Christian activity, of course, but it still fills the space that might be taken by silent adoration. Thus, “church” comes to resemble simply another form of human group endeavor and indeed often comes to mimic in a serious way the culture around it that is supposedly governed by different values. “Church” is increasingly thought of in terms of organization rather than of people worshiping God together, and leaders bring business and management models to bear on its development—planning growth, programming success, and managing change.

Leadership itself is understood and evaluated from a secular point of view. What counts as “good leadership” in the church-as-organization has been borrowed from the secular world. The modern pastor is seen in this light as a kind of CEO of the company, trained as an expert in problem solving and management, and thus gains respectability in a world and in a church that no longer thinks in a truly Christian way, particularly about the church. He is “a CEO in his study and a shrink in his pulpit.”2 As Vinoth Ramachandra rightly notes, “Many seminary graduates are now skilled in management techniques, or counselling skills and even ‘church-planting’ methodologies, but lack any integrating theological vision.”3 The story is told of a Christian leader returning from a church-growth conference puzzled because he had heard no theology and no serious references to God—only the exaltation of technique and numbers.4 Church advertising often reflects this ethos, as illustrated in these comments of an advertising executive regarding a contract from an Episcopal church in Minneapolis:

Promoting one’s church and marketing is a big part of evangelism. . . . George [the pastor] was used to getting on his knees a lot and asking for favors, and he wondered why he couldn’t promote his own parish with messages as hard-hitting as a lot of the ads he’d admired.5

The narcissistic, self-absorbed church thus develops by degrees to respond to the narcissistic culture, mimicking that culture in its move from word to image, from passion for truth and righteousness to cultivating intimacy and “good feelings,” from exposition to entertainment, from integrity to novelty, from action to spectacle.6 A survey of sermons by evangelical ministers between 1985 and 1990 suggests, in fact, that over 80 percent of these made God and his world spin around the surrogate center of the self. This is related to the professionalization of the ministry, in which the fulcrum around which ministry turns is no longer God but the church, which itself thus turns out to be a kind of idol.7 Of this kind of consumerist religion, Jacques Ellul commented rightly a number of years ago that it was not so much a “Jesus revolution” as a “gigantic religious expediency, in which Jesus and the revelation are served up to suit everybody’s taste.”8

Noise deafens us to reality. Silent reflection—deliberate inactivity—is necessary if we are to regain perspective and remember who God really is, what that really means, and what, therefore, the church is for. We need to hear again that injunction: “Do not come any closer . . . take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Ex. 3:5); and to hear it, we need to stop talking.

It is necessary, if we are going to truly live a Christian life, and not just use the word Christian to disguise our narcissistic and promethean attempts at spirituality without worshipping God and without being addressed by God, it is necessary to return to Square One and adore God and listen to God. Given our sin-damaged memories that render us vulnerable to every latest edition of journalistic spirituality, daily re-orientation in the truth revealed in Jesus and attested in Scripture is required. And given our ancient predisposition for reducing every scrap of divine revelation that we come across into a piece of moral/spiritual technology that we can use to get on in the world, and eventually to get on without God, a daily return to a condition of not-knowing and non-achievement is required.9

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe. (Heb. 12:28)