Chapter 8

Obey the King, even to your own hurt.  

I say: Keep the king's command, because of God's oath to him.

Because it is part of obeying God.

The wicked die, just like everyone else, and they are quickly forgotten.

11 Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. [Ecc 8:11 ESV]

Slow justice "fixes" men to do evil.  I think that means that slow justice makes evil the easier way, and once set upon it, men don't change.  Reminds me of that guy in Seattle who'd been arrested 150 times, and still had not received justice.

HOWEVER, MSB says I've missed the point here.  It says that God's mercy in allowing men to sin and not receive immediate justice for those sins is taken as an open door to further disobedience.  Delayed retribution from God imparts a feeling of "getting away with it" or maybe "sins so small that they don't matter to God", that sort of thing.  Solomon says these "delays" on God's part do not diminish at all the certainty of final justice.  So the principle I think still applies to earthly judgement by kings, juries, and so on.  But the big picture is that even if you "get off scott free" while you live, justice will always come.

So when the culture is one of slow justice, does it then help to have a microcosm that has swift justice?  Family justice, church discipline, and so on?  Can we fight evil as long as justice is swift in our little corner?

Solomon says even where justice is slow, it is still better for an individual if he chooses to fear God.

I don't understand vs 14.

14 There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. [Ecc 8:14 ESV]

Per MSB, Solomon is saying right out loud what we have all sometimes observed.  Sometimes the good guy loses, sometimes the bad guys win.  Solomon thinks this is enigmatic and sad, just like we do.  In general, on earth, God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked.  But there ARE exceptions, and these are "enigmatic and discouraging" to those striving to do right.  That's all it means.

vs 15 we've all heard before:

15 And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun. [Ecc 8:15 ESV]

This comes right after 14, and the point is that despite the exceptions to justice, we should resolve to enjoy life despite the injustice that we see all around us.

I believe 16 and 17 say that man can never fully understand what the world is about;

16 When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep, 17 then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out. [Ecc 8:16-17 ESV]

There are questions unanswerable, unknowable, to the feeble mind of man.  We will always have questions.  Some rail against this, but the wisest man who ever lived couldn't "know" what God was going about.