Thomas Bolin, «Rivalry and Resignation: Girard and Qoheleth on the Divine-Human Relationship», Vol. 86 (2005) 245-259
This article looks at the repeated gnomic phrase in the Book
of Qoheleth, "All is vanity and a chasing after wind" (NRSV) and reads it as a
disjunctive parallelism in which the terms lbh
and xwr denote mortality and the divine spirit,
respectively, thus showing the sense of the phrase to be, "All is mortal, but
strives for immortality". Using René Girard’s concept of mimetic rivalry
clarifies this reading of the proverb, and shows it to be a concise expression
of a major theme in the Book of Qoheleth, viz., the author’s thoughts on the
difference between humanity and God, understood as paradoxical relationship
based on both similarity and difference between humans and the divine. More
importantly, Girard helps to understand more deeply how and why Qoheleth views
human proximity with the divine as the cause of conflict and pain in human life.
Because this tension is also evident in numerous other biblical and
extra-biblical texts, caution must be exercised, in referring to the Book of
Ecclesiastes as a "radical" or "heterodox" writing.
252 Thomas Bolin
In this regard, mention must also be made of Qoh 6,10, “Because
it is known what humanity is, they are not able to dispute with one who
is stronger than they†(29). The “stronger†party in this verse is a veiled
reference to God, and expresses Qoheleth’s belief that humankind can
never enter into conflict with God with any hope of victory (30).
My re-reading of this particular phrase in Qoheleth, while
departing from the majority of scholarship, in fact supports and
illustrates some of the recognized themes in the book. For example, to
say that the colon, jwr tw[r refers to humanity’s attempts to grasp at
divine immortality also understands the phrase as an expression of
hopeless futility, which is how the standard reading of “chasing after
the windâ€, reads it. However, now the exact nature of the futility is
made much more clear: we are doomed to failure by the very object of
our desire, viz., the divine life. The proverb is read as a statement that
human life is a struggle against limitations imposed by God, and that
this tension between our mortal “portion†and our desire is the cause of
human suffering (31). Thus, my proposed interpretation of the couplet
serves both to affirm its focus on the pointlessness of human effort but
also demonstrates that the proverb expresses Qoheleth’s understanding
of the divine-human relationship. To say that humankind strives for
that of which it knows, but cannot have, expresses the profound
disjunctions between the divine and the human, and between the scope
of human knowledge and its limited existence (32). These disjunctions,
and their resultant suffering, are what Qoheleth grapples with in his
book, and he advises that they can only be dealt with by means of an
evasion that narrows the scope of human vision to the present moment
and its concrete pleasures (33). Reading the proverb as an antithetical
(29) Fox (Time to Build, 247-248) and Seow (Ecclesiastes, 230-232) propose
emendations for this verse, but these changes do not affect the contrast Qoheleth
makes between divine power and human frailty.
(30) Cf., Qoh 5,2: “For God is in heaven, and you are on earth; therefore let
your words be fewâ€.
(31) CRENSHAW, “The Eternal Gospelâ€, 552-554; FOX, A Time to Tear
Down, 31.
(32) Although Qoheleth is not primarily concerned with the problem of human
knowledge (N. LOHFINK, “Is Kohelets lbh-Aussage Erkenntnistheoretisch
Gemeint?†Qohelet in the Context of Wisdom [ed. A. SCHOORS] [BETL 136;
Leiden 1998] 59).
(33) BERGER, “Qohelet and the Exigenciesâ€, 147; S. DE JONG, “God in the
Book of Qohelet: A Reappraisal of Qohelet’s Place in Old Testament Theologyâ€,
VT 47 (1997) 162-163; T. PERRY, “Kohelet’s Minimalist Theologyâ€, Qohelet in
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