I [almost] always find reading Ecclesiastes hard work. This year I chose to use Eugene Peterson’s The Message paraphrase to bring fresh light. It worked, so much so that as I finished chapter twelve I was tempted to go back and start again.
In his closing comments on the book Peterson says this (he uses the Quester as his metaphor for the Teacher as seen in other versions),
“Some editions of the New Testament include the Psalms at the end. It’s a most appropriate conclusion. The Psalms integrate the experience of grace into our lives at every level of praise and petition, of faith and doubt.
In the same way that the Psalms are an appropriate conclusion to the New Testament, Ecclesiastes is an appropriate introduction. People bring so many mistaken expectations to the gospel, so much silly sentiment, and so many childish demands that they hardly hear its real message. The Quester got rid of all that. He threw out the accumulated religious junk and banished the fraud that had paraded as faith.
The Quester’s well-orchestrated admonitions about life without God being nothing but smoke form a fitting preface to the New Testament. Because these admonitions clear the religious smoke from the air, revealing not only the truth about us but the truth about God. And that prepares us to fear him, which in turn motivates us to obey him.”
I think he’s right!