Ecclesiastes 3 Footnotes

3:19-20 Ecclesiastes appears to be rejecting the idea of an afterlife. What the author was questioning, however, may have been the materialistic notions of afterlife that predominated in ancient Egypt, where people thought that after death a powerful man could continue to enjoy his possessions, his women, and the services of his slaves. In short, this theology did not take seriously the finality of physical death (the great pyramids of the pharaohs were expressions of this view). The Egyptian “Harpers’ Songs,” written about one thousand years before the time of Solomon, criticized this refusal to face the significance of death, and reveals some striking parallels to Ecclesiastes. (Solomon had cultural ties with Egypt, being married to the daughter of an Egyptian ruler, 1Kg 3:1.) Biblical theology, by contrast, takes death seriously as “the last enemy” (1Co 15:26); it is only by an act of God, the resurrection of Jesus, that we can overcome its finality (1Co 15:55-57).