The Wisdom of Justice: The Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes

The struggle for justice is never easy. The constant presence of sin makes it feel like the world cannot get better. The weight of discouragement continually brings you to the edge of giving up in the fight. The ongoing, and changing, manifestations of injustice make it feel like there’s no end in sight, no hope for the hopeless. While this series has discussed a view of God’s justice (the Proverbs), Jesus’ justice (the Psalter), and our personal response to injustice (Job), we haven’t talked about what we are supposed to think about injustice. This is where we will discuss the final two books in the Wisdom canon: the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes.

While neither book expressly suggests either an eschatology, or a view of justice, the books do teach us a lot about how to view our world and our relationship with God. Traditionally, Ecclesiastes has been framed as the wise, aged reflections of Solomon. The book seems to paint a bleak picture of the world writ large, offering little hope to the weary. The Song of Solomon, on the other hand, paints a beautiful picture of a man and a woman, joined together in poetry and song. From ancient times, the Song has been interpreted as a picture of the covenant between Yahweh and Israel, later Christ and the Church. In these books, we find a more sobering, realistic, and encouraging picture of the world as it is and as it should be.

In terms of what the world is, we turn first to Ecclesiastes. Solomon had everything that he could have wanted: women, power, money, chariots and horses; essentially, you name it, he owned it. Not only that, but Solomon was the son of David, the one with whom God had promised an everlasting dominion.¹Song 1:1; cf. II Samuel 7:13-14. I’m not sure about you, but nothing sounds quite as good to me as an everlasting kingdom some days. Solomon also reigned in a period where Israel’s land was significantly bigger than it ever was or would be again, a kingdom made up of Jew and Gentile living together in peace.²I Kings 8-9. As life went on, though, he felt the fleeting love and passion he gained from his things fade away.³Ecclesiastes 1-2. He chased it, worked for it, and tried to buy it, but nothing changed. The meaningless of life barreled over his feeble attempts at making the world a better place for himself.

Don’t we often find ourselves in the same place? While protesting yet another pointless death at the hands of an unjust system, we hear another name on the news. As we pray for the safety and peace of our nation, don’t we find that we hear about another protest turned into a violent event? We might say, as Solomon did, that: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”⁴Ecclesiastes 3:9-16. It’s easy to fall into the same trap of discouragement that Solomon did. And it’s encouraging to know that our critiques of the culture aren’t unfounded: the wisest man alive also saw the futility of the world around him.⁵Ecclesiastes 1-2. But the end of his book says something else: “Remember God in your youth.”⁶Ecclesiastes 12:1.

Why? Because when we remember God in our youth, Solomon knows, we will be joined with him as a bride to a husband. The Bride, we learn in the first chapter of the Song of Solomon, is someone unwanted and unbecoming.(Song 1:5-7.)) “Though” she is dark, she is lovely;⁷Song 1:5. she asks that we don’t look upon her because of her darkness. Her brothers are angry with her, and she can’t seem to keep up with her own work. But that doesn’t matter to “Him”, the groom.

The Groom earnestly seeks his Bride in her darkness, in her lack of ability to keep her vineyard. And the Bride explodes with love back toward the Groom. Others are so enamored with the love that they share that they can’t help but sing about it either.⁸Song 1:4b. When the Groom goes missing, the Bride follows him into the city. “My beloved is mine,” she sings, “and I am his.”⁹Song 2:16. What an exaltation! What a beautiful thing to say—only to have the confidence of knowing that you and the one whom you love are so intertwined that you belong to each other. But isn’t that what God tells us? In his covenant with us, he tells us, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”¹⁰Leviticus 26:12.

The mutual seeking of the Bride and Groom in the song is but a picture of the way that Jesus sought us: he came from heaven to earth, took on flesh, died on a cross, and rose again to secure our salvation by union with him.

Knowing God now, in our youth, gives us the eschatological hope that we will be joined with Christ in the marriage supper of the Lamb as a bride and a groom. The mutual seeking of the Bride and Groom in the song is but a picture of the way that Jesus sought us: he came from heaven to earth, took on flesh, died on a cross, and rose again to secure our salvation by union with him. So, remember God in our youth to be able to look forward to the final consummation of our marriage with him. Our general weariness can be alleviated by knowing what there is in store for us.

But knowing that the world will eventually get better isn’t always enough. Sometimes, we need to know that there is something now. Thankfully, Solomon also gives us a better hope for the dark world around us. God has left us with a gift now: “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.”¹¹Ecclesiastes 2:9-16. It may be hard more often than not, but God has blessed our work. He has designed our work to give us joy and, through his Spirit, he has given us the ability to do good. We can take pleasure in our work. Some of us may not feel that we can take pleasure in our work until it is complete, but Solomon speaks against that. He says that our work is never complete, but we may still take pleasure in that work which we have accomplished. Our fight against injustice may never finish this side of the eschaton, but we are allowed to take pleasure in it.

And what better encouragement might we have to fight injustice than the joy we are given now and will experience later?