Ecc 3:16-20 | KingComments | STEP | The Preacher goes on with his observations and sees something else, a new problem of life. This problem is “wickedness” happening all over the world, especially “in the place of justice” and “in the place of righteousness”, which are the places where one might expect the maintenance of law and justice ( ). He has seen concrete examples of the distortion of justice, such as oppressive rulers, unjust judges and religious hypocrisy in courts where justice must be done. He has seen the same in secular or religious council chambers where the law of Divine justice must be applied. In those places people are selfish and ambitious. The greatest injustice in the place of justice is the trial against the Lord Jesus. The whole world is a place where wickedness occurs instead of justice. You may have thought that you’ve bought a good item, but you are deceived. Your hard-earned money is gone. Someone had bought an article on a certain website. The address where he could pick up the article, was the address where I live in Middelburg. One Sunday, when we came back from the church meeting, he was in our front yard. He had come from Amsterdam to pick up the article for which he had paid. Of course I could not give him that. [I offered him something else: a cup of coffee and the gospel. Unfortunately, he didn’t desire for either.] Other examples are that you do not get the promotion you deserve because of injustice or that your company is competed out of the market by mafia practices. The whole world is a place of wickedness and injustice. How we would like to have a world where evil would be punished directly and justly and good would be rewarded directly and justly. However, we must reconcile ourselves with the reality that this – until Christ comes to earth – is a utopia. This leads us to the question of how we should deal with the injustice that is present and how we should react to it. We would like an answer to that question. The Preacher’s research helps us to find that answer. After the injustice he saw “under the sun”, again his comment follows in , beginning with “I said”. It is in the form of a consideration, for he says it ‘to himself’. In his consideration, which as it were automatically rises into his heart when he sees injustice, he takes refuge in God as the righteous Judge. God will judge injustice in the future. This judgment concerns both the consideration, “every matter”, and the actions, “every deed”. God’s judgment is not confined to expressing the judgment, but also means the execution of the sentence. The thought that injustice also has a time limit, and that God sets that limit, is a consolation when we see all injustice in the world ( ; ). We cannot change that injustice, but God has set a time for everything ( ). God has also determined a time, a day, when He will judge ( ; ). Any unrighteous trial will be reopened and revised before the judgment seat of Christ. “The Judge is standing right at the door” ( ), which is Christ. He will judge perfectly.

‏ Ecclesiastes 3:16-20

In the Place of Justice Is Wickedness

The Preacher goes on with his observations and sees something else, a new problem of life. This problem is “wickedness” happening all over the world, especially “in the place of justice” and “in the place of righteousness”, which are the places where one might expect the maintenance of law and justice (Ecc 3:16).

He has seen concrete examples of the distortion of justice, such as oppressive rulers, unjust judges and religious hypocrisy in courts where justice must be done. He has seen the same in secular or religious council chambers where the law of Divine justice must be applied. In those places people are selfish and ambitious. The greatest injustice in the place of justice is the trial against the Lord Jesus.

The whole world is a place where wickedness occurs instead of justice. You may have thought that you’ve bought a good item, but you are deceived. Your hard-earned money is gone. Someone had bought an article on a certain website. The address where he could pick up the article, was the address where I live in Middelburg. One Sunday, when we came back from the church meeting, he was in our front yard. He had come from Amsterdam to pick up the article for which he had paid. Of course I could not give him that. [I offered him something else: a cup of coffee and the gospel. Unfortunately, he didn’t desire for either.] Other examples are that you do not get the promotion you deserve because of injustice or that your company is competed out of the market by mafia practices. The whole world is a place of wickedness and injustice.

How we would like to have a world where evil would be punished directly and justly and good would be rewarded directly and justly. However, we must reconcile ourselves with the reality that this – until Christ comes to earth – is a utopia. This leads us to the question of how we should deal with the injustice that is present and how we should react to it. We would like an answer to that question. The Preacher’s research helps us to find that answer.

After the injustice he saw “under the sun”, again his comment follows in Ecc 3:17, beginning with “I said”. It is in the form of a consideration, for he says it ‘to himself’. In his consideration, which as it were automatically rises into his heart when he sees injustice, he takes refuge in God as the righteous Judge. God will judge injustice in the future. This judgment concerns both the consideration, “every matter”, and the actions, “every deed”. God’s judgment is not confined to expressing the judgment, but also means the execution of the sentence.

The thought that injustice also has a time limit, and that God sets that limit, is a consolation when we see all injustice in the world (Gen 18:25; Psa 73:17). We cannot change that injustice, but God has set a time for everything (Ecc 3:1-8). God has also determined a time, a day, when He will judge (Acts 17:31; Psa 37:13). Any unrighteous trial will be reopened and revised before the judgment seat of Christ. “The Judge is standing right at the door” (Jam 5:9), which is Christ. He will judge perfectly.

Similarity and Difference Between Man and Beast

The judgment of Ecc 3:17 is still postponed, although we yearn for it. It may give us an unsatisfactory feeling that evil can do its work unhindered. Yet that too has a purpose: all injustice in time becomes a test that makes it infallibly clear whether we fear God or not. We learn the truth about ourselves and then discover that we are not only judges of the injustice around us, but that the injustice is also within us.

The injustice of man proves at least one aspect of God’s purpose: it provides an undeniable demonstration on the scene of the history of our ignorance of our own nature and destiny. There is probably nothing more capable of exposing man as a sinner and a wicked person – and this in all ranks – than cursing the iniquity of the world. Anyone who fears God can endure injustice. Anyone who curses it does not know himself.

Man is no better than beasts as long as he lives without connection to eternity. As long as the children of men do not fear God, they do not know God. And if they do not know God, they get excited about all the injustice in the world. Injustice shows that man is just as cruel and often more cruel than beasts. Furthermore, man has in common with the beasts that he dies just like the beasts. Without involving God or eternity there is no difference between man and a beast. Then man stands on the same level as the beast. We recognize this in the theory of evolution, which reasons in that way because it excludes God in the search for the origin of creation.

Ecc 3:19-21 give an explanation of Ecc 3:18. To the eye, humans and beasts go to the same place. They all have the breath of life in them (Gen 7:22; Psa 73:22; Pro 7:22), and a man can be buried “with the burial of a donkey” (Jer 22:19). Ecc 3:19 shows man’s mortality as something he has in common with all earthly creatures. It confronts us with the fall into sin and with the irony that while we imagine ourselves to be gods, we humans die like the beasts. Man and beast have the dust of the earth as a common origin (Ecc 3:20). Through man’s sin, man, and beasts too, return there when they die (Gen 3:19).

The Preacher also notices the difference between man and beast in what happens after death (Ecc 3:21). Returning to dust relates to the body of both man and beast. However, man has something that the beast does not have and that is a spirit. Man has received his breath of life from God, through which he has become a living being (Gen 2:7). This is not how God has done it with beasts. He created them by the power of His word (Gen 1:24-25).

The difference between man and beast that is present at death, is beyond the perception of man. The word “who”, which begins in Ecc 3:21, is a cry of despair. Man’s general view is that there is no difference. The Preacher knows that there is a difference (Ecc 12:7). We can only know this through revelation from God. The Preacher talks about people in their splendor (Psa 49:12 ; 20) and not about the believer who is received by God (Psa 49:15).