Machado: A Dialogue with Time

The Reflective Passages as the Core of Qoheleth: Content and Structural Analysis

“…These difficulties include ignorance of the fate of human beings after death, the lack of advantage afforded to humankind over animals in this respect (3:18-22), 75 an imbalanced approach to divine retribution with humans either "overdoing righteousness" or "overdoing wickedness" (7:15-22), a failed attempt to understand evil in the world including wickedness, folly, foolishness and madness-despite much investigation (7:23-29), and lack of motivation for moral living due to the apparent inconsistency of divine justice, i.e., the disconcerting reality of wicked men prospering and righteous ones suffering (8:9-14). 76 The concluding reflective passage (9:1-10) recapitulates the notion that the divine-human gap both cannot be bridged and is incomprehensible to mortals, as are the repercussions of this difficulty for human conduct. Since death does not discriminate between those who worship God and those who do not, a person cannot know if he is loved or hated by God.…”