The Heḇelness of African Power: Hope or Despair: A Political Reading of Reading Qoh 3:16-17; 4:1-3.13-16

Abstract

The mother continent Africa is known for its various, multiple, and repeated instabilities, the rationale being the great hope and desire for the permanence, fixity, stability, lasting or enduring things that characterize human beings. Irrespective of how great and noble this hope and desire might be, one should admit that permanence or stability in life under the sun is against human nature, which for Qoheleth is הבל, that is, fleeting, transitory, brief, “not stable”. The use of הבל applied to different areas of life draws attention to the fleetingness of human experience in the world compared to God’s eternity. In Qoheleth’s view, there is nothing eternal on Earth: everything is fleeting (הכל הבל). So is political power, which for Qoheleth is short-lived and unstable, whether oppressive or not. It is, therefore, the aim of this paper to explore the hermeneutical possibility of Qoheleth’s use of הבל, which could be used to understand the political instability in African leadership. As such, this study calls attention to Qoheleth’s use of הבל with a political focus. It reads the text against the context of the oppressive manipulative political control of the powerless, voiceless, and the downtrodden by the powerful in Qoheleth’s society, which is no less in today’s African society. Consequently, it proposes that a political reading of Qoheleth adds to its hermeneutical understanding, which then can become more meaningful to Africans in an oppressive and depriving social and political environment.