Ecclesiastes 4:1–3: No One to Comfort Them

King Solomon would have a difficult time making Hallmark movies and celebration gift cards with the next conclusion he brings to bear. It is not good news, but it is the reality humanity sits with, even if we have created enough distractions to keep our minds from truly considering what he has concluded.

A couple of verses earlier, Solomon considered the injustice and unrighteousness that had taken hold of positions of power. He saw that in the place where justice was supposed to be found there was wickedness, and in the place where righteousness was supposed to be found there was wickedness also (Ecclesiastes 3:16). Now he returns to that thought, but instead of examining those who possess the power, he considers those who have been forced to live underneath it.

His conclusion is difficult. Those who no longer experience the effects of evil are in a better position than those who are still being touched by it.

No One to Comfort Them

We have grown accustomed to evil. It is present, pervasive, and dominant within the interactions of humanity. For what age of humanity has been absent of it? We can compartmentalize the effects of injustice and unrighteousness, but that does not remove them. Wickedness has even seated itself in positions that are supposed to preserve what is good. Solomon had already seen this in the place of justice and righteousness, and now he looks at what life is like for the people forced to live beneath that kind of power (Ecclesiastes 3:16).

Under the sun, where does help come from?

Solomon sees oppression, but oppression is not the root of the problem. It is one of the symptoms. The deeper problem is the presence of evil within humanity. It can express itself through rulers, nations, communities, families, institutions, or individuals. Removing one expression of it does not mean the thing producing it has been removed.

Israel experienced this clearly in Egypt. A new Pharaoh looked at the Hebrew people and decided their existence was a threat. Because he possessed the power, he was able to place them under taskmasters, make their lives bitter through forced labor, and eventually order the death of their sons (Exodus 1:8–16). The oppressed could recognize what was happening to them, but recognizing injustice and possessing the ability to stop it are two different things.

Psalm 10 presents a similar picture. The wicked pursue the poor, crush the helpless, and become comfortable in their actions because they believe judgment will never come. The wicked man convinces himself that God does not see and will not call him to account (Psalm 10:1–11). This is part of what makes Solomon's observation so heavy. On the side of the oppressor there was power, while on the other side there were tears and no one able to provide the comfort that was needed.

We can look through human history and find more examples than we could ever reasonably count. The difficult part is allowing those examples to tell us something about humanity itself. We normally prefer to separate them into individual problems. This ruler was evil. This nation was corrupt. This group abused its power. This movement went too far. We can then convince ourselves that if the proper person or group replaces the wrong one, the problem has been solved.

But the pendulum can simply swing to the other side.

The people who were oppressed yesterday can possess the power tomorrow. The people who correctly identified one injustice can create another while attempting to correct it. If the evil underneath the problem remains, changing who possesses the authority does not finally solve anything.

One of the more disturbing examples of this can be seen by comparing Genesis 19 with Judges 19. The evil of Sodom is easy to recognize. Yet generations later, a scene with terrible similarities appears within Israel itself. The people who possessed the law of God and could condemn the wickedness of Sodom were not somehow immune from the same corruption (Genesis 19; Judges 19).

What happens afterward makes the problem even more difficult. Israel recognizes that a terrible evil has occurred and attempts to bring judgment against it. Yet their efforts eventually create another crisis, and in Judges 21 women are taken to provide wives for the remaining men of Benjamin. Humanity can recognize evil correctly and still fail to deal with it righteously. In an attempt to bring justice to one terrible act, another terrible act can be justified as necessary.

This is why oppression itself cannot be the deepest problem Solomon is revealing. Oppression can be resisted, governments can change, rulers can fall, and laws can be rewritten. Some of those things can provide real relief and should not be dismissed. But none of them remove the thing within humanity that continues producing new expressions of evil.

The evidence is all around us, yet accepting what that evidence means is difficult. Instead, we learn to live around it. We divide the problems of the world into manageable pieces and tell ourselves that because we cannot see all of them at once, perhaps the whole situation is not as bad as it appears.

Solomon does not allow himself that luxury. He looks at the oppressed and sees their tears. He looks at those who possess power and sees the ability they have to continue the oppression. Then he repeats the terrible observation that there was no one to comfort them.

Better Than the Living

Solomon then gives us a shocking statement. He considers those who have already died more fortunate than those who are still living. Then he goes further and says that the one who has not yet existed is better than both because he has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

This does not sound like the kind of biblical knowledge we normally expect to hear. We have to be careful, though, not to dismiss Solomon's conclusion simply because it makes us uncomfortable. His reasoning is tied directly to what he has just observed. He has seen oppression, tears, power being used by the wicked, and people with no one able to comfort them. His conclusion is directly connected to the presence of evil.

Solomon is not presenting nonexistence as an abstract good. He is showing us how we ought to respond to evil when we actually see it for what it is. Evil is not a small defect in an otherwise acceptable world. It is filthy, destructive, and completely opposed to what is good. Those who are outside of its effects are, in the limited sense Solomon is describing, in a better position than those who continue living beneath it.

The dead are beyond the oppression Solomon is observing. The one who has not yet existed has never even seen the evil deeds being done under the sun. Solomon sees the presence of evil as something so terrible that absence from its reach is preferable to continued exposure to it.

Our difficulty is that we have learned to accept evil as a trade for finite comfort in the meantime. If something terrible happens to someone else but our own life remains untouched, we can call it unfortunate and then continue with our day. We may never say the words aloud, but the arrangement can become something like this: you can strike my neighbor without consequence as long as you assure me that I will not be struck.

Because it did not affect us directly, the act becomes something regrettable but tolerable.

That is a very different response from Solomon's. He does not measure evil by how much inconvenience it causes him personally. He sees it and is disturbed by its presence at all. We often want evil minimized enough that we can return to our normal lives. Solomon forces us to ask whether normal life in the presence of evil should be as comfortable to us as we have allowed it to become.

We are not naturally good at this. We can become passionate about one evil while ignoring another. We can demand justice when the wrong has touched us and accept a feeble response when it has touched someone else. We can even become comfortable with an unjust act if we believe it produces an outcome we want.

This does not mean there is no difference between good and evil or that every attempt at justice is worthless. Scripture clearly says otherwise. The LORD does not delight in wickedness, and evil does not dwell with him (Psalm 5:4–6). The wicked will not finally stand in judgment, because the way of the wicked will perish (Psalm 1:3–6). The problem is that humanity does not possess the ability to bring that final judgment or establish perfect righteousness for itself.

Psalm 10 ends differently from where it began. The same Psalm that described the wicked believing God had forgotten declares that the LORD is King forever, that he hears the afflicted, and that he will do justice for the oppressed (Psalm 10:16–18). This begins to move us beyond what Solomon can see simply by looking under the sun.

Where Does Our Hope Come From?

Absent the gospel of Christ, humanity is trapped inside the problem Solomon describes. There is no human comforter under the sun who can completely dispatch evil. We can restrain it. We can punish particular acts. We can create laws to discourage it. We can remove one ruler and replace him with another. These things can matter and can provide real relief, but they cannot remove evil from humanity.

We have several ways of trying to make life under the sun tolerable. We can align ourselves with those who possess power and hope that being near them protects us. We can seek the power ourselves and make sure we are never on the losing side. We can separate ourselves from the suffering around us and try not to think about it. We can tell ourselves that because some evil has been restrained, everything is now all right.

Death still waits behind every one of those options.

This is why the gospel of Christ is not merely another human proposal for improving life under the sun. The answer comes from beyond what Solomon is observing.

Israel had experienced deliverance before. God reminded them during the days of Gideon that he had brought them out of Egypt and delivered them from those who oppressed them. Yet the same people who had received that deliverance did not listen to his voice (Judges 6:7–10). Deliverance from one oppressor did not remove the deeper rebellion within the people themselves.

The same problem remains with humanity. We can desire deliverance from evil while still resisting the God who tells us what evil is. We can want justice for the sins committed against us while being much less interested in his judgment of the sin within us.

The gospel does not allow us to separate those two things.

God has revealed his salvation from heaven in the man Jesus Christ. When Peter preached the gospel to Cornelius and those gathered with him, he proclaimed Jesus as the one through whom God preached peace. Jesus went about doing good and delivering those who were oppressed by the devil. Humanity put him to death, but God raised him from the dead. Peter then announced that this same Jesus has been appointed by God to judge the living and the dead, while everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name (Acts 10:33–43).

Christ deals with evil in both directions. There is evil outside of us, but there is also evil within us. Both fall under his judgment.

This presents a problem before it becomes good news. If Christ is the righteous King who will finally judge evil, then we do not get to stand beside him and point only toward the wickedness of other people. We are also creatures corrupted by sin. The Judge who will deal with the evil around us must also deal with the evil within us.

This is where the mercy of God revealed in the gospel becomes necessary. Christ did not merely announce judgment against sinners. He bore the sins of his people in his own body on the tree so that those who trust him might be forgiven and live in righteousness (1 Peter 2:24).

The same Christ who will return as Judge first came as the sacrifice for sinners.

This does not mean the evil that remains around us will be ignored. There are wicked acts throughout history that humanity has never discovered. There are crimes that were never answered. There are victims whose names have been forgotten. There are people who possessed enough power to avoid any meaningful human judgment. There are also cases where some human justice was carried out, but even our best judgment was limited by what we knew and what we were capable of doing.

None of that places an evil act outside the judgment of Christ.

Human courts and divine judgment are not competing systems where someone can claim that an earthly punishment exhausted God's judgment against sin. Christ knows what was done, why it was done, what was hidden, what was misunderstood, and what was never discovered. His judgment does not depend upon incomplete evidence, political pressure, changing public opinion, or the limitations of human understanding.

Paul wrote to believers who were themselves experiencing persecution and affliction. He did not tell them that their suffering was invisible or that justice did not matter. He told them that God considers it just to repay those who afflict his people and to give relief to those who are afflicted when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven (2 Thessalonians 1:4–10).

This is the part of the answer Solomon could not discover merely by surveying life under the sun. Christ will not only remove evil. He will judge it rightly and establish the righteousness, justice, and peace that humanity has repeatedly shown itself incapable of establishing.

The pendulum will not simply swing again.

There will not be another corrupt kingdom waiting behind his kingdom, another ruler who eventually abuses his authority, or another generation that overturns one injustice only to establish another. The kingdom belongs to the righteous King.

Christ is the man of righteousness. He is the man of peace. He is the man of justice. He is the exact imprint of the nature of God. The power that Solomon saw resting on the side of the oppressor will not remain there forever.

There is another part of the gospel that answers Solomon's difficult conclusion about the dead. Solomon looked at death and saw a place beyond the immediate reach of oppression. Peter proclaimed something greater. Jesus entered death and was raised from it. The Christian hope is not that death becomes our permanent escape from evil. Our hope is resurrection under a King who has defeated death itself.

Where does our hope come from?

Not from another arrangement under the sun. It comes from the kingdom of God.

The shadows cast under the sun give outline to the grace and mercy that come from above the heavens. Solomon allows us to see how serious the problem really is. The gospel reveals the one man capable of dealing with it.

Stop Making Peace With Evil

The presence of evil has infiltrated every aspect of life. Only the foolish or unobservant could look honestly at humanity and conclude that everything is as it should be. That includes the world around us, the institutions we build, the people who possess power, and ourselves as individuals.

Yet we have become accustomed to it. We tolerate what should horrify us because the alternative feels too large to consider. We settle for temporary comfort and call it peace. We are willing to live with evil as long as enough distance remains between its effects and our own lives.

Solomon will not allow us to call that good.

When evil is seen properly, his conclusion begins to make more sense. It is better not to be underneath its effects. It is better not to be touched by it. It is better not even to see the evil deeds done under the sun than to pretend their presence is an acceptable trade for a few comfortable years before death.

But the gospel gives us knowledge Solomon's observation by itself cannot provide. Evil will not remain forever. Christ will return. He will judge what humanity judged poorly. He will judge what humanity never discovered. He will expose what was hidden. He will bring relief to the afflicted. He will raise the dead. He will establish righteousness without creating another injustice in its place.

For those who trust him, the Judge who is coming is also the Savior who has already borne their sin.

So the proper response is not to make peace with evil. We should not learn to love the world as it is simply because we have found a comfortable place within it. We should not confuse the temporary restraint of evil with its removal. We should not call something acceptable merely because its consequences landed on our neighbor instead of us.

Everything is not as it should be.

Christ has told us that it will not remain this way.

Scripture References

Ecclesiastes 3:16
Solomon had already observed wickedness occupying the places where justice and righteousness were supposed to be found.

Exodus 1:8–16
Pharaoh uses political power to oppress Israel, showing what happens when authority is placed on the side of the oppressor.

Psalm 10:1–11
The wicked crush the helpless and begin to believe that God neither sees nor will judge what they have done.

Genesis 19
The wickedness of Sodom provides a disturbing picture of human corruption and violence.

Judges 19
A similar corruption later appears within Israel itself, showing that knowledge of God did not make sinful humanity immune from evil.

Judges 21
Israel's attempt to repair the consequences of evil produces further injustice, exposing humanity's inability to establish perfect justice for itself.

Psalm 1:3–6
The way of the wicked will not endure before the judgment of God.

Psalm 5:4–6
God does not delight in wickedness, and evil is completely contrary to his character.

Psalm 10:16–18
The LORD hears the afflicted and will finally do justice for the oppressed.

Judges 6:7–10
God reminds Israel that he delivered them from oppression, yet they still refused to listen to his voice.

Acts 10:33–43
Peter proclaims Jesus as the risen Lord, the Judge of the living and the dead, and the one through whom believers receive forgiveness of sins.

1 Peter 2:24
Christ bore the sins of his people in his own body, providing forgiveness for the evil that exists within us.

2 Thessalonians 1:4–10
Christ will return to bring righteous judgment against evil and relief to those who have suffered beneath it.