Preaching Ecclesiastes

I started thinking and writing about Ecclesiastes because I had to preach it. So, hopefully, as I'm on the verge of submitting, I can have a crack at answering the question I began with three years ago: how does one attack a book such as Ecclesiastes and divide it into appropriate sections for preaching to a congregation?

As discussed in previous posts, one instinct can be to systematise the book and preach the teaching of Ecclesiastes on work, joy, wealth, and so on, much as one might do with the book of Proverbs. As my personal approach is to preach systematically through books, this was not really an option for me, so I chose to divide the book into manageable and logical chunks, and it was the things observed through this process that led me to embark on this study.

The way I ended up dividing the book for weekly preaching to a congregation (before beginning this study) was to preach the introduction and opening poem (1:1–11), then 1:12–2:26 as a block, and then 3:1–15 as the wisdom poem and its observation response. 3:16–4:16 was one talk, although I had the opportunity to come back to it at a weekend away I was asked to speak at, where I divided the panel into four talks. I then skipped forward to the next observation section, 5:12–6:12, then the final observation panel. At another weekend away I gave four talks from the fourth observation panel, with the coda (9:11–13) serving as a concluding Bible study. The penultimate talk was the final poem (11:7–12:7) and then finally, also serving as a conclusion to the series, 12:8–14.

All this means I did not spend much time preaching through the wisdom panels, although, if I had my time again, I would endeavour to preach the observation panels with much more reference to the wisdom panels. That also infers that I would not preach from the wisdom panels on their own, but use them, as I have argued is the case for Qohelet, to illustrate and interact with his observations.

Here is what I would recommend for preachers who are persuaded by the structure presented in this paper, with a plan for between seven and sixteen talks:

• 1:1–11 one talk and an introduction to the book as a whole
• 1:12–2:26 one talk or up to three talks (with the coda 2:24–26 hanging over all the talks), illustrated by the wisdom panel 3:1–9
• 3:10–4:16 one talk or up to five talks (dividing the final unit into two), illustrated by the wisdom panel 4:17–5:11
• 5:12–6:12 one talk, illustrated by the wisdom panel 7:1–14
• 7:15–9:13 one talk or up to four talks (with the coda 9:11–13 hanging over all the talks), illustrated by the wisdom panel 9:14–11:6
• 11:7–12:7 one talk
• 12:8–14   one talk, also reflecting on the book as a whole and the role of wisdom in character formation