Death, they say, is the great equalizer. The author of Ecclesiastes would agree. Once again, the Teacher calls us back to the book of Genesis. He has already shined a spotlight on the Garden of Eden, before sin entered the world. He presented the Garden of Eden as the model for how we receive God’s gifts of eating, drinking, working, and marriage. Now he reminds us of God’s curse of death in Genesis 3:19: “[F]or dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Today’s passage is difficult to read. The Teacher laments that humans and animals will suffer the same fate: death. You may be surprised at his question in verse 21: “Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?” At first glance he seems without hope. What about the hope we have in the resurrection and our life with God in the new heavens and the new earth? Like any good teacher, he leaves us with this question for quite a long time. But in 12:7 he again alludes to Genesis 3:19 and answers the question, perhaps afraid we would miss his meaning: “The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

All of us are going to die; we are all like Abel: “Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless” (v. 19). But for those in Christ, those who have believed in the death and resurrection of God’s only Son, there is hope! Will you trust Him today?

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