The phrase carpe diem is defined as the urge to seize the day, to live each moment to the fullest! This is the first of several passages in Ecclesiastes where the author urges us to seize the good gifts God has given us.

Some have mistakenly read these passages as hedonistic calls to debauchery and revelry. That is not consistent with the message of Scripture. For example, the prophet Isaiah castigated the people of Judah because when they should have been “weep[ing]” and “wail[ing],” they were instead saying, “Let us eat and drink...for tomorrow we die!” (Isa. 22:13). In 1 Corinthians 15:32 Paul quotes this passage from Isaiah to point to the hopelessness of life if Christ was not raised.

The Teacher is not calling us to enjoy God’s gifts from a hedonistic, godless mindset. Rather, he is saying that food, drinks, work, and a spouse are gifts that God has given us to enjoy during this life under the sun. In addition to living in right relationship with God (what he calls “fearing God), these gifts help us navigate a world shot through with sin.

What’s more, Adam and Eve enjoyed these gifts in the Garden of Eden before they sinned against God. We may miss the allusions to Genesis in English translation, but the carpe diem passages (Eccl. 2:24–26; 3:10–15; 3:16–22; 5:18–20; 8:10–15; 9:7–10; 11:8–10) use the exact same language as Genesis 2:15–25. In the Garden of Eden God gave the first humans the gifts of eating, drinking, working, and a spouse. In Ecclesiastes, we are told that embracing those gifts is how we look back to Eden and now, as New Testament believers, we look forward to the new heavens and the new earth, where we will eat, drink, work, and enjoy companionship as God intended.

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