Why Another Commentary?
I'm starting to write a book.
I’ve wanted to write a book (and then several more) for quite some time. Earlier this year I began a study of the book of Ecclesiastes with two friends. In preparation, I read (and am still reading) numerous commentaries on Ecclesiastes, keeping notes on important thoughts I went through them. At this point, I’ve collected 28 pages of notes with a tall stack of commentaries still waiting to be read. It seems that I have already made serious progress into the research portion of writing a book. It would be a shame to abandon those notes once the study series completes.
So I hope to write my own commentary on Ecclesiastes, using this substack to release early drafts of it in small portions, not necessarily in order. The next hundred or so posts will be a first draft of my commentary. After several revisions, I’ll hopefully have a decent book, which I would like to see completed and released by the end of 2023.
The following will (probably) be a section in the Introduction:
Why Another Commentary?
One realization during my search for commentaries on Ecclesiastes was that there is no end to the making of many books. There have been endless commentaries written over the last two millennia, so many that whole books have been written just listing these works.1 Even if we limit the selection to what is accessible today with internet access and a credit card, such a list would take years to read through in its entirety. Commentaries have been written by great theologians and educated scholars from a variety of different perspectives, for both the layman and the academic.
So why should I add to the list? For the reasons I mentioned above. There is far too much to read. There are many great insights to be found in the commentaries of the early Christians and other great theologians, if you have enough time to read them. You can learn a tremendous amount from the numerous academic tomes, if you have enough money to afford them. Or you could choose just one and learn a few good insights, missing out on many more.
What I hope to provide in this volume is an affordable commentary that is manageable in size, easy to read, and thorough in exegesis. I often include many different interpretations of a verse. Sometimes I insist on one and argue against another. Other times I provide many plausible interpretations. I wish to take you on a brief journey through the great catena2 of commentary on this incredible book, showing you not just what I think, but what so many others before us have thought. My intention is that after reading this commentary, you will not only appreciate the brilliance of Ecclesiastes, but you will have a decent understanding of how it has been interpreted. Footnotes3 are used not just to cite sources (which should be viewed as avenues for further reading) but also to add helpful clarifications and background for some that would benefit from them.
If you would like to follow along with this commentary as I write it, please subscribe. Helpful criticisms are very much appreciated.
Stuart Weeks, The Making of Many Books: Printed Works on Ecclesiastes 1523-1875 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2014); David J. H. Beldman and Russell L. Meek, A Classified Bibliography on Ecclesiastes (London: T&T Clark, 2019)
A Latin term meaning “chain.” St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) compiled a commentary on the four Gospels consisting of commentary from the Church Fathers called the Catena Aurea, or “golden chain.”
Such as the one before this one.