Ecclesiastes 3:16,17

Injustice Is A Blot on God's Creation (Ecclesiastes 3:16).

The consequence of his awareness of everlastingness, and of his subsequent recognition that justice is not being achieved, is that he becomes aware that God is the final judge.

Ecclesiastes 3:16

‘And moreover I saw under the sun, in the place of judgment, that wickedness was there. And in the place of righteousness that wickedness was there.'

The Hebrew is graphic. ‘In the place of judgment, wickedness there!' Where justice and righteousness should have been prevalent, wickedness had entered. The courts were corrupt. The authorities governing dishonestly and unfairly. So now he sees that there is not only meaninglessness, but also wickedness and injustice. A moral dimension has been introduced. This can only lead on to the thought of God's judgment.

Ecclesiastes 3:17

‘I said in my heart, “God will judge the righteous and the wicked. For there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.” '

As his thoughts were progressing, this terrible fact that he had become aware of shook him out of his complacent reasoning. The scheme of things was disturbed. Wickedness in the place of judgment! Wickedness in the place where right should prevail! God must surely do something about it. And so he is sure that at some stage God must step in and judge both the righteous and the wicked. For there is a time for every purpose and for every work so that there must be a time for this.

Note that the righteous are to be judged as well as the wicked. The judgments of the courts have proved false. So the Preacher is confident that God must, as it were, hear their appeal, He must re-judge the righteous as well as judging the wicked, for he is arguing that He must surely have some way of bringing about final justice. (Compare Ezekiel 18:20). Here we have the moral argument for the truth of an afterlife. This again signifies that he sees God as stepping into the advancement of time. (The logical consequence of this must be a judgment beyond the grave for those who died unjustly. But he does not reach that conclusion yet).

Later he will declare that for some who cannot find justice it would be better to be dead, or even to not have been born at all (Ecclesiastes 4:1). This may suggest that he does, even at this stage, have an inner sense that for things to be righted justice must in some way be dispensed after death. But he does not discuss the matter. It is not yet fully formulated in his mind. But what he is certain of is that God must judge, and right the wrong.

So the Preacher is now no longer quite so smooth in his philosophy. He has had to recognise that God continues to insist on breaking into things. First he had the recognition of the strange contentment and blessing of the godly (Ecclesiastes 2:24), then the sense of beauty in nature (Ecclesiastes 3:11 a), then the recognition of a sense of everlastingness in man (Ecclesiastes 3:11 b), then the recognition of God's doing everlasting things (Ecclesiastes 3:14), then the recognition of God's stepping into the process of time to act (Ecclesiastes 3:15), and now the sense of morality and necessity for His judgment, something that was of such importance to God that it necessitated God Himself stepping in to act in this way. All was now no longer quite so meaningless.