Ecclesiastes 9:2-4. 2The same destiny ultimately awaits everyone, whether righteous or wicked, good or bad, ceremonially clean or unclean, religious or irreligious. Good people receive the same treatment as sinners, and people who make promises to God are treated like people who don’t. 3It seems so wrong that everyone under the sun suffers the same fate. Already twisted by evil, people choose their own mad course, for they have no hope. There is nothing ahead but death anyway. 4There is hope only for the living. As they say, “It’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion!”
Like Job, Psalms, and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes is another set of long poems in the Bible written by someone called “The Teacher.” The Teacher may have been King Solomon, but more likely it is someone writing about King Solomon and his selfish and extravagant lifestyle (see day 13, Apes).
In Ecclesiastes, The Teacher asks all of life’s hardest questions like, “Why are we here?” and “What happens when we die?” Read Ecclesiastes 9:2-4 again. Can you tell what The Teacher is saying about death and dying? He says everyone dies. Good people die and bad people die – Good people receive the same treatment as sinners. Then he calls this wrong and hopeless. Then he makes his point by contrasting two animals – a living dog and a dead lion. The Teacher’s conclusion? Because there is nothing after death, it’s better to be a living dog than a dead lion.
Do you have a pet dog? If you do, you probably love your dog. You feed your dog, walk your dog, pet your dog, and play with your dog. As a pastor I have comforted many people who have lost a beloved dog.
Lions on the other hand are not kept as pets. We might like seeing them in zoos but we would never want to run into a lion on the street. In general, most of us don’t care about lions too much.
In Solomon’s day all of this was reversed. Dogs were not loved and they definitely were not pets. Dogs were considered to be disgusting scavengers (do you know what a scavenger is?). Dogs were filthy, had diseases, and were “unclean” like pigs (day 8). But lions were a big deal in Solomon’s day. Lions were strong predators (do you know what a predator is?). Lions represented power and royalty. Lions were kept by kings to show how great they were and to punish people they didn’t like (like Daniel in the lion’s den).
In Solomon’s day people would definitely rather be a dead lion than a living dog. But not The Teacher. He says that if death leads to nothing, then who cares? Just try to stay alive as long as you can, even if it means being a nasty, gross, mangy dog.
Now, if Jesus had never come to us at Christmas, then The Teacher might be right. But he’s not right, at least not in Ecclesiastes 9:2-4 (spoiler alert: The Teacher will get it right later in the chapter). When Jesus came to us as a baby he brought everlasting life to us. Jesus was born to die, but also to rise from the dead never to die again. When we choose to trust in Jesus and his forgiveness of our sin, we receive his eternal life. Now all of us dead dogs are living lions with Jesus. And when he comes again, he will come like a lion to save us once and for all time! Amen.
Questions: What do you think happens to people when they die? If you died today what would happen to you? If Jesus came back today as a lion would you be in his pride (a pack of lions)?
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