Episode
Wait… did Solomon just say there’s no afterlife? (Ecc 3:17-4:3).
- Podcast
- Old things New Podcast
- Published
- Feb 3, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 727
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Summary
Pray Read: Ecc 3:16-4:3 Meditation Verse 21 is one of those awkward Ecclesiastes sayings. It’s one of those verses that makes Christians want to avoid the book altogether – and plenty, it would seem, do just that. I want to take a moment to explain it. Let’s just start by reading it together: “Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?” Straight away you are probably thinking, hang on, the New Testament talks about an afterlife. Is Solomon saying there is no afterlife here? What does he mean? Well, he means exactly what he says. Let me put it this way. If someone from your church, let’s say, was to die in the next few seconds, would you be able to tell me where their spirit is? No, you would not, would you? In verse 16 Solomon makes the point that he is observing life under the sun. And from life under the sun, we literally cannot see the spiritual realm. What happens to animals when they die? We do not know. That is Solomon’s point in verse 21. We have no idea. What about the spirit of a man? You do not know for sure. It may have gone up to heaven, it may have gone down to hell. That is not to say we cannot have assurance or confidence that a faithful believer has gone to heaven. In God’s grace, we can have confidence. But only God knows categorically where a person goes. That is Solomon’s point. From where we are standing, we do not categorically know a person’s eternal destiny. There is a level of mystery in the afterlife for us, and we need to acknowledge that and leave it with God. Some commentators say that Solomon is denying the afterlife altogether in this verse, as though he were some kind of cynical agnostic. Perhaps you have thought that yourself. There are three reasons why that reading is deeply fl…