The writer to the Hebrews
notes that one of the Lord’s objectives in his incarnation was to “deliver all those
who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery”.
That slave metaphor is not particularly flattering. And yet we can see a slave’s mentality at work in
Ecclesiastes. Solomon, the Preacher, has lived his life making decisions for
everyone else around him. He has been the greatest king of his generation;
autonomous, powerful, captain of his own destiny. As he considers his own
looming demise, he cannot stop obsessing about the various ways in which his
own agency is being gradually stripped from him as he ages. This, he says, is “vanity”
and “a great evil”. Death is the great leveler of humanity, and the Preacher
does not look forward to being leveled.
That preoccupation is a form of slavery, one from which only Christ can free us.