What have the words in bold above got to do with Jersey? Take (A) for instance. Where, in Jersey, would be the “place of justice”? The Jersey Courts and the lawyers? Where in Jersey would be the “place of righteousness”? The church buildings and the great and the good?
Let’s go back then to this ancient book of Ecclesiastes (meaning, simply put, “leader-speaker”), written probably 3,000 years ago, and see what the author (probably the leader-speaker of the nation of Israel) had to say about their “place of justice” and their “place of righteousness”.
There – even there in those very places – there was wickedness. It seems that the leader-speaker was greatly distressed about that. Maybe he knew the wickedness within the human beings who operated there – and everywhere. So (B) he “said in his heart” that God would see to it all. There would be regime change one day when “God will judge the righteous and the wicked.”
And the leader-speaker of this nation has a reason to know that fact: The reason is that “there is a time for every matter and for every work.” In other words, as folk in Jersey ominously say, “he’ll have his day”.......”she’ll have her day”..... But this 3,000 year old book places that in the hands of the God of Israel – the God of our lord Jesus Christ.
There’s more wisdom yet in this national leader-speaker. He has worked something out that others have missed (C). He’s worked it out that the existence of wickedness in the “place of justice” and the presence of wickedness in the “place of righteousness” – in his own nation BC 1,000 – is in fact a test. A test from Almighty God. God is testing every human being, every one of “the children of men”, with the objective in God’s mind that every human being “may see that they themselves are but beasts”.
How so? Well, when mankind sees wickedness even in the “place of justice” even in the “place of righteousness”, will they not then see that they are degenerating into “beasts”, into animals?
Tough words from the leader-speaker of the nation............ It seems that he is deeply concerned to see a change of mind – a regime change – in the people over whom he is the national leader.
And he knows that this regime change will only come when they see themselves as they really are. In fact, it will only come, so he says, when they see wickedness in the place of justice and in the place of righteousness and recognise that they are no better than animals – predatory and a-moral.
But there’s a tad more wisdom from him. In (D) he concludes that, if the need for regime change in every man and woman is not seen, then there’s only one thing for mankind to do. They must then, in that circumstance, “rejoice in their work”.
There’s nothing else for them but to try to be happy in what they do, in what they earn, in what they buy through their work and business activity.
With a touch of the despair this leader-speaker gives up. “Who can bring him [mankind] to see what will be after him?” It’s a rhetorical question.
Unless folk can see that wickedness everywhere can’t possibly continue for ever there won’t be any regime change, any hope, for them. They’ll just have to live and die like beasts. They’ll just have to work pointlessly, without seeing the ultimate blessing that could be theirs. |
