The Greek word Ecclesiastes comes from Ekklesia "church" and means "church preacher." In Hebrew it is called Kohelet from kahal "assembly". Thus, the book is a collection of the words of a church preacher. As can be seen from the book itself, Ecclesiastes is the pseudonym by which the son of David, who reigned in Jerusalem, called himself. This circumstance points to Solomon as the author of Ecclesiastes. The following description of his wisdom, wealth, fame, and luxury corresponds to this (see Ecclesiastes 1:1218; 1 Kings. 4, 29). The main subject of the content of the Book of Ecclesiastes is the depiction of the vanity and emptiness of all earthly labor, knowledge, wealth, luxury and pleasures without faith in God and the afterlife. The book teaches about the fear of God, about the keeping of His commandments as conditions for possible happiness in the midst of a vain world. It is valuable that the writer expounds this doctrine on the basis of his personal long experience and deep analysis. In the book one can feel the great wisdom of the author, enlightened by God's revelation. At the beginning of his discourse, Ecclesiastes explains what the vanity (fruitlessness) of human affairs actually consists in. The earth and all the natural phenomena on it revolve in a cycle, and nothing is added from all their work, either in the quantity of matter or in the quality of the active forces. The first desire of a person to know. Therefore, Ecclesiastes tried to acquire knowledge like no one else. But the result of the acquired knowledge was a languor of the spirit, for knowledge does not make up for what is lacking, does not correct the will perverted by sin. Thus, with the increase of knowledge, sorrow increases. The other desire is for contentment and pleasure. For this purpose, Ecclesiastes acquired riches and indulged in sensual pleasures, but everything turned out to be vanity, because the accumulation of goods is accompanied by hard work and cares, and the enjoyment of them does not depend on man, but on God, in Whose hands life itself. Further, Ecclesiastes depicts vanity in the sphere of human life. Without God, all the phenomena of earthly life are limited by time and, just as in soulless nature, represent a cycle: birth and death, joy and sorrow, truth and falsehood, love and hatred. But man's striving for life, for truth, goodness, and beauty is placed by the Creator in the spirit of man. From this there is no doubt that He will also satisfy His aspirations there beyond the grave. Their satisfaction here is hopeless because of the cycle of opposites. A person on earth must believe in God and humbly submit to His commands, must diligently fulfill religious and moral duties and not be carried away by the deceptive blessings of this world. Only in such a mood will a person find peace. From this Ecclesiastes concludes that the purpose of human life is the moral education of the afterlife, where the correspondence between happiness and the moral dignity of man will be established.

Ecclesiastes concludes his observations with an exposition of the teaching on the significance of man's earthly life for preparation for the future: while making moderate use of earthly goods, one must take care to do good deeds. For this purpose, God created man. The time of writing the book of Ecclesiastes refers to the last years of Solomon's reign, when he experienced many things, understood and felt many things, and brought repentance to God, knowing the futility of physical pleasures. The book of Ecclesiastes is full of deep thoughts, which the reader, who is not versed in abstract concepts, is not immediately able to understand and appreciate.

Book of Song of Solomon

This book was written by Solomon in the best years of his reign, soon after the temple was built. In form, it is a dramatic work consisting of conversations between the Beloved and the Beloved. At the first reading, this book can only appear to be an ancient artistic lyrical song: this is how it is interpreted by many free interpreters who do not bind themselves to the voice of the Church. It is necessary to proceed to the reading of the prophets in order to see that in the Old Testament the image of the Beloved and the Beloved is used in the sublime sense of the union of love between God and believers. If this book was included in the codex of the sacred books of the Jews, it was because the Old Testament tradition understood it in this way, in a sublime symbolic sense, and prescribed that it be read on the feast of Passover. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul uses the same symbol, only without the use of poetic form, when, speaking of the love of a husband for his wife, he compares Christ's love for the Church with her (Eph. 5, 2232). The same image of the bride and groom is often heard in church hymns, as a symbol of the ardent love of the Christian soul for its Savior. Such an outburst of love of the soul for Christ is also found in the writings of Christian ascetics.

It is instructive to compare the following passage of the Book of Song of Songs with a similar portrayal of love in the Apostle Paul.

Put me like a seal on your heart, like a ring on your hand: for love is as strong as death; jealousy is as fierce as hell; her arrows are fiery arrows; She is a very strong flame. Big waters cannot extinguish love, and rivers will not flood it. If a man gave all the riches of his house for love, he would be rejected with contempt (Song of Songs 8:67).

Who will separate us from the love of God: tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? as it is written, For Thy sake we are slain all day long, and we are reckoned as sheep destined to be slaughtered. But we overcome all this by the power of Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:3539; 1 Cor. 13).

Prophetic Books

Description of the prophetic era

Prophetic books are easier to understand if one knows the historical setting in which they were composed. Therefore, we will briefly acquaint the reader with the most important events of those times. Under Solomon's son, King Rehoboam (980 B.C.), the united kingdom of Israel was divided into two kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Judah, which occupied the southern part of the Holy Land, was ruled by the descendants of King David. The capital of the kingdom of Judah was the city of Jerusalem, where a magnificent temple built by Solomon stood on the Zion Hill. The law allowed Jews to have only one temple because it served as a spiritual center for the Jewish people. The kingdom of Judah consisted of two tribes, the descendants of Judah and Benjamin. The remaining ten tribes were included in the kingdom of Israel, which was formed in the northern part of the Holy Land. Its capital was Samaria, which was ruled by kings of different dynasties. The kings of Israel, fearing that their subjects would wish to return to the sceptre of the king of Judah when they visited the temple in Jerusalem, prevented their subjects from making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. To meet the spiritual needs of the people, they built pagan temples in different parts of Israel and persuaded the people to worship idols. The temptation to idolatry was great, since all the peoples surrounding Israel worshipped various deities. The Phoenician deity Baal was especially popular. Along with idolatry, coarse, immoral pagan customs passed on to the Jews. In this difficult time for the Old Testament religion, God sent His prophets to Israel, who tried to delay the process of spiritual decay and restore piety among the people. The first Israelite prophets Elijah and Elisha lived under the Israelite kings Ahab, Jehu and Jehoahaz (900825 B.C.). They did not leave records of their sermons to posterity, but their miracles and some of their instructions are recorded in the Third and Second Books of Kings. During the long reign of Jeroboam II (782,740 B.C.), the kingdom of Israel reached the highest degree of prosperity. The weakened neighboring kingdoms of Syria, Phoenicia, Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites did not trouble the Jews. The expansion of the borders of the kingdom of Israel was accompanied by peace and security. It was a time of flourishing art and trade. But at the same time, the morality of the people began to decline rapidly. The rich oppressed the poor, judges acquitted for bribes, debauchery found a wide response among the superstitious masses. The Israelite prophets Joel, Amos and Hosea armed themselves against these evils. A special position among the prophets is occupied by Jonah, who preached not among the Jews, but in Nineveh, the capital of Assyria. After his preaching and the repentance of the Ninevites, the Assyrian kingdom began to grow stronger, expanded, and finally turned into a powerful military force. For two centuries, the Assyrian Empire spread over the territories now occupied by Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Israel. In 738, the king of Israel had to pay a huge tribute to Tiglathpilesar of Assyria. In view of the increasing demands of the Assyrian kings, the kings of Israel had to look for allies among the kings of neighboring states. For example, the Israelite king Tekoa, together with Rezin of Syria, tried to draw the Judean king Ahab into an alliance against Assyria by force. But the frightened Ahab turned to Tiglathpileser III for help. In 734, Tiglath-thalaser again invaded Israel, annexed Galilee and Damascus to his kingdom and took many Israelites into captivity. During the lifetime of Tiglathalasar, the Israelite king Hosea obediently paid tribute to Syria. After his death, an alliance was concluded with Egypt. Then the Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV invaded Israel and ravaged it, and his successor Sargon II in 722 took the capital of Israel Samaria and ravaged it. The Israelites were resettled in various parts of the vast Assyrian Empire, and neighboring nations were resettled in their place. Thus the kingdom of Israel ceased to exist. In his place later appeared the Samaritans, the descendants of the Israelites, who mixed with the pagans. The prophets Joel, Amos and Hosea predicted the calamities coming upon Israel. They saw in the repentant conversion of the Jewish people to God the only possibility of salvation for them. After the fall of Israel, the kingdom of Judah existed for more than a hundred years. During the fall of Samaria, the pious king Hezekiah ruled in Judea (725696). He, following the policy of his father Ahab, maintained an alliance with Assyria. However, after Sargon's death, Hezekiah joined a coalition of neighboring kingdoms seeking to overthrow the oppression of Assyria. In 701, an Assyrian army led by King Sennacherib invaded Judah and ravaged several Judean cities. Hezekiah bought himself off with a large tribute. Soon Sennacherib again attacked Judah, collecting new tribute necessary for him to maintain his military power, and threatened Jerusalem with destruction. Hoping for God's help, Hezekiah decided to defend himself in Jerusalem. Then the prophet Isaiah spoke, who predicted that Sennacherib's plans would not be fulfilled and God would save the Jews. Indeed, the very next night the Angel of the Lord struck down the 185,000-strong Assyrian army. Sennacherib returned to Assyria in shame, where he was soon killed by conspirators (2 Kings 20). Isaiah revealed the flowering of the prophetic gift, and his book is a remarkable monument of prophetic writing. We will talk about it in more detail later. At about the same time, Micah and Nahum prophesied. Hezekiah's son, the wicked Manasseh (696641 B.C.), was the exact opposite of his believing and good father. His reign turned out to be the darkest period in the history of the Jewish people. It was a time of persecution of the prophets and destruction of faith. Manasseh, having concluded an alliance with Assyria, set himself the goal of making paganism the dominant religion in his country. He mercilessly destroyed the defenders of the faith. During his reign, the great Isaiah also suffered a martyr's death. The reign of Manasseh, which lasted about fifty years, caused irreparable damage to the true faith. Those few prophets who survived the persecution went underground, and we know nothing about their activities. In his old age, Manasseh tried to throw off his dependence on Assyria, but he paid a heavy price for it. In the end, he realized his guilt before God and repented, but neither the aged Manasseh nor his successors could restore the true faith among the people. After Manasseh, the pious king Josiah (639608 B.C.) ruled. Wishing to revive faith in God among the people, he diligently engaged in religious reform, and regular services began again in the temple. However, the success of his reforms was mainly external. Pagan customs and superstitions took deep root among the people. High society was morally corrupt. Nevertheless, the prophets Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, and especially Jeremiah tried to awaken a sense of repentance in the people and restore faith in God. In 608, the Egyptian army of Pharaoh Necho II, waging war against Assyria, passed through Judah. Josiah, trying to remain faithful to Assyria, entered into battle with Necho, but was defeated at Megiddo (Armageddon). For a short time, Judah became a subject of Egypt. This was the time of the weakening of Assyria and the strengthening of the Babylonian monarchy. The joint army of Nabopolassar of Babylon (Chaldean) and Xerxes of the Medes destroyed Nineveh in 606 B.C. Thus perished the warlike Assyrian Empire, which had terrified and ravaged neighboring countries for a hundred and fifty years. Nabopolassar's successor, Nebuchadnezzar, invaded Judah in his victorious campaign against Egypt, and King Jehoiakim became a subject of Babylon in 604. Contrary to the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah, Jehoiakim's son Jehoiachin rebelled against Babylon and was taken captive to Babylon with many of his retainers (597, the first Babylonian captivity). Among the captives was the prophet Ezekiel. In 588, under King Zedekiah, Judah again rebelled against Babylon (Chaldea). In 586, Jerusalem was besieged and taken. The temple was burned, the city was destroyed. The blinded king, along with the rest of his subjects, was taken captive to Babylon. Thus began the second Babylonian captivity. The Jews spent about 70 years in captivity, from 597 to 536 B.C.

The Meaning of the Ancient Prophets

In Old Testament times, priests limited themselves mainly to offering sacrifices prescribed by the law. They did not care about the morality of the people. They were priests, but not shepherds. The Jewish people were in spiritual ignorance, and pagan superstitions and vices were easily assimilated by them. Therefore, the main task of the prophets was to teach the Jewish people to believe and live correctly. Seeing deviations from the Law of God, the prophets severely rebuked sinners, no matter who they were commoners or princes, priests or judges, slaves or kings. Their inspired word had great power to awaken a sense of repentance and a desire to serve God. The prophets were the conscience of the people and "elders" to those who longed for spiritual guidance. Only thanks to the prophets did the true faith persist among the Jewish people until the time of the birth of Christ. The first disciples of Christ were disciples of the last Old Testament prophet John the Baptist. While the priesthood was hereditary among the Jews, people were called to the prophetic ministry by God individually. The prophets came from the most diverse strata of the population from the peasant and pastoral class, as, for example, the prophets Hosea and Amos; or from high society, such as the prophets Isaiah, Zephaniah, and Daniel. There were prophets of priestly origin, such as the prophets Ezekiel and Habakkuk. The Lord chose prophets not according to their social background, but according to their spiritual qualities. Over the centuries, the image of a true prophet of God was established among the Jews: a man who was completely unselfish, infinitely devoted to God, fearless before the powers that be, and at the same time deeply humble, strict with himself, compassionate and caring, like a father. Many of the weak and offended among the people found protectors and intercessors in the person of the prophets of God.

For greater clarity, we will consider the prophetic books in chronological order. We will talk about the prophets who lived in the period from the ninth to the sixth century B.C. Joel, Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah. At the center of this first period is Isaiah, whose book must be considered the flowering of the prophetic gift. The eyes of the prophets of this period were turned to the fall of the kingdom of Israel, which occurred in 722 B.C. This first period ends with the persecution and destruction of the prophets by King Manasseh.

The Book of the Prophet Joel