The Uncomforted Tears Under the Sun Text: Ecclesiastes 4:1-3
Introduction: A Sober Look at a Fallen World
The book of Ecclesiastes is a divine gift to the church, but it is a gift that many Christians leave in the wrapping. It feels too honest, too raw, too much like the world we actually live in. It is the inspired record of a man looking at life "under the sun," which is the biblical way of describing a worldview that brackets God out. When you look at the world from a purely horizontal perspective, a purely immanent frame, what you see is what the Preacher sees: vanity, a chasing after the wind. And in our passage today, he turns his gaze to one of the most intractable problems of this horizontal life: the brutal reality of oppression.
We live in an age that is obsessed with oppression. We have entire academic disciplines dedicated to identifying it, complex theories to explain it, and revolutionary movements promising to end it. But for all our talk, we seem to have only multiplied the grievances. We have manufactured new categories of victims and new classes of oppressors, and the result is not justice, but a cacophony of rage, envy, and resentment. The modern world wants to solve the problem of oppression without God, which is like trying to cure a disease by renaming the symptoms.
The Preacher, Solomon, is not naive. He is not a revolutionary in the Marxist sense. He is a realist. He looks at the world as it is, scarred and broken by the fall of man, and he does not flinch. He sees the raw deal that many people get. He sees the structural injustice, the power imbalances, and the sheer, heartbreaking sorrow of it all. But unlike the modern social justice warrior, he does not propose a new political program or a five year plan to eradicate all tears. He forces us to look into the abyss of a world without a Comforter, precisely so that we will be driven to the one true Comforter who is not found under the sun, but who reigns over it.
This passage is a dose of biblical realism. It is meant to sober us up. It is meant to strip away our sentimentalism and our utopian delusions. If your gospel cannot handle the brutal facts of Ecclesiastes 4, then your gospel is too small. It is a gospel made of cotton candy and good intentions, and it will dissolve in the first rain of real trouble. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a flimsy shelter from the storm; it is the power of God that breaks into the storm and commands the waves, "Peace, be still."
The Text
Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold, I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them. So I lauded the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. But better off than both of them is the one who never has been, who has never seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
(Ecclesiastes 4:1-3 LSB)
The Unvarnished Observation (v. 1)
We begin with the Preacher's clear-eyed assessment of the world.
"Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold, I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them." (Ecclesiastes 4:1)
Solomon "looked again." This is not a passing glance. This is a considered, deliberate investigation. He is taking stock of the human condition. And what does he see? "All the acts of oppression." Not some, not a few, but a pervasive, systemic reality. Oppression is what happens when fallen human beings have power over other fallen human beings. It is the inevitable result of sin. The fall did not just corrupt our relationship with God; it shattered our relationships with one another. Cain's murder of Abel was the first act of oppression, and the blood has been crying out from the ground ever since.
Notice the key elements he identifies. First, "the tears of the oppressed." This is not an abstract, sociological analysis. It is deeply personal. He sees the emotional cost, the heartbreak, the raw suffering. God sees these tears. He told Moses at the burning bush that He had seen the affliction of His people in Egypt. Psalm 56 says that God keeps our tears in a bottle. This is not meaningless suffering; it is observed suffering.
Second, he sees the power dynamic: "on the side of their oppressors was power." This is the crux of the problem. Oppression is not just meanness; it is meanness backed by muscle. It is the ability to enforce your will on another against their will, for your own benefit. This power can be political, economic, physical, or social. But in a fallen world, power always tends to corrupt, and it is almost always used to exploit.
And third, he repeats a devastating refrain: "they had no one to comfort them." He says it twice for emphasis. This is the heart of the despair. It's bad enough to be crushed, but it is another level of hell to be crushed alone. There is no human court of appeal that can truly fix this. There is no earthly savior who can wipe away these tears. The systems themselves are often the instruments of oppression. The courts can be bought, the officials can be bribed, and the mob can be stirred up. Under the sun, there is no ultimate recourse. This is a bleak picture, and it is meant to be. Solomon is rubbing our noses in the futility of all man-centered solutions to the problem of evil. Our committees, our protests, our revolutions, they all end up, sooner or later, just rearranging the oppressors.
The Despairing Conclusion (v. 2)
Given this bleak reality, the Preacher draws a shocking conclusion.
"So I lauded the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living." (Ecclesiastes 4:2 LSB)
From a purely "under the sun" perspective, this makes perfect sense. If life is a relentless cycle of suffering and injustice with no hope of ultimate relief, then to be released from it is a blessing. The dead are no longer oppressed. Their tears have ceased. The boot is no longer on their neck. They are, in a word, free from the grind of this fallen world. Job lamented the day he was born for this very reason. Jeremiah cursed the day of his birth as well. This is not a command to suicide, but rather a profound lament over the depth of human misery.
This is a direct assault on the modern, secular religion of progress. We are told that life is the ultimate value, that we must extend it at all costs, that this world is all there is, so we must make it a paradise. The Bible, in its honesty, says that there are conditions of life so miserable that death is preferable. This is not pessimism; it is realism. It forces us to ask the question: what is the point of it all? If this life is just a cruel joke where the powerful win and the weak weep, then why endure it? This is the question that drives men to despair, unless they have an answer that comes from "above the sun."
The Preacher is setting a trap for our pride. He is showing us the logical end of a godless worldview. If you start with man as the measure of all things, you end with the conclusion that it would be better not to be a man at all. The humanist worldview has no adequate answer for the tears of the oppressed. It can only offer temporary solutions, distractions, or the false promise of a man-made utopia that always turns out to be another abattoir.
The Ultimate Desperation (v. 3)
But Solomon takes his logic one step further, to the point of absolute zero.
"But better off than both of them is the one who never has been, who has never seen the evil work that is done under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 4:3 LSB)
Better than the living who suffer, and better than the dead who have escaped suffering, is the one who never existed at all. The unborn child is spared the entire spectacle of "the evil work that is done under the sun." To never have been is to have never been victimized, never been an oppressor, never shed a tear, and never caused one. From a horizontal perspective, non-existence is the ultimate prophylactic against suffering.
This is the final terminus of a worldview without God. It is not just pessimism; it is nihilism. It is the logical conclusion that existence itself is the problem. Many ancient and modern philosophies have arrived at this same point. The Buddhists seek to escape the cycle of suffering by extinguishing the self. The modern anti-natalist argues that having children is an immoral act because it brings another being into a world of pain.
Solomon, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, takes us to the very edge of this precipice and makes us look down. He wants us to feel the gut-wrenching vertigo of a meaningless universe. He is demonstrating that if you do not have a transcendent God who is both sovereign and good, this despair is the only intellectually honest conclusion. You cannot look at the world, see what Solomon sees, and then whistle a happy tune about the indomitable human spirit. That is a sentimental lie.
The Answer from Above the Sun
So, is this the final word? Is the Bible telling us to despair? Not at all. The entire book of Ecclesiastes is a thought experiment designed to show the bankruptcy of a life lived apart from God. The conclusion of the book is "Fear God and keep his commandments" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). The bleakness of chapter 4 is meant to make us desperate for the rest of the story.
And the rest of the story, the full counsel of God, gives us the answer to this uncomforted oppression. The Preacher says the oppressed have "no one to comfort them." The Hebrew word for comforter is menachem. This is a devastating diagnosis, but it is not the final one. For the prophet Isaiah promises a Messiah who will come to "comfort all who mourn" (Isaiah 61:2). Jesus begins His ministry by quoting that very passage.
Where is the comforter? His name is Jesus Christ. He is the one who saw the tears of the oppressed and did not remain a distant observer. He entered into our world of oppression. He became one of the oppressed. He was, as Isaiah 53 says, "despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." The ultimate act of oppression in human history was the crucifixion of the only innocent man who ever lived. On the cross, the power of Rome and the power of the corrupt religious establishment crushed the Son of God. He cried out in agony. He shed tears of blood. And for a moment, He was the ultimate uncomforted one, crying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
He did this to deal with the root of all oppression, which is our sin. He absorbed the full force of God's righteous wrath against sin, so that He could offer us not just temporary relief, but eternal comfort. And then He rose from the dead, demonstrating that oppression and death do not get the last word. God gets the last word. And His word is resurrection.
Because of the resurrection, we are not left as orphans. Jesus promised to send "another Comforter," the Holy Spirit (John 14:16). The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance, the guarantee that one day all oppression will cease. He comforts us in our afflictions now, so that we can be agents of comfort to others (2 Corinthians 1:4). We are called to "weep with those who weep," to defend the fatherless, and to plead the case of the widow. We do this not with the naive optimism that we can build heaven on earth, but with the sober confidence that the King is returning to do just that. One day, He will return to judge the living and the dead. He will hold every oppressor to account. And He will wipe away every tear from the eyes of His people. In the new heavens and the new earth, there will be no more oppression, no more tears, no more death, for the former things will have passed away. That is the only hope that is strong enough to look the despair of Ecclesiastes 4 in the face and not blink.