The Hodder Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes

Eric Ortlund has given us a precious gift in this new commentary on Ecclesiastes. Page after page is full of deep insight into both the text and the world around us. He combines the kind of a scholar with the heart of a pastor and-more than that-a friend. This will help us profoundly understand Ecclesiastes, and therefore life itself. – Sam Allberry, Associate Pastor, Immanuel Nashville; author, James For You.
What is good for human beings? Eric Ortlund helps readers perceive Qohelet’s answer to this perennial question. With skill and unusual clarity, he demystifies the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, inviting readers to embrace both the frustrations and the joys of earthly life within divinely imposed limits. Like Qohelet’s observations, Ortlund’s readings of and reflections on Ecclesiastes are penetrating, painful, and healing. Ortlund refuses to sugar-coat the vanity and frustrations of life. And he refuses to minimize Qohelet’s recognition of the giftedness of life in God’s good creation. I cannot wait to share Ortlund’s wise reading of Ecclesiastes with my students. – Christopher B. Ansberry, Associate Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies, Grove City College, USA
This is a delightful commentary on a book of Holy Scripture which so many find incomprehensible at best and disheartening at worst, and for this Eric Ortlund deserves our gratitude. You will find in here not only a clear path through the riddles and conundrums of Ecclesiastes but also a faithful guide to wisdom and joy in life with Christ east of Eden. The attention to the text is close and profound, the awareness of our finitude as human creatures is deeply felt in the heart, and so the result is a help to reading Ecclesiastes that is as absorbing and rich as it is pastoral and edifying. I learned a great deal and expect to return to these pages to keep doing so. – David Gibson, Minister of Trinity Church, Aberdeen, Scotland.
Non-technical, readable and accessible. * Evangelicals Now *
This commentary is novel in that Eric Ortlund reframes Ecclesiastes’ tension between frustration and joy as a coherent theological vision, showing how life’s brevity and limits function not as despair but as an invitation to receive ordinary pleasures as gifts from God, a perspective that makes Ecclesiastes in The Hodder Bible Commentary especially fresh and fruitful for preaching and teaching. * Timothy Yap *

Eric Ortlund is Lecturer in Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew at Oak Hill Theological College in London. He has written commentaries on Esther and Malachi, and two books on Job: Suffering Wisely and Well: The Grief of Job and the Grace of God (Crossway), and Piercing Leviathan: God’s Defeat of Evil in the Book of Job (NSBT).

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