The Three-Story Perspective of Ecclesiastes
BEN SANSBURN
Ecclesiastes is a challenging book. In preparing to preach through it, I’ve been incredibly grateful for the wealth of rich, Christ-centered resources available. One of the most insightful has been Bobby Jamieson’s book, Everything Is Never Enough.1
One of Jamieson’s most helpful insights is his metaphor that Ecclesiastes is “like the view from a three-story building.”
“You and Qohelet enter the building on the ground floor. This is where he stays for most of the book. Looking out from a floor-to-ceiling window, Qohelet’s far-seeing eyes take in the whole of human life from its own level. He weighs the merits of work, sex, food and drink, wealth, power, and many other possible sources of meaning and satisfaction. He finds them all wanting and pronounces them all ‘absurd’ - hevel. Qohelet sounds embittered and defeated, even depressed. At one point he tells us that he hates his life and that he gave his heart up to despair.”
This “ground floor” is the view most of us feel when reading Ecclesiastes. We wonder what to do with Qohelet’s perspective. Is it a view we should adopt or reject? Is it hopeless or simply honest? Should we reinterpret Qohelet’s words this side of Christ?
Jamieson suggests that the right approach is actually to see that Qohelet speaks from more than one frame of reference.
“… at several points in the book Qohelet climbs up a set of stairs to the second story. From up here, he surveys the same territory, considering many of the same subjects - work, wealth, food and drink - and he pronounces them good. He sees rich opportunities for enjoyment and tells us to get busy enjoying them with statements such as:
In these seven passages, Qohelet surveys the same territory but sees something astonishingly different. He sees the same subjects yet comes to the opposite conclusion. Here on the second floor he says that everything is a gift."
Jamieson argues that making sense of the tension between Qohelet’s first and second floor viewpoints is the key to interpreting the book. On the ground floor, Qohelet observes life through the senses. He “operates empirically.” He “investigates through observation, experience, and reflection… and draws conclusions based on what he sees and does and suffers.”
But there’s a different approach Qohelet takes from the second floor. There, his conclusions don’t come as much from what he observes on the surface, but what he discerns underneath it. “He concludes that life is good, that life is a gift, and that the threads that compose the fabric of our lives are each themselves gifts.”
“The key difference between the first floor and the second floor,” Jamieson writes, “is that, on the second floor, Qohelet brings God to bear. Specifically, he considers all of life through the lends of its being created by God and sustained by God.”
It’s this difference between how our lived experiences feel on the surface, and how they are lived Coram Deo (superintended by a good and sovereign God), that makes the difference between despair and delight. Yet, it also creates a paradox. All things are both absurd and a gift. “Neither one cancels or erases the other.” Both those truths sit side by side in the life and experience of Qohelet, and in our lives as well. We live in the tension between Genesis 1 and Genesis 3, where the world is good but fallen, beautiful and broken.
But there’s still a third floor. Qohelet doesn’t visit it often, but when he does, the view matters.
“Qohelet only stays long enough [on the third floor] to point out two crucial reference points: one, fear God because, two, he is going to judge all that you do and all that everyone ever does.”
This is the climactic conclusion at the end of the book:
“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (12:13-14).
Only when we live from that third floor perspective, can we rightly enjoy the second floor gifts, and accept the first floor frustrations. All three views are true and in tension. Jamieson’s argument is that they are all needed and work together to help us make sense of the landscape of life and live into it with purpose and wisdom.
One of Jamieson’s most helpful insights is his metaphor that Ecclesiastes is “like the view from a three-story building.”
“You and Qohelet enter the building on the ground floor. This is where he stays for most of the book. Looking out from a floor-to-ceiling window, Qohelet’s far-seeing eyes take in the whole of human life from its own level. He weighs the merits of work, sex, food and drink, wealth, power, and many other possible sources of meaning and satisfaction. He finds them all wanting and pronounces them all ‘absurd’ - hevel. Qohelet sounds embittered and defeated, even depressed. At one point he tells us that he hates his life and that he gave his heart up to despair.”
This “ground floor” is the view most of us feel when reading Ecclesiastes. We wonder what to do with Qohelet’s perspective. Is it a view we should adopt or reject? Is it hopeless or simply honest? Should we reinterpret Qohelet’s words this side of Christ?
Jamieson suggests that the right approach is actually to see that Qohelet speaks from more than one frame of reference.
“… at several points in the book Qohelet climbs up a set of stairs to the second story. From up here, he surveys the same territory, considering many of the same subjects - work, wealth, food and drink - and he pronounces them good. He sees rich opportunities for enjoyment and tells us to get busy enjoying them with statements such as:
- “There is nothing better” (2:24, 3:12, 3:22)
- “What I have seen to be good and fitting” (5:18)
- “And I commend joy” (8:15)
- “Go, eat your bread with joy” (9:7)
- So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all.” (11:8)
In these seven passages, Qohelet surveys the same territory but sees something astonishingly different. He sees the same subjects yet comes to the opposite conclusion. Here on the second floor he says that everything is a gift."
Jamieson argues that making sense of the tension between Qohelet’s first and second floor viewpoints is the key to interpreting the book. On the ground floor, Qohelet observes life through the senses. He “operates empirically.” He “investigates through observation, experience, and reflection… and draws conclusions based on what he sees and does and suffers.”
But there’s a different approach Qohelet takes from the second floor. There, his conclusions don’t come as much from what he observes on the surface, but what he discerns underneath it. “He concludes that life is good, that life is a gift, and that the threads that compose the fabric of our lives are each themselves gifts.”
“The key difference between the first floor and the second floor,” Jamieson writes, “is that, on the second floor, Qohelet brings God to bear. Specifically, he considers all of life through the lends of its being created by God and sustained by God.”
It’s this difference between how our lived experiences feel on the surface, and how they are lived Coram Deo (superintended by a good and sovereign God), that makes the difference between despair and delight. Yet, it also creates a paradox. All things are both absurd and a gift. “Neither one cancels or erases the other.” Both those truths sit side by side in the life and experience of Qohelet, and in our lives as well. We live in the tension between Genesis 1 and Genesis 3, where the world is good but fallen, beautiful and broken.
But there’s still a third floor. Qohelet doesn’t visit it often, but when he does, the view matters.
“Qohelet only stays long enough [on the third floor] to point out two crucial reference points: one, fear God because, two, he is going to judge all that you do and all that everyone ever does.”
This is the climactic conclusion at the end of the book:
“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (12:13-14).
Only when we live from that third floor perspective, can we rightly enjoy the second floor gifts, and accept the first floor frustrations. All three views are true and in tension. Jamieson’s argument is that they are all needed and work together to help us make sense of the landscape of life and live into it with purpose and wisdom.
1 Jamieson, Bobby. Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes' Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness. Waterbrook, 2025.