Welcome to this Daily PBJ devotional. Read Exodus 28, Ecclesiastes 4, and Psalms 33-35. This devotional is about Ecclesiastes 4. Again I looked, and I considered all the oppression taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter. The power lay in the hands of their oppressors, and there was no comforter. So I admired the dead who had already died above the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet existed, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun. I saw that all labor and success spring from a man's envy of his neighbor. This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind. The fool folds his hands and consumes his own flesh. Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and pursuit of the wind. Again I saw futility under the sun. There is a man all alone, Without even a son or brother, And though there is no end to his labour, His eyes are still not content with his wealth. For whom do I toil and bereave my soul of enjoyment? This too is futile, a miserable task. Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. For if one falls down, his companion can lift him up. But pity the one who falls without another to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though one may be overpowered, two can resist. Moreover, a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Better is a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to take a warning, for the youth has come from the prison to the kingship, though he was born poor in his own kingdom. I saw that all who lived and walked under the sun followed this second one, the youth who succeeded the king. There is no limit to all the people who were before them. Yet the successor will not be celebrated by those who come even later. This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind. This is God's word. This chapter of scripture is not encouraging. That's an understatement. This chapter of scripture is bleak. It states in verse 1 that powerful people in this world use their power to oppress the weak and the vulnerable. These victims have no comforter, according to the NIV's rendering of verse 1. Their lives are a miserable stretch of existence, from birth to the grave, each day and night. They do what more powerful people want them to do, and they live in fear. What kind of fear? Fear of displeasing the powerful people. Fear of more invasive abuse from the powerful. Fear of starving, unable to provide a living for themselves because their abusers take so much from them. Although Solomon did not tell us how many were oppressed and how many were oppressors, The chapter may suggest that the vast majority were oppressed by a small minority. The way the chapter suggests this is in the words of verses 2 and 3. Those verses rank the happiest people from least happiest to most happy. The categories of people Solomon discussed were broad. The dead, the living, and the unborn. These three broad groups of people include a whole lot of people. So, who is the happiest? The living are the least happy, according to Solomon, because they're oppressed. You can see verse 1 and verse 2, C and D, for that. The dead are the next most happy because they are no longer oppressed, according to verse 2, A and B. But the happiest people of all are people who never lived at all, according to verse 3. Why? Because they have not seen the evil that is done under the sun. Those are the words of verse 3 from the NIV. Bleak, right? According to Solomon, you're better off dead. But You're best off if you never made it out of the womb alive in the first place, because then no one could use you and abuse you. Of course, not everyone is enslaved by others. Some people go out and achieve, making all their dreams come true. They must be happy, right? No, Solomon argued, because all toil and all achievement spring from one person's envy of another. Those are the words of verse four in the NIV. Envy is a desire to have what someone else has. And that can make you work hard. But when you achieve something, you can't enjoy the achievements, because your envy will move on to someone higher on the achievement ladder. If you could just enjoy the living you make, modest though it is, as verse 6a says, you'd be better off than a wealthier person who has done nothing but work driven by envy. Even a person who's had no wife, no siblings, and no children isn't happy, according to verse eight. Solomon thought that a single, solitary man should be happy because he only has to provide for himself. He can work hard enough to get what he wants and then spend all of it on himself with no guilt. A single man who makes $30,000 per year may be able to buy more pleasure than a man who makes $90,000 a year but supports a wife, five kids, a dog, and a deadbeat brother. Seems logical, right? But it doesn't work out that way. The single guy with no dependents still works really hard. There was no end to his toil, according to verse 8c. But his eyes were not content with his work, according to verse 8d. He, too, then, was sucked into envy, unable to enjoy his life, because he needed to prove to someone that he matters. I told you this was a bleak chapter. But not all is lost. The solution to this is partnership. Verses 9 through 12 commend a partnership of two, that's verse 9, or even three, that's verse 12c. Partners who work together instead of envying one another can produce more as a unit than they would on their own, according to verse 9b. They can give each other some time off when they are injured or sick or just tired, according to verse 10. They can keep each other company, according to verse 11, and they can protect each other, according to verse 12. So the man who makes $90,000 and has to split it up with others is happier than the single guy who makes $30,000 or even $90,000 and can do whatever he wants with it. In fact, if the single guy made that $90,000 or even $900,000, the man with partners is happier because of the benefits that partnership brings. God created Adam, and when he did, he made the most capable man who ever lived, apart from Jesus Christ, of course. Adam, while he was still in an unfallen state, an unfallen person, had a greater mind and better body than any of us because he was unafflicted and unaffected by the curse of sin. Yet God said it wasn't good for that guy a complete Adam, God said it wasn't good for him to be alone. He gave him a partner, even knowing that his partner, in other words Eve, that her weakness would lead Adam into sin. Having a life partner in your spouse or a business partner in your vocation can help you escape the hopeless life that the oppressed live. Even if you are oppressed, at least you have someone to keep you warm at night, according to verse 11. Solomon was a powerful man who literally oppressed others. He taxed the nation so thoroughly for his own projects, pleasures, and luxuries that people begged his son to lay off, and then they revolted against him when he wouldn't lay off the taxation. But Solomon seems to have been a lonely man, despite his wealth and power over others, not to mention the 1,000 women in his life. And if you have 1,000 women in your life, can any one of them be truly your partner? People can be the source of your greatest problems in life. They can also make promises that they fail to keep, or even intentionally break, They can see you as a rival when they should see you as an ally. If you have enough people problems, you might be tempted to decide that isolation is better. This chapter advises us to partner up. Share life generously with your partner, your spouse, your children, your business partners, your teammates. The benefits of companionship will outweigh the freedom that being alone provides and promises. God created us to be teammates, and the life he gave us is best enjoyed when it is shared. If you have a partnership, a marriage and family, for instance, or a business partnership, or a ministry partnership, or something else, are you a good partner? Are you thankful for the benefits that partnership brings you? Or do you selfishly wish you had all the control and all the benefits to yourself? If you are in a partnership, but it's broken, the answer isn't to go off on your own. It is to become and to build a true partnership, rather than a rivalry based on envy. And if you found this devotional helpful, please go to my website, dailypbj.com, and sign up to receive these every day by email, and that will help you be in God's word every day. I'm looking for financial support to help me keep making devotional content and other online content like this. And if you would like to be part of that, please go to dailypbj.com support for more information. Please share this with someone who might be challenged and helped by it in their Christian life. And I'll see you next time. May God bless you. Hope you have a great day today.