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"Then I saw the wicked buried"

Text: Ecclesiastes 8:10

THE DESCENT TO OBLIVION

One of the things that troubled Solomon was the fact that people are so easily forgotten. He traced this reality in the lives of people.

“Then I saw the wicked buried,
who had come and gone from the place of holiness,
and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done.
This also is vanity.”
Ecclesiastes 8:10

1. “Then I saw the wicked buried”

a) Death had taken place.

b) The norm then was to bury the dead,

c) Not everyone could afford to put the dead in tombs.

2. “Who had come and gone from the place of holiness”

a) Perhaps the wicked were not always so wicked.

b) Perhaps they had come from the place of holiness.

i) Their parents may have been holy.

ii) In their youth they may have walked in paths of righteousness.

c) But somewhere along the way, the path of wickedness was chosen.

i) The righteous had become wicked.

ii) He had died as a wicked person.

3. “And they were forgotten in the city where they had so done”

a) The city in which these people had grown up in had forgotten them.

b) Whatever righteous deeds that had been done were forgotten.

c) The wicked deeds would also fade away in the process of time.

d) The people who had died would not be remembered much, if at all.

e) This was “oblivion”!

4. “This also is vanity”

a) One’s life is forgotten all too quickly.

i) The righteous

ii) The wicked

b) The sense of “vanity” expressed here.

i) Despondency was felt.

ii) Despair was felt too.