From Here To Eternity - Where Did That Idea Come From?

Solomon, the Jewish king, wrote, "He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end." (recorded in the Holy Scriptures, in Ecclesiastes 3.11) This notion of 'eternity' is recorded here in Qohelet, but is a translation of the Hebrew word "Ha-olam" which often is translated as 'the world.' 

Don't get bogged down, but have a quick glance at this information from Murphy. (Or you can even skip this next paragraph, but come back afterwards)

The commentator, Roland Murphy, said this of the word. 

"Qoheleth says that God has put (Ha-olam) ‏העלם‎, “duration,” into the human heart. Whether this action is seen as positive or negative, the result is the same: humans have not been helped because they cannot understand what God is about. The interpretation of ‏העלם has been a crux interpretum. LXX (ἀιῶνα) and Vulgate (mundum) understood it to mean “world.” This could be taken as a desire for knowledge of the world in a good sense, or as a kind of secularism or worldliness (1 John 2:16). However, olam עלם in the sense of world is not found in biblical Hebrew, and Qoheleth elsewhere (eg, 3:14) uses the word in a temporal sense. A traditional view understands the word to mean “eternity” (so the RSV and many commentators such as W. Zimmerli and H. Hertzberg; but NRSV, “a sense of past and future”). F. Delitzsch understood it to be the desiderium aeternitatis, or “the desire of eternity.” 

F. Delitzsch

If you don't recognize F. Delitzsch, that's not a surprise, but if you were a student of XIX theology, especially among Jews or Lutherans in Germany, you would know the name very well. Franz Delitzsch, although baptised in his birth year of 1813, has some serious interest in and relations with the Jewish people. His godfather, Franz Julius Hirsch, was likely his own birth-father. Hirsch was a Jewish antiques dealer, although Delitzsch called Hirsch his 'benefactor.' Delitzsch went on to be a commentator along with C. Keil of the entire Older Testament, and actually translated the books of the Newer Testament into Hebrew as well. This, well before the modern State of Israel, and well before the modern use of Hebrew, but still his work is standard among Jewish people in studies in Israel.  Delitzsch went on to assist in mission work among the Jewish people, like what would later be called 'Jews for Jesus' back in the XIX. He was an amazing scholar and man of God.

So when he translated Ecclesiastes 3.11 to mean the desire of eternity, that really helps us in understanding what the wise old king meant. Solomon is saying that God has put the desire of eternity in our hearts, and as a result, we long for its satisfaction, not with temporal things like Solomon considered in the rest of that short Bible book (wine, women, song), but only with eternal things that only God offers.  All because of a longing, a deep desire for 'something more.'
This resonates with me. I grew up with Jewish scholastic considerations. Yet I also grew up in the 1950s and 1960s where hedonism had a culture and a definition: hippies. We lived 'for today' and 'we were sure to wear flowers in our hair when we went to San Francisco.' It was a time of self-love and selfishness. Our desire was for today and not for eternity.

Against that backdrop of dark human consumption settles the words of the king: "He has also set eternity in their heart." Because God has placed this longing in us, we will not rest until we find our rest in Him. All the fake rests we had in the 1960s pale in comparison to the reality of eternity with God.  Not a forever where we sit on clouds and pluck harps, but a forever of being with the Creator of all who as a master artist painted every sunset to which we say, "wow." He is the clever designer of all the mountains and rivers, the colors of every artist's palate and the best symphonies since Haydn. The personal God who wants each of us to know him and to learn of his love, that's the one who has set eternity in our hearts.

Does that resonate with you?

Yeshua said, "God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life." (John 3.16). He cares about you. He cares about your cousin and the protestors. He cares about the poor in Africa and in Sydney's west. He wants us all to know him and to have life forever, life eternal, eternal life.

The way to receive that is to believe. After all, God has started this longing in you for all that. Why not ask him to resolve that now?

Written by Bob Mendelsohn

If you would like to know more about a Messianic Jewish perspective on eternity, contact us at [email protected]