The King Whose Word Bends His Own Law in Kohelet

Most people read Ecclesiastes as a book about death and dust. The rabbis of Midrash Rabbah read it as a book about power. Specifically, about a king who knew, from the inside, that the people who make the rules do not always feel bound by them.

Solomon wrote Kohelet, and Solomon had been a king. So when he writes "Do not be hasty to leave his presence; do not stand before him in an evil matter, for he does whatever pleases him" (Ecclesiastes 8:3), the rabbis hear something more than palace etiquette. They hear a warning about what happens when the one giving the orders is also the one writing the law.

A rule for the curses, a hesitation for the blessings

Kohelet Rabbah, compiled in eighth-century Palestine, opens this chapter with a strange piece of synagogue choreography. When the Torah reader hits the section of curses in Deuteronomy, no one stops. No pause between aliyot. No blessing before, no blessing after. One person reads the whole terrifying paragraph straight through.

Why? Because if you break the curses into pieces, you look like you are flinching from them. You look like you despise the rebuke. So Rabbi Hiyya bar Gamda teaches from Proverbs: "My son, do not despise the admonition of the Lord, and do not loathe His rebuke" (Proverbs 3:11). Read the hard part out loud. Do not chop it up to soften it.

Then comes the small, devastating story. Rabbi Levi ben Panti is reading the curses in front of Rabbi Huna and his voice keeps catching. He is stammering. The words taste bad in his mouth. Rabbi Huna stops him. Sound your voice. These are not curses, Huna says. These are rebukes. A father correcting a son.

The picture is already disturbing. God is the king. The community is standing in his presence. You are not allowed to be hasty, not allowed to leave the room, not allowed to break the rebuke into manageable fragments. You stand there and take it.

And then someone notices the king breaks his own laws

This is where the midrash turns its knife. The next verse in Kohelet says "Since the king's word has power, who will say to him: What are you doing?" (Ecclesiastes 8:4). And Rabbi Bon, in the fourth chapter of Kohelet Rabbah, asks the question every honest reader of the Torah eventually asks.

God tells us, "Do not test the Lord" (Deuteronomy 6:16). Then God tests Abraham at the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:1).

God tells us, "Do not take vengeance and do not bear a grudge" (Leviticus 19:18). Then Nahum calls God "a zealous and vengeful God" (Nahum 1:2).

The rabbis stage Israel walking right up to the throne. Master of the Universe. You wrote it. You take vengeance. You bear a grudge. What are You doing?

The midrash answers in God's own voice, and the answer is not what you would expect. God does not say the laws are different for the king. God says the laws have a context the disciple missed. To Israel: I will not bear a grudge against you. To the nations who came to destroy you: yes, I remember. The rabbis place a parallel scene in Bereshit Rabbah, fifth-century Palestine, where a rabbi seems to lend at interest after forbidding it to his student, and the student is furious. Is it permitted to you and forbidden to me? No, says the teacher. You missed the whole verse. The student had read only half the Torah.

The king's word has power because the king has read the whole book

That is the move Kohelet Rabbah is making. Solomon's verse about kings is not a license. It is a confession. The rabbis admit, on the page, that Torah looks contradictory. That God seems to do what He forbids. That from down here on the floor of the courtroom, divine justice can feel like a king who answers to no one.

Their answer is not to deny the tension. It is to say that the same verse means two different things depending on who is reading it. You may not take vengeance against your neighbor. God may take vengeance against the empires that try to erase the Jewish people. The king's word has power because the king sees the whole map. The subject sees only the patch of floor he is standing on.

This is not a comforting answer. It is the answer of a community that has been on the receiving end of bigger kings than God. It is rabbis writing under Byzantine rule, knowing that earthly kings do abuse "the king's word has power" all the time, and refusing to let that abuse become the picture of heaven.

And the feast at the end of all this asking

So what do you do, after staring this hard at power? Solomon answers in the next breath. "A feast is made for laughter, and wine cheers the living, and money answers everything" (Ecclesiastes 10:19).

It sounds like surrender. Throw a party. Drink. Buy your way out.

The rabbis read it the other direction. In chapter nineteen of Kohelet Rabbah, they say the feast made for laughter is the feast of idol worship. The forced kind. The revelry you have to keep refilling because the joy keeps leaking out. The wine that cheers the living is not wine at all. It is the Torah, citing Psalm 19:9: "The precepts of the Lord are upright, cheering the heart."

And the money. The money that answers everything is the most honest line. Rabbi Yehoshua of Sikhnin, quoting Rabbi Levi, says money answers sometimes. When you spend it on tzedakah, on the work of repair, on making the world less cruel, it speaks for you on the day of judgment, as Genesis 30:33 says: "my righteousness will speak on my behalf." When you hoard it or use it to harm, it testifies against you, like the false witness in Deuteronomy 19:16.

So the same coin that buys the king's silence can also be the thing that argues your case before a higher court. The same wine that drowns the question can also become the Torah you study to ask the question better.

What Solomon was actually warning us about

Read in sequence, the three chapters of Kohelet Rabbah are doing one thing. They are taking the king's mouth, which says "who will say to me: what are you doing," and putting an honest answer back in it. The answer is: we will. We always do. And we are allowed to.

Israel walks up to God in this midrash and demands an accounting for the contradiction in the Torah. God does not strike them down. God explains. The rabbis are telling their readers that even the king whose word has power has to show the work. Has to read the whole verse. Has to answer the disciple who is brave enough to ask.

Solomon ended Ecclesiastes worn out by what he had seen on the throne. The rabbis took his exhaustion and turned it into a permission. You may stand in the king's presence. You may not be hasty. But you may ask.