What is the meaning of Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 5?

Answer 1

Ecclesiastes 9:5: "For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten."

Prior to the Babylonian Exile, the Hebrews did not believe in heaven and hell, and in the post-exilic period not everyone accepted the modern concepts of immortality. Ecclesiastes tells us that, in the beliefs of the time, the dead go to Sheol - not a place of punishment or reward, but rather a place of not-knowing and semi-conscious survival. Even as late as the first century CE, the Sadducee sect of Judaism did not accept the concept of heaven.

Answer:

The Bible says that IT [God's Word] is Truth (John 17:17).

Ecclesiastes 9:5 is one tiny part of God's Truth. And in spite of what modern professing Christianity [and most other religions here in Satan's world] believe, today... the "Truth" of God's Word says [and means] exactly what it says.

Death isn't conscious "living" somewhere else in some other "life form." Life and death are opposites.

This "first death" that is appointed to all of us [Heb.9:27) is "dormancy"... unconscious sleep. There's no thinking, planning, or knowing anything. As it says elsewhere in Ecclesiastes... we [dust thou art, according to God's Truth] go to the grave [an all-too-common occurrence with which we are all too familiar]... and our "spirit" [which is unconscious and asleep apart from the body] returns to God, our Creator (Eccle.12:7).

Death is "sleeping." An unconscious, undreaming... profound... SLEEPING... according to the Truth:

"...Our friend Lazarus SLEEPETH; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep... LAZARUS IS DEAD." (John 11:11-14)

"...some ARE FALLEN ASLEEP..." (I Cor.15:6).

"...if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which ARE FALLEN ASLEEP in Christ are perished." (I Cor.15:17-18)

"...I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning THEM WHICH ARE ASLEEP, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also WHICH SLEEP in Jesus will God bring with Him... we which ARE ALIVE and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [precede] them WHICH ARE ASLEEP"... THE DEAD in Christ SHALL RISE FIRST..." (I Thess.4:13-16).

Ecclesiastes 9:5 means exactly what it says - the dead know not any thing. God knows the Truth about life and death. Man is only guessing... and he would be wise to "believe" what his Creator is telling him. For in God's wisdom is understanding.