Joel M Bradshaw

8So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity.

9Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.–Ecclesiastes 11

I read Qoheleth depressed in this chapter and seeking to find something to hold onto. He looks back at his life and is wondering if it was a life well lived. We as readers are yearning for the resolution we will get in chapter 12.

Just looking at second half of verse 9, I would absolutely never counsel following your heart. As all rock-bottom addicts know, the heart indeed is deceitful and lies to us. Ancient Hebrew had a dual nature to man. There was the inner person and the outer person. The word for ‘heart’ is that unseen inner reality, mind, thoughts, emotions, conscience, etc.

So it’s as if Qoheleth is sarcastically saying, “Go ahead young man and live your life. Hold to standards that flow from inner convictions rather than from outer manipulations. But just remember that God is going to judge those convictions and what they produced in your outer life.”

This is the theme of the famous Jeremiah 17.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” (Jeremiah 17:9-10)

A person’s going to live their life. But God is going to judge that life. So work backwards and place God’s opinion over your own as your motivating principle. This life directs your heart with Biblical truth rather than following the heart.–JMB