From Hebel to hope: A cognitive-linguistic response to postcolonial readings of Ecclesiastes 4:1–3

Abstract

Readers of the Bible within Africa continue to face a tension between faithfulness to the biblical text and its contemporary significance. This tension has, in recent decades, been resolved by employing a hermeneutic of suspicion. By privileging ideologically driven interpretations—primarily concerned with exploiting hidden motives, uncovering socio-political backgrounds, and unmasking power struggles within the biblical text—a hermeneutic of suspicion shifts the search for meaning from determining authorial intent to a reader’s response. In this interpretative milieu, the book of Ecclesiastes has not remained unscathed. Postcolonial re-readings of the text have often been used to reframe Qohelet’s concern, resulting in interpretations that obscure the meaning of the book. This article suggests that in order to recover the author-intended meaning of the text, biblical exegesis necessitates a framework that synthesises historical grammatical hermeneutics and Relevance Theory (RT). The latter is a cognitive-linguistic model that explains how humans infer meaning through the recognition of authorial intention and significance. This results in a historical-linguistic hermeneutic that honours the Bible as the Word of God whilst simultaneously addressing African concerns. By integrating text centred exegesis with cognitive-linguistic insights, focusing on Ecclesiastes 4:1–3, this article offers a hermeneutic that affirms Scripture’s divine authority while encouraging African readers to engage Scripture faithfully and contextually.