Pessimism pervades the book of Ecclesiastes; a philosophical quest for meaning, rendered futile by the biography-obliterating fact of death. Romans 8:20 picks up Ecclesiastes’s idiom, and extends it to the domain of nature, whose entropic death-ward storyline echoes the futility of death-haunted human existence. But Rom 8:21–23 rewrites the cosmic music of despair, superimposing earth-mother’s cry for deliverance in hope of new birth. God’s Spirit, first-fruits of cosmic harvest, echoes the cry of birth-pangs.275 God’s Son, second Adam, first-fruits of a resurrection harvest of new
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