Ecclesiastes 7

Ecclesiastes 7:1

III. ADVICE FOR LIFE UNDER THE SUN (7:1-12:8) A. The Good and the Better Under the Sun (Chap. 7)7:1 The sour note at the end of chapter 6 was that man cannot determine what is best for him under the sun. But Solomon does have ideas as to some things that are good and others that are better. That is his subject in chapter 7. In fact, the words good and better together occur here more times than in any other chapter in the OT. First, a good name is better than precious ointment. A good name, of course, signifies a good character. Precious ointment represents what is costly and fragrant. The thought is that the most expensive perfume can never take the place of an honorable life. The Preacher says the day of death is better than the day of one’s birth. This is one of his statements that leaves us guessing. Did he mean this as a general axiom, or was he referring only to a man with a good name? When applied to true believers, the observation is quite true. But it is certainly not true of those who die with sins unconfessed and unforgiven. 7:2 Next Solomon decides that it is better to go to a funeral parlor than gorge oneself at a banquet. Death is the end of all men, and when we come face to face with it, we are brought up short and forced to think about our own departure. Every thinking person must take into account the fact of death and should have a philosophy of life which enables him or her to confidently face that inevitable appointment. The gospel tells of the Savior, who, through death, destroyed him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and who delivers all those who, through fear of death, are subject to lifelong bondage (Heb_2:14-15). 7:3 Another “better”: sorrow is better than laughter. The Preacher was convinced that seriousness accomplishes more than levity. It sharpens the mind to grapple with the great issues of life, whereas frivolity wastes time and prevents people from coming to grips with what is important. I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way, But left me none the wiser For all she had to say I walked a mile with Sorrow, And not a word said she; When Sorrow walked with me! Robert Browning HamiltonFor by a sad countenance the heart is made better. It is one of the paradoxes of life that joy can coexist with sorrow. Even heathen philosophers have attributed a therapeutic value to suffering and sadness. But what is only moderately true for the unbeliever is more gloriously true for the child of God. Sorrows and sufferings here are the means of developing graces in his life. They give him a new appreciation of the sufferings of Christ. They enable him to comfort others who are experiencing similar trials. And they are a pledge of future glory (Rom_8:17). 7:4 The mind of a wise person maintains poise and serenity in the presence of death. He can cope with sorrow and pressure because his roots are deep. Fools can’t stand to face serious crises. They try to drown out the sounds of life as it is with laughter and gaiety. They avoid contact with hospitals and mortuaries because their shallow resources do not equip them to stand up under the pressures of life. 7:5 There is something else that is better. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools. Constructive criticism instructs, corrects, and warns. The empty mirth of fools accomplishes nothing of lasting value. 7:6 The laughter of the fool is like the crackling of thorns under a potshowy and noisy but not productive. Burning thorns may snap, crackle, and pop, but they do not make a good fuel. Little heat is generated, and the fire goes out quickly. It is noise without effectiveness, froth without body. 7:7 Even a wise person acts foolishly when he becomes a cheating oppressor. He becomes power-mad and loses his sense of balance and restraint. And all those who indulge in bribery and graft corrupt their own minds. Once they stoop to accept payola, they lose the power to make unprejudiced judgments. 7:8 It seemed to Solomon that the end of a thing is better than its beginning. Perhaps he was thinking of the tremendous inertia that must often be overcome to begin a project and of the drudgery and discipline that go into its early stages. Then by contrast there is the sense of achievement and satisfaction that accompanies its completion. But it doesn’t take much insight to realize that the rule does not always hold. The end of righteous deeds is better than the beginning, but the end of sin is worse. The latter days of Job were better than the beginning (Job_42:12), but the end of the wicked is indescribably terrible (Heb_10:31). The Preacher was on firmer ground when he said that the patient in spirit is superior to the proud in spirit. Patience is an attractive virtue, whereas pride is the parent sin. Patience fits a man for God’s approval (Rom_5:4), whereas pride fits him for destruction (Pro_16:18). 7:9 Next we are warned against the tendency to fly off the handle. Such lack of self-control reveals a decided weakness of character. Someone has said that you can judge the size of a man by the size of what it takes to make him lose his temper. And if we nurse grudges and resentments, we expose ourselves as fools. Intelligent people don’t spoil their lives by such nonsensical behavior. 7:10 Another foolish activity is living in the past. When we constantly harp on “the good old days” and wish they would return because they were so much better, we are living in a world of unreality. Better to face conditions as they are and live triumphantly in spite of them. Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. 7:11 Solomon’s thought with regard to wisdom and an inheritance may be understood in several ways. First, wisdom is good with an inheritance (NKJV; NASB); it enables the recipient to administer his bequest carefully. Second, wisdom is good as an inheritance (JND); if one could choose only one heritage, wisdom would be a good choice. Third, wisdom is as good as an inheritance; it is a source of wealth. Also it is an advantage to those who see the sun, that is, to those who live on earth. How this is so is explained in verse 12. 7:12 Wisdom resembles money in that both afford protection and security of sorts. With money, one can insure himself against physical and financial losses, whereas wisdom provides added protection from moral and spiritual damage. That is why wisdom is superior; it preserves the lives of its possessors, not just their material fortunes. When we remember that Christ is the wisdom of God and that those who find Him find life, the infinite superiority of wisdom is obvious. In Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col_2:3). 7:13 One thing a wise person will do is to consider God’s sovereign control of affairs. If He has made something crooked, who can make it straight? In other words, who can successfully countermand His will? His decrees are immutable and not subject to human manipulation. 7:14 In His ordering of our lives, God has seen fit to permit times of prosperity and times of adversity. When prosperity comes, we should be glad and enjoy it. In the day of adversity, we should realize that God sends the good and the bad, happiness and trouble, so that man will not know what is going to happen next. This can be both a mercy and a frustration. There may also be the thought that God mixes the good and the bad so people won’t be able to find fault with Him. In either case, the conclusions are distinctly subsolar. They do not rise above flesh and blood. 7:15 We have an expression “Now I’ve seen everything” when we witness the unexpected, the paradoxical, the ultimate surprise. That seems to be Solomon’s meaning here. In the course of his empty life, he had seen every kind of contradiction. He saw just people die young and wicked ones live to old age. 7:16 Since the Preacher could not detect a fixed relation between righteousness and blessing on the one hand and sin and punishment on the other, he decided that the best policy is to avoid extremes. This shallow, unbiblical conclusion is known as “the law of the golden mean.” By avoiding extreme righteousness and excessive wisdom, one might escape premature destruction. This, of course, is untrue. God’s standard for His people is that they should not sin (1Jo_2:1). And His guarantee for His people is that they are immortal till their work is done. 7:17 The other danger, in Solomon’s reckoning, was extreme wickedness. The foolhardy man can also be cut off before his time. A middle-of-the-road policy is therefore the ideal toward which we should strive, says the Preacher. It is clear that these are man’s reasonings, not God’s revelations. God cannot condone sin at all. His standard is always perfection. 7:18 According to the Preacher, the best policy is to grasp this factthe untimely fate of the overrighteous manand not to let go of the opposite factthe self-destruction of the profligate. The one who fears God (by walking in the middle) will escape from both pitfalls. This advice wrongly puts God in favor of moderation in sin and in unrighteousness. But it arose from Solomon’s observations under the sun. Unless we remember that, we will be puzzled by such a worldly philosophy. 7:19 Solomon believes that wisdom gives more strength and protection to a man than ten rulers give to a city, which simply means that wisdom is greater than armed might. God is not necessarily on the side of the biggest battalions. 7:20 The fact that this verse begins with for shows that it is vitally connected with what precedes. But what is the connection? The connection is that we all need the benefits of the wisdom that the Preacher has been describing, because we are all imperfect. There is no one who is absolutely righteous in himself, who invariably does good and who never sins. Generally verse 20 is taken to teach the universality of sin, and that application is legitimate. But in its context, writes Leupold, the verse tells why we stand in need of a closer alliance with that wisdom which has just been described. 7:21 A healthy sense of our own imperfection will help us to take criticisms in stride. If we hear a servant cursing us, though he is much lower on the social ladder, we can always be glad he doesn’t know us better, because then he would have more to curse! When Shimei cursed David, Abishai wanted to cut off his head, but David’s reply implied that perhaps Shimei’s cursing was not entirely causeless (2Sa_16:5-14). 7:22 And we should always remember that we have been guilty of the same thing. Many times we have cursed others in our heart. We can scarcely expect others to be perfect when we are so far from perfect ourselves. That is one of the frustrations of a perfectionist. He wants everything and everyone else to be perfect, but he lives in a world of imperfection, and he himself cannot reach the goal he sets for others. 7:23 The Preacher used his extraordinary wisdom to probe into all these areas of life. He wanted to be wise enough to solve all mysteries and unravel all the tangled skeins. But because he was making all his investigations apart from God, he found that the ultimate answers eluded him. Without special revelation, life remains an insoluble riddle. 7:24 Explanations of things as they exist are remote, inaccessible, and exceedingly deep. The world is filled with enigmas. The realm of the unknown remains unexplored. We are plagued by mysteries and unanswered questions. 7:25 In spite of his failure to come up with the answers, Solomon doggedly persevered in his search for greater wisdom and a solution to the human equation. He wanted to understand the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness, that is, why people abandon themselves to debauchery and shame. 7:26 In that connection, he thought especially of a loose woman or a prostitutea woman whose influence is more bitter than death. Her mind is filled with subtle ways of snaring men, and those in her clutches are bound as if by chains. Anyone whose desire is to please God shall escape her traps, but the man who plays around with sin is sure to cross her path and be hooked by her. It is altogether possible that the woman here may be a type of the world or of the wisdom of the world (Col_2:8; Jam_3:15). 7:27, 28 Verses 27-29 seem to express Solomon’s general disappointment with his fellow human beings. When he first met anyone, he had great expectations, but after he got to know that person better, his hopes were dashed. No one met his ideal. Perhaps he would see someone who was rather attractive. He would think, I must get to know that person better. I’d like to develop a close personal friendship. But the more he got to know this new acquaintance, the more disillusioned he became. He found that there is no such person as the perfect stranger, and that familiarity does breed contempt. Solomon decided to total the number of friendships in which he found a measure of real satisfaction and of fulfilled hopes. Out of all the people he had known, how many did he regard as true “soul brothers”? He had sought repeatedly for a perfect person, but had never been able to find a single one. Everyone he met had some flaws or weaknesses of character. All that he discovered was that good men are rare and good women rarer still. He found one man in a thousand who came close to his ideal, that is, a man who was a loyal, dependable, selfless friend. But he couldn’t find one woman in a thousand who impressed him as a reasonable approach to excellence. He did not find a woman among all those. Such a shocking outburst of male chauvinism is incomprehensible and offensive to us today, but that is because our judgments are based on Christian principles and values. It would not be shocking to the orthodox Jew who thanks God every day that he was not born a woman. Nor would it be shocking to men of some cultures in which women are looked on as slaves or mere property. Commentators go through interpretive gymnastics to soften the force of Solomon’s harsh words here, but their well-intentioned efforts are misdirected. The fact is that the Preacher probably meant exactly what he said. And his conclusion is still shared by men throughout the world whose outlook is earthbound and carnal. Solomon’s view of women was terribly one-sided. G. Campbell Morgan gave a more balanced view when he wrote: The influence of women is most powerful for good or for ill. I once heard one of the keenest of observers say that no great movement for the uplifting of humanity has been generated in human history but that woman’s influence had much to do with it. Whether so superlative a statement is capable of substantiation I do not know; but I believe there is a great element of truth in it. It is equally true that the part that women have taken in corrupting the race has been terrible. When the womanhood of a nation is noble, the national life is held in strength. When it is corrupt, the nation is doomed. Woman is the last stronghold of good or of evil. Compassion and cruelty are superlative in her. Solomon later redeemed himself by writing one of literature’s noblest tributes to womanhoodProverbs 31. In Ecclesiastes he writes from the earthly plane of human prejudice, but in Proverbs 31 he writes from the lofty peak of divine revelation. With the advent of the Christian faith, woman has reached the summit in her rise to dignity and respect. The Lord Jesus is her truest Friend and Emancipator. 7:29 As the Preacher pondered his unending disappointment in the people he had met, he correctly concluded that man has fallen from his original condition. How true! God made man in His own image and after His likeness. But man sought out many sinful schemes which marred and distorted the divine image in him. Even in his fallen condition, man still has an intuitive hunger to find perfection. He goes through life looking for the perfect partner, the perfect job, the perfect everything. But he cannot find perfection in others or in himself. The trouble is that his search is confined to the sphere under the sun. Only one perfect life has ever been lived on this earth, that is the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. But now He is above the sun, exalted at the right hand of God. And God satisfies man’s hunger for perfection with Christno one else, no other thing.