Original Meaning
WISDOM IS A good thing and is certainly better than folly. However, Qohelet has been insistent throughout the book that human knowledge is contingent and limited. Moreover, possessing wisdom does not enable anything approaching total comprehension of or control of the universe or autonomy in respect of God who created it and rules over it. There is a certain amount of “profit” in wisdom (cf. yitron in 2:13; see comments). It is a good and useful thing that allows us to arrive at important conclusions about the world and dispels our illusions about it. It points us in the direction of contentment (although it can paradoxically bring sorrow and grief in that it enables clear insight about the nature of things, 1:18). Nevertheless, possessing wisdom is far from enabling complete mastery over existence, and it certainly does not solve the problem of death (e.g., 2:14–16). Wisdom operates within fixed parameters.
In the current section we return to consider this broader reality within which wisdom operates. Wisdom, leading on to righteous living, is an excellent thing (7:19, 21, 26). Yet it is only partially grasped by mortal beings (7:23–25), and righteousness is always mixed in with wickedness (7:20–22, 27–29). The pursuit of wisdom and righteousness brings no guarantees, moreover, about how the individual life will work out (7:15). The wise person accepts as reality the mixed nature of experience and does not struggle against it (7:13–14, 16–18). He or she accepts the limitations that God has set on mortal life. Thus does Qohelet continue to balance appreciation for wisdom with critique of its potential and, no doubt, of the way that it was sometimes used within his own culture and time.
The crucial thing to be remembered about the universe is that God has created it (vv. 13–15). Wisdom is not a key that can be used in independence of the Creator to unlock the secrets of the universe, to shape existence after mortal desires, and to control life. Although certain ways of being and behaving are wiser than others and in general tend toward life rather than death, yet in the end we must remember that the universe is not a predictable machine but a personally governed and complex space. Wisdom is not magic. God is not an object to be manipulated, nor does God’s world belong to human beings. If God makes something crooked, it is beyond human power to make it straight (v. 13; cf. 1:15).
Thus, the wise person accepts the world as he or she finds it, receiving both good and bad from God and acknowledging that either might lie in the future (v. 14). The wise person knows that righteousness does not infallibly produce life in the short term (in spite of the advantage that wisdom has over money), just as wickedness does not inevitably lead on, in the short term, to death (v. 15). The embrace of wisdom does not give one leverage in respect of God, so that the future becomes predictable. As chapter 3 has reminded us, it is God who controls the “times,” and the times are extremely varied.
To those who accept these limitations (i.e., conform themselves to reality), there is clearly “benefit” (yoter, 7:11) in wisdom. To those who do not and think of life not so much as something to be lived as something to be capitalized upon—who are committed to striving with and struggling against reality rather than living in harmony with it—life will ultimately seem to have no benefit worth speaking of (cf. yoter in 2:15, NIV “gain”).
The surprising advice of 7:16–18, based on what Qohelet has seen (v. 15) during his “brief,” perhaps even “puzzling,” (but not “meaningless”) life should be understood in this context. Wisdom is clearly attractive to many people, as the book has shown, precisely because it appears to offer the possibility of control over life. The wise, and consequently righteous, person (it is thought) can guarantee for herself divine blessings, including long life and wealth, while the foolish, and consequently wicked, person guarantees for herself only doom.
Yet this represents, for Qohelet, a profound misunderstanding of the nature of things. While he agrees that people should avoid excessive foolishness and wickedness, since (in spite of acknowledged exceptions, v. 15) this does represent a path to destruction (v. 17), he is equally concerned that they should avoid excessive righteousness and wisdom (v. 16). The dogged pursuit of the latter, just as much as the committed quest after the former, brings bad consequences, for both are incompatible with the fear of God (v. 18). Both represent, in their own way, a refusal to accept the limitations God sets on mortal beings.
Those who pursue wisdom or righteousness for “profit” in this sense (note that “neither be overwise” in v. 16 is in Heb. weʾal titḥakam yoter; cf. the comments on yoter at 2:15; 6:8, 11; 7:11), hoping to gain an edge over God and force his hand, are in no different a position to those who pursue foolishness and wickedness. Both are guilty of hubris—the arrogant self-deification in which mortal beings so regularly indulge as they seek to fashion reality after their own liking. Both are guilty of sin. It is, indeed, self-delusional to think it possible to escape sin and become the kind of blameless person that verse 16 implies, as Qohelet will go on to argue (7:20, 27–29).
The truly wise person (v. 18) will grasp hold of both the pieces of advice contained in verses 16–17, therefore, embracing not only the obvious truth of verse 17 but also the perhaps less obvious truth of verse 16.1 That the fear of God thus sets the boundaries within which mortal life should be lived out (see comments on 3:9–15, noting also 12:13) makes it clear that Qohelet is not, in suggesting that the two extremes are equally problematic, implying at the same time that any actions between the extremes are equally acceptable. Reverence for God requires not only the avoidance of foolishness and wickedness but also the pursuit of wisdom and righteousness. If indeed it is reverence for God that motivates the pursuit, then it is a good thing.
Verses 19–22 further explain the message of verses 15–18. Although wisdom may be pursued from bad motives and its pursuit may result in bad consequences, yet in itself it is a good thing. It is vastly superior, in fact, to political or military power (v. 19; cf. 9:13–18; Prov. 21:22; 24:5–6), which is dependent on wisdom for its success. One wise person is “more powerful than ten rulers [perhaps better, officials] in a city.” Yet the wise person will still be a flawed person, because he or she is a human being. No one is sinless (Eccl. 7:20; cf. 1 Kings 8:46), no matter how intent a person is in pursuing God. To err is human.
Verse 22 identifies by way of example one such flaw (cursing others in one’s heart), drawing from the reality of universal human sinfulness in this regard the advice that people should not be too attentive to the words of their servants and (presumably) take punitive action against them. One’s attitude to other human beings should be conditioned by the awareness of one’s own flawed humanity. The truly wise person who fears God and remembers who he is (vv. 15–18, 20) will also remember who one’s neighbor is and will behave accordingly.
With verses 23–25 we move toward the conclusion of the whole chapter. Qohelet’s reflections on wisdom in this section (“all this,” v. 23), motivated by a determination to be wise, have convinced him of the complexity of it all. No one can “discover” (mṣʾ; lit., “find”) wisdom itself in all its mystery (v. 24); it is “beyond” (lit., “far off from”) the inquirer (v. 23). No one can come to a comprehensive understanding of the universe, for the data2 are “far off and most profound” (lit., “deep, deep”); that is, the ocean of knowledge is too wide and deep. It is impossible to grasp the whole “scheme of things” (ḥešbon, v. 25; cf. also v. 27), to articulate the whole sum of the matter.3 Understanding, investigating, and searching out have not led Qohelet to the achievement of this larger goal (v. 25). This is not surprising, for as Job 28:20–23 tells us:
Where then does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?
It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,
concealed even from the birds of the air.
Destruction and Death say,
“Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.”
God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells.
Yet although wisdom in itself may not be found and a comprehensive grasp of reality cannot be attained, some individual findings are possible, as chapter 7 and other sections of the book have illustrated. Verses 26–29 recount some such findings. As the futile attempt to build a systematic account of wisdom was progressing, one “fact” being added to another and yet no “finding” of the more general kind taking place (Heb. mṣʾ, vv. 27–28; NIV “discovered” and “finding”), Qohelet did manage to come to some conclusions about men and women.
For example, the kind of woman who sets out to entrap and enslave a man is “more bitter than death.” The good man, walking on the right path and embracing wisdom rather than folly, will “escape” (mlṭ) her “snare” (lit., “nets”; Heb. meṣodim), just as the wise man of 9:13–18 saves (causes to escape, Heb. mlṭ) the city from the “nets” (Heb. meṣodim) of the invading king. The book of Proverbs devotes considerable space to the arming of a young man for such a sexual battle (e.g., Prov. 2:12–19). The sinner, on the other hand, has no motivation to avoid the trap and thus falls straight into it.
A more fundamental conclusion (mṣʾ, “discovered,” v. 27) to which Qohelet has come is that human beings generally (and not just women), although created “upright” by God, have gone astray. The precise manner of their straying, as described in verse 29, is significant: They have “gone in search of many schemes” (Heb. biqšu hiššebonot rabbim). The verb bqš is used in verses 25 and 28 (“search out,” “searching”) of Qohelet’s own quest for comprehensive knowledge—that is, his own inquiry into the “scheme of things” (hešbon, vv. 25, 27). The language is deliberately chosen to suggest that Qohelet’s quest is itself an indication of departure from God’s ways. One of his individual findings, in fact, is that the larger attempt at finding wisdom is not only futile but sinful—an act of irreverence toward God (cf. vv. 15–18).
The precise way in which we are to understand the second part of verse 28 in this context is a matter of debate. Most commentators have understood “man” and “woman” (which is all that actually appears in the Heb. text) to mean “upright man” and “upright woman” (cf. NIV). If this is correct, then the verse anticipates verse 29, stressing just how little righteousness humankind exhibits (cf. also v. 20). It is unlikely that Qohelet intends any particular comment on women by the admittedly awkward way in which the finding is expressed. The point of the line in context, if “uprightness” is the focus, is not that there are more righteous men than righteous women in the world but that there are hardly any righteous people at all, whether men or women. Yet it is curious, if this is what Qohelet means, that he does not qualify “man” and “woman” explicitly with Heb. yaṣar, “upright,” or some similar term. It seems more natural, in fact, to link verse 28 to verse 27 in the first instance, as a more literal translation of verses 27–29 makes clear:
See, this I have found, says Qohelet:
one to one to find a sum,
which I still seek but have not found.
One man among a thousand I found,
but a woman among all these I did not find.
See this only I have found:
that God made humans upright,
but they sought many sums.
In order to come to a cumulative understanding of the world, one must be able to make connections between things, between the experiences of this person and that (“one to one to find a sum”). What Qohelet seems to be saying in his rather compressed way is that summation has proved impossible, because it has proved all but impossible to make connections. He has only occasionally (one time in a thousand) been able to connect a particular primary datum (presumably derived from his own experience and observation) with that provided by another to make any kind of “sum,” and even then, it has only ever been another man. Women have remained clothed in mystery.
The overriding perspective of the whole book of Qohelet is, of course, resolutely male, as has been most recently demonstrated by verse 26 (it does not speak of the man who is a snare to women). Qohelet’s “findings” thus represent a drop in the ocean of experience (one part in a thousand), and they are a male drop at that. The futility of the common human enterprise of “adding” in order to arrive at conclusions about life is thus made especially clear.
Bridging Contexts
WISDOM, QOHELET TELLS us, brings in its train power (7:19); to know and to understand the ways of the world places one in a position of great advantage in respect of others who may have some power but no understanding. This is why the history of the ancient and indeed modern world is full of stories of people who were the real “power behind the throne.” It is because wisdom brings power that it is so attractive to so many (note Matt. 13:54). It offers godlike control over destiny—one’s own destiny and that of other people. This is also the reason why it is so dangerous in a world where sin has touched every life and every heart. It offers the illusion that one is indeed a god, and with this comes inevitable damage to the rest of creation and ultimately to oneself.
It is necessary when considering wisdom, therefore, constantly to remind ourselves—and to be reminded by the Bible—of the true nature of things. What can wisdom really achieve? What is it really for? The biblical answer is that wisdom can never achieve for human beings the kind of control over life and destiny that they aspire to. At all times it is God who controls the times; at all times it is God who rules the universe, and his ways are inscrutable:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out! (Rom. 11:33)
One of the first steps in true wisdom, in fact, is the acceptance of this reality and thus the truth that while wisdom is indeed light for life, it cannot be a means of gaining autonomous control of life. The New Testament achieves the necessary balance here by linking true wisdom firmly with the person of Jesus and by attacking any wisdom that ultimately stands apart from him. There is a human wisdom that opposes God and that God opposes. It is a wisdom he intends to frustrate (1 Cor. 1:17–21). Christ, by contrast, is himself “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24, cf. v. 30), the firstborn over all creation (Col. 1:15, alluding to the personified figure of wisdom in Prov. 8:22–31; cf. Col. 2:3 and John 1:1–5). All truth and wisdom are ultimately focused on him and derive from him (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:8; Eph. 1:8; Col. 1:9).
Already in the Old Testament we have the similar insistence that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (e.g., Ps. 111:10; cf. Prov. 1:7). Various passages make clear just how far beyond human grasp wisdom is. To Job 28, mentioned above, we may add by way of example the closing chapters of the book of Job (chs. 38–42), where the speeches of God persuade Job (and us) of exactly the same point. Job was not present at the creation of the universe and knows little of what happens within it. He has neither adequate knowledge nor power to contend with God. Thus he acknowledges in the end, “I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (42:3).
It is, of course, because Christ was present at the creation of the universe that he understands what the universe is about and teaches therefore with authority, unlike the teachers of the law (e.g., Matt. 7:29). He brings as divine wisdom both light and liberation. The purveyors of religion bring only darkness and slavery.
This brings us neatly to the religious expressions of this innate human desire for power and control, for it is not only those who say that they pursue control over reality in neglect of or in opposition to God who in fact do so. Religion can itself represent, in many of its expressions, an attempt by human beings to control their own destiny—an attempt that does not reckon seriously with the true nature of things. It is clear, for example, that much of the non-Israelite religion in the Bible is presented as being of this kind (cf. 1 Kings 18, where the prophets of Baal dance around the altar and mutilate themselves in an apparent attempt to manipulate their god into action).
However, even those who assert belief in the true God can be found engaging in this kind of false religion. Jeremiah assails his contemporaries, for example, for repeating the mantra “the temple of the LORD” (Jer. 7:4), as if their religion, focused on the Jerusalem temple, provides security against divine judgment. More to the point in reference to Ecclesiastes 7:13–29 are the New Testament’s various attacks on those who seek to manipulate God by means of the accumulation of righteousness (cf. the letter of the apostle Paul to the Galatians). Even the pursuit of virtue, when it is the pursuit of control over God and his actions present and future rather than the pursuit of God himself, is false religion. True religion has at its heart love for God and love for neighbor, in which the self looks outward and gives itself away to others. It knows nothing of the selfish manipulation of God and the self-interested helping of my neighbor that is part of such manipulation. It is reverence for God (which is connected to love for neighbor) that must motivate the pursuit of righteousness, as indeed the pursuit of wisdom. The true wisdom is in fact biblically always connected with love for neighbor as well as for God (cf. Matt. 11:19; James 3:13–17).
Our neighbors are women as well as men. This means that we must consider carefully how to handle a passage like Ecclesiastes 7:26–28 in the context of the whole Christian Bible, which knows that all human beings are made in the image of God and redeemed equally in Christ. It is, of course, true that some women set out to entrap and enslave a man (v. 26), but there is no reason, biblically or experientially, to think that they are greater in number than those men who set out to entrap and enslave a woman. There is some reason to think, on the contrary, that they are fewer. It would be a hermeneutical error of the gravest kind not to recognize this, and in failing to recognize it to perpetuate a tendency throughout the history of (mainly male) biblical interpretation to suggest that women are much more the cause of sexual sin than men. Qohelet’s “findings” here are the findings of one man, as in the case of the psalmist who tells us in Psalm 37:25 that he has “never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” Although Qohelet’s words are words of Scripture, they are only some of those words that together speak to us as the Word of God. They must be correctly located within the entirety of the Bible if we are to understand how they are to be heard. Were Qohelet indeed a misogynist, as some have claimed, then we should have to deal with that fact within the whole context of Scripture. Even though he is not, on the view taken in this commentary, a misogynist, he still speaks from a male perspective. The “drop in the ocean of experience” that his findings represent must not be confused with the ocean itself—at least, not if we want to sail with Jesus.4
Contemporary Significance
The fundamental reason why the best that a government can give a great society of free men is negative, is the unalterable ignorance of any given mind, or any organization that can direct human action, of the immeasurable multitude of particular facts which must determine the order of its activities. Only fools believe that they know all, but there are many.5
It may seem that Friedrich Hayek is only stating the obvious when he tells us that the universe is beyond our grasp; yet as he himself reminds us, those who believe otherwise are “many.” The majority in Western culture have long ago ceased to believe that empirical inquiry is only a limited inquiry into the universe God made (“thinking God’s thoughts after him”)—as many of the founders of modern science believed—and have come to think of it as an all-embracing method that enables us, stone by stone, to demolish the wall that separates us from true and complete knowledge, to arrive some day on the other side.
We retain, culturally, the Christian view of the world, which understands it as rational and law-governed and therefore in principle comprehensible to some extent by human beings. But we have long ago abandoned, theologically, the larger idea that it is rational and law-governed because it was created so by God. Our group aim, indeed, is to displace God from his throne and to put ourselves there instead, as we come to understand and thus (so we imagine) to control the universe, shaping it to our own ends. We are the modern inheritors of the legacy of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9), seeking to build through our wisdom and our technology a new city “with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves” (11:4). At the same time technology coexists with barbarism, as in Genesis 4–6, and the earth is “full of violence” (6:11).
The conceit that lies at the heart of our empiricism is found across all the fields of human inquiry. It reveals itself, for example, among those who gaze on the wonders of our universe and, faced with the opportunity for worship, see only the promise of bringing all the vastness under intellectual control:
After a century of discoveries that opened the cosmos to our gaze, astronomers are now poised to uncover the universe’s most fundamental properties—its size, age, origin and destiny.6
Such conceit is found among historians who imagine they can reconstruct the past more truly and objectively than any of their predecessors and who miss the opportunity of learning from it because they are so busy recreating it in their own image. It is the conceit of the social scientist who observes groups of people or asks them questions in the belief that he or she can discover deep truths about human nature generally and does not have any concept of just how trivial these findings are when thrown into the vast ocean of human findings. As Hayek suggests, it is the conceit also of the economist and of the government that depends on this modern-day “wise man at court” (Dan. 2:1–24), who imagines that the economic world is a material system that can be understood, predicted, and manipulated. It is, finally, the frightening conceit of the geneticist who proclaims that we are on the verge of understanding the nature of human beings and of being able to manipulate (and to buy and sell) humanness, in pursuit of a much better world. This one stands arm in arm with the biologist when he or she speaks, for many biologists “know” that humanness is simply a matter of evolutionary selection and see no reason why human beings should not themselves contribute proactively to their own future development.
It is all about control of the times—past, present, and future. It is about power—the power to define, create, and act in freedom from all constraints. It is not that this mode of empirical inquiry has not brought with it many societal benefits. With these benefits has come a forgetting of God, however (Deut. 8:10–20), and a dark and mistaken belief that we are the masters of our own destiny. “Only fools believe that they know all, but there are many,” and ordinary people seem more than willing to trust them. There is a tremendous public appetite for new discoveries, new steps forward on the path of progress, new cures, and new means of self-advancement. The latest “wisdom” is eagerly devoured and turned to profit by all who hear of it.
On September 1, 1999, the Vancouver Sun reported that Frances Rauscher (a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin) had demonstrated empirically in 1993 that ten minutes of listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major could boost a person’s score on a portion of the standard IQ test. Soon teachers and parents took advantage of the discovery, hoping that their children might attain a few extra points in their SAT scores. An entrepreneur turned Rauscher’s preliminary finding into a seemingly authoritative self-help book, while others released compact discs of Mozart music that bore extraordinary health claims. The governor of Georgia decreed that every newborn should leave the hospital with a state-purchased cassette or CD of classical music, and catalogues began offering stethoscope-like devices so that pregnant women could introduce babies in the womb to Mozart. It is the way of the modern world. The universe is seen only as raw material for me to shape, through technological control, in pursuit of my educational, financial, and other goals. Wisdom is sought because it brings power.
In the world of the Bible this kind of phenomenon is referred to as idolatry, that is, the worship of some created thing in place of the living God. Any Christian person caught up in it needs to repent. It is not that intellectual curiosity is forbidden by God, nor is scientific inquiry into the world God has made sinful. Yet we should remember fundamentally that God is God and we are not. When we forget this, we make the basic human mistake. The consequences of this mistake, when human power is wielded in defiance of divine power, is disaster for other people, for creation more generally, and eventually for ourselves.
The only safe kind of human wisdom is wisdom rooted in God and centered in Jesus Christ, which thus knows its limitations and boundaries. The nature and character of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures that testify to him is also the reference point that Christians need to use when confronted by claims about reality others may make and when faced with plans that others may have that arise out of these claims.
It is only a matter of consistency, of course, that we should not object to other people’s attempts to control the universe if we ourselves are practicing a religion that seeks such control rather than exercising true biblical faith. In this regard it is important to remember that the Bible itself was never intended to give us complete inside knowledge and understanding of the universe, so that we ourselves might exercise a godlike power over our own lives and over others. It is an amazing indication of just how deep our human rebellion against God goes, however, that the very Bible that tells us the truth about God, the world, and ourselves should have been so frequently used by Christians to fight power with power. We object to other people’s claims to possess the truth by asserting that we possess it instead, and all humility before God, who cannot be possessed and whose universe can never be fully comprehended by mortal beings, disappears. The Bible, we should remember, has not been given to the church so that we as Christians, rather than some other human beings, should behave like gods, knowing all things and being capable of all things. It has not been given to the church so that we can control “the times.” It is given only so that we may have sufficient light to live by, as we worship the God of mystery and wonder and move humbly through his amazing creation as the brief, mortal beings that we are.
We do not truly understand anything, even if we know the contents of the Bible, if we do not understand this. The Bible itself can become an obstacle to our redemption, in fact, if it receives more of our devotion and trust than God does. It can become itself an idol we worship. Even the Bible cannot function properly in God’s universe unless it is read in dependence on the living God and as a witness to the One who is alone the fount of all wisdom. The Bible should never be used as a means of placing ourselves, rather than God, at the center of the universe.
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. (James 3:13)