Ecclesiastes Week 2: Finding Fulfillment
June 19, 2022
Wisdom Is Meaningless
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
15 What is crooked cannot be straightened;
what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said to myself, “Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.
18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
Pleasures Are Meaningless
2 I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. 2 “Laughter,” I said, “is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?” 3 I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives.
4 I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. 5 I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. 6 I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. 8 I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem[a] as well—the delights of a man’s heart. 9 I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me.
10 I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor,
and this was the reward for all my toil.
11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun.
Wisdom and Folly Are Meaningless
12 Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom,
and also madness and folly.
What more can the king’s successor do
than what has already been done?
13 I saw that wisdom is better than folly,
just as light is better than darkness.
14 The wise have eyes in their heads,
while the fool walks in the darkness;
but I came to realize
that the same fate overtakes them both.
15 Then I said to myself,
“The fate of the fool will overtake me also.
What then do I gain by being wise?”
I said to myself,
“This too is meaningless.”
16 For the wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered;
the days have already come when both have been forgotten.
Like the fool, the wise too must die!
Toil Is Meaningless
17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 18 I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. 19 And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. 20 So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. 21 For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. 22 What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? 23 All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.
24 A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26
What will give us lasting satisfaction in life? What will make life worth living?
People have been trying to answer that question from the beginning of civilization. And frankly, I don’t think a whole lot has changed in the answers. They all seem to be variations of about the same half a dozen things that Solomon mentions. The details might be different but the general ideas are unchanged. And Solomon, by his own account, has tried them all on for size.
Some have looked to the accumulation of knowledge as a source of satisfaction. Solomon sets out to investigate and explore all that goes on in the world.
But it doesn’t take long to realize that this is an impossible task. We are three millennia removed from Solomon, and despite enormous advances in science, biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics, we are apparently no closer to solving the mysteries of the universe. We’ve certainly learned a lot since Solomon’s time, but the problem is the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know.
Next Solomon tried wisdom as a source of satisfaction. Wisdom is not the same thing as knowledge, of course. I think we’ve probably all had the experience of knowing someone who is really knowledgeable but lacked the wisdom of a toaster. As I have heard it explained, knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable. Wisdom is knowing that you still don’t put it in a fruit salad. And philosophy is wondering if ketchup is really a fruit smoothie.
Wisdom in Solomon’s day meant understanding the fundamental principles that govern the world and knowing how to live well. But an important part of wisdom is realizing the shortcomings of our wisdom. No matter how wise we are, we all make foolish choices from time to time. Especially in election years.
Next Solomon tried pleasure as a source of satisfaction. That’s a popular choice, especially among wealthy societies. Live it up. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Or in modern terminology, YOLO: “You only live once.” Solomon, of course, was enormously wealthy, and he had 300 wives and 700 concubines, many of them to cement foreign alliances. It kind of does make you question his wisdom, though. But it’s hard to imagine he lacked in anything pleasurable.
“Not doing anything foolish, I cheered myself with wine,” he says. I guess that’s his way of saying he didn’t lose self-control. But what does it achieve? The quest for pleasure is ultimately self-defeating. The more we have, the more we need. The science of drug addiction teaches us that addicts build up a resistance to the drug so
that over time they need higher and higher doses to achieve a high. The same thing is true of dopamine, the “pleasure chemical” in our brains.
Next Solomon tried to find satisfaction in wealth and achievements. He ruled over the largest kingdom of any of the Old Testament kings, stretching from Egypt to the Euphrates River, including most of modern day Lebanon and Syria, and many of the neighboring nations were subject to him, paying annual tributes. He built palaces surrounded by parks and gardens. That was typical of ancient Near East palaces, that they were surrounded by lush gardens and vineyards and such. The most famous of which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Solomon accumulated enormous numbers of slaves, musicians, fruit trees, whatever he desired, and we know that he ruled over the largest and most prosperous territory Israel had in the Old Testament.
But ultimately this led him to a final conclusion: A legacy would also not bring lasting satisfaction. He couldn’t keep it. He had to pass it on to someone else. And what would happen to this enormously wealthy and powerful kingdom he had built? Would it be used well?
I think we are probably all familiar with stories of people who receive a large inheritance and then squander it by their own foolishness. Well, Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, didn’t exactly do a bang up job of taking care of the kingdom he inherited. He despised the wise advice of his father’s counselors, and the kingdom split and fell into civil war. The ten northern tribes revolved, and he lost all the territory that David and Solomon had gained.
Solomon didn’t keep anything he gained. I think of the short story by Leo Tolstoy, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” At the end of the story, the rich man dies, and his servant answers the question, “Just six feet, from his head to his heels.”
Solomon’s conclusion about all these things is that they are like “chasing the wind.” You can never grasp it. There is futility in trying to find meaning and satisfaction in any of these half a dozen things.
But I would also say here that there is something that Solomon never mentions. There is no talk of “doing for others.” There is no talk of devoting one’s life in service to others. All that he speaks of is a rather self-centered enterprise. And I think there’s something important missing from it.
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