Wisdom and Moderation
Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing; it benefits those who see the light of day. For wisdom provides protection, just as money provides protection. But the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves the life of its owner.
Consider the work of God: For who can make straight what he has bent? In times of prosperity be joyful, but in times of adversity consider this: God has made one as well as the other, so that no one can discover what the future holds.
During the days of my fleeting life I have seen both of these things: Sometimes a righteous person dies prematurely in spite of his righteousness, and sometimes a wicked person lives long in spite of his evil deeds.
So do not be excessively righteous or excessively wise; otherwise you might be disappointed. Do not be excessively wicked and do not be a fool; otherwise you might die before your time.
It is best to take hold of one warning without letting go of the other warning; for the one who fears God will follow both warnings (Ecclesiastes 7:11-18).
If you think the Preacher speaks blasphemy, it might well mean you are his intended audience.
Throughout Ecclesiastes 1:1-6:12 the Preacher meditates upon the hevel of life under the sun: all is vain, futile – truly absurd. He compares most human endeavors toward meaning as “chasing after wind”: people pursue pleasure, wealth, wisdom, or other things looking for ultimate purpose and satisfaction and will be disappointed and frustrated by all of them. To rage against such truths is itself futile and striving after wind. God understands better than we do.
In Ecclesiastes 7:1-10 the Preacher seemed to have set forth a series of aphoristic exhortations not unlike the proverbs for which he is well known. Ecclesiastes 7:11-18 somewhat continues in this same trend, covering a series of pericopes which have some relationship to wisdom and exhortations regarding life.
Throughout his discourse the Preacher has considered wisdom and has often complained about its deficiencies (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:12-18, 2:12-17, 6:8-9). Most recently the Preacher commended heeding the rebuke of the wise, yet also spoke of how wisdom could be corrupted by oppression or bribery (Ecclesiastes 7:5, 7). In Ecclesiastes 7:11-12 he set forth a more positive perspective on wisdom: like an inheritance, wisdom is good; it provides protection, like money can provide protection; it can preserve the life of its owner.
The Preacher has not thus contradicted himself; instead, he has provided a balanced understanding of wisdom (and, for that matter, money). The Preacher never denied the value or benefit of wisdom; he had previously lamented how wisdom was not the ultimate good, for even the wise perish just like the fool. Wisdom is not the ultimate good, but it is still good. Those who heed wisdom tend to live longer and better lives than those who flaunt it. Wisdom is often communicated precisely because of the dangers lurking in this world from natural and artificial sources. Likewise, money can provide a level of protection, since by it one can obtain access to greater resources and the fruit of the labor of others. The Preacher has done well at showing money is not the ultimate good, cannot deliver on all it promises, and can lead to great anxiety; but it still has its value, as his personal life would attest.
The Preacher will again commend the protection wisdom can provide in Ecclesiastes 7:19, so we can certainly understand the series of observations about life which he set forth in Ecclesiastes 7:13-18 as within the bounds of this wisdom and the protection it can provide.
In Ecclesiastes 7:13-14 the Preacher exhorted his audience to consider God’s work, rhetorically asking who can make straight anything He has bent. He did not leave us wondering to what end we should thus consider God’s work: he exhorted his audience to find joy in the days of prosperity, but to remember in the days of adversity how God has been the Giver (or at least the Facilitator) of both, and none can know what may be in the future.
The Preacher’s observation is apt. As humans we have a tendency to take whatever happens for our benefit or prosperity for granted as the way things should be and prove quite critical whenever we come into any adversity. Perhaps you have heard a person curse or question God on account of some difficulty they have or are experiencing; perhaps you are that person. But have you ever heard anyone cursing or questioning God because they have received some benefit or success in their lives? The very premise seems foolish! But we could also entirely shift our perspective, of course; we could assume everything which we will experience will be awful and terrible, and consider benefits or prosperity as aberrant and unexpected. However we may want to view our lives, the Preacher is right: the same God who is the Giver, or at least Facilitator, of all the good we enjoy, has given or facilitated the challenges and difficulties we encounter. We can tell ourselves all kinds of stories about how it will all turn out in the end, but we do not know how it will turn out in the end; only God does.
The Preacher continued in a similar vein of observation in Ecclesiastes 7:15-18. The Preacher has seen a righteous person die young despite his righteousness and a wicked person live a long, full live despite his wickedness. Thus the Preacher counseled his audience to be neither excessively righteous, excessively wise, excessively wicked, nor foolish: excessive righteousness or wisdom invites disappointment, and excessive wickedness and folly leads to death. The Preacher encouraged his audience to hold firmly onto both sets of these warnings, for thus those who fear God would do.
The Preacher’s observations prove alarming for many; how can he possibly chastise anyone for “excessive” righteousness or wisdom? Is he really commending a “moderate” amount of wickedness?
Those who maintain a superficial façade of piety, ancient and modern, have made absolute the maxims of Proverbs: the righteous are wise, prosper, and live long before God; the foolish are wicked, suffer poverty, and their lives are short. Thus we can tell the difference between the righteous and the wicked based on the quality of their lives, so this viewpoint would maintain, and thus we should seek righteousness and wisdom so we can guarantee not just a high quality of life but salvation here and in the future.
It is not as if the Preacher finds wisdom useless; but the Preacher has observed the maxims of Proverbs cannot be maintained absolutely. Even if we could go so far as to say the rule is that the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer (which the Preacher does not advance; we do so for the sake of argument), the exception still exists. Righteousness is no guarantee of prosperity or long life; the wicked will endure judgment at some point, but their lives on earth might be quite long and comfortable.
Thus the Preacher would shatter the superficial façade of piety which attends to an absolutist view of Proverbs. The pursuit of righteousness and wisdom cannot deliver from the trials of life. What happens when a person thus single-mindedly pursues such a pretense of righteousness and wisdom? Greater and greater frustration at the ways of the world, how the “real” very much falls short of the “ideal.”
Note well the Preacher did not condemn pursuing righteousness and wisdom; he warned about going to excess. Likewise, the Preacher did not commend a little bit or a moderate form of wickedness. Yet the Preacher is being realistic; the righteous and wise should not wait to watch for the inevitable downfall of the moderately wicked. Excessive wickedness and folly certainly put a person on the trajectory to death; cirrhosis of the liver, for instance, is the likely result of excessive alcohol consumption, and the “Darwin Award” concept exists to describe people perishing in their folly. But moderate wickedness, which would not commend a person to God, and still leaves a person liable to eternal condemnation in hellfire, on a practical level is very unlikely to lead to death in life. To continue our examples: the liver can manage a moderate level of alcohol and even the occasional drunkenness; we can all probably think of something foolish we did which had consequences but did not kill us.
And such is why the Preacher commended balance for those who fear God, holding onto both warnings at the same time. To not be excessively righteous and wise is not an invitation to wickedness and folly; to not be excessively wicked or a fool is not an invitation to presume salvation comes from righteousness and wisdom. In fact, the fear of God generally requires believers to hold onto two sets of warnings or exhortations at the same time. Many, in their quest to understand, seek to flatten out the wisdom of God manifest in His creation and revealed in Christ and in Scripture, myopically focusing on one set of doctrines or dangers and thus neglecting other doctrines and falling prey to other dangers. To fear God requires us to respect the multi-dimensional nature of His ways and truth and resist flattening it out in order to make it seem more comprehensible or controllable.
We do well to view any kind of extremism with great skepticism. Truth is rarely found at any kind of extreme; Jesus, fully God and fully man, rarely exhibited any kind of extremes. While Jesus was always holy and righteous, it was the Pharisees who seemed the most committed to zeal for holiness and righteousness, and in that zeal they dishonored God by imposing their own traditions to define righteousness and by separating themselves from and reckoning themselves as superior to the other children of Abraham whom they deemed the “sinners” or “unclean.” Jesus, the true embodiment of all that was righteous and holy, ate food, drank wine, dined with sinners and tax collectors, and scandalized the religious establishment by His association and connection with those defiled by the world. In this way we do well to understand the Preacher’s wisdom, and ourselves avoid the excessive righteousness and wisdom which ironically leads us away from God, not toward Him, and in all things seek to embody the wisdom and faithfulness of God manifest in Jesus His Son.
Ethan R. Longhenry
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