Joy at the End of the Tether: The Inscrutable Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

by Douglas Wilson

A man arrives without possessions and he leaves without possessions. In the interval, while he does have all his stuff, he cannot sleep because he worries about it. What a deal.

Fear God, and reject the idiocy of greed . . . that great choker of quiet wisdom.

The fact that some men can just take it as it comes, without agonizing all the time over the ultimate meaning of things, is the gift of God (v. 20).

When God gives power for enjoyment, a man may thrive, even though he lives his days under a dying sun.

Prosperity is not necessarily good (Eccl. 6:1–12).

We cannot necessarily tell God’s disposition toward a man through his outward condition.

The good Lord gives to His people a can opener to go with the cans of peaches He gives them. But to the unbeliever, He gives no way of genuine enjoyment.

Is the poverty of the stick an adversity? Not at all—it is a gnarled key that opens the doors of many worlds.

Both mourning and feasting are from the Lord. But mourning is better than empty mirth. The vapid world of sitcoms and stand-up chortlings is a bunch of nothing (vv. 2–4). A man who knows how to mourn will also know the meaning of solid laughter. But if a man does not know the wisdom of mourning, then no amount of tittering will fill up his soul.

The adversity of seeing something through is far better than the pleasure of bragging about something before it is done.

A quick-tempered man is simply a walking display case of folly.

Why should we moan about the “bad turn” events have taken? Why are we no longer in the “good old days?” The answer is that God does not want us to be. He is the Governor of all. Further affliction may be necessary (vv. 10–12). Sometimes the good old days were not really that good. And even when they were, we must not revolt against God’s wisdom in His providence. He is the one who decreed that those days would come to an end.

Will a man be able to bend the world in a different direction than the Almighty has? This central doctrine in the book must be allowed to sink deeply into our souls. Is it crooked? Then the Lord God made it so.

We are to receive our prosperity as from Him because it is from Him (v. 14). But in the day of adversity, we are also to remember our doctrine on the sovereignty of God. He has made both days (v. 14). The Lord brings the springtime, and the Lord brings earthquakes. The Lord gives the birthday, and the Lord assigns the day of mourning.

Prosperity may be a camouflaged curse; a man may be surrounded with untasted wealth. Adversity may be the means by which God is bringing great blessing; as Rutherford knew, when in the cellar of affliction, a man can find God’s choicest wines. All situations are not what they appear.

Only the pleasure of God can rescue a man from her.

One writer has commented that men in revolt against God will either raise the fist in civil unrest and revolution or raise the phallus in their contemptuous fornications.1 In that fornication they revolt against sexual maturity and show their bestial ignorance of the imago Dei.

Foolish men believe they have found sexual liberty at just the moment when God has seized them by their yearning little idol in order to dash them against the rocks. Their exhilarating sensation of liberty is only temporary—a free fall with death at the end of it.

The heart of man has fashioned many devices. In our creation, we were made upright in Adam. He rebelled, and since that time we have been using the gifts given us by God to destroy ourselves.

God made us upright; we have sought out many schemes. The righteousness of Another is the only answer.

If relativists seek after hollow minds, the godly must not respond by building minds of solid wood. Flexibility and prudence must not be confused with compromise and fear.

Prudence is not necessarily cowardice or compromise. So a courtier picks his battles cautiously, careful not to die on every hill.

Everyone, king and courtier alike, is in a war with death.

No one is able to fight the final war between light and dark here under the sun, and no one should pretend to try.

the godly know what swarms of sociologists do not, and that is that swift and sure punishment deters the wicked.

What should a man do in a world of powerful kings and wicked men who look as though they got away with it? He should prepare to make merry; he should enjoy himself—he should eat, drink, and be merry all his days under the sun (v. 15).

The wise know how to identify what cannot be known.

Look around as you please, you do not know what is happening.

Solomon bluntly asserts that God controls all things. He does not say how God does it. Only a blockhead of the first order of magnitude would think to explain the way in which God reveals Himself through His works.

As we consider what passes before us, we cannot make sense of it. We tend to assume, echoing Shakespeare, that the history of all things is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But rather, it is a tale told to idiots. Both the righteous and the wicked are in the hand of God.

Does God love me or hate me? The question cannot be answered through an appeal to external “blessings” or “curses.” The real test is wisdom—a heart attitude of thankfulness and faith.

Madness lives without faith, without eyes.

In the world of creatures, we may only enjoy what we do not worship.

We are called to the duty of work and not to the duty of predicting results.

We want to have a measure of control; we want to be setting the odds ourselves. But Solomon knows that the results are not predictable by any of those who live under the sun. “Who would have thought . . . ?” The results of all our endeavors are completely in the hands of God. The time when we must cease our labors will fall upon us (9:12). Death comes suddenly, so labor as though that night is coming . . . because it is.

As we live and breathe, we broadcast what we are. If we are foolish, the folks see us coming. If we are wise, that competence is visible as well.

It is a peculiar folly of some nobles to deny the obvious and to seek to enthrone the common man all in the name of “the people.” In its modern manifestation, we call it democracy. In its ancient garb, Solomon called it foolishness. Our egalitarianism requires herculean efforts from us as we try to reconcile our dogma with the way the world was established. This folly of egalitarianism is the fountainhead of most of our modern isms—feminism, socialism, fascism, racism, communism, etc. As the poet said, beware all isms except for prisms.

Many lives are torn apart with the tongue.

Empty chatter goes nowhere. A fool begins with lunacy and ends with imbecility—and has quite a trip in between. The words of the wise are in sharp contrast to this.

Solomon urges us to treat alms like a business, investing in the Lord.

When it comes to work, just hit it. Excuses are always plentiful. Too hot. Too cold. Too late.

always remember that Ecclesiastes is at war with the folly of self-sufficiency. The key to wisdom is coming to understand what we do not know.

Rejoice in your youth, he says, and remember the judgment of God (v. 9). Remove sorrow, and remove evil (v. 10). Although our youth is vanity, it must be enjoyed. This enjoyment is only possible if you remember your Creator now, before the difficult days arrive (12:1–2).

All such things are preparation for dying and death (12:5). Before that time arrives, remember your Creator (v. 6). And so death comes (12:6). The obscure images here all clearly indicate the point of the marvelous creation of the human body . . . breaking. The dust of our bodies will return to its source, and our spirits will go to God (v. 7).

Those who would repent of their folly must let Solomon nail it down for them.

So God will judge the secret things, all of them, whether good or evil. But how can the thought of exhaustive judgment bring pleasure and encouragement anywhere, especially in the midst of vanity? Here is the word of the Lord—it is the gift of God.