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

by Douglas Wilson

The ungodly king Ahab had a righteous cabinet minister, whom some believers would dismiss as a craven compromiser. How could a godly man serve in the government of such a man? The reasoning may seem good to us, but the Bible goes contrary to our reasoning. And Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house. . . . Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly: For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.” (1 Kgs. 18:3–4) The courtier is a mist giving advice to a king who is a mist—no one knows absolutely what will happen in days to come (v. 7). Everyone, king and courtier alike, is in a war with death. No one can keep the spirit contained in the body; no one is able to obtain a discharge from that coming fight, and all will lose it (v. 8). All political battles must therefore be kept in perspective. No one is able to fight the final war between light and dark here under the sun, and no one should pretend to try.