This chapter reads slightly extra like Proverbs than the earlier ones. So, regardless that there’s some logic to its construction, Solomon hits many alternative subjects for us to look at – life and demise, ache and pleasure, feeling and avoiding, listening and ignoring, endurance and impulsivity, humility and delight, previous and current, knowledge and wealth, safety and preservation, management and belief, righteousness and wickedness, humanity and holiness.
Knowledge and Foolishness – Ecclesiastes 7:1-29
Solomon continues to share his knowledge with the congregation by telling them what he has discovered about life. He says {that a} good fame is extra beneficial than costly fragrance, as a result of in the long run it would present that your life was essential (the day of 1’s demise is healthier than the day of 1’s beginning [v. 1]). Then, talking about demise, he says that it’s higher to go to a home of mourning for the lifeless than to a home of feasting as a result of that is how each individual’s life ends, and it does our hearts good to take inventory of that (v. 2). It’s higher to be unhappy for our loss than to giggle it away as a result of tears can do our hearts good. Although crying makes our faces drop, it makes our hearts glad to recollect (v. 3). Then Solomon ends this line of pondering by saying {that a} sensible individual permits himself to mourn, whereas the idiot chooses solely to do issues that carry him pleasure (v. 4). The purpose he appears to be making is that we be taught extra from adversity than we do from pleasure, and it is very important replicate on what God is making an attempt to show you in these occasions relatively than to dismiss them out of your thoughts as a result of it’s exhausting and also you don’t wish to really feel it.
Then, not solely ought to we enable ourselves to really feel issues that upset us, however we must also be prepared to listen to issues that may upset us. Fools repeat the phrases that we wish to hear, however we have to hearken to the rebuke of the sensible as a result of it, too, is nice for our hearts (v. 5). The idiot’s laughter could shortly ignite our pleasure, however in the identical manner that thorn bushes shortly catch fireplace, making numerous noise however burn shortly and generate little warmth, so the idiot’s laughter shortly ignites our pleasure, but it isn’t robust and enduring, which makes it meaningless (v. 6).
In talking of the sensible and the idiot, Solomon says that extortion makes a sensible individual lose his good sense, and a bribe will corrupt his coronary heart (v. 7; Exodus 23:8). So, as a substitute of giving in to strain or taking the short payoff, a sensible individual favors endurance over delight (the short look of success) and perseveres till the tip (v. 8). This can hold him from getting indignant like a idiot (v. 9). So, the sensible man guards himself in opposition to strain and bribes, together with the anger of a idiot, by being humble and affected person.
One other factor that impulsive folks do is assume solely within the right here and now. So, if occasions are dangerous in the mean time, they may generally look again on earlier occasions and keep in mind them extra fondly than they actually have been (v. 10). So, Solomon reminds us that this isn’t a sensible manner to take a look at the world. It isn’t actuality, and it, too, is greedy after the wind as a result of we will by no means clutch the previous irrespective of how tough the current could also be.
