Today’s reading: Ecclesiastes 12; Ephesians 2
When we get to the end of Ecclesiastes, once the words of the Preacher are finished, we hear again from the author why he chose to write these words down.
The author finishes the book like this:
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
There are a few things in this that stand out to me.
First off, the author recognizes these words as coming from, but not originating with, the Preacher. Instead of wisdom coming from the Preacher, all wisdom ultimately comes from one Shepherd, the Lord. This is important to know that even he is recognizing this as he scribes the book. There is plenty in Ecclesiastes that would seem to contradict teachings in Proverbs, for example, but here the author is calling out that, despite that, both are coming from the single source of truth, Yahweh. This is helpful in knowing how we should interpret Biblical wisdom. Just as there are verses in Proverbs that contradict one another, at times back-to-back and very clearly no accident, here too the scribe is not unaware or ashamed of the differences. This is why I said at the beginning of this book that Ecclesiastes is a really helpful and important foil to the book of Proverbs, because if all we had in the Bible was the book of Proverbs, it would give us a very rosy but inaccurate picture of how the world works. Wisdom is found in considering the generalized wisdom of Proverbs alongside the more cynical wisdom and reality of Ecclesiastes and Job.
Secondly, the point of collected wisdom is to keep us moving forward in the right direction and away from self-destruction. Oxen, hitched to a plow, would not, on their own, keep moving forward in a straight line, so goads were used to keep them on track. Goads would cause pain to get the ox’s attention when they were wandering from the path to set them back on course, and the more the ox resisted, the more pain he would experience until he finally listened. In similar fashion, we were created for goodness, righteousness, and faithfulness, but when we start wandering from that path, the words of the wise are the goads which turn us back on track. So, I would argue, the point of the wisdom books is not to make a checklist of every proverb and saying, and then to sit down at the end of each day saying, “Did I check all the boxes today and keep all these instructions?” Instead, the point is to have these saying bouncing around in our heads, guiding the way we think about the world and process the decisions before us, and then, for God’s Spirit to use them to prod us when we start to veer from the right direction.
And finally, the point of it all is to fear God and keep his commandments, that’s where the author lands. There are parts of this book that almost seem to be discouraging living according to God’s commandments, or at least that say that living carefully according to His commandments isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and yet, that’s not what the author is taking from the Pracher’s words. Things may not always work out cleanly in this life, and that might make it all seem like vanity and chasing after wind, but the ultimate reality is that every deed will be brought into judgment before God. There is a greater reality beyond this life as we are experiencing it now, and we cannot lose sight of that reality. So we need not disparage when the unrighteous prosper and our righteousness doesn’t seem to pay off, because it will not be that way forever, and our faithfulness will be rewarded.
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