Wisdom is Pointless
Ecclesiastes 1: 12-18
Wisdom is pointless DIG: Where has the Teacher searched for wisdom? What is the “burden” in verse 13? Why is God blamed for it? Why does wisdom bring sorrow and knowledge bring grief? How is chasing after the wind, like failing to grasp the meaning of life under the sun?
REFLECT: Sooner of later, most people who wrestle with the big questions in life end up getting discouraged or depressed. Where “under heaven” have you searched for meaning? Where have you found it? In what instances has knowledge caused you sorrow?
All our learning is pointless without God.
After introducing the author and stating the theme, Ecclesiastes offers a series of examples taken from nature and human experience to prove that all our efforts on this earth are fleeting and pointless (to see link click Cc – The Failure of Earthly Things). These verses come from someone who refers to the Teacher in the third person – perhaps the book’s final editor. Then, starting in verse 12, the Teacher speaks for himself and invites us on a spiritual and intellectual quest: I, the Teacher, have been king over Isra’el in Jerusalem.
I wisely applied myself to seek out and investigate everything done under heaven. What a bothersome task God has given humanity to keep us occupied (1:12-13)! Solomon’s quest was sincere. He devoted his heart and soul to knowing the truth, leaving nothing out. He wanted to investigate every area of human endeavor, everything done under heaven, a synonym for under the sun, cutting God out of the picture.
Understand that the kind of wisdom the king was pursuing was not godly wisdom, but human wisdom – the best that human beings have said or thought without special revelation from ADONAI. This is a worthy pursuit, as far as it goes. All truth is God’s truth, wherever it may be found. Because YHVH created the world and everything in it, any truth that we discover is a divine gift: ADONAI gives wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding (Proverbs 2:6). The question, however, still needs to be asked: how far will human wisdom take us? Will information bring transformation? Can it lead us to eternal life?
One way to answer these questions is to see the result of Solomon’s quest. What did he discover? The reality is that he came up empty. Verses 13 to 15 summarize Solomon’s unhappy efforts to understand the universe. His mood is unmistakably gloomy: What a burdensome task God has given humanity to keep us occupied (1:13)! Sooner or later most people end up feeling the same way. There are many burdensome things in life that make us feel unhappy: the bad relationship our parents have, the unkind comments people make about us, the things we do not have but wish we did, the recognition we deserve but never get – even the ordinary frustrations of daily life can make us feel unhappy.
When Solomon talks about the bothersome task, he has in mind his very quest to understand the meaning of life. The pursuit of knowledge itself is what turns out to be so pointless. The longer he looked for answers and the harder he tried to understand the meaning of life, the more frustrated he became with all of life’s unanswerable questions.244
Chasing after the wind: After going everywhere and looking at everything Solomon reached this conclusion: I have seen all the activities that are done under the sun, and it’s all pointless (Hebrew: hebel), like chasing after the wind (1:14). Just as one cannot grasp the wind, so one cannot grasp the meaning of life under the sun. Meaning may be there but it cannot be grasped – it is like chasing after the wind – and the enigmas cannot be reconciled.245
The Teacher-king now explains why he was so frustrated. So he concluded the first stage of his unhappy quest with a proverb: What is crooked can’t be straightened; what is not there can’t be counted (1:15). No matter how much he pondered the world’s problems under the sun, he could not straighten out life’s anomalies, nor reduce all that he saw into a neat, tidy system. Frustration and perplexity surrounded Solomon and all his wisdom, while it might help in some things, could not solve the fundamental problems of life.246 The thrust of the verse is that there is something fundamentally wrong with life under the sun, and since the world, as it is, has come about as a result of God’s will, there is absolutely nothing that humans can do about it.247
The quest continued: So, Solomon’s first test failed. Human wisdom could not provide an answer for the meaning of life. However, that didn’t mean he was ready to give up. He had a little heart-to-heart talk with himself, a running dialogue about what he had discovered. He said to himself, “Look, I have acquired much wisdom, more than anyone ruling Jerusalem before me.” Yes, I experienced a great deal of wisdom and knowledge (1:16). Still, the Solomon of Ecclesiastes had not yet considered the claims of morality, so his quest was incomplete. He had tried to learn everything he could, like someone who goes to college and reads all the great books. However, He had not yet fully investigated the difference between right and wrong, or tried to find meaning and purpose by becoming a better person. Solomon tells us that he studied both wisdom and knowledge and madness and folly without saying why he studied both. Perhaps he looked for meaning or pleasure in one or the other. Perhaps he studied both in order to differentiate wisdom from the crazy foolishness of disobedience to ADONAI. Or perhaps he was attempting to be truly objective, or to get the full picture since wisdom and foolishness are two sides of the same coin.248
What was the result of Solomon’s renewed quest? Did knowing the difference between right and wrong help him find purpose in life? Was he able to become a better person? Not at all. Traditional morality also failed to satisfy his soul. He said: I came to see that this too was merely chasing after the wind. Then he offered another proverb to summarize what he had discovered: For in much wisdom is much grief; the more knowledge, the more suffering (1:17-18). So long as wisdom is restricted to the realm of under the sun, it sees the throbbing clamor of creation, life scurrying around in its ever-repetitive circles, nothing more.249
A hopeful conclusion: As usual, reading Ecclesiastes quickly makes us feel even worse about life than we did before. At first, the Teacher’s honesty may seem refreshing, but the more we study the book, the more depressing it can become. This actually means Solomon is achieving his purpose. Remember that he is showing us the world from a merely earthly perspective – the best thinking that human beings can do on their own.250 Solomon believes in God, of course, and mentions Him by name in verse 13, but he made his spiritual quest essentially without God’s help. The Teacher did not pray or consult Scripture, which had been the cause of his downfall in the first place (see Bx – Solomon’s Wives). Instead, he was off and running on his own quest for meaning without stopping to consider His majesty. He was probing into matters by his unaided and unenlightened reason under the sun apart from any wisdom from God who dwells above the sun.
If we take a secular perspective and try to understand the world on our own terms rather than on God’s terms, we will never escape Ecclestiastes 1. Study all the philosophy, research all the religion and pursue all the personal improvement that you please – it will still end in frustration. Human reason can only take us so far. All our learning is pointless without God.
But, thank God that there is a God, and that He does not leave us in despair! The Solomon of Ecclesiastes shows us the need for a Savior. The Teacher didn’t know it yet, but at the end of all our questioning ADONAI will be waiting for us in the Person of His own Son. The Bible says that YHVH rewards people who truly seek Him. And without trusting, it is impossible to please God, because whoever approaches Him must trust that He does exist and that He becomes the Rewarder to those who seek Him out (Hebrews 11:6). And that if we lack wisdom, we can ask God and He will give it to us: Now if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives to all generously and without finding fault, and it will be given to you (James 1:5 NIV). Yeshua Messiah – He Himself, in His own Person – is the wisdom of God (First Corinthians 1:24).
We should not leave Ecclesiastes 1 without remembering that Yeshua entered into all the pointlessness and frustration of life under the sun to show us the wise way to live. If we follow Messiah and His wisdom we will not try to bend what is crooked back to our own purpose, but humbly submit to the way ADONAI wants things to be, just as Yeshua did when He went to the crooked cross and died for our sins (First Peter 2:21-24).
If we follow the wisdom of Messiah, eventually life will add up. It will never add up to something simple on this side of eternity. But if we leave the final calculations to Him, He will make sure that all the books are balanced in the end, including our personal account, which He has reconciled with His own blood. Our current frustration will not last forever, including all our struggles to understand the meaning of life. Soon, our sorrows will be over. We will be with Yeshua forever, and find the answers to all our questions in Him.251
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