Ecclesiastes 7:8-14
Our most excellent adventure now moves into the second of the sections in chapter seven: Patience. Yes dear reader, I am going over this one carefully myself, since patience is really not my strongest suit! The topic is set clearly enough in verse 8:
The end of a matter is better than its beginning,
and patience is better than pride.
This verse hearkens back to the discussion in the previous section about houses of mourning and the day of death being better than the day of birth; a matter is best concluded in life, rather than begun, for in its conclusion we know if we have concluded it properly and, in a way pleasing in the eyes of God. Likewise, it is better to be patient than proud. If you stop and think about pride, it might not seem to line up well with patience, for all too often it leads a person to impatience, as a proud person seeks to have their way over someone else, while the patient person must deal with others in ways that respect their opinions, views and personhood.
Verse nine reinforces this thought:
Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit,
for anger resides in the lap of fools.
Allowing ourselves to be provoked would seem to trigger (in this context) rash actions of anger and impatience which reside in the “laps of fools.” This is set out further in verse 10:
Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”
For it is not wise to ask such questions.
How common this is; ah yes, the good old days were so much better than the here and now. Were they really? My father used to speak of those good old days, when people weren’t as crazy as they are “now”. Well, his “good old days” were the 1930’s and ‘40’s. The “now” was the 1960’s. If you stop and think about it, as crazy as the ‘60’s were in some ways, I doubt they were worse than the Great Depression and the Second World War! Yet from my father’s point of view, the ‘30’s and ‘40’s had been concluded; he knew how they ended, and things eventually worked out. The ‘60’s and how all of the issues of the day seemed to have no end in sight; would we tear civilization apart?
How do I know why he thought what he thought? Because for me, the ‘60’s and ‘70’s are the good old days! Today? What is going on in this world- will we tear civilization apart? You see, I don’t know how this is all going to come out in the end, and I want to know right now.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
In verse 10, the Teacher tells us that it isn’t wise to ask the question about the good old days, and in 11-12 he goes on to tell us essentially that impatience isn’t compatible with wisdom; wisdom is better than impatience. Solomon wraps up this discussion in 13-14:
Consider what God has done:
Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?
When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider this:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, no one can discover
anything about their future.
We can be just as impatient as we please. We can work ourselves into a tizzy if we want, we can become perfectly obnoxious in our impatience if we choose. Yet none of that will make the slightest difference… or if it does make any difference, it will end up being a difference that does us no good at all, for impatience is not compatible with wisdom. It is better to be wise and patient, than impatient and a fool… and you may quote me on that.
In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these:
the righteous perishing in their righteousness,
and the wicked living long in their wickedness.
Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?
Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?
It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes
Ecclesiastes 7:15-18
Solomon has noticed two things that might come as a surprise: First, he has seen righteous men die young in their righteousness, and he has seen really wicked men live long lives. From our point of view, this isn’t all that surprising; it happens all the time, and is something that we sometimes wonder about… Why O Lord is this so?
Back in the time of Solomon, this was more shocking, for the righteous were supposed to live long, have many children and prosper in the land, while the wicked were supposed to suffer the calamities they so richly deserved and come to an early termination if they didn’t change their ways. As we now understand, there is a season for everything, and a time for every season under heaven.
Then he goes on to tell his readers that they should neither be overly righteous, nor overly wicked; what does he mean by that? This dear reader is simpler than it might seem at first.
The best Biblical example of being overly righteous that I can think of as I write this is the example of the Pharisees. Those guys were really very righteous; they did everything just exactly right. No, really they did. Think about it, they were so righteous that they not only followed the letter of the Law, they actually made up more laws so that they wouldn’t even come close to breaking a Law. Yet in the end, they became so outwardly righteous that they put form over substance, and lost track of the inward realities of their relationship with God, and they perished in their outward form of righteousness.
As for being overly wicked, you might think that we aren’t supposed to be wicked at all, and in this you would be correct. OK, maybe I should just speak for myself here: As much as I might want to be perfectly righteous in everything I do, say or think, I fall short and can comprehend completely Paul’s observation that the things he would do, he didn’t, and the things he wouldn’t do, he did. Oh, wretched man that I am! Yet while all of this is going on, I manage not to go too far, for I have no wish to damage my relationship with our Lord, so I restrain myself, and with His grace I do much better than I used to, by the power of His life in me.
In this, we avoid both extremes, as the Teacher says in the last verse. Notice that he says “whoever fears God.” This is the guy who also said that “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Thus, a wise person avoids extremes, and another word for this is “moderation.”
See how simple this text is? Now just because the text is simple, putting it into practice may not be easy, but if we are completely honest with ourselves, it isn’t all that hard either.
I’ll bet you can’t wait for restraint, and that is coming up next!
“Restraint” is everyone’s favorite concept, but it is a quality of the wise. Even outside of relationship with God, a wise person learns self restraint. To be sure, a person doesn’t even need to be all that wise to understand that unrestrained speech can quickly get you into trouble, and that unrestrained action can easily land a person in the penitentiary. A person who is wise in the faith knows much more, for he or she is fully aware that our God is a model of self restraint. A wise person of faith will restrain his or her speech and actions simply out of love for God.
Wisdom makes one wise person more powerful
than ten rulers in a city.
Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous,
no one who does what is right and never sins.
Do not pay attention to every word people say,
or you may hear your servant cursing you—
for you know in your heart
that many times you yourself have cursed others.
Ecclesiastes 7:19-22
Although the word “restraint” is not present in these verses, restrain is very much in evidence; restraint in deeds is clearly implicit in the first two verses and in word in the remaining ones.
In the first two verses, notice that one wise person is said to be more powerful than ten rulers, and that this is followed by a statement that no one is without sin. What is it that makes the wise person so strong? The Teacher speaking of sin and righteousness is the clue; the wise person avoids the sins that lead to destructive and limiting behaviors that detract from the rulers’ effectiveness, even though the wise person has their problems sometimes.
Then there is the matter of words; we are advised not to pay attention to what everybody says and that requires restraint. He gives an example: Don’t listen to everything people say, or you might hear your servant curse you; but then you have done your share of cursing. The curse uttered by the servant isn’t worth hearing, and your own cursing isn’t worth saying; a wise person uses more restraint than either reacting to every idiotic utterance they hear, or saying stupid things. In the process, they avoid so much grieving of the Lord, not to mention problems of a more earthly nature.
When I think about it, this is a really simple little lesson. In fact, it’s a lesson my mother and father taught when I was a little kid; “behave yourself and watch your mouth.”
You would have thought I wouldn’t need to hear this all these years later, but there are times when I do need to hear it again; how about you?
All this I tested by wisdom and I said,
“I am determined to be wise”—
but this was beyond me.
Whatever exists is far off and most profound—
who can discover it?
Ecclesiastes 7:23-24
The value of wisdom is that we can search out everything that goes on around us, and draw conclusions about them; this is the Teacher’s quest. The Teacher will tell us of his search for wisdom in these last verses of chapter 7, and in this discussion, he reveals some interesting things, but not quite what we might expect. In the first 2 verses, he tells of the difficulty of the search and how it seemed to evade him. Verse 25 seems to be his goal:
So I turned my mind to understand,
to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things
and to understand the stupidity of wickedness
and the madness of folly.
He wants to understand the “scheme of things” and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and folly; all I can say is “good luck.” His results are in verses 26-27:
I find more bitter than death
the woman who is a snare,
whose heart is a trap
and whose hands are chains.
The man who pleases God will escape her,
but the sinner she will ensnare.
“Look,” says the Teacher, “this is what I have discovered:
“Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things—
To begin with, he mentions “the woman who is the share” an interesting illustration. It would seem that our wise Teacher has found that many fall victim to the allurements of lust and sensuality; some commentators might want to expand this to drink and drugs, but I’ll let the Teacher’s words stand alone without any help from me. A wise man of God will avoid this trap, but woe to the not so wise. I doubt much has changed since Solomon wrote these words…
And now, the rest of his results:
while I was still searching
but not finding—
I found one upright man among a thousand,
but not one upright woman among them all.
This only have I found:
God created mankind upright,
but they have gone in search of many schemes.”
Ecclesiastes 7:28-29
As for verse 28, let’s not shoot the messenger here gang; I didn’t write this text! It would seem that in Solomon’s investigation, he had a hard time finding upright men, and that he failed entirely to find an upright woman. I wonder how large his sample was… It is possible that he is using a little touch of hyperbole here, at least I hope so. In any event, people who are truly “upright” aren’t easy to find I suppose, even now. This brings us to verse 29, which seems to summarize the whole of his search under the sun. God created us as upright and moral people, certainly He intended that we should live this way, but humanity entered into sin and folly, and each of us knows what happened after that, for even these many centuries after Solomon breathed his last, we endure life in a world that is filled with the consequence of sin and rebellion against God.
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