Ecclesiastes 2 Commentary
Having completely discounted human wisdom for life’s meaning, the teacher now moves gears through other human spaces. They are all empty!
First on the list is pleasure. Laughter is madness! It means nothing. You are still on the hunt for meaning.
Achievement can release a great sense of fulfillment. But not good enough to fill the gap that only true wisdom can occupy. Big projects mean nothing.
What about fame and human praise? There is an example of a man who pushed the pedal all the way down but the distance covered was zero. You cannot buy joy.
Then comes an age-old dilemma: both the wise and the foolish die. We are not too sure about the author’s statement. What we know is that those that have received wisdom from above won’t actually die. We, therefore, suspect the scripture is referring to what the world calls wisdom. It means nothing as can be seen in the fact that both the fool and the wise die.
The scripture is drawing our attention to the fallacy of human efforts.
Whatever his eyes desired, he got; whatever his heart desired, he got. Why not? He had the cash for it. He had the power and the authority for it.
“In all this, my wisdom stayed with me.” Definitely not the Wisdom of God nor the fear of God which is the beginning of Wisdom.
Regardless, wisdom or logic stays with an individual. How different is the fool from the God-wise? They both die. Think about it.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11 is a game-changer. Saints will physically die but they really never die. They simply sleep. Lying deep behind each saint’s life is God’s promise of eternity in Heaven. But even here the presence of the El-Shaddai God remains with the saint. The Spirit within each saint speaks completeness: love, peace, joy, self-control or rule, and contentment or fulfillment among other things.
There is no mine for peace. You cannot work for it. This is what the teacher has seen. Toil is meaningless; faith isn’t.
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