Bible Commentaries

Ecclesiastes 7:2

We are apt to blame society for being constrained and artificial, but its conventionalities are only the result of the limitations of man's own nature. How much, for instance, of what is called "reserve" belongs to this life, and passes away with its waning, and the waxing of the new life! We can say to the dying, and hear from them things that, in the fullness of health and vigour, could not be imparted without violence to some inward instinct. And this is one reason, among many others, why it is so good to be in the house of mourning, the chamber of death. It is there more easy to be natural,—to be true, I mean, to that which is deepest within us. Is there not something in the daily familiar course of life, which seems in a strange way to veil its true aspect? It is not Death, but Life, which wraps us about with shroud and cerement.

—Dora Greenwell, Two Friends, pp38 , 39.

Compare Sterne's famous sermon on this text:—"So strange and unaccountable a creature is man! He is so framed that he cannot but pursue happiness, and yet, unless he is made sometimes miserable, how apt he is to mistake the way which can only lead him to the accomplishment of his own wishes," etc.

Ecclesiastes 7:2

Every one observes how temperate and reasonable men are when humbled and brought low by afflictions, in comparison of what they are in high prosperity. By this voluntary resort unto the house of mourning, which is here recommended, we might learn all these useful instructions which calamities teach, without undergoing them ourselves, and grow wiser and better at a more easy rate than men commonly do.... This would correct the florid and gaudy prospects and expectations which we are too apt to indulge, teach us to lower our notions of happiness and enjoyment, bring them down to the reality of things, to what is attainable.

—Bishop Butler.

Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. And hence the saying, It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of mirth.

—Shelley.

Ecclesiastes 7:5

It is the sinful unhappiness of some men's minds that they usually disaffect those that cross them in their corrupt proceedings, and plainly tell them of their faults. They are ready to judge of the reprover's spirit by their own, and to think that all such sharp reproofs proceed from some disaffection to their persons, or partial opposition to the opinions which they hold. But plain dealers are always approved in the end, and the time is at hand when you shall confess these were your truest friends.

—Richard Baxter, Preface to the Reformed Pastor.

A truth told us is harder to bear than a hundred which we tell ourselves.

—FÉnelon.

Ecclesiastes 7:6

Nothing serves better to illustrate a man's character than what he finds ridiculous.

—Goethe.

"During that time" (his agitation on behalf of Calas" descendants) "not a smile escaped me without my reproaching myself for it, as for a crime."

—Voltaire.

"Froude," said Keble once to Hurrell Froude," you said you thought Law's Serious Call was a clever book; it seemed to me as if you had said the Day of Judgment will be a pretty sight."

Ecclesiastes 7:8-9

There is not a greater foe to spirituality than wrath; and wrath even in a righteous cause distempers the heart.

—Chalmers.

Reference.—VII:8.—A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Ecclesiastes 7:10

The actual connexion of these words of the text is quite in keeping with the tone and temper of the writer of this book. He does not mean, at least as the chief purpose of this rebuke, to glorify the present with its opportunities and possibilities at the expense of the past. It would hardly be in accordance with the prevailing pessimism of the writer to strike here a hopeful and inspiring note. The whole trend of his teaching is that life is illusive, and a man should not build his hopes too high, and look for permanence in any source of joy. Moderation is the great secret.

I. It is a common infirmity of old age, but it is not confined to age, to disparage the present and to glorify the past. It is a merciful provision of our nature which makes us forget the pains and sorrows of the past, and when we do remember them sets them in a soft and tender light, letting us see some of the good which has come from them. And as the sorrows of the past seem diminished by distance, by a strange reversion the joys loom larger and finer. To a reflective mind the pleasures of memory are sweeter than the pleasures of possession or even the pleasures of anticipation. And this tendency seen in our everyday life is also reflected on a larger scale in history. All old institutions gain allies for their existence in sentiment and respect for what has displayed the quality of permanence. We judge of the past by what has come down to us of the past, and make unfavourable comparison of the present with it. We forget among other things the greatly extended sphere for human activity now; and we forget that with the treasures of the past which we possess time has weeded out much that was inferior.

II. It is a natural bias of the mind, and in many respects a very beautiful thing, to glorify the past. The danger of it comes in when it makes light of the present, and destroys the healthful faith that would save the present from despair. We must not let the past sit on us like an old man of the sea, choking us and fettering our movements. It is for this stupid purpose that the past is generally used by the ordinary laudator temporis acti. The underlying idea is that anything that now can be done must be feeble and not worth doing. Such an idea kills effort and robs life of dignity. It paralyses the present and mutilates the future. On the one hand we have ever with us the man whose attitude to life is summed up in the dictum, "Whatever Ecclesiastes 7:10

The best gift that history can give us is the enthusiasm it arouses.

—Goethe.

Both in politics and in art Plato seems to have seen no way of bringing order out of disorder, except by taking a step backwards. Antiquity, compared with the world in which he lived, had a sacredness and authority for him; the men of a former age were supposed by him to have had a sense of reverence which was wanting among his contemporaries.

—JOWETT.

An obsolete discipline may be a present heresy.

—Newman.

See also Ben Jonson's Discoveries, secs. xxi. cxxiii.

"Carlyle," said Maurice, "believes in a God who lived till the death of Oliver Cromwell."

The Goodness of Gladness

Ecclesiastes 7:14

I. Well that, you say, we can very easily do. Our difficulty up to the present time has not been to be joyful when prosperity has smiled upon us, but to find that prosperity which should bring us joy. Is that true? Or is it not rather true, as Bishop Butler has told us in his solemn way, that "Prosperity itself, while anything supposed desirable is not ours, begets extravagant and unbounded thoughts," and that prosperity itself is a real and lasting source of danger. Is it not a matter of common observation that the danger which prosperity sets up is precisely this, the danger of discontent

II. But literally this advice Ecclesiastes 7:14

The thought which occupies the writer's mind here is that of the compensations of experience. He has lit on the great truth that human life is very subtly and finely equalized. He is not preaching the doctrine of equality, as if there were no difference between man and man. He is too honest to assert, as Pope asserted, that whatever Ecclesiastes 7:15

The two main qualities for a long life are a good body and a bad heart.

—Fontenelle.

Compare M. Arnold's Mycerinus.

Reference.—VII:15-18.—T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes 7:16

The words, righteous over much, are apt to be a good deal in the mouths of sinners when they are pressed by their own consciences, or their spiritual guides and advisers, to practise some unpleasant duty or reform some pleasant vice.

I. How far is this manner of speaking justifiable in the persons who use it? The text is oftener quoted in a mood half-sportive, and as a short way of silencing unpleasant discussion, than as a serious ground of argument But the misery of it Ecclesiastes 7:16

The book has been said, and with justice, to breathe resignation at the grave of Israel.... Attempts at a philosophic indifference appear, at a sceptical suspension of judgment, at an easy ne quid nimis (). Vain attempts, even at a moment which favoured them! shows of scepticism, vanishing as soon as uttered before the intractable conscientiousness of Israel.

—Literature and Dogma, II.

Let not the frailty of man go on thus inventing needless troubles to itself, to groan under the false imagination of a strictness never imposed from above; enjoining that for duty which is an impossible and vain supererogating. Be not righteous over much, is the counsel of Ecclesiastes; why shouldest thou destroy thyself? let us not be thus overanxious to strain at atoms, and yet to stop every vent and cranny of permissive liberty, lest nature, wanting these needful pores and breathing places, which God hath not debarred our weakness, either suddenly burst out into some wide rupture of open vice or frantic heresy, or else fester with repressing and blasphemous thoughts, under an unreasonable and fruitless rigour of unwarranted law.

—Milton.

Man is neither angel nor brute, and the misfortune is that whoever would play the angel plays the brute.

—Pascal.

As an aged man of the world, whose recollections went back into the last century, is reported to have said: "When I was young, nobody was religious; now that I am old, everybody is religious, and they are both wrong".

—Jowett.

No man undertakes to do a thing for God, and lays it aside because he finds perseverance in it too much for him, without his soul being seriously damaged by it He has taken up a disadvantageous position. This is not a reason for not trying, but it is a reason for trying soberly, discreetly, and with deliberation.

—F. W. Faber.

Almost everybody you see in Oxford believes either too much or too little.

—Phillips Brooks.

Righteous Over Much

Ecclesiastes 7:16-17

Our text is characteristic of one of the lines of thought which run through this strange book. The book is autobiographical in the true sense, that it gives a record of personal thought and experience. The book is the fruit of the contact of a Jew with alien philosophy and civilization, the author had seen the world and had tried the different ways of life which have ever been possible to men. The book is full of world-weariness. The satiety which comes from such a life seems at first to have destroyed all serious earnest purpose; and he pronounced upon all things the verdict of vanity, that everything was equally worthless, and nothing counted much anyway. The withered world-weary life, so frankly revealed in this autobiography, is itself the most terrible sermon that could be preached from the book, of the vanity of a life lived apart from God.

I. The words of our text with their doctrine of moderation suggest a common thought in Greek philosophy. It might be called the very central thought of Aristotle's Ethics that virtue is moderation, not of course meaning moderation in indulging in anything wrong, but that wrong itself means either excess or deficiency. He defines virtue as a habit or trained faculty of choice, the characteristic of which lies in observing the mean. "And it is a moderation firstly, inasmuch as it comes in the middle or mean between two vices, one on the side of excess, the other on the side of defect; and secondly, inasmuch as, while these vices fall short of, or exceed, the due measures in feeling and in action, it finds and chooses the mean or moderate amount."

II. There is much to be said for this doctrine of moderation even in what is called righteousness, at a time like that in which the writer lived, when righteousness was looked on by most as external ceremonies and keeping of endless rules, rather than as spiritual passion. There is often much justification for the sneer at overmuch righteousness at all times, when the soul has died out of religion and the punctilious keeper of the law becomes self-complacent and censorious of others. It Ecclesiastes 7:16

Here the doctrine of moderation is extended to the intellectual sphere, that the safest course is to avoid extremes and to do nothing in excess. The truth of this advice is seen more clearly if we translate the word "destroy" a little more fully. The primary idea of the word is that of silence, being put to silence, and thus it came to mean to be laid waste or destroyed. But the root meaning is to be made desolate, solitary, and was sometimes used of a lonely solitary way. So that the question of the writer might be put, Why make thyself solitary? Why isolate thyself? The exceptional always isolates. The ordinary man of the street cannot see your faraway visions of truth or beauty or holiness. The thinker is lonely.

I. How pitifully true this is can be seen in the whole history of human thoughts. In loneliness, in sickness of heart, in despair of the unknown, has every inch of ground been gained for the mind of man. Further there is justification for it even from a moral point of view. As the temptation of the over-righteous is censoriousness and self-satisfaction, so the temptation of the overwise is what St. Paul calls the vainly puffed-up mind, a besotted conceit and pride, as if wisdom will die with them, and which looks down with contempt on the vulgar, unlettered throng.

II. But as censoriousness came not from too much righteousness, but from too little, so contemptuous pride is the failing not of real but of spurious wisdom when wisdom is supposed to be information. Knowledge of facts, knowledge of books, it lends itself to the puffed-up mind. But these things, scientific facts, literature, are not wisdom; they are only the implements of Ecclesiastes 7:18

Of little threads our life is spun, and he spins ill who misses one.

—M. Arnold.

Reference.—VII:18.—T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes 7:21

Here is commended the provident stay of inquiry of that which we would be loth to find: as it was judged great wisdom in Pompeius Magnus that he burned Sertorius" papers unperused.

—Bacon.

The Law of Equivalents

Ecclesiastes 7:22

The meaning would seem to be: Take no heed of tale-bearing; do not attach too much importance to words that are spoken in secret and not intended for thine own ear. Do not listen to servants talking about thee in the kitchen; do not be distressed by what men say about thee in the streets; do not judge thyself too much by thy nickname: "for oftentimes also thine own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise——"

I. This is the law of equivalents. Men hear what they have spoken. If you have sowed the air with pearly words, you will reap a pearly harvest "Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Do not play the eavesdropper. Otherwise thou shalt hear no good of thyself. If thy servants curse thee, or speak unkindly of thee, think, for oftentimes also thine own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast cursed them.

II. Now there is another application, and it Ecclesiastes 7:23

Perhaps the best part of old age is its sense of proportion which enables us to estimate misfortunes, or what seem to be such, at their true proportions.

—James Payn in Nineteenth Century, September, 1897.

The Reason of Things

Ecclesiastes 7:25

"I applied mine heart to seek out the reason" is enough; "of things" is a phrase put in by men who, with mistaken generousness, desire to assist inspiration. I. He is a very foolish man who wants to pry too much into the reason of things. A good many things in life have to be taken just as they are and just as they come, and the Lord permits a ready simple reading of many things which might be so taken as to perplex faith and bewilder imagination. Men are in some instances made to pry; they cannot be content with what is known and visible and accessible; some men cannot live on the commonplace, some dainty souls could never live upon simple mother-made bread, they must have other things to eat, and they cannot get them, and in a vain futile endeavour to get these other things their souls wither and perish and pass away. Do not be too wise; be not righteous over much, neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? These are the inquiries of the wise man himself.

II. We cannot, however, all avoid looking round and wondering at the marvellous structure" and economy and intermixture and dramatic interplay of things. It is a right wonderful universe so far as we can see it, and that is a very little way and a very little portion; still, if things be so mysterious, at once so august and so abject within the little sphere that is visible or accessible, what may they be, what must they be, on the wider lines, on the complete outline, as God has figured and controlled it? For my own part, and this is a matter upon which personal testimony must be taken for what it is worth, I have come to the conclusion that there is no explanation of life, nature, and all things under the sun and above the sun that we have heard anything about that is so simple, so complete, and so satisfactory as that they were all made and are all under the gentle and mighty control of a living personal God.

Some of the reasons of things may be discovered almost immediately by a test which we call by the Latin word conduct The reason is written upon the very face of the situation. That is very good up to a given point; that did not escape the keen eyes of Ecclesiastes 7:28

There are only two good men: one is not born yet, and the other is dead.

—Confucius.

I began to... get an especial scorn for that scorn of mankind which is a transmuted disappointment of preposterous claims.

—George Eliot.

See Lowell's Sonnets, Iv.

Ecclesiastes 7:28

Charles Kingsley objects to Fénelon's Télémaque, that "no woman in it exercises influence over Ecclesiastes 7:29

You have had false prophets among you—for centuries you have had them—solemnly warned against them though you were; false prophets, who have told you that all men are nothing but fiends and wolves, half beast, half devil. Believe that, and indeed you may sink to that. But refuse that, and have faith that God "made you upright," though you have sought out many inventions; Ecclesiastes 7:29

Adam and Eve were placed in a garden to cultivate it; how much is implied even in this! "The Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it." If there was a mode of life free from tumult, anxiety, excitement, and fever of mind, it was the care of a garden. Adam was a hermit, whether he would or no. True; but does not this very circumstance that God made him such point out to us what is our true happiness, if we were given it, which we are not? At least we see in type what our perfection is, in these first specimens of our nature, which need not, unless God had so willed, have been created in this solitary state, but might have bean myriads at once, as the angels were created. And let it be noted, that, when the Second Adam came, He returned, nay, more than returned to that life which the first had originally been allotted. He too was alone, and lived alone, the immaculate Son of a Virgin Mother; and He chose the mountain summit or the garden as His home. Save always, that in His case sorrow and pain went with His loneliness; not, like Adam, eating freely of all trees but one, but fasting in the wilderness for forty days—not tempted to eat of that one through wantonness, but urged in utter destitution of food to provide Himself with some necessary bread,—not as a king giving names to fawning brutes, but one among the wild beasts,—not granted a helpmeet for His support, but praying alone in the dark morning,—not dressing the herbs and flowers, but dropping blood upon the ground in agony,—not falling into a deep sleep in His garden, but buried there after His passion; yet still like the first Adam, solitary,—like the first Adam, living with His God and Holy Angels.

—J. H. Newman.

Reference.—VIII:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No1697.