NOTES for Ecc 7:1-29

In form these reflections resemble the instructions collected in the Book of Proverbs of Solomon, but the character of the instructions, if taken outside the context, sharply differs from the edifying proverbs that contain advice and recommendations for a prosperous life. Wisdom, so highly valued, is reduced to the remembrance of death and the cessation of all earthly joy, and even wisdom itself proves an unreliable support in a world where oppressing others makes a wise man foolish.

These are rather reflections that might be called the fruits of sober experience, if something did not prevent us from finally accepting the pessimism that pierces the one reflecting. And only the sole conclusion found, that God made man upright, but people have gone after many schemes, helps us look again at everything said before. Then vanity of vanities is not in man's very existence, but in how he lives after falling away from the Creator?

Most of us heard from childhood that knowledge is a power. And we usually understood it in a totally practical way, according to the principle "forewarned - forearmed". Independently of the fact, if it was about scientific knowledge giving power over nature, or practical knowledge, allowing to orient correctly in a concrete situation. But the wisdom that the Ecclesiastes talks about, is probably all the same a different kind. It is enough to remember that wisdom in the time of Salomon was still also understood as an art of communication, judgment and governance.

Then the meaning of the statement somehow changes: as we see, the Ecclesiastes wants to say that the problem is not in power, as such, but to be able to dispose of it properly so as not to lose neither the power, nor oneself in the power. The second is of course much more complex than the first. And how to solve both problems at once? It turned out to be another important aspect of wisdom here: the wisdom, as the art of righteousness, as the habit to follow the Torah and the observation of commandments.

In those days, when the book was written, many, if it is not all, already understood that neither a just judgment, nor a just governance are possible for a governor, if it does not aspire for righteousness in all its plenitude, even if this plenitude remains inaccessible for man. And only such understood righteousness makes the governor really strong. Because now it is not the power that makes him strong, as governor, but he as a righteous governor made the power strong by his righteousness.

Most of us heard from childhood that knowledge is a power. And we usually understood it in a totally practical way, according to the principle "forewarned - forearmed". Independently of the fact, if it was about scientific knowledge giving power over nature, or practical knowledge, allowing to orient correctly in a concrete situation. But the wisdom that the Ecclesiastes talks about, is probably all the same a different kind. It is enough to remember that wisdom in the time of Salomon was still also understood as an art of communication, judgment and governance.

Then the meaning of the statement somehow changes: as we see, the Ecclesiastes wants to say that the problem is not in power, as such, but to be able to dispose of it properly so as not to lose neither the power, nor oneself in the power. The second is of course much more complex than the first. And how to solve both problems at once? It turned out to be another important aspect of wisdom here: the wisdom, as the art of righteousness, as the habit to follow the Torah and the observation of commandments.

In those days, when the book was written, many, if it is not all, already understood that neither a just judgment, nor a just governance are possible for a governor, if it does not aspire for righteousness in all its plenitude, even if this plenitude remains inaccessible for man. And only such understood righteousness makes the governor really strong. Because now it is not the power that makes him strong, as governor, but he as a righteous governor made the power strong by his righteousness.

What is Ecclesiastes seeking? God? In essence, yes. But he himself perceives his search differently. He is seeking true reality. One could say: Reality with a capital letter, if such Reality were not associated for us today with what we define for ourselves as "spiritual" or "divine." But what stands for us behind these words? Words, especially words like these, have long been devalued, not only because of dishonest Christians, but also because of quite honest theologians and philosophers, each time convinced that now they have finally found something truly spiritual and genuinely divine.

It appears that in the times when Ecclesiastes lived, the devaluation of words was already a sad reality. Ecclesiastes himself is religious; he knows something about God, but suddenly it has turned out that he does not really know God at all. Or almost not at all. But there are too many words, and Ecclesiastes prefers to avoid words. He does not even speak about reality; he prefers to speak of quite concrete, sufficiently tangible things. But what he is seeking is precisely reality.

And even Reality with a capital letter. But he seeks cautiously, as if feeling all that life consists of, his own life and other people's: what of this is authentic? What is truly real, and what only seems so? Death is more real than life; sorrow is closer to reality than joy and merriment. A strange conclusion, it would seem, but in the fallen world this really is so. If death is final, then life is either absurdity or a malicious joke of God on man.

With a God who can joke this way, one must be careful and circumspect. And wisdom... it would have meaning if it could give life. But it cannot; wisdom can deliver no one either from death or even from the evil in which the world lies. Evil can be minimized; for this one must allow everything that flows to flow freely. Nothing can be changed; one can only merge with the flow of life, not resisting it. An almost Daoist conclusion, but Ecclesiastes is seeking the authentic within this world.

And here only eternal movement is authentic, the flow of life, in which all forms and events dissolve and from which they are then born again; and here it no longer matters whether to call this flow "dao," as the Chinese philosophers did, or "logos," as the Greek philosophers did. Ecclesiastes does not call it anything at all, but he senses it quite clearly. He has found something real in the world, but it does not look as though living has become any easier or more joyful for him.