NOTES for Ecc 8:1-17

It seems that the words of Ecclesiastes affirm the greatness of royal power, which, it seems, no one is able to resist. But even the power of a king proves to be part of the endless vanity of vanities, and not only because human power over another person is often exercised for harm, but, more importantly, because the king has no true power over the world. For no man has power over the spirit to retain the spirit, and he has no power over the day of death.

So what is wisdom? Is there any meaning in it at all? It turns out that there is: it allows a person to orient himself in what is happening. This is not the highest meaning, which remains God's mystery, but an earthly meaning accessible to man. Everything on earth has its time; everything in its time will be given an adequate evaluation, and God's judgment is entirely real; the only question is when the day of His judgment will come. These very times and seasons are what earthly wisdom allows one to know. Life on earth flows in its course; all the forms of the world and all its events are born from this flow and in their turn return back, while God watches over everything from above.

Why this flow? What is it for? Why is life this way and not another? Why is there so much evil in it? Why was there less evil before, and was there really less of it? Only God knows the answers to all these questions, and human wisdom is powerless here. But when and what one can expect from the flow of life, what and when can appear from it, and what is soon destined to disappear again into it, about this earthly, human wisdom can speak. This, in fact, is what it is needed for. At first glance this is a somewhat strange approach to wisdom, but here it is precisely the wisdom of this world.

For the Jews, wisdom was never something abstractly theoretical or contemplative; it was always associated with ability, skill, practice. And in Ecclesiastes it proves quite practical. True, practical wisdom was usually always connected with the possibility of somehow building a person's life, outward or inward. Here there is no talk of building life: Ecclesiastes is quite sure that this is impossible and meaningless.

A person cannot direct the flow of life in the desired direction; here wisdom is powerless. But it allows one to orient oneself in this flow, remaining practice more than theory, though not the practice of building or changing life, but, so to speak, of life navigation, the art of swimming in the flow of life. Well, being able to swim in the sea of life is certainly necessary. But is this the wisdom Ecclesiastes was seeking?

Speaking of the deeds that are "done under the sun," Ecclesiastes calls them "incomprehensible." What does he mean? Is science worth nothing? Of course, in his days science knew far less than it does in ours, but science has always remained science; in its main features scientific knowledge was the same then as it is today.

The point is not science as such, but what in the time of Ecclesiastes was called wisdom. Wisdom then did not mean scientific knowledge itself, or even knowledge as such. A wise person was not an intellectual expert, but a person who understood who he was, where he came from and why he came into the world, and where he was going. Wisdom consisted in answering not the question "how," but the question "why."

It was the same old question, still relevant today, about the meaning of life. And Ecclesiastes evidently understood that knowledge as such does not answer it. Science can investigate much; human reason is not at all as weak as believers sometimes say it is. But the main thing cannot be understood by reason alone.

Indeed, the question of meaning, the question "why" and "for what," is not a scientific one; reason alone is too little here. In the final analysis the answer to this question is known to God alone. The nature created by God, which science investigates, contains no answer: stones, trees, and animals not only do not know it, but do not even ask such a question. God Himself answers for stones, trees, and animals the question of the meaning of their existence, but stones, trees, and animals are unable to understand or even hear His answers.

More is given to the human being: he can and must understand why and for what he himself lives in the world, as well as why the world in which God has placed him has been given to him. But for the answer one must turn not to the world, but to God. Here the forefront belongs not to intellect or reason, but to faith, faith above all as trust in God, as the ability to ask Him a question and hear the answer.

From God one can learn the meaning of everything in the world, if only He considers it necessary to tell. Then, having received answers to the main questions, a person becomes truly wise: his life acquires the goal and meaning for which alone it is worth living.