The Ignorance of Humans Who Cast Off God’s Wisdom

19Wisdom is a strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city. 20Surely there is not a righteous man on earth, who does good and doesn’t sin. 21Also don’t take heed to all words that are spoken, lest you hear your servant curse you; 22for often your own heart knows that you yourself have likewise cursed others. 23All this I have proved in wisdom. I said, “I will be wise”; but it was far from me. 24That which is, is far off and exceedingly deep. Who can find it out? 25I turned around, and my heart sought to know and to search out, and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity, and that foolishness is madness. 26I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and traps, whose hands are chains. Whoever pleases God shall escape from her; but the sinner will be ensnared by her. 27“Behold, I have found this,” says the Preacher, “to one another, to find out the scheme; 28which my soul still seeks; but I have not found. I have found one man among a thousand; but I have not found a woman among all those. 29Behold, I have only found this: that God made man upright; but they search for many schemes.”

Every shop has a smell of its own. One smells of perfume, another of cigarettes, and another gives off the sharp odor of chemicals. The smell may be so strong that we frown and turn our heads away, but as long as we stay in that shop, we cannot escape it.

There is only one way not to smell it: leave the place. If someone has no intention of leaving and yet grows angry at the smell or demands that it be taken away, no one could be more foolish. Just as every shop has its own smell, people too carry a scent all their own, shaped by their temperament, their character, and their circumstances. Because the years a person has lived form their character and temperament, these cannot be hidden even if they wish to hide them, and the scent they give off tells a great deal about who they are. What fragrance do you give off? With what fragrance do people remember you? Do they want to stay near you because they love your fragrance? Or do they grimace and walk away? If people dislike your fragrance, stop being stubborn and change the direction you have lived in until now; then you can carry a different fragrance.

If you say, “I don’t care if people dislike me; I won’t change my ways,” you may have to take a long detour in life, and you may end up with something to repent of before God in tears. Some people give off a foul smell because they love to gossip, slander others, and complain all the time. Of course, no one can be perfect. We make mistakes, and sometimes we catch ourselves talking about others and regret it. But if it is sinful, we must surely correct it and strive not to give off a bad smell.

Doing good must always be rooted in love, yet some do it out of duty rather than love. Love and duty may look like the same action from the outside, but the fragrance they give off is entirely different, so those on the receiving end can tell what is truly in the heart. Serving God because we truly love him is not the same as working to be seen; giving ourselves up because we truly love people is not the same as doing it from obligation. The work may look alike, but it is not.

Solomon was a man filled with the fragrance of the wisdom God had given him. His wisdom was so precious that people gathered around him, and because God loved Solomon, he filled him with wisdom and grace. Solomon knew that the wisdom God had given was wiser and stronger than ten rulers in a city, and for that reason he promised to keep the law. But little by little he mistook God’s wisdom for his own righteousness, and from then on he began to give off the stench of pride, lust, and immorality.

Once he had gained great power with God’s help, he began to treat the people harshly, and he took foreign women as wives to gain more land. As he listened to flatterers who told him what he wanted to hear, Solomon’s holy fragrance turned into the stench of the world. Even a diamond that looks flawless has its flaws. In the same way, Solomon realized that the years he thought he had lived wisely had been a crystal of defects, formed from human pride, corruption, and sin.

He had thought that those who slandered others, stirred up division, and covered his eyes and ears were people he could not do without, and that those who flattered him in order to gain more power were loyal servants. But once he took their words to heart, the fragrance of wisdom vanished and the stench of the world became his own scent. Only then did Solomon see that the only people left around him were those who wanted to use him. Seeing what he had become, he realized that he had spent his life in vain.

Those who cast off God’s wisdom as easily as Solomon did are of no use even to Satan, who for that very reason is quick to cast them aside. It is when people believe in God faithfully that Satan sets out to hinder their salvation. Since those who have thrown away their faith of their own accord already have no life in them, Satan pays them no attention. The fragrance that rises when God’s wisdom fills us is a holy fragrance that even unbelievers find pleasant. We must therefore live by the word without wavering.

But the smell of a faith gone rotten is more offensive than the smell of the world, so people expect nothing more from such Christians and will mock them, because, though they have no faith themselves, they want Christians to keep theirs. Solomon’s wisdom was a rare treasure that no one could imitate. It was so outstanding, stronger than ten rulers who guard a city, that he could easily resolve the people’s problems.

First Kings 3 records the case of two women who came before Solomon for judgment. Each insisted that the dead baby was the other woman’s and the living one her own, and demanded her son back. The two women had given birth three days before. One of them, sleeping restlessly, rolled over onto her three-day-old baby, and the baby died. She then carried her dead son into the other woman’s room and secretly swapped him for the living child.

When the woman who had been asleep got up and looked at the baby, it was already dead, and she saw that it was not her son. The two quarreled, each claiming the living baby as her own, and when they could reach no resolution, they came hoping that King Solomon would judge wisely. Solomon pondered who the baby’s mother was. Seeing that both women claimed the living baby as theirs, he chose to find the mother by ordering the baby put to death.

When he sternly commanded that the baby be killed, one woman wept and pleaded with him not to kill the baby but to give him to the other woman instead. The other woman, though, asked him to cut the baby in two so that neither of them would have him. This is the heart of Satan, because Satan and his forces know that they will fall into the lake of fire in any case; since they can possess nothing, they do evil that ruins the world and its people.

Watching the two women, Solomon could tell which was the baby’s mother: the one who begged him to spare the baby even if it meant giving him to the other woman, or the one who asked that he be killed so that neither could have him. He ruled that the baby be given to the woman who had offered to give him up. This verdict is still remembered as Solomon’s famous judgment. The hearts of these two women are like the hearts of Christ and Satan. Satan tries by every means to lead the souls God loves into death, but Christ endured the agony of throwing his own life into the midst of death and gave life to sinners.

This ruling, in which Solomon used the baby’s life to find the mother, was astonishing wisdom that no one could easily have conceived. Because of his wise judgment the people came to revere Solomon from the heart, but the praise of people made him proud. When he forgot that it was God’s wisdom and grace that had made the nation strong and given the people peace, he ended up stealing God’s glory.

When prosperity lasts a long time, people grow proud, thinking they enjoy it because they are righteous. Solomon became so intent on exalting himself and being served that he forgot he had left the faith and was on the road to destruction. That is a great misfortune, because those who turn the grace God gave them into their own righteousness and pose as righteous meet death in the end. When we become overly righteous like this, we forget what Isaiah said: that to God the nations are like a drop in a bucket, regarded as a speck of dust on a balance, and the islands are like fine dust he lifts up.

If, before God, the world is like a drop of water and a speck of dust on the scales, and even islands that seem vast are as slight as dust, then however great human righteousness and knowledge may be, they are trifling. The moment we take people’s praise to heart, grace cannot help being pushed out of our hearts. If we let such shallow words steal our hearts, pride is sure to follow. We must form the habit of thinking more deeply before we act.

Romans 3:10 says, “There is no one righteous; no, not one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. They have all turned away. They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not so much as one.” That is why salvation is the grace of God. Once people think they know as much as an expert, or become certain of their own opinion, they stop listening to others. To refuse to listen even when someone counsels us from the word is a very dangerous condition.

Unless we give up human righteousness, we are like Eve, who ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil out of a desire to become like God, and we may make as wrong a judgment as Judas did when he decided to betray Jesus. To give up our own righteousness is as hard as losing ourselves, but only those who have let it go can know what astonishing love God’s grace is.

Ecclesiastes 7:21

21Also don’t take heed to all words that are spoken, lest you hear your servant curse you;

People care a great deal about what others think of them. To be sure, there are things we must attend to in order to live in the world. But if we pay too much attention, we will be bound by what others say and fall into a snare of our own making. We must not take people’s words to heart. Caring too little about others would be a serious problem too, but if we are bound by what others think, we will grow timid and our self-esteem will sink.

We grieve when we see celebrities whose very lives are shaken by comments posted online, until they take their own lives. Reading words that insult your character and judge you carelessly would leave you bewildered, frightened, and in pain, but not everything those people say is right. The words of the world are trifles that vanish into thin air; that is all the more reason to stand firm in the word at all times. To listen to such people and cut short the life God has given is a foolish choice.

James says that everyone stumbles in many things in the course of life, but that anyone who does not stumble in word is a perfect man. Since Satan’s aim is to oppose God, we must keep a firm heart and learn to judge with our eyes on the long course of life. Look at Nehemiah, who came as governor of Judah to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and you will see how remarkable his faith was, and how wholly he relied on God. Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem slandered Nehemiah viciously to keep him from rebuilding the wall.

They spread the lie that Nehemiah meant to make himself king once the wall was built, but he was not shaken by their words; looking to God alone, he rebuilt the wall for Judah and its people.

When we hear what people say, we must first discern whether their words are meant to help us or are slander meant to discourage us. If we cannot tell whether a word is meant to help us live as God’s people, or only sounds like praise while it badly shakes our faith, serious trouble follows. Everyone makes mistakes in life, so even if we hear that someone has spoken against us, we also need to be generous and understanding, because we ourselves have sometimes criticized others. So when we hear that others have spoken ill of us, we must deal graciously with them, and when we remember speaking ill of others, we must confess it to God in repentance.

What Solomon wants to say through Ecclesiastes is this: give up the thought that all our decisions and judgments are righteous. He says this because, looking back on his youth, he realized that the years he had spent posing as a righteous man had meant little. To mistake God’s wisdom for one’s own and abuse it is a sinful act that uses God. Solomon had lived trusting his own wisdom, but as the years passed he came to understand deeply that life rests in the end in God’s hands, and that no human being can ever fathom how God leads a life from beginning to end.

Ecclesiastes 7:26

26I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and traps, whose hands are chains. Whoever pleases God shall escape from her; but the sinner will be ensnared by her.

Once Solomon grew proud, he claimed to be righteous, and as a result he was bound fast in Satan’s snare. Where God’s wisdom had departed, pride and folly, greed and lust filled the space; his judgment weakened and his discernment vanished. When the wisdom God had given him, more precious than pearls, lost its luster, he grew greedy for power. He took many wives and concubines as a result, and he came to serve the idols they brought with them.

None of this could ever have happened if Solomon had held on to wisdom. For a man, finding a good wife may well be the greatest of all blessings. In Proverbs Solomon said, “Who can find a worthy woman? For her price is far above rubies.” Yet he himself lived a life of failure because of his wives. The hands of the women the king favored bound him like chains and clouded his wisdom, and a life of sensuality and fleshly pleasure made it inevitable that his soul would depart from God.

He did not see how small a man he had become because of these immoral women, but when the season of pleasure had passed, he realized too late that pride, Satan’s temptation, and human righteousness had made a fool of him. You must not make Solomon’s mistake. Those who please God can escape the wicked woman who binds like chains, but foolish people who have cast off wisdom and grace will be caught by her and meet with great disaster. Satan hardens still further the hearts of those who lack wisdom and makes them close their ears, so that they cannot heed the counsel of the wise.

Solomon, who until then had met the affairs of the world with the clear insight of God’s wisdom, fell into the idols brought by immoral and cunning women and grew dull, so that he could not stand against Satan’s attacks. In verse 26 Solomon says that whoever pleases God shall escape from the wicked woman, but the sinner who has left God will be ensnared by her, powerless. In other words, people escape the wicked not because they are wise but because God protects them, which keeps the wicked from crossing the fence of the Holy Spirit.

The woman Solomon speaks of is the lustful foreign woman who worshiped idols, but from where we stand today she may also be money, human relationships, or human righteousness. We must remember that a life lived as we please, without entrusting everything to God, can be caught in snares and traps and bound with Satan’s chains.

In verse 28 Solomon says that his soul still seeks and has not found: “I have found one man among a thousand; but I have not found a woman among all those.” The one man he found among a thousand was probably Solomon himself, now aware of his sin. But among his thousand wives, and among the many people he had met, there was not one who had received God. This shows that for human beings to set their hearts on the world is, in the end, a sin from which there is no turning back.

Because God, when he created human beings and all creatures, made them to obey him, the God of justice, to go against his will and live for our own desires is sin itself.

Ecclesiastes 7:29

29Behold, I have only found this: that God made man upright; but they search for many schemes.”

God made humanity upright, but when people devised many schemes and sinned, they came to live under a curse. The God of justice created all things good in his sight, but Adam and Eve devised a scheme, defied his word, and placed all creation under the curse. A scheme here means a plot or stratagem. Although God had given human beings the best conditions and surroundings in which to live, they defied the word of the great God in order to rise as high as God. People may think their schemes are clever, but because those schemes spring from a nature made of dust, their outcome cannot help being evil. That is why we must strive to become new creations. You who have received Christ, do not become fools who cast off God’s wisdom as Solomon did. I hope instead that you will offer God the sweet aroma of Christ and be his children who receive the rewards of heaven.

If we wait until many years have passed to turn back, it will be too late, since few chances will remain. When frost has settled on our heads and deep valleys have formed on our faces, we may at last have the wisdom to know what is good and what is vain, yet by then there will be no chance left to turn back. Because of that, we must repent now, as we hear the word.

God wants us to recognize our ignorance, bow down humbly, seek his wisdom, and serve him. The depth of the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge is beyond human measuring, and his ways are a truth that fools can never trace out. When we stop chasing after evil as our desires lead and become good people, God will pour out his wisdom and knowledge on us in ever greater abundance, and he will give us fellow workers in faith to help us find his way with ease.

May you shake off the temptations of the world, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and become the new man, created in the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness of truth.