A Commentary in Simple English on Ecclesiastes

Chapter 9 Wisdom in danger

Verses 1-6 Death yet again

Well, now, the Teacher says in verse 1. He thought about all these things. What he says next is not what he sees. He speaks once again as a man of faith. Here, the wise and the ‘righteous’ are just the same people. The Teacher says that both these people and also what they do are ‘in the hand of God’. God’s hand here means His power and care. What we do as well as who we are in God’s hands. That is good to know. We are not in the power of luck or chance. We are not in the power of some enemy.

Next the Teacher speaks about ‘love and hate’. They are not the love and hate of God. They are the love and hate of men (3:8 and Prov 15:17.) ‘Love and hate’ are opposites. They include everything in between. A man does what is right and wise. What he does is ‘in the hand of God’. Yet men may love him or hate him. We never know what to expect from people. There is a problem at the end of verse 1 and the start of verse 2. It really says: ‘All things are like all things’. That does not mean much to us. ‘Everything is empty - vanity’ may be best. Once again, the Teacher thinks about death. All men face death. So the Teacher gives us a list of kinds of good and bad people. In each case, the good kind comes before the bad kind.

‘Those who do what is right : those who do what is wrong.

Those who are clean : those who are not clean.

Those who offer gifts to God : those who offer God nothing.

The good man : and the man who sins.

Those who promise to serve God : those who will not promise this. [9.2]

We could accept death more easily if it made a difference between good and bad people. It does not. Once again, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are opposites. They include all kinds of people in between.

So verse 3 goes on to say that death really is bad. It is the worse thing of all. If all men were really good until they died that would be different. Yet we all have bad things which happen to us. They leave behind them thoughts that hurt us. ‘Madness’ may be a little too strong. We go through life with sick hearts. We watch things that happen in the world around us. These things so often are bad and they make us even sadder. Then death comes along to round it all off! (Verse 4) Yet God ‘chooses’ or ‘joins’ us to be with the living. ‘Let life put death to shame!’ We can at least look at death.

The live dog is probably very dirty. It eats rubbish. It smells bad, no doubt. It will not live long. It will die sometime quite soon. The lion may be ‘the King of the Beasts’ but here it is already dead. At least the dog is alive!

(Verses 5 and 6) The Jews wanted to become part of the ‘family memory’ when they died. In that way at least, they would ‘live on’. People would remember them. We put up stones over the graves of our loved ones who have died. The stones say: ‘In loving memory’. Then we forget them. All our strong feelings for people who have died go away. The love or the hate that we felt for them quickly goes away. The dead do not even share a place in our feelings.

The Christian, of course, can say: ‘Yes! They will have no part in what happens under the sun. Yet it is far better to have a part in God’s glory’.

We should remember that while we are alive, we have bodies. This means that we can do things. Death parts us from our bodies. So the dead are much weaker than the living. They even know much less. This is why it is so foolish for the living to seek help from the dead. When God raises us from the dead, that will be glory. We shall have better bodies. Our bodies in glory will have powers that we do not have in this life.

Verses 7-12 The failure of wisdom

In these verses, the Teacher gives us once more the best answer that he can find. Still, this is ‘under the sun’ (9:10). Indeed, what the Teacher says is stronger than what he has said before. In verse 7, he tells us to eat and drink and to enjoy it (1 Cor 10:31). There should be joy in our hearts, because we know that God is pleased with us. In verse 8, white clothes are a picture of joy. So too, here, is oil. People rubbed oil on to their heads when they itched. It would have been better to wash more often.

(Verse 9) The wise man will enjoy life with the wife that God has given to him. Remember 6:9! We can see here that marriage is for life. We can see more of the Bible teaching about marriage. The man has most of the work and the worry. The wife is there to help him.

Verse 10 tells us to try hard at everything we do. This means both work and pleasure. We are in God’s hand. (Verse 1) So our hand should work hard. These verses end with the picture of death. It does not matter who the Teacher speaks to. They are all on their way to one place. That is the grave. There we lose four powers. We shall have nothing to do. We shall not think. We shall know nothing. Wisdom will have no place.

As Christians, we could ask the Teacher how he knows so much about death. Thanks be to God that death and the grave are not the end! Christ has risen. He lives, and we shall live with Him.

In verses 11 and 12, the Teacher gives us five pictures. These are things, he says, which he has seen for himself.

This is, perhaps, a little poem: -

‘Not to the quick, the race;

‘and not to the mighty, the battle;

‘and also not to the wise, bread;

‘and also not to the clever, riches;

‘and also not to those who have knowledge, favour’.

In other words, it is not always those who run fast who win the race. The big army does not win every battle. A man may be wise, yet go hungry. A clever man may be poor. Favour or grace (‘hen’) does not always go to the people you would expect to have it. That is all true. Things do not always turn out the way you think that they will. This is because God is at work. We cannot know or even guess what He will do.

In verse 12, death is certain. When death will come is quite unknown. We catch fish and birds and they cannot get away. Bad times catch men too. Men cannot escape from them.

Verses 13-16 Wisdom’s weakness+

In these verses, wisdom succeeds. It saves a city. Yet this does the wise man no good. First (verse 13) the Teacher says that he saw this happen. (Verse 14) There was a small city. Not many people lived there. A strong king came with his army. The army set to work to take the city. No doubt there were rich people in the city. But there was one man who was wise, although he was not rich. He used his wisdom to save the city. You will find a story like this in 2 Samuel 20:14, 22.

This is the best example of the way in which the Teacher uses stories. He does not say when this happened. He does not tell us the name of the king or of the city. He does not tell us how the poor wise man saved the city. There are none of these details, which we would want to put in if we told the story.

Now we already know that wise people are not always rich. It may be because they are wise that they are not rich (Prov 3:8; 1 Tim 6:9 and 10). The Teacher was wise. He knew that it was not money that he wanted. The poor wise man in the Teacher’s story would have liked to have honour. He did not even get that. People forgot him and ‘despised’ him. The city did not remember his wisdom. We cannot measure the real value or worth which wisdom has by whether people honour it. Our wisdom may have real value even when people do something that does not seem quite right to us. ‘Wisdom is better than strength’.

Two groups of people may try to do the same thing. One groups uses strength. The other group uses wisdom. Strength will do harm and destroy. Wisdom will work in quiet, gentle ways and do no harm.

We may guess that the poor wise man said: ‘If you pay this king enough, he will go away’. If this was what happened, the rich people would say: ‘He is a poor man. It was our money, not his, that saved the city’. Yet it was the poor man’s wisdom which saved the city. The rich people said: ‘We shall not listen to him the next time that we need help’.

Verses 17 and 18 War and peace

These verses prepare us for Chapter 10. In these two verses there are words which are like the last few verses. Yet what they say gets us ready for the next chapter. Wisdom can do much good. Yet what is bad can stop the good which comes from wisdom.

So in verse 17, we have two pictures. First, the wise man speaks. The ruler wants to know what to do. So the wise man talks to him quietly. The ruler ought to listen quietly to him. Then second, there is the ruler who would not listen to a wise man. He is in trouble. He shouts. All round him there are ‘fools’. He wants them to save him, but they cannot.

In verse 18, the Teacher says that wisdom and war may try to do the same thing. Wisdom is better because it does not kill and destroy. In the second part of the verse, ‘good’ means the good which we can gain by wisdom. Sadly, one man who is not wise can stop all this good. ‘One person who messes up destroys a whole lot of good.’ [9.3] He is a sinner or rather, ‘a fool’. The next chapter will give us some pictures of this.

We need to be very careful about the word ‘fool’. In Matthew 5:22 Jesus warns us that it is wrong to call anyone a ‘fool’. The Old Testament uses the word quite often. This happens not only here in ‘The Teacher’ but also in Proverbs. We need to understand what the word means in these books. It is really ‘not wise’.