Scripture Daily

Context No. 998 of 4322 · Ecclesiastes

Context · Reflection

Ecclesiastes 2:12-16: in context

12I turned myself to consider wisdom, madness, and folly; for what can the king’s successor do? Just that which has been done long ago. 13Then I saw that wisdom excels folly, as far as light excels darkness. 14The wise man’s eyes are in his head, and the fool walks in darkness—and yet I perceived that one event happens to them all. 15Then I said in my heart, “As it happens to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and why was I then more wise?” Then I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16For of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is no memory forever, since in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. Indeed, the wise man must die just like the fool!

The Preacher turns to compare wisdom and folly. He sees plainly that wisdom is better than folly as light is better than darkness; the wise man has his eyes open while the fool walks in the dark. But then a leveling thought crashes in: the same fate comes to both. Wise and fool alike die, and both are equally forgotten in the days to come. So he asks, why then have I been so wise, and calls even this vanity, because the wise man dies just like the fool.

The Preacher is honest about something we prefer not to face. Wisdom really is better than folly, genuinely, the way light is better than darkness; he does not pretend otherwise. But he refuses to let wisdom become a way of escaping the one fact that levels everyone, death. The wise and the foolish end in the same grave, and both are forgotten within a few generations, so that if this life is all there is, even wisdom cannot finally purchase an advantage over the fool. It is a bleak clear-sightedness, and the book of Ecclesiastes sits in scripture precisely to make us feel the weight of it, to strip away the illusion that being clever or accomplished exempts us from the common human end. The Preacher is not the last word in the Bible; he is the honest question that the gospel answers, the ache for something death does not erase. Only a resurrection can finally answer the complaint that the wise man dies like the fool.

Do I quietly trust that being wise or accomplished will spare me the common end, and where do I look for what death cannot erase?

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