Study 2 – The book of Ecclesiastes by Neville Clark

Study 2 – The book of Ecclesiastes by Neville Clark

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Reading: Ecclesiastes 2

This evening, we really come to the beginning of Solomon’s quest proper, don’t we. We are going to commence where we left off last week in Ch 1:12, where Solomon is now going to investigate what we described as the central theme of the book of Ecclesiastes. We are going to investigate that, this week at least, up until the end of Ch 2 by personal experience. He is going to experiment personally and practically with some of the issues of life that he might attain for himself some ultimate form of fulfilment. We described last week the theme of the book of Ecclesiastes as “The Quest for the Greatest Good.”

Solomon is going to systematically now and intelligently set about examining every aspect of life in order that he should find out what a man should do, without God, to find something of lasting value; not that Solomon’s an atheist, of course, but to prove the point of the importance of God in our lives, he begins to explain the problems of life, by ignoring God, at least at the start of the book of Ecclesiastes. What can man make of himself then by his own development that has any lasting fulfilment, or lasting benefit whilst living life as an end in itself.

In our last class as we explained we considered the introductory verses of Ch 1 which outlined the quest itself, which explained some of the problems that Solomon had seen about him and he proposes to deal with, as he starts to answer some of the major issues of life. And this is where we are this evening. In the first major experiment which Solomon undertakes to answer the quest, to solve the problem of man’s satisfaction, of man’s fulfilment, which we are going to do, he is going to test every avenue of life. Look at Ch 2:10, he is very, very committed to the solution of this problem as we read in v 10, “Whatsoever mine eyes desired, I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy.” The NIV says, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired.” “I refused my heart no pleasure.” He is going to examine everything he possibly can that he might see what possible good there is in life, that he might attain some sort of lasting fulfilment.

Whilst he is committed to the experiment, however, you will notice the last words of v 9, whilst he is doing this, he never ever becomes so submerged in his experiment that he loses control, at least not at this stage of the experiment. Also he says at the end of V 9 “My wisdom remained with me.” This is going to be an objective experiment, this is not just a wander off into luxury and extravagance, this is an experiment. He wants answers from the experiment so of course he’s got to analyse objectively to see what he finds as he withholds nothing from his eyes, or from his heart.

This is the quest now, pursued from the point of view of personal experience. The first twelve verses of Ch 1 are the Title of course, and the explanation of what the problem of the quest is all about. Well we come to v 12 and Solomon now starts to explain the various methods of personal experience which he is going to undergo to answer this quest. You can see that we are going to experiment now with wisdom, pleasure, indulgence, creativity, with power with wealth and with labour, and we are going to experiment with all those things this evening through the eyes of Solomon and we are going to realize that wisdom really isn’t the answer. Wisdom has a certain value, but it is not the answer that Solomon begins to think it was.

Similarly with labour there is some satisfaction in labour but there isn’t the satisfaction in labour that Solomon thought there might be when he commenced this quest. But of course there are some very powerful conclusions at the end of the chapter about what is and isn’t right and the benefits that man can expect from life if he lives it through the narrow frame of reference that Solomon begins with in the first couple of chapters of this book.

So that’s our structure for the evening. So he answers everything he tries and analyses it and he says, “My wisdom remains with me.” In Ch 2:9, he actually does what he says he wanted to do and looks at everything objectively without being taken away with perhaps the enjoyment or the pleasure per se of the quest itself.

Well lets begin then in Ch 1:12, because this is the start of the quest now proper. “I the Preacher,” he says, “was king over Israel in Jerusalem. Now, of course, that is just a restatement of Ch 1:1 as he says many of the very same words there, because you see this is the beginning of the quest, this is the formal beginning now. He is approaching the quest as a king with all the time, all the opportunity, all the resources that that implies, which of course, as we explained last week was very incredible for anyone else who thought they might want to pursue this quest themselves. They couldn’t do it better, he is going to do it better than any of us might expect to do.

Now the first resource that Solomon brings to bear upon the problem that he is going to solve is, of course, the resource of wisdom. At the end of V 16 he explains to us that he had great experience of wisdom and of knowledge, this was Solomon’s peculiar gift, wasn’t it, this was what God had left him with, and I suppose it was where he began to solve most problems that came up in his life, he would apply the enormous intellect that he was blessed with to problems and start to unlock answers, so of course, it is not surprising that this is where he begins to try to solve this problem, the problem of mankind.

And so therefore in V 13 it says, “I gave my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.” ‘I gave my heart to this problem,’ he says.

Now when it says he gave his heart, brothers and sisters, it doesn’t mean he approached the subject emotionally, as we might describe giving our heart to some subject. To the Hebrews, you see, the heart was the seat of intellect, whereas the bowels were the seat of emotion, so when he says “I gave my heart to a problem,” he means, ‘I focused upon this problem with all the power of my intellect,’ and he had a brilliant mind as we know. So he is now going to apply logic and thought to this problem, to the problems of life that he has described in the previous verses.

And he says here, in V 13, that “I am going to seek and to search out wisdom” concerning these things. The NIV says, “I am going to study and to explore.” The word “seek,” you see, means to ‘examine deeply,’ and the word “search out,” means to ‘examine widely,’ so he is going to examine a vast breadth of subjects at considerable depth. He can look across the whole gambit of pleasure that life affords man in what is going to be an exhaustive occupation over many years, as he tries to unlock the pleasures of life, fulfilment in life. And the object of the study was as he says half way through this verse, to “answer the sore travail” as he describes it. The RSV says, “This unhappy business that God has given to the sons of man to be busy with.” The fact that man spends all his life looking for fulfilment in a world in which nothing is ever fulfilled. Where the sun rises and sets, but never ever concludes its circuit. Where the wind blows this way and that way and never ever stops, where the sea is never full, where the eye and the ear is never satisfied and man struggles and struggles for fulfilment and then dies, unable to pass this experience on to the next generation because that generation has to therefore go and learn all the same lessons itself until it dies, and the third generation begins all over again. “This unhappy business,” RSV, “this sore travail” that God has created, and you notice there is no doubt in Solomon’s mind why things are like what they are, but to prove the purpose of God, and the validity of becoming a Bible student, he has to begin to answer this quest without reference to God, as we will see.

This is a terrible problem, there must be a solution to this treadmill, and so in V 14 he says, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit. The NIV says, “Every thing is meaningless, a chasing after the wind,” The RSV “Vanity and a feeding upon wind.” The word “spirit” here is the word ‘ruach,’ it is the same word as the word ‘wind’ as it occurs twice in V 6. The same phrase occurs in Hos Ch 12:1 “Ephraim” of the northern tribes, “Ephraim feedeth upon wind and followeth afer wind,” speaking of course of an attempt to attain the unattainable. ‘That’s what life’s like,’ says Solomon in V 14, ‘you labour, you expend time, spend money, you expend energy, you dream of satisfaction, once I have achieved this or that, I won’t have to do it any more. Just one more promotion, one more overseas trip, just one more coat of paint,’ only to find that you really haven’t solved anything at all, and the satisfaction that you thought you were going to achieve never comes, it was never as good as what you thought it was going to be, it wasn’t the solution it promised to be, you see, and as Solomon examined the problem, he found inconsistencies, V 15. Life is not fair, some things don’t happen the way they should, “that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting” or lacking, “cannot be numbered.” You know what the problem is but you can’t quantify it, you are missing some dimensions, you can see a problem but you can’t fix it, it is beyond your grasp to be able to solve.

Solomon knows by the way where the problem comes from because he describes in Ch 7:13, he describes it like this, “Consider the work of God,” he says, “for who can make straight that which he has made crooked,” in Ch 7:13, so there is no mistake in Solomon’s mind why things are like what they are, this is God’s sore travail, he has created things like this, you see? which can’t be fulfilled and a desire in the heart of man to fulfil them and it is a terrible business, as Solomon describes it here. There just no solutions to some problems in life and there is no solution, naturally speaking to the fulfilment that man looks for in life. But that is what Solomon is trying to answer, you see.

The solution, by the way, to the problem of V 15, comes in the kingdom age, because Isaiah 40:4 says, “Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill made low, the crooked, straight, the rough places plain, when the glory of Yahweh shall be revealed.” There’s the solution to the crookedness in nature, in the food chain, in the curse upon the earth, in the nature of man, there’s the solution to the crookedness of life, but it won’t happen of course until Isa Ch 40, that’s the Divine answer.

Even though Solomon knows God is behind it, he is committed to trying to solve the problem without God, at least in the first instance, and so he says in v 16, “I communed with mine own heart saying Lo,” he says, “I am come to great estate, I’ve got more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem, yea my heart had great experience of wisdom and of knowledge.” You see the agony that must be in Solomon’s mind. This is the most brilliant mind that has lived until that time. There must be a solution to this. ‘How can I answer this problem? Why can I not answer this problem?’ He says, and he rolls through his own credentials and lists three credentials here in this verse, which he has and no one else has, “I have become great,” he says, ‘I am famous, particularly for answering difficult questions, everyone in the world comes to me to answer their difficult questions and I answer them. I can’t answer this question. I am the wisest man in history, in the history of Jerusalem, I have a divine blessing in this regard, if anybody can answer this question, I can, but I can’t.’ You can see the wrestling that he has got on this issue, just applying wisdom to this problem. ‘My experience of wisdom and the knowledge of life is vast, but I am missing something.’ Prov 9:9 “Give instruction to a wise man and he will be yet wiser, teach a just man and he will increase in learning,” and Solomon’s learning was like this, brothers and sisters, that he couldn’t answer the problem that he was trying to answer by this quest, just at least by thinking about it.

And so he says, ‘Well, perhaps the answer is not to be found in intellect? Perhaps I am taking the problem too seriously? Perhaps, really, it is quite obvious,’ V 17, so he says, “I gave my heart to know wisdom and madness and folly, but I perceived that this also was vexation of spirit.” ‘Madness’ and ‘folly,’ he says. ‘I tested both extremes, I applied a conscientious diligence to the problem and I applied recklessness. I pretended there was no problem. It got me nowhere. From the skilful application of knowledge and the mature decision that that provides, to the senseless disregard of intelligence as if there were no problem in the wild and irrational conclusions that it provides.’ It seems by the way that the madness and the folly he talks about here, it doesn’t tell you in this verse what exactly he did to explore madness and folly, but I think very possibly that the madness he refers to is in chapter 2:2 and the folly he refers to is in chapter 2:3. These are the kinds of things he tried to examine life through the eyes of madness and folly. Madness occurs in verse two and folly occurs in verse 3, it is the same word, mad and foolish things he tried as part of his quest, both extremes, distractions of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Vanity, hopelessness, he hadn’t answered anything, merely wasted time and distracted himself. “And in much wisdom,” he says “is much grief,” v 18, “and he that increases the knowledge increases sorrow,” and whilst it is fruitless to pretend that problems don’t exist, it is at least stress free. And there are some days I suppose when you just have to go out and sniff the roses, because it is all too hard, and Solomon explains that. He says, ‘Well it is vanity to pretend that there is no problem and madness and folly really aren’t the solution but when you start to consider the magnitude of this problem, it only makes you upset. What should you do when you really can’t solve this problem, you really can’t gain fulfilment in anything, at least, not by thinking about it.’

Well, the quest couldn’t be solved merely by thought, the problem was too large, the problem was too complex, human beings are what they are, and all the calculations Solomon made really yielded nothing, no obvious answers to the fulfilment of mankind, but then, of course, he has only just begun, he has only just begun to think about how to solve the problem. Nothing has sprung up obviously, he’s got a long way to go, hasn’t he, his intention, remember, is to seek and to search out, deeply and widely, he’s got to look at every aspect of life to see whether pleasure can be derived in a more fulfilling capacity than what might appear on the surface. And so in Ch 2:1 he says, “I said in my heart Go too, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure but behold,” he says, “this also is vanity.” The RSV says it like this, “Come now, I will make a test of pleasure, enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, Solomon,” this is the doctrine of hedonism, really, whatever is pleasant and free from pain, is intrinsically good. Do whatever you do, as long as it makes you happy, is intrinsically good. It is not what Solomon says, he says it is meaninglessness, it is vanity, it is poisonous, it is not true, it doesn’t answer anyway and it is not fulfilling.

Well, what about? V 2. “I said of laughter, it is mad,” he says, “and of mirth” or pleasure as the word means, “what doeth it?” The laughter he speaks about here is a superficial frivolity, madness, foolishness, it is just stupid. ‘Mad’ by the way here, the word ‘Mad’ is from a root which means ‘to boast.’ At the very best it means ‘to show off,’ at the very worst, it means ‘delirium,’ it is the same word that is used of David in 1 Sam 21:13 when he feigned himself mad. So madness is anything between simply showing off and being absolutely delirious, and that is what madness was and he says of laughter, this is the prating laughter of fools. Not that Solomon has a problem with laughter, by the way, because in Ch 3:4, he says, “there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh.” But in Ch 7:6 he goes on in Ecclesiastes and he says, “as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool.” He sees laughter as the laughter of the fool and the kind of reckless abandon as so often shown in the world is absolute vanity, he says, there is no escaping that. It irritates, it annoys, and he says, ‘What about mirth,’ pleasure? Now this is different, this is legitimate pleasure, harmless amusement, good, this is acceptable he says, “but what doeth it?” What is the point of it? It might not irritate you, but where does it get you, just to participate in pleasure. Prov 14:13, “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful and the end of that mirth is heaviness.” Laughter is a very poor cover for tragedy. Solomon is upset at the end of Ch 1:18, and laughter, even wholesome laughter, legitimate pleasure is a very poor cover for tragedy.

How often, brothers and sisters, how often would it be that the person who is the ‘life of the party,’ is the most unhappy person of all? It is a veil, but it is really a very poor cover, isn’t it? So Solomon dismisses it. It is either madness or profitless, well what about wine v 3. And he is forced to consider wine, of course, because, as he says, this is something the sons of men do under heaven “all the days of their lives.” There is a generation, or a portion of every generation, I suppose, who devote themselves to solving problems with wine. ‘Why do they do it?’ He says. Perhaps there is something I don’t know about wine, and he pursues this experiment for some time it appears, till I might see. He says, “I sought in my heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting my heart with wisdom, and to lay hold on folly till I might see what was that good for the sons of men which they should do all the days of their lives.” Till I might see. That is going to take time. I am going to have to repeat this over and over and wait for something to emerge. When we speak about giving ourselves to wine as Solomon says here, we are not referring to just the drinking of wine, but everything wine means, the culture of wine. Wining and dining and everything associated with wine, so it wasn’t just outright drunkenness that Solomon was speaking of here it is the whole culture of wine, because there is a culture and it spends all its time eating and drinking and being merry. In our age, in fact in many parts of the brotherhood it is possible to do that all the days of your life, it is expensive I suppose, but it is definitely possible to do. As our society becomes more affluent it is more common, and in the more affluent echelons of Jewish society, those in which Solomon must have mixed, there would certainly have been an element devoted to living that lifestyle. Many times in the Proverbs Solomon speaks about wine, possibly based upon the results of this experiment. Prov 20:1 he says “wine is a mocker,” Prov 21:17, he says, “he that loves wine shall never be rich.” Prov 23:29 he says, “who has woe but they that tarry long at the wine.” But perhaps the best reference is just one page back in Ch 31:4. Here is a proverbial reference on wine, Prov 31:4, “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes, strong drink, lest they drink and forget the law and pervert the judgment of the afflicted.” It is not for kings, you see, and this was Solomon’s policy, he kept his heart, didn’t he? “I acquainted my heart with wisdom.” I did not get drunk, I went, I observed, I participated but I watched, I was doing an experiment and I was doing it professionally, it is not for kings to drink wine, lest they lose control of themselves, and Solomon never lost it, it was his avowed intention wasn’t it, he never ever to never ever lost control of himself. Needless to say, of course, while also in the words of Ch 1:17, “the folly of wine was vexatious,” it was a chasing after wind, it really obviously, had no solution to it.

And now Solomon enters the next phase of his experiment. I suppose he began with simple things first. He thought about the problem in his own mind to try and rationalise a solution but he couldn’t do it. Then he chose the flighty things, the things that cost very little for a King that he could do very simply, the cultures that already existed, he participated in those and found them also to be very fruitless and pointless.

Well now he is going to start spending money. V 4 Ch 3. “I made me great works, I builded me houses, I planted me vineyards.” Literally, where it says here that he builded houses it literally means ‘I built houses for myself.’ So what? So what, is this, we have a clue here, I believe as to when the quest began, as to when Solomon in his reign actually began to do these things. You see, there is no mention in this verse of Solomon building the Temple. The Temple was a house, but it was a house of God and it wasn’t a house for himself. The houses for himself that he refers to here are his own house, of course, the palace, the house for Pharaoh’s daughter, the house of the Cedars of Lebanon, the house of the Forest of Lebanon. These were the houses that Solomon built. He began to build the Temple the king’s record tells us, 1Kgs 6:1, he began to build the Temple in the fourth year of his reign and it took seven years to build. In the eleventh year he began to build all the other houses that he had in the city of Jerusalem, so this quest, then, I would suggest probably began sometime about the eleventh year of his reign. Solomon ruled for forty years. He began his reign at about the age of 20, so he is 31 odd years old when he begins the great building, planting quest as we see it through here. This is taken from the Companion Bible, this is how Jerusalem looked in the days of Solomon. As you make your way up here through the City of David, from Zion, from the old city, you enter the porch for the throne, or the hall of the throne as the King’s record describes. You read all of this in 1 Kgs 7 and onwards. The whole floor covered in cedar, the throne made of ivory, and overlaid with gold. Six steps up to the throne, 12 lions, one each side, two on each step, golden lions and it tells us in the King’s record, “there was not the like made in any kingdom” an exquisitely ornate throne room that Solomon had there. There was a hall of pillars which appears to have been a waiting room or an anteroom just before here in the house of the Forest of Lebanon, so called of course because of the 45 pillars in three rows of 15 like colonnades that lined the inside of that house holding up the roof. 50 m x 25 m it was, cedar beams in the roof, all dragged down overland and floated down on the sea from Hiram king of Tyre. A strip of windows, right around the top sides of that building so that the sun would shine in from all directions and around the walls, 300 gold shields so that when you entered the Porsche here and entered the house of the Forest of Lebanon you would be met with a blaze of glory as the sun shone in each of the side windows and bounced off the shields and back and forth across this room, a magnificent spectacle that Solomon had created, the House of the Forest of Lebanon. To one side, the house of Pharaoh’s daughter, the other side a house for Solomon himself, and of course, amidst all that, beautiful gardens, ornate gardens, picturesque gardens, and garden paths, that Solomon had for his own pleasure, quite apart from what he made for public pleasure. V 5 goes on and tells us that he made gardens and orchards and planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits. And you read the Song of Solomon brothers and sisters and you read about the vineyards that Solomon had, in Ch 6:11 of Song, he talks about the garden of nuts and the valley where the vines flourished and the pomegranates grew. In Ch 8:11 of Song it says Solomon had a vineyard in Baalhamon and he let it out to keepers, every one for the fruit thereof, brought a thousand pieces of silver. By it wasn’t just the case of owning gardens, you see, because Solomon studied these gardens. When he wasn’t building things, he was thinking about the lessons of life that we learn from the gardens and of course in 1 Kgs 4:33 it tells us that he spake of trees from the Cedar tree in Lebanon to the hyssop that springs out of the wall, he wrote proverbs about every different aspect of the garden. Orchards he made, orchards, it is the Hebrew pardes, parks, decorative gardens, he is creating his own Paradise you see, everywhere you look he is decorating all of the landscape about him by building or by planting, in magnificent style, as of course, only a king can do. V 6 he says, “I made pools of water to water therewith the wood that brings the forth trees.” Now that’s important because the wood here doesn’t bring forth fruit, it brings forth trees, it is not part of the garden, it is a forest, he has grown a forest from which he can harvest lumber because 1 Kgs 9:26 tells us that in addition to all of the building he has done around the capital, he’s gone and built a Navy of ships down at Ezion Geber. Harvested the wood from the forest to build the ships, it appears. And then, v 7, servants, maidens, servants born in my house, I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all them that were in Jerusalem before me. Two classes of servants mentioned, servants who were purchased as slaves and servants who were born in his house. Men and women who would be particularly loyal to the king, being born in his house, people over whom he has control of life and death, he owned them from their conception, and a multitude of cattle, as he describes here. Cattle, of course, doing duty for livestock of whatever variety, and these were crucial, these livestock were crucial, because 1 Kgs 4:22 tells us that for one day, for one day, Solomon’s provision was 6500 l of fine flour, 13,000 l of meal, 30 cows, 100 sheep, plus deer and fowl. That was to support the state every day. He had to have a multitude of cattle of all kinds to supply the table.

And v 8 says, I also gathered silver and gold, the peculiar treasure of kings of the provinces, I got men singers, and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men as musical instruments and that of all sorts. The peculiar treasure, he says, the peculiar treasure of kings. You know what that is, these curious gifts of art that ambassadors give to each other, craftwork from distant countries, every ambassador bringing some novel thing from his culture, and Solomon was collecting hundreds of these things, hanging them I suppose in museums all around Jerusalem, what use are they, but they are his, they are his possessions, he is collecting one thing after another as people come to see him to ask him of his wisdom.

V9 He goes on, “I was great, I increased more than all they who were before me in Jerusalem. My wisdom,” he says, “remained with me and whatsoever mine eye desired, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labour and this was my portion of all my labour.”

Now we are going to stop there. Do you know why we are going to stop there? Because that is where God stopped. Solomon has got to such an extent that he can hardly count the money rolling into the coffers of the State. He’s got building activity going on all over the country in addition to what we’ve got here, he is commissioning an army, stables at Megiddo, he’s fortifying the fortress cities all around the perimeter of his Empire. And God says, ‘Solomon, I need to talk to you. You’ve got to stop, come with me.’ Now just remember that little phrase in V 10 of Ch 2, “Whatsoever mine eyes desired, I kept not from them,” now you come with me to 1 Kgs 9. Look at this. 1 Kgs 9:1, “Whatsoever my eyes desired,” he said, “I kept not from them” and God says ‘Solomon, it is time to stop, I need to talk to you, Solomon.’ And look what it says, 1 Kgs 9:1, “It came to pass, when Solomon had finished the building of the house of Yahweh,” that’s in year 11 remember, it took 7 years to build, starting at year 4, “and the kings house,” that’s up to year 24, because it took another 13 years to build his house and all the associated palaces, “and all Solomon’s desire which he pleased to do,” that Yahweh appears to him the second time. He has got everything happening at an enormous rate of knots, all his desire, nothing has been withholden from him. God appears to him the second time, as he appeared to him at Gibea. The first time, of course, was 1 Kgs 3, when Solomon asked for wisdom. God appeared to him and he asked for wisdom and was commended greatly for that and this time God appears to him again, the second time. And Yahweh says to him, V 3, “Solomon, I have heard thy prayer,” that is the prayer of 1 Kgs 8, when Solomon dedicated the Temple, many years earlier it appears, “I have heard thy prayer and thy supplication that thou hast made to me, I’ve hallowed this house,” the Temple, “which thou hast built to put my name there forever. Mine eyes and my heart shall be there perpetually” and he says, Solomon, “If thou wilt walk before me as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness to do according to all that I have commanded thee and will keep my statutes and my judgments, then will I establish the throne of thy kingdom on Israel forever as I promised your father David. But,” he says in V 6 “if ye shall turn from following me or ye or your children, and will not keep my commandments and my statutes which I have set before you, and if you go and worship other gods, Solomon, then I will cut off Israel from out the land which I have given them, and this house will become a by-word.” ‘Solomon, we’ve got to put a stick in the sand and you just have to know that I have heard your prayer, in 1 Kgs 8. I have accepted the house that you have built me Solomon I inhabit it, I am going to put my Name here forever, but I can see the desire of your eyes and you are pursuing everything. Oh, it might be a laudable quest, Solomon, but you just have to understand that if you continue in following my commands as your father did, nothing will be withholden from you, but if you don’t, Solomon, if you, for example, serve false Gods, Solomon, then I will destroy you.’ Now why would God say that? It is very serious you know, you come across to Ch 11:9, this was a serious issue for Solomon, but he didn’t realise, I don’t believe at this time how serious God was. Look, after Solomon’s heart was turned away in 1 Kgs 11:9, it says, that Yahweh was angry with Solomon “because his heart was turned away from Yahweh the God of Israel which had appeared unto him.” ‘Solomon, you are on notice, you’re on notice,’ you see Solomon is getting himself into very deep water here. Come back to Ecclesiastes, Ecc 2:9, things are beginning to run away, brothers and sisters, the wisest man in the world is beginning to lose control of where this might be going. Ecc 2:9, “I was great and increased more than all those before me in Jerusalem, but my wisdom remained with me.” I am in control of my experiment, you see, I’m wealthy, I’m extremely wealthy, I am in control. What does the Bible say? The Bible doesn’t say he wasn’t in control, “the King made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycamore trees that are in the vale, for abundance.” All King Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold and all of the vessels of the house of the Forest of Lebanon were of pure gold, none were of silver, none was made of silver, it was not even accounted for in the days of Solomon, you just didn’t use silver, it was like using aluminium. It didn’t really look like gold looked.

So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom, and the weight of gold that came Solomon in one years was 666 talents of gold. The Bible leaves us with that, it says nothing more than that, but this was the measure of the wealth he was accumulating year upon year, upon year. But he is in control. He was in control. That was one problem.

Do you want to see the other problem come back to Ch 2:8, and the problem is with the last part of this verse where it says, “Musical instruments, and that of all sorts.” You want to read some other translations? Here is the New American Standard Bible, “I provided for myself male and female singers and the pleasures of men.” Many concubines. Young’s Literal, “I prepared for me men singers and women singers and the luxuries of the sons of men.” A wife, and wives, he’d built a harem. He built a harem. “Whatsoever mine eyes desired,” v 10 say, “I kept not from them,” including “the luxuries of the sons of men.” And it was those women, of course, that stole Solomon’s heart not from his wife, but from his God, and led him into the worship of false gods, and that is when God appeared to Solomon and said,’Solomon, you must understand, money is one thing, but the women are another. They are not in the truth, Solomon, you are stacking them together, Solomon, hundreds of them,’ you know how many he had, he had 1,000 of them. Nothing his eyes desired was withholden from him, you see, and as wise and knowledgeable as he was, brothers and sisters, he still had human nature, as Nehemiah said many hundreds of years later, in Ch 13:26, “Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him, nevertheless, even him,” says Nehemiah, “did outlandish women cause to sin.” And God appeared to him, and put him on notice, way back in 1 Kgs 9.

But for the moment, Solomon does retain his composure. At this point in Ch 2, nothing has gone wrong, he’s enjoyed these activities while does them, he says, but when they are finished as v 10 says, he was really left with no lasting benefit. They were enjoyable, building and planting, it was an enjoyable thing to do, but had no lasting benefit. V 11, “Then I looked,” I said, “I looked upon all the works that my hands had wrought and the labour that I had laboured to do, and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit,” there was “no profit under the sun.” Whatever pleasure I had when I did them, he says, it doesn’t exist. As one commentator put it rather crudely, this statement is “the morning after the night before.” Solomon is not trying to justify himself at all, he is brutally honest. There is great enjoyment in being busy, but with the achievement, once the object is achieved then the pleasure begins to fade, you see, novelty wears off. And in v 11, we are right back to where we started from in Ch 1:3, when Solomon asks the formative question of the quest, “What profit has a man of all his labour which he takes under the sun? And Solomon has laboured and laboured and built the capital like no king before him. ‘Nobody can copy me he says,’ I’ve used more money than you are ever going to see and I’ve got nothing left. There is no lasting satisfaction, we have gone full circle, we have not achieved anything since we began in Ch 1, and yet we have expended energy like you wouldn’t believe. No profit under the sun. But do you want to know the tragedy of these verses, Brothers and Sisters? You know the real tragedy of these verses is this, 1 Sam 8. They came to Samuel and they wanted a king, and Samuel said, ‘Listen,’ you remember the discussion that Samuel had with the people then with his God in prayer, and he was upset because the people had rejected Samuel’s sons and he took it personally and then he made it a matter of prayer with is God and God says, ‘Listen, Samuel, don’t worry about it, they haven’t rejected you, Samuel, they’ve rejected me, that I should reign over them. Go and tell them this.’ So Samuel says in the ears of the people. He says, ‘You want a king? This will be the manner of the king which shall reign over you, he’ll take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots and to be horsemen, some shall run before his chariots, and he will appoint them captains over thousands and captains over 50s and you’ll and they will make him instruments of war and instruments for his chariots and he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, cooks and bakers, and he will take your fields and your vineyards and olive yards, even the best of them and give them to his servants. He will take your man servants and your maid servants and your goodliest young men, your children and your asses and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep and you shall be his servants and ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye have chosen.

What’s the point? This is the question, how many hundreds of thousands of people worked their fingers to the bone for that story we just read. How many hundreds of thousands of people died to give the story that we have just read. How many families went without while Solomon poured gold down the drain, brothers and sisters, in this generation so that he could pursue his quest and write a dozen verses for us about the fact that labour has no ultimate profit? 40 years, 40 years he ruled, crippling taxation, economic hardship, great personal sacrifice for that country so that one man could fulfil his dream. And Samuel said to them, you can have a king, but you will cry out because of that king and they did, didn’t they? As soon as Solomon died they took Rehoboam to Shechem, the place of the ‘burden bearer’of all things, and they went to him and begged him to relieve the burden that his father had put upon them. A generation died, you see, knowing nothing but labour to fulfil those verses so that those verses could be written for all time. There’s the tragedy of those verses.

Well, having solved the practical experiences, Solomon now turns back to wisdom and folly and says, ‘Look, I‘ve achieved nothing. We really haven’t moved anywhere beyond Ch 1:3. Well, perhaps I have learned a lesson, perhaps all this money, perhaps all this time has been for some profit,’ Ecc 1:17 “I turned myself to behold wisdom, madness and folly, for what can a man do that cometh after the king? Even that which has been already done and then I saw that wisdom excelled folly as far as light excels darkness. The wise man’s eyes are in his head but the fool walks in darkness, but I myself perceived also that one event happens to them all.” I am the king, I have more ability, I have more opportunity, I have gained more experience than anyone that will follow me. In a worldly sense, I have collected enormous wisdom. So what? ‘Well,’ he says, ‘worldly wisdom does have some value. It is certainly better than folly, because if you are wise you can extract some good that there might be along the way. You may be able to improve your lot, so that in practical life, wisdom is indispensable. But in the long run’ Solomon says, ‘what’s the profit?’ Even wisdom, what is the profit even of being wise? Whether you are wise or whether you are foolish you die. Oh yes, if you are wise, you might prolong your life, what, 10 years? 10 years? 10 years in the ultimate scheme of things, worldly wisdom is of value, but only of limited value. It certainly can’t bring satisfaction. It certainly really hasn’t helped to solve the quest, has it, even wisdom of all things certainly hasn’t really helped to solve the quest, In fact,’ he says in Ecc 2:15, “I said in my heart, as it happens to the fool so it happens even to me. Why was I then more wise? I said in my heart, This also is vanity.” As we found in Ch 1:18, for a man without God, wisdom will probably bring you grief anyway. You just find out that the problem is even bigger than you first thought and the more you investigate it the bigger it gets. So in the world it’s just a judgment call on how wise you want to become on anything because of the grief it will ultimately bring you. And what’s more, Ecc 2:16 “there is no remembrance of the wise more than the fool forever, seeing that which now is in the days to come shall be forgotten. How dies the wise man? As the fool.” Of course this is talking about the natural man without the Truth. The world very quickly forgets its heroes doesn’t it? Very quickly forgets its heroes. But not so, in the Truth, Psa 112:6 says, “The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.” Psa 116:15, “Precious in the sight of Yahweh is the death of his saints.” So the righteous are never forgotten, but there is one thing that God does forget and that is in Prov 10:7 he says, “The memory of the just is blessed but the name of the wicked shall rot.” They won’t be remembered. Well in Ecc 2:17 he goes on and says, “because of this, because of all this,” and he says, “I hated my life because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me, it is all vanity and vexation of spirit.” ‘I’ve conducted one experiment after another, I’ve reasoned, I’ve laughed, I’ve enjoyed, I’ve tasted. I’ve made, I’ve accumulated, I’ve collected things, I’ve done it more than anyone’s ever done it before me or is likely to do it after me, and to that I added experience, I added my knowledge, my insight, my foresight, my hindsight, I saw this problem from every dimension and where has it got me? I haven’t achieved lasting satisfaction in anything I put my hand to and I have put my hand to almost everything. Why am I alive? because I will die like the wise man and like the fool and worse than that, worse than that, V 8 “I hated all my labour,” he said, “which I have taken under the sun because, what’s more, I shall leave it unto the man that will follow after me and who knows,” ad I think he did, by the way, “who knows whether he shall be a wise man or a fool. Yet he shall have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.” You see, even though he could not find lasting satisfaction in everything he had done, there was the possibility that his labours could benefit somebody else, and if that man that succeeded him was wise, then perhaps that effort would be put to good use. Perhaps there would be some benefit in him having worked so hard. But really, everything depends, everything depends upon the man’s that succeeds him. Psa 39:6, “Surely every man walketh in a vain show, surely they are disquieted in vain, he heapeth up treasures and knoweth not who shall gather them.” He can’t take it with him can he? So he says in Ecc 2:20 “So I went about and caused my heart to despair of all the labour which I had done under the sun.” Here is a paraphrase of one commentary. “I gave up as desperate all hope of solid fruit from my labour.” Ecc 2:21, “There is a man whose labour is in wisdom and in knowledge and in equity, yet to a man who has not laboured therein shall he leave it. This also is vanity and a great evil.” This is what the NIV says on Ch 2:21. “For a man may do his work with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This is meaningless and a great misfortune.” And isn’t it true.

And so Ch i2:22 “For what has a man of all his labour and of the vexation of his heart wherein he hath laboured under the sun. For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief, yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night, this is also vanity.” And that’s it, you see, he’s worried, he is an old man as he writes the book of Ecclesiastes, and he’s worried, he can’t sleep at night because he has worked so hard and he has worked diligently, with wisdom and with knowledge and with skill, and he knows, brothers and sisters, that he is going to bequeath his empire to a fool, because that’s exactly what Rehoboam was and his father must have known that. Solomon dies at 80 years old and the record tells us in Kings that when Rehoboam began to reign he was 41 years old. So by the time Solomon is writing these words the character of Rehoboam was extremely well known. Solomon knew exactly the kind of son that Rehoboam was, and what’s more, he makes a comment on this subject in Ch 4 which is so pertinent, you could hardly believe that Solomon did not see his future unwinding. Ecc 4;13, look what he says. He can’t sleep at night, why? Because, look, he says, Ecc 4:13, “Better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king who will no more be admonished.” And he was admonished wasn’t he, because God appears to him twice, and admonished him particularly the second time, this old and foolish king. “For out of prison he cometh,” that is the poor man in Ecc 4:13 “Out of prison he cometh to reign, whereas also he that is born in his kingdom shall become poor” or as it ought to be, “out of prison he comes to reign even though he was born poor in his kingdom. I considered all the living,” he said, “which walk under the sun with the second child that shall stand up in his stead.” Ah, so there is another child now, a child that shall stand up after the king. There is no end of all the people even of all that have been before them, there is no end of the people that that child, the king’s son, shall reign over. They also that come after him however, shall not rejoice in him, however.” Now I suppose that when Solomon wrote these words, brothers and sisters, he was talking about Saul who was followed by a poor man called David, who had a son called Absalom or Adonijah, who ruled over many people but who no one rejoiced in for a time. But doesn’t it have a remarkable outworking in his own life, because there was a child called Jeroboam who was a poor child, the son of a widow woman, you see, but very wise. Solomon in fact observed his wisdom, his maturity and made him ruler over all the slaves of the house of Joseph as they were building the retaining wall of Milo. But Solomon didn’t like him. A prophet appeared to Jeroboam as you know and told him that he was going to be the next King. Solomon found out, tried to kill him and he flees to Egypt but returns from Egypt and comes to reign as the words of the prophet had said, though he was born poor in his kingdom. And there was a king, an old foolish king who did not heed the admonition he was given, who was followed by his son, who ruled over all the living, who did not rejoice in him, and the words played out in the exact fulfilment, and it is difficult, I say, to believe, that these were the sorts of thoughts that occupied Solomon on his bed at night as sleep fled from him as he thought about what was going to happen to all the wealth, to all the dynasty, the empire which he had so patiently and wisely collected under heaven. It is difficult to believe he couldn’t see all that happening isn’t it, but he refused the admonition, he refused the admonition that God gave to him. Even when Yahweh appeared to him the second time he didn’t see the seriousness of those words, did he, and look at the result, look at the result of refusing that admonition. He made his own son the product of the quest, because this verse here, 1 Kgs 14:21 introduces Rehoboam to us. “The Son of Solomon” it says, “He reigned in Judah, he was 41 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem and the city which Yahweh chose out of all the tribes of Israel, and his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess. And when Rehoboam died across the other side of the same page of your Bibles it says that slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David and his mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonitess. And look what Solomon did for that woman in 1 Kgs 11:7 “He built Moloch the abomination for the children of Ammon. And the very year that he should have been spending with his son, teaching him the principles of the Truth, teaching him how to read the book of Proverbs that he was writing, the Song of Solomon that he was writing, taking him round the garden observing the lessons for life, he was out there with the boy’s mother worshipping false gods in the garden park. In every sense, you see, Rehoboam became a direct product of the quest and so if it was a tragedy, brothers and sisters, a generation worked their fingers to the bone to pay for it, indirectly, the kingdom was divided as a result of it, because that boy was a casualty of his father’s quest, every bit a casualty of his father’s quest, the luxuries of the sons of men, a wife, and wives and the admonition came as he began to build up that harem. Just what did it cost to conduct the quest.

Well, look at the conclusion, Ecc 2:24. After having surveyed all of his, brothers and sisters, Solomon says, ‘I can tell you now what I have found, “there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw that it was from the hand of God.” ‘Enjoy the simple things of life’ he says. Eating and drinking with your family, an honest day’s work. Enjoy your labours and your accomplishments, and so you should, he says, because it is a Divine blessing, it is a God-given pleasure that you should do that. And this is a major them now that is going to develop in the book of Ecclesiastes, the blessing of God for work, the blessing of God for honest labour, that is, that is a reward in this life under the sun for the natural man, that he enjoys what he puts his hand to when he does it. Ch 2:25 “For who can eat, or who else can hasten thereunto more than I.” ‘Listen, if I tell you this, I know what I am talking about,’ he says, ‘for God giveth to a man that is good in his sight, wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather, to heap up that the sinner may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit. With the blessing now of the Divine perspective, everything becomes clear to Solomon, doesn’t it. Our object, brothers and sisters, is not to gather and to heap up now, that is what the sinners do. It will be done for us by other people out there and be presented to us in the last days when we stand there together as heirs of the world. What does he conclude, this is what he concludes, “Written in the blood of a generation of Israelites there is no lasting value to be gained by any labour in this life irrespective of the degree to which that labour is taken. And the lesson is written so that we don’t experiment with that so we don’t try and prove that point for ourselves. Solomon thought he could control it, if he had realised the cost, if he had realised the cost of this quest, brothers and sisters, I don’t think he ever would have begun it. Secondly, man does however gain the temporary satisfaction from his accomplishments, this is a gift from God and is provided for man’s enjoyment, that is a legitimate pleasure to be satisfied with your accomplishments, with your achievements but see the satisfaction for what it is it is a genuine blessing, but it is a limited blessing, it is not an end in itself. The world about us chases this feeling time after time after time always on to something new to try and fulfil something. And they do so many things at once that I suppose they do simulate a kind of fulfilment in their life, they are too busy, too busy to get worried about anything else, but it is only a limited blessing, and designed as such. The best course is to be content with the simple elements of daily life to enjoy the blessings of labour, but to look beyond this present life for lasting satisfaction. In this life everything is vanity and vexation of spirit, to the natural man, but to the saints the apostle says in 1 Cor 15, “My beloved Brethren be ye steadfast unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Transcription by Fay Berry 2016 .