Year 2, Day 340: Ecclesiastes 10

Dead Flies

There is a great truth found in the opening analogy of Ecclesiastes 10.  Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment have a stench.  Or, to put it another way, one mistake is far more readily remembered than a whole score of successes.  Think about it.  How many times do we do something and get almost everything perfect but we make one mistake?  What is it we spend our time obsessing about?  The one mistake, of course.  Never mind the vast success of everything else.  We obsess over the one mistake.

Of course, you can apply this saying organizationally, too.  What is the Human Resource truism that has become popular over the last 15 years or so?  An organization is only as strong as its weakest member.  I struggle in applying this truism to the church, however.  We have something that most organizations don’t have: Jesus Christ.  Paul tells us that when we are weak, He is strong.  So while there is truth to this opening verse of Ecclesiastes in an organizational dynamic, I also believe that there is the movement of Jesus Christ that none of us can account for within the organization.  After all, organizationally speaking we are all weak at different times.  But Jesus Christ can compensate and make our weak moments turn into the strong moments for the fellowship of believers.

Humble Before God

Verses 5-7 required some research for me, and I’d like to share that research.  At first, it seems as though Solomon is making an elitist comment that the lower-born people should have to walk while the high-born people deserve to ride on horses.  But after doing some research I don’t really think that this was Solomon’s point.  I think there are two possible ways to look this verse and come away with what Solomon is really saying.

The first – and most literal – interpretation would be in the setting of military conquest.  When a nation is captured, the princes of a foreign land are brought back to the victorious king.  They are usually brought back as slaves, subjected before the king.  Their once glorious worldly state comes crashing down around them as one human being asserts dominance over them.  If this is the proper reading of this passage, then Solomon seems to be making the comment that we can all lose our station in life very quickly and sometimes at the whim of other people who are of a lower station than us.

The second possible interpretation is on a spiritual level.  In Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, Solomon often talks about how wisdom is better than station or worldly opinion.  We know that it is not always the popular or the wealthy or even the leaders who have wisdom.  So what Solomon could very well be saying is that the world leaders may be up on horses and living a seemingly easy life, but they are really slaves to the life and culture around them.  On the other hand, the people who have the wisdom and humbleness to be good leaders in the world are often the regular people that the world looks down upon as people of little interest.  Personally, I think this is Solomon’s point in this section of verses.

Laziness

I have a little bit of space, so I would like to address two move verses that made me think today.  Verse 18 really touched me this morning as I wrote this.  Through sloth the roof sinks; through slack abandonment the house leaks.  I really got to thinking how true an analogy this is.  The things that we are masters at are the things we practice over and over in our life.  But as soon as we ease up and turn our attention elsewhere, even the things we were masters at begin to erode with respect to our proficiency.  For example, take music.  How many of us played an instrument or a sport really well when we were younger. We played it well because we were often made to practice.  As we got older, many of us felt a shift in priorities.  We didn’t play the instrument or the sport as often as we used to.  Perhaps we set it down altogether.  We no doubt suffered a decrease in our ability to play.

The same thing is true with everything in our life.  When we spend less time in our marriages, our marriages grow weak.  When we stop having spiritual conversations with our children and youth, the world has more opportunity to creep in and sink their claws into them.  When we spend less time in God’s Word, our ability to speak wisdom out of God’s Word diminishes.  When we spend less time in prayer, our connectedness to God feels strained.  To return to the analogy, our spiritual house begins to leak and the roof begins to sag.

Is Money The Answer?

The last verse that I want to speak towards is Ecclesiastes 10:19.  At first glance, this verse seems to absolutely contradict a great swath of the rest of scripture.  Is money really the answer to everything as this verse claims?

The short answer is no.  Money is not the answer to everything.  Large sections of Ecclesiastes (See 2:1-11 and 6:1-6) have been given to explaining that wealth is often a route to vanity, not true happiness.  So what is going on here?

Well, it seems that this verse is serving two functions.  First of all, it is a verse that gives us the full picture in life.  Yes, wealth might bring vanity.  But abject poverty is not necessarily any less of a vain existence.  We do need access to some money in this life.

Second, I think that this is a verse that also speaks to moderation.  Bread may be good, but what happens to a person that eats too much?  They become slow and sluggish until they digest.  Wine may be good in small amounts, but what happens to a person who consumes too much?  They become drunk and utterly worthless until they sober up.  Wealth may be good in small amounts so that we can live, but what happens when we have it in too large of quantity?  We begin to horde and place our trust in the wealth rather than in God.  For me, this verse – helped especially by the analogies to bread and wine – is all about the importance of moderation.

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