Theological Commentary: Click Here
In this chapter,
Solomon examines things that the world typically thinks are worth living
for. First, start with passion. Solomon says that he didn’t hold back from
anything. Whatever he wanted, he let
himself have. He built great
things. He was master over many
people. He accumulated all kinds of
riches. In the end, Solomon considered
it striving after the wind. The pleasure
was fleeting, unable to be grasped onto firmly like the wind.
Next,
Solomon decided to live wisely. We all
know that living in wisdom is better than living in folly. It might seem like more work in the
short-term, but in the long term the wise life is far less work and far more
greatly rewarding. However, there’s a
problem. The wise and the foolish still
end up in the same place: dead. The wise
and the fool are both doomed to die and be slowly forgotten. Seeing this, Solomon asks what the point is.
Then,
Solomon focused on hard work. He reaped
benefit of hard work, but the lesson didn’t change. What, in all of that he accumulated, would
persist in life, much less death? In
fact, once death comes doesn’t the hard work simply pass on to someone who didn’t
work to obtain it? It all seems kind of
pointless, which absolutely is Solomon’s point.
What does
that leave? It leaves God. The thing that everything has been missing up
to this point was God. There’s nothing
wrong with enjoying life, but we should enjoy it through God’s grace and
love. There’s nothing wrong with wisdom,
but we should be wise in the ways that God has for us. There’s nothing wrong with working hard, but
we should be working hard where God is also at work. In the end, without God death is the great
equalizer. The only thing that brings us
above the great equalizer of death is being in the Lord.
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