Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Ecclesiastes 1:12-18
The Intellectual Search (Ecclesiastes 1:12).
‘I the preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom about all that is done under heaven. It is a painful effort (a sore travail, an unhappy business) that God has given to the sons of men to be exercised with.'
The Preacher reminds us that he was king in Jerusalem, and gave himself to use his wisdom to discover knowledge, but declares that the search for such wisdom and understanding turned out to be a useless and painful effort because of the difficulty of finding anything out. Although all that is under heaven is looked into, the effort only turns out to be effort spent in vain (compare Ecclesiastes 12:12). One is reminded here especially of the study of modern philosophy, where men seemed to be getting somewhere and finished up arguing about the meaning of words and mathematical formulae. Learned, yes, but not getting anywhere.
‘Was king in Jerusalem.' Some see this as meaning that he was no longer king in anything but name, but had relinquished his throne to his son who in practise ruled for him. But it may simply mean that he did it while he was king, without necessarily signifying that he had now ceased to be king. What had ceased was his search, not his reign. He had done it while he was king, but had ceased to do it.
‘I have seen all the works which are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and a striving after wind.'
He had searched out everywhere what men did, but whatever they did, it was in the end fruitless and profitless, both spiritually and rationally. It was simply temporal and material. Seeking to find meaning to life was like striving after the wind. It was impossible to grasp and lay hold of what they were looking for, some extra meaning and lasting significance in life. All they had was the works that man continually did and which were in the end without any really final important significance. (Although of course being necessary to survive. It is kings in Jerusalem who can afford to think like this).
‘What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be accounted for (numbered).'
This simply means that everything in life is basically marred and lacking in meaningful content. Everything is lacking in some way. It is ‘unstraight (crooked)'. And whatever we do it is not possible to make it ‘straight'. Whatever we do to it, it remains unstraight. We cannot give it a perfection that it does not have (the perfection he was looking for). It is not possible to obtain something complete from something else which is incomplete and thus diametrically opposite to it and totally unlike it. Nor is it possible make something of account which is in fact not so. All in life is to be seen as like things that are in essence crooked (marred in some way and incomplete). All are the same essentially. And perfection cannot be obtained from imperfection. Thus it is impossible to look behind such things and find anything that is essentially meaningful, i.e. something that is straight. Nothing can be transformed into something different, for all is essentially the same. What he was actually looking for, something that was essentially different from everything else and had an element of perfection, appeared in fact to be lacking. Thus it was impossible to give any account of it. It was all a part of his vain search into the meaning of life.
‘I communed with my own heart, saying, “Lo, I have obtained for myself great wisdom, above all who were before me in Jerusalem. Yes, my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also was a striving after wind. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge, increases sorrow.'
The Preacher had convinced himself that he had accumulated a wisdom and understanding above any who had been before him in Jerusalem, whether king, priest, wise man or prophet. He was convinced that he had great resources within himself of wisdom and knowledge, which had come through his meditation on truth as he saw it, and through his experience of life. None had quite achieved what he had achieved.
But when he then applied himself to examine all that was to be known, whether it was wisdom, or what others thought was wisdom (but turned out to be madness and folly, frivolous knowledge), it was in vain. He had left nothing uninvestigated, however foolish it had seemed. But all his searching out of man's supposed knowledge, whether wise or foolish, had achieved nothing. He had come to the conclusion that the search for ultimate wisdom, for an ultimate reality, was the searching out of something that could not be comprehended or grasped. It was like searching for the wind.
Thus all his wisdom and increase in knowledge had simply left him flattened and even grief stricken. It appeared that wisdom only resulted in grief, and knowledge in sorrow, because what was being sought could not be found in that way. It was out of reach of intellectual ability. We are here reminded of Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1:20, ‘where is the wise, where is the scribe, where is the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?' The Preacher agrees with him. No solution was to be found in that way.