Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Ecclesiastes 2:12-17
A Return To Philosophy and Its Hopelessness (Ecclesiastes 2:12).
‘And I turned my mind to observing wisdom and madness and folly. For what can a man do who follows what a king has done? Only what he has already done.'
His next step was again to consider the combined ‘wisdom' of men. He studied what was wise, he studied what was madness, he studied what was foolish and absurd. Having as king indulged himself in all the pleasures open to a king, and having found them to fail, what was left for him? Only to return to what he had already done. This was in itself proof of the folly of it all.
‘For what can a man (any man) do who follows what a king has done? Only what the king has already done' This does not necessarily contrast himself as a man with the king. He is both the king and a man. As king he had had special advantages not open to ordinary men. Yet as a king, with the resources of a king, he had tried everything out, he had covered all the ground, he looked into everything. So what was any man, including himself, to do to follow that? All any man could do was repeat the same old thing.
‘Then I saw that wisdom exceeds folly, as much as light exceeds darkness. The wise man's eyes are in his head, and the fool walks in darkness. And yet I saw that one thing (or ‘event') happened to them all.'
He was not undiscerning. He recognised that there was wisdom and that there was folly. And that the first was totally superior to the second, just as light is superior to darkness. The wise man sees where he is going. He uses discernment. He walks in the light. The fool blunders on in darkness, with his eyes closed. But all come to the same end. All experience the same final event. All die (compare Ecclesiastes 3:19). All end in darkness.
‘One thing (event).' Contingency, happening, chance, fortune, providence, fate.
‘Then I said in my heart, “As it happens to a fool, so will it happen to me. And why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart that this also was vanity. For the wise man even as for the fool, there is no remembrance for ever, seeing that in the days to come all will have been already forgotten. How does the wise man die? Just as the fool.'
So he questions how he can really consider himself as more wise than a fool when both come to the same end. Both die. Both are forgotten by men. ‘The memory of them is forgotten' (Ecclesiastes 9:5). Almost nothing of what they are lives on. Thus neither has accomplished more than the other. Neither has gained more than the other. They share the same fate. The wise man is finally as the fool.
Do we see here the first glimmer of a search after the idea of a possible future life, for if what he says here is true, and all ends at the end of this life, what is there to live for? Let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Compare Ecclesiastes 3:21 which surely has this in mind as a possibility. It was the same dilemma that the prophets and the psalmists faced. If death was the end how do we explain suffering? (See Psalms 73). How do we encourage men to positive living and achievement? How do we discover final meaning?
‘So I hated life, because the effort that is wrought under the sun is grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.'
The Preacher confesses that as a result of his meditations life was becoming distasteful to him because of its pointlessness. All the effort he had put in discouraged him, nay, grieved him, because it had achieved nothing. It was profitless. Again he summed it up as useless and striving after the unattainable.