Ecclesiastes 7:1-29

Ecclesiastes 7 and Ecclesiastes 8:1

I. The endeavour to secure a competence may be not lawful only, but most laudable, since God means us to make the best of the capacities He has given us and the opportunities He sends us. Nevertheless we may pursue this right end from a wrong motive, in a wrong spirit. Both spirit and motive are wrong if we pursue our competence as though it were a good so great that we can know no happy content and rest unless we attain it. For what is it that animates such a pursuit save distrust in the providence of God? Left in His hands, we do not feel that we should be safe; whereas if we had our fortune in our own hands, and were secured against chances and changes by a comfortable investment or two, we should feel safe enough.

II. Our sympathies go with the man who seeks to acquire a good name, to grow wise, to live in the golden mean. But when he proceeds to apply his theory, to deduce practical rules from it, we can only give him a qualified assent, nay must often altogether withhold our assent. The prudent man is likely: (1) to compromise conscience (Ecclesiastes 7:15); (2) to be indifferent to censure (Ecclesiastes 7:21); (3) to despise women (Ecclesiastes 7:25); (4) to be indifferent to public wrong (Ecclesiastes 8:1).

III. In the closing verses of the third section of the book, the Preacher lowers his mask, and tells us plainly that we cannot, and must not, rest in the theory he has just expounded; that to follow its counsels will lead us away from the chief good, not towards it. This new theory of life he confesses to be a "vanity" as great and deceptive as any of those he has hitherto tried.

S. Cox, The Quest of the Chief Good,p. 188.

References: Ecclesiastes 8:1. T. Hammond, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 333.Ecclesiastes 8:1. R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons,p. 281.Ecclesiastes 8:4. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1697, and My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi,p. 201 Ecclesiastes 8:8. U. R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 38; A. Mursell, Ibid.,vol. xix., p. 297.