Humanity’s wisest man

Four centuries before Plato, Socrates and Aristotle began their philosophical search for wisdom, a wise man wrote three short books that even today are distributed throughout the entire world and studied by millions. When this author was young, he was about to be entrusted with national responsibilities; he had the reflex of turning to God in prayer. What did he ask for? “Give your servant an understanding mind,” he prayed, “that I may discern between good and evil”. That young man was about to be crowned Solomon, King of Israel in 962 BC. His prayer was so powerfully answered that “Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt”. He wrote 3,000 proverbs, “spoke of trees… of beasts, birds, reptiles and fish”, and he wrote over 1,000 songs. People came from afar to listen to his wisdom.

One of his books has a very contemporary feel about it: it reveals how his heart had been hungry for human fulfilment, but he had found it hard to find. Yet in his book “Ecclesiastes” he shares his personal experience as he struggled to avoid the emptiness of life in his search for true human satisfaction. The testimony of this wise philosophical thinker is well worth studying, and it is available in every Bible. 

His book starts out with dramatic effect: “Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” How contemporary does that feel! This is not his conclusion, but his starting point. He recounts how he had sought fulfilment and discovered that every avenue proved inadequate to satisfy the deep needs of his heart.  

He first tried studying to gain understanding and knowledge; he became very erudite, but found that, as he describes it, it was just like chasing the wind, concluding “accumulating knowledge is vexatious and increases sorrow”. From that he turned to hedonism: “enjoy yourself”, he said to himself, but despite trying to cheer himself up with wine, women and song, he remained frustrated – “Pleasure? What use is it?” It was all vanity. 

Then he turned his hand to work, conceiving and accomplishing grandiose constructions – houses, gardens, pools and forests. He obtained slaves to work for him and had great possessions of flocks and herds. He grew very rich in silver and gold: “I kept my heart from no pleasure”, he testified. “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and lo and behold – it was all pure vanity and chasing the wind”. Then the enigma of death confronted him: since the wise and the foolish end up in the same cemetery… “I gave my heart up to despair” he concluded. “I thought the dead more fortunate than the living”.

All this sums up our human predicament and it is extremely depressing; but fortunately, that is not the end of the story. He makes the occasional allusion to God in his book as he continues to “search out the scheme of things” – the whole picture, a true worldview. “God made man upright”, he writes in a flash of inspiration, “but they have sought out many schemes” – devious philosophies.

He turns finally to be positive: “Rejoice, young man in your youth… Walk in the ways of your heart… But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment”. In other words, realise you are responsible for your life and will have to answer one day to God. “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth,” he concludes; “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole raison d’être of man” (Ecclesiastes 12.13-14).

Clive Every-Clayton