After Solomon discovered that all of his material possessions and all the pleasures he pursued offered him no possibility of grasping and holding onto meaning and purpose, Solomon turned to exploring wisdom for the answer. In fact, Solomon spent his lifetime acquiring wisdom, and, for example, he compiled his collection of wisdom in the book of the Bible entitled Proverbs.
Ecclesiastes 2:12 I turned myself to consider wisdom, madness, and folly; for what can the king’s successor do? Just that which has been done long ago. 13 Then I saw that wisdom excels folly, as far as light excels darkness. 14 The wise man’s eyes are in his head, and the fool walks in darkness—and yet I perceived that one event happens to them all. 15 Then I said in my heart, “As it happens to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and why was I then more wise?” Then I said in my heart that this also is vanity. 16 For of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is no memory forever, since in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. Indeed, the wise man must die just like the fool!
Over the course of his life, although Solomon did not always follow his own wise counsel and, in fact, like all of us, pursued grievous sins, he still concluded that wisdom excels folly as far as light excels darkness. The wise walk with understanding. After all, as Solomon has explained, with wisdom he built great works, wrote great music, acquired the wealth of the world, and much, much more. By contrast, the fool walks in darkness, unable to understand all of the intricate workings of the world and unable to accomplish great things.
But before getting too excited about wisdom Solomon had a very troubling realization; the wise man must die just like the fool. Despite all of the temporal benefits that wisdom brings in this life, the scholar with the PhD and the uneducated illiterate dropout, both die. In the final analysis all of Solomon’s labors, both in material goods and now in acquiring wisdom, could not be grasped and held on to. As God had warned Adam prior to his sin, with the relentless march of time, both acquired possessions and wisdom would all be taken in death. This conclusion led Solomon to despair.
Ecclesiastes 2:17 So I hated life, because the work that is worked under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a chasing after wind. 18 I hated all my labor in which I labored under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who comes after me. 19 Who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have rule over all of my labor in which I have labored, and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity.
Solomon knew that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness but because of the great equalizer, death, he could not explain why wisdom excels folly. Under the sun there was no way for him to hold onto that wisdom or anything that he had achieved through the use of his wisdom. And, to make matters worse, if this were even possible, after Solomon’s death a fool could inherit and rule over the empire for which Solomon had labored.
These are very strong words particularly when you remember Solomon is writing this for his son who will soon inherit the Kingdom. However, the problem was that his son, Rehoboam, had surrounded himself with his friends who were young and foolish counselors. Just like us with our children, Solomon was attempting to intervene. He didn’t want his son to follow in his wayward footsteps, making the same mistakes that he had made, turning from God.
Many years later Christ would issue the same warning to his followers, asking, What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul? Matthew 16:26 It is very easy to lose perspective and get so enamored with chasing the things of this world, what Solomon calls under the sun, that we completely neglect the reality of the world to come, and lose our souls.
Solomon, as the old song goes, “had the world on a string and was sitting on a rainbow” but it all turned out to be hevel, hevel, vanity, vanity, chasing after the wind, pursuing something that could never be grasped, for, after all is said and done, our lives here on earth are swallowed up in the dust of death. Psalm 22:15