Nielsen’s Nook

Qoheleth 1:13-18

Translation

Ecclesiastes 1:13-18 (ESV)

¹³ And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. ¹⁴ I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

¹⁵ What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.

¹⁶ I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” ¹⁷ And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

¹⁸ For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Reflections

In many ways the description that Qoheleth gives is very pertinent to the Christian of the covenant today. As one’s heart is illuminated to see the twisted nature of this world, the same conclusion must be humbly arrived at: When understanding increases – pain increases.

We must understand wisdom and its absence, foolishness. Yet even in understanding we find that we do not. Perhaps that is wisdom in the world as it is, both created by God and twisted by Man. To be wise is to recognize the great angst in which the world rumbles forward. It is to see that wisdom is something that was created to be loved while at the same time our fallen nature loves its absence. Yet it is not simply that we prefer to not have wisdom but that something in us seeks to suppress it down to beat it out of the very warp and woof of the universe in which we live. It is like a tireless beating of a carpet that seeks not to remove the dust but to obliterate the very pattern woven in to it. On the one hand, this will never happen, for wisdom is not made of the stuff that fools can snuff out completely; while on the other hand, we expend our energies to suppress the very thing that would bring beauty. To be wise is to see this tension for what it is in our selves and in others and to embrace the pain as one looks in the king’s mirror of wisdom only to see a fool.