I just read through Ecclesiastes, and I was confused! As I ponder the proverbs and epigrams of The Preacher I find myself wondering what Jesus made of these aphorisms? Or how did Daniel interpret and apply these adages and axioms? Or how did Edmond Dantés puzzle over these teachings in Ecclesiastes?

Here are a few examples of what I’m curious about…

There is a time to seek, and a time to lose (3:6); a time to keep silence, and a time to speak (3:7); Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice (4:13); Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few (5:1-2); He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity (5:10); There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt (5:13); It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools (7:5); Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this (7:9-10); Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? (7:13); In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him (7:14); When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one’s eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out (8:16-17); Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do (9:7); I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man (9:13-15); But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man’s wisdom is despised and his words are not heard (9:16); If the serpent bites before it is charmed, there is no advantage to the charmer (10:11); Bread is made for laughter, and wine gladdens life, and money answers everything (10:19); As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything (11:5); The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd (12:11); My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh (12:12).