Vers. 5-7. But rulers themselves under the sun are not free from folly, and this shows itself in the disorder that actually proceeds from them. Orders and ranks are not in harmony. Folly is exalted, and those with whom dignities accord are in lowly place. It is another view of the present confusion, and how fully the coming of the Highest showed it out! A stable, a manger, rejection, and the cross, were the portion under the sun of the King of kings. That fact rights everything even now, in one sense, to faith for the path closest to the King must be really necessarily the highest, though it be in the sight of man the lowest. Immanuel, the Son of David, walking as a servant up and down the land that was His own—The Lord Jesus, The Son of Man, having less than the foxes or birds of the air, not even where to lay his head,—Christ, the Son of God, wearied with His journey, on the well of Sychar,—this has thrown a glory about the lowly path now, that makes all the grandeur of the great ones of the earth less than nothing. Let the light of His path shine on this scene, and no longer shall we count it an evil under the sun for folly and lawlessness to have the highest place, as men speak, but rather count it greatest honor to be worthy to suffer for His name, for we are still in the kingdom and patience of the Lord Jesus Christ,—not the Kingdom and Glory. That shall come soon.
Vers. 8-10. But then, Ecclesiastes continues, is there complete security in the humbler ranks of life? Nay, there is no occupation that has not its accompanying danger. Digging or hedging, quarrying or cleaving wood,—all have their peculiar difficulties. Although there, too, wisdom is still evidently better than brute strength.
Vers. 11 to 15 turn to the same theme of comparison of wisdom and folly, only now with regard to the use of the tongue. The most gifted charmer (lit. master of the tongue) is of no worth after the serpent has bitten. The waters that flow commend the spring whence they issue. Grace speaks for the wise: folly, from beginning to end, proclaims the fool; and nowhere is that folly more manifested than in the boastfulness of assertion as to the future.
"Predicting words he multiplies, yet man can never know
"The thing that shall be; yea, what cometh after who shall tell?
"Vain toil of fools! It wearieth him,—this man who knoweth naught
"That may befall his going to the city."
This seems to be exactly in line with the apostle James: "Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain: ye who know not what shall be on the morrow."
Vers. 16-18. The land is blessed or cursed according to her head. A well-marked principle in Scripture, which has evidently forced itself on the notice of human wisdom in the person of Ecclesiastes. A city flourishes under the wise diligence of her rulers, or goes to pieces under their neglect and sensual revelry. For the tendency to decay is everywhere under the sun, and no matter what the sphere,—high or low, city or house,—constant diligence alone offsets that tendency.
Ver. 19. The whole is greater than its part. Money can procure both the feast and the wine; but these are not, even in our preacher's view, the better things, but the poorer, as chapter vii. has shown us. We, too, know that which is infinitely higher than feasts and revelry of earth, and here money avails nothing. "Wine and milk," joy and food, are here to be bought without money and without price. The currency of that sphere is not corruptible gold nor silver, but the love that gives,—sharing all it possesses. There it is love that answereth all things:—the more excellent way, inasmuch as it covers and is the spring of all gifts and graces. Without love, the circulating medium of that new creation, a man is poor indeed,—is worth nothing, nay, is nothing, (1 Cor. xiii.) He may have the most attractive and showy of gifts: the lack of love makes the silver tongue naught but empty sound,—a lack of love makes the deepest understanding naught; and whilst he may be a very model of what the world falsely calls charity, giving of his goods to feed the poor, and even his body to be burned, it is love alone that gives life and substance to it all,—lacking love it profits nothing. He who abounds most in loving, and consequent self-emptying, is the richest there. The words of the Lord Jesus in Luke xii. confirm this: "So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." The two are in direct contrast. Rich here—laying up treasure for one's self here—is poverty there, and the love that gives is divine riches. For he who loves most has himself drunk deepest into the very nature of God, for God is Love, and his heart fully satisfied with that which alone in all the universe can ever satisfy the heart of man, filled up,—surely, therefore, rich,—pours forth its streams of bounty and blessing according to its ability to all about. How thoroughly the balances of the sanctuary reverse the estimation of the world.
But, then, how may we become rich in that true, real sense? To obtain the money that "answereth all things" under the sun, men toil and plan. Perhaps as the balances of the sanctuary show that selfish accumulation here is poverty there, so the means of attaining true riches may be, in some sort, the opposite to those prevailing for the false—"quietness and confidence."
The apostle, closing his beautiful description of charity, says: "Follow after charity." Ponder its value—meditate on its beauties—till your heart becomes fascinated, and you press with longing toward it. But as it is difficult to be occupied with "Love" in the abstract, can we find anywhere an embodiment of love? A person who illustrates it in its perfection, in whose character every glorious mark that the apostle depicts in this 13th chapter of Corinthians is shown in perfect moral beauty—yea, who is in himself the one complete perfect expression of love. And, God be thanked, we know One such; and, as we read the sweet and precious attributes of Love, we recognize that the Holy Spirit has pictured every lineament of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wouldst thou be rich, then, my soul? Follow after, occupy thyself with, press toward, the Lord Jesus, till His beauties so attract as to take off thy heart from every other infinitely inferior attraction, and the kindling of His love shall warm thy heart with the same holy flame, and thou shalt seek love's ease—love's rest—in pouring out all thou hast in a world where need of all kinds is on every side, and thus be "rich toward God." So may it be for the writer, and every reader, to the praise of His grace. Amen.
Where are we, in time, my readers? Are we left as shipwrecked sailors upon a raft, without chart or compass, and know not whether sunken wreck or cliff-bound coast shall next threaten us? No; a true divine chart and compass is in our hands, and we may place our finger upon the exact chronological latitude and longitude in which our lot is cast. Mark the long voyage of the professing Church past the quiet waters of Ephesus, where first love quickly cools and is lost; past the stormy waves of persecution which drive her onward to her desired haven, in Smyrna; caught in the dangerous eddy, and drifted to the whirlpool of the world in Pergamos, followed by the developed Papal hierarchy in Thyatira, with the false woman in full command of the ship; past Sardis, with its memories of a divine recovery in the Reformation of the sixteenth century:—Philadelphia and Laodicea alone are left; and, with mutual contention and division largely in the place of brotherly love, who can question but that we have reached the last stage, and that there is every mark of Laodicea about us? This being so, mark the word of our Lord Jesus to the present state of the professing Church: "Thou sayest I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, but knowest not that thou art poor, and blind, and naked, and wretched, and miserable." Yes, in the light of God, in the eyes of the Lord, in the judgment of the sanctuary, we live in a day of poverty. It is this which characterizes the day in which our lot is cast,—a lack of all true riches, whilst the air is filled with boastings of wealth and attainment.