But what are human wisdom and glory? It seems that Solomon was to illustrate its emptiness. See the king, in his old age, sinking into idolatry and empty luxury, falling away from his God, and pointing the moral of his own proverbs. He himself was the drunkard, into whose hand the thorn of the proverb penetrated, without his heeding it. This prudent and wise king, who understood so well all the snares of temptation and all the arts of virtue, fell like the puppet of any Asiatic court. What a contrast between the wise and great king as described in I Kings iv. 20-34 and the same king in his degenerate old age!
It was this last period in the life of Solomon which the writer of Ecclesiastes took as the scene and subject of his story. With marvellous penetration and consummate power he penetrates the mind of Solomon and paints the blackness of desolation, the misery of satiety, the dreadful darkness of a soul which has given itself to this world as its only sphere.
Never was such a picture painted of utter scepticism, of a mind wholly darkened, and without any remaining faith in God or truth.
These three books mark the three periods of the life of Solomon.
The Song of Songs shows us his abounding youth, full of poetry, fire, and charm.
The Proverbs give his ripened manhood, wise and full of all earthly knowledge,—Aristotle, Bacon, Socrates, and Franklin, all in one.
And Ecclesiastes represents the darkened and gloomy scepticism of his old age, when he sank as low down as he had before gone up. But though so sad and dark, yet it is not without gleams of a higher and nobler joy to come. Better than anything in Proverbs are some of the noble sentiments breaking out in Ecclesiastes, especially at the end of the book.
The Book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful description of a doubt so deep, a despair so black, that nothing in all literature can be compared to it. It describes, in the person of Solomon, utter scepticism born of unlimited worldly enjoyment, knowledge, and power.
The book begins by declaring that all is vanity, that there is nothing new under the sun, no progress in any direction, but all things revolving in an endless circle, so that there is neither meaning nor use in the world.[363] It declares that work amounts to nothing, for one cannot do any really good thing; that knowledge is of no use, but only produces sorrow; that pleasure satiates.[364] Knowledge has only this advantage over ignorance, that it enables us to see things as they are, but it does not make them better, and the end of all is despair.[365] Sensual pleasure is the only good.[366] Fate and necessity rule all things. Good and evil both come at their appointed time. Men are cheated and do not see the nullity of things, because they have the world in their heart, and are absorbed in the present moment.[367]
Men are only a higher class of beasts. They die like beasts, and have no hereafter.[368]