WISDOM [2] SUBJECTION TO AUTHORITY IN GOD Qoheleth, in this chapter, comes to recommend wisdom to us as the most powerful antidote 1. The benefit of wisdom 1. 2. Wisdom and subjection to authority 2-3. 3. To be ready for sudden evils and death 6-8. 4. Wisdom and oppressive government 9-10. 5. Wisdom and the prosperity of the evildoers 11-14. 6. Using God's gifts cheerfully 15-17. THE BENEFIT OF WISDOM [1] "Who is as the wise man? and who knows the interpretation of a thing? a man's wisdom makes his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed" [1]. Hhere is an encomium of wisdom, that is, of true piety, guided in all its exercises by prudence and discretion. 1. It advances him above his neighbors, and makes him more excellent than they: Who is as the wise man ? Heavenly wisdom will make an incomparable man. No man without grace ,though he be learned , or noble, or rich, is to be compared with a man that has true grace and is therefore accepted of God . 2. It makes him useful among his neighbors and very serviceable to them: Who but the wise man knows the interpretation of a thing , that is, understands the times and the events of them, and their critical junctures. 3. It beautifies a man in the eyes of his friends: It makes his face to shine , as Moses's did when he came down from the mount; it puts honor upon a man and a luster on his whole conversation, makes him to be regarded and taken notice of , and gains him respect. It makes him lovely and amiable, and the darling and blessing of his country . The strength of his face, the soreness and severity of his countenance (so some understand the last clause), shall be changed by it into that which is sweet and obliging. 2 + Moreover, wisdom, when it is found in a man, shows itself also in its possessor's face, and makes his countenance to shine; as, on the other hand, effrontery convicts the man in whom it has taken up its abode, so soon as he is seen, as one worthy of hatred. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus 1. A Metaphrase of the Book of Ecclesiastes. + For if the wisdom of a man illuminates his countenance, much more does the virtue of a woman illuminate her face; and if you considers this to be a great ornament, tell me what well be the advantage of the pearls in that day? St. John Chrysostom 1. Instruction to Catechumens, 2:4. 4. It emboldens a man against his adversaries, their attempts and their scorn: The boldness of his face shall be doubled by wisdom; it will add very much to his courage in maintaining his integrity when he not only has an honest cause to plead, but by his wisdom knows how to manage it and where to find the interpretation of a thing. WISDOM AND OBEDIENCE TO THE KING [2-3] A particular instance of wisdom pressed upon us, and that is subjection to authority, and a dutiful and peaceable perseverance in our allegiance to the government which providence has set over us . "I counsel thee} to keep the king's commandment, and {that} in regard of the oath of God. (3) Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he does whatsoever pleases him" [2-3]. 1. We must be observant of the laws. Some understand verse 2 as a limitation of this obedience: Keep the king's commandment, yet so as to have a regard to the oath of God, that is, so as to keep a good conscience and not to violate your obligations to God, which are prior and superior to your obligations to the king . 2. We must not be forward to find fault with the public administration, or quarrel with every thing that is not just according to our mind, nor quit our post of service under the government, and throw it up, upon every discontent [3]. 3. We must not persist in a fault when it is shown us. 4. We must prudently accommodate ourselves to our opportunities, both for our own relief, if we think ourselves wronged, and for the redress of public grievances: In Rom. 13:1 St. Paul asks us to be subjectto the authority: 1. For conscience's sake, and that is the most powerful principle of subjection.It is called the oath of God because he is a witness to it and will avenge the violation of it. 3 2. For wrath's sake, because of the sword which the prince bears and the power he is entrusted with, which make him very formidable. 3. For the sake of our own comfort: Whose keeps the commandment, and lives a quiet and peaceable life, shall feel no evil thing, to which that of the apostle answers (Rom. 13:3). "Where the word of a king {is, there is} power: and who may say unto him, What do thou?" [4] Whoso keeps the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerns both time and judgment" [5]. He that does no ill shall feel no ill and needs fear none. Solomon had said that a wise man's heart discerns time and judgment, that is, a man's wisdom will go a great way, by the blessing of God, in moral prognostications; but here he shows that few have that wisdom, and that even the wisest may yet be surprised by a calamity which they had not any foresight of. + It is clear, even with a moderate insight into the nature of things, that there is nothing by which we can measure the divine and blessed Life. It is not in time, but time flows from it; whereas the creation, starting from a manifest beginning, journeys onward to its proper end through spaces of time; so that it is possible, as Solomon somewhere says, to detect in it a beginning, an end, and a middle; and mark the sequence of its history by divisions of time. But the supreme and blessed life has no time-extension accompanying its course, and therefore no span nor measure. St. Gregory of Nyssa 1. Against Eunomius, Book 1. TO BE READY FOR SUDDEN EVILS AND DEATH [6-8] Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him. For he knows not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be? [6]. 1. All the events concerning us, with the exact time of them, are determined and appointed in the counsel and foreknowledge of God, and all in wisdom. 2. We are very much in the dark concerning future events and the time and season of them. 3. It is our great unhappiness and misery that, because we cannot foresee an evil, we know not how to avoid it, or guard against it, and, because we are not aware of the proper successful season of actions, therefore we lose our opportunities and miss our way: "There is no man that has power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither {has he} power in the day of death: and {there is} no discharge in {that} war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it" [6-8]. There is no man that has power over his own spirit, to retain it,w hen it is summoned to return to God who gave it. It cannot fly any where out of the jurisdiction of death, nor find any place where its writs do not run. A man has no power to adjourn the day of his death, nor can he by prayers or bribes obtain a reprieve; no bail will be taken, no (excuse), protection, or imparlance (conference), allowed. We have not power over the spirit of a friend, to retain that; the prince, with all his authority, cannot prolong the life of the most valuable of his subjects, nor the physician with his medicines and methods, nor the soldier with his force, nor the orator with his eloquence, nor the best saint with his intercessions. Death is an enemy that we must all enter the lists with, sooner or later: 4 Men's wickedness, by which they often evade or outface the justice of the prince, cannot secure them for the arrest of death, nor can the most obstinate sinner harden his heart against those terrors. WISDOM AND OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENTS [9-10] Here, in these verses, he encourages us, in reference to the mischief of tyrannical and oppressive rulers, such as he had complained of before (ch.3:16; 4:1). 1. He had observed many tyrannt rulers who hurt the ruled [9]. It is sad with a people when those that should protect their religion and rights aim at the destruction of both. They also hurt themselves. He had observed them to prosper and flourish in the abuse of their power [10]. They are proud of their wealth, and power, and honor, because they sit in the place of the holy; but all this cannot secure, "All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: {there is} a time wherein one man rules over another to his own hurt [9]. "And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this {is} also vanity" [10]. Their bodies from being buried in the dust; I saw them laid in the grave; and their pomp, though it attended them thither, could not descend after them, The psalmist says, "For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away: his glory shall not descend after him" Ps. 49:17. Their names from being buried in oblivion; for they were forgotten, as if they had never been. WISDOM AND THE PROSPERITY OF THE EVILDOERS [11-14] "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil" [11]. He had observed that their prosperity hardened them in their wickedness [11]. Observe, 1. Sentence is passed against evil works and evil workers by the righteous Judge of heaven and earth, even against the evil works of princes and great men, as well as of inferior persons. 2. The execution of this sentence is often delayed a great while, and the sinner goes on, not only unpunished, but prosperous and successful. 3. Impunity hardens sinners in impiety, and the patience of God is shamefully abused by many who, instead of being led by it to repentance, are confirmed by it in their impenitency. (4.) Sinners herein deceive themselves, for, though the sentence be not executed speedily, it will be executed the more severely at last . 5 8:11 +It follows then that no one can be deceived by the devil but one who has chosen to yield to him the consent of his own will: as Ecclesiastes clearly puts it in these words: For since there is no gainsay by those who do evil speedily, therefore of the children of men is filled within them to do evil." It is therefore clear that each man goes wrong from this; viz., that when devil thoughts assault him he dies not immediately meet them with refusal and contradiction, for it says: "resist him, and he will flee from you." Abbot Serenus 1. Cassian, Conf., 7:8. "Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his {days} be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him: (13) But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong {his} days, {which are} as a shadow; because he fears not before God" [12, 13]. God's people are certainly a happy people, though they be oppressed: It is the character of God's people that they fear God [12]. It is the happiness of all that fear God, that in the worst of times it shall be well with them; their happiness in God's favor cannot be prejudiced, nor their communion with God interrupted, by their troubles; they are in a good case, for they are kept in a good frame under their troubles, and in the end they shall have a blessed deliverance from and an abundant recompense for their troubles. Wicked people are certainly a miserable people [13]; though they prosper, and prevail, for a time, the curse is as sure to them as the blessing is to the righteous. It is said, "Say you to the righteous, that {it shall be} well {with him}: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked! {it shall be} ill {with him}: for the reward of his hands shall be given him" Isa. 3:10, 11. The wicked man's days are as a shadow, not only uncertain and declining, as all men's days are, but altogether unprofitable. These days shall not be prolonged to what he promised himself; he shall not live out half his days, Ps. lv.23. Though they may be prolonged [12] beyond what others expected, yet his day shall come to fall . God's great quarrel with wicked people for their not fearing before him; that is at the bottom of their wickedness, and cuts them off from all happiness. "There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just {men}, unto whom it happens according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked {men}, to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also {is} vanity" [14]. He would not have us to be surprised at it, as though some strange thing happened, for he himself saw it in his days. He saw wicked men to whom it happened according to the work of the righteous, who prospered as remarkably as if they had been rewarded for some good deed, and that from themselves, from God, from men. He would have us to take occasion hence, not to charge God with inequity, but to charge the world with vanity. USING GOD'S GIFTS CHEERFULLY [15-17] He would have us not to fret and perplex ourselves about it, or make ourselves uneasy, but cheerfully to enjoy what God has given us in the world, to be content with it and make the best of it, though it be much better with others, and such as we think very unworthy: "Then I commended mirth, because a man has no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God gives him under the sun. (16) When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also {there is that} neither day nor night sees sleep with his eyes:) (17) Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek {it} out, yet he shall not find {it}; yea further; though a wise {man} think to know {it}, yet shall he not be able to find {it}" [15-17]. Since God's Ultimate purpose are unknowable (8: 15- 17), and since the length of life is uncertain (9: 11- 16), the wise course of action is to enjoy oneself here and now. 6 In the service of a King who is often arbitrary and does whatsoever pleases him (v. 3 b), the wise action is not to demand one's way in every matter. When the king commands some unpleasant thing, be not hasty to go out of his sight (v. 3 a). That is, do not impulsively turn your back on what he wants. There is time and a place for everything (v. 6). He would not have us undertake to give a reason for that which God does, for his way is in the sea and his path in the great waters, past finding out, and therefore we must be contentedly and piously ignorant of the meaning of God's proceedings in the government of the world, v. 16, 17. Others had likewise set themselves to make this enquiry with so close an application that they could not find time for sleep, either day or night, nor find in their hearts to sleep, so full of anxiety were they about these thing. When we look upon all the works of God and his providence, and compare one part with another, we cannot find that there is any such certain method by which the work that is done under the sun is directed.
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