Or is it Sparta? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
In this section, the Teacher writes about considering madness and folly. As I wrote in my paper on the topic:
The Teacher then turns to consider madness and folly. He does not tell us what all this consisted of and unfortunately, commentators do not have a clear idea either. Bartholomew says it consists of behavior considered senseless and irrational.[1] Perry probably gets closest when he says this could refer to the opposite of wisdom.[2] Another problem with understanding what the Teacher means by these terms is that the words for madness and folly show up nowhere else in the Old Testament except in this book.
The Teacher says nothing about how this testing takes place. It would seem obvious that this could not take place with the usage of wisdom. How does one wisely explore the opposite of wisdom? Could perhaps the Teacher have gone out and observed the Fool from the book of Proverbs and learned from the experience of others?
However he gains his information, there comes a surprising change in the book when the Teacher declares wisdom better than madness. (2:13-14) The person who has wisdom can see where he walks. The Teacher makes the comparison saying that a life lived in the light ranks above one lived in the darkness.
Unfortunately, while the life of wisdom comes out better than the life of folly, in the end, what difference does it make? Perhaps one could say that if Solomon wrote the book, he might have in mind a situation like the one described in Proverbs 7 where a young man gets seduced by the wayward woman and does not realize that her house leads to death. True enough, but even if one lived with full wisdom, they too will one day go to a place of death. What good has happened to them in the end overall? How can one say that they lived a better life if the result of both folly and wisdom occurs at a cemetery? Hence, the Teacher again ends this section saying it describes life under the sun.
So is it better to be wise? Yes. However, no matter how wise you are, in the end, you will still die. There have been many great men of wisdom that we have no idea about today. Right now, I am going through a book called The Moral Argument. I have read so far about many people that I have sadly never heard of. I suspect most Christians haven’t heard of them either.
Not only that, but even the ones that people do remember, we tend to not know many of their philosophies today. Aside from biblical figures, who we don’t know as we should, we can also include Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and even the great scientific minds as well. Consider how many people consider the Middle Ages to be the Dark Ages unaware entirely that there were plenty of people doing great scientific work in that day. Ask people to name a medieval scientist and they will likely say Galileo, who didn’t even live in that period!
So what about another option? If pleasure doesn’t deliver and wisdom doesn’t, what about work?
We’ll discuss that next time.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
[1] Bartholomew, 130.
[2] Perry, 79.
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