Ecclesiastes 2:12-16 Click here for Bible Verses
Hi GAMErs!
Today’s passage is Ecclesiastes 2:12-16. In case you’re wondering, since I believe that Qohelet, the main speaker in Ecclesiastes, is best identified as Solomon, I will refer to him interchangeably as Qohelet or Solomon. Let’s go!
Ecclesiastes 2:12-16 (NIV)
12 Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly. What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done?
13 I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness.
14 The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both.
15 Then I thought in my heart, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said in my heart, “This too is meaningless.”
16 For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!
On verses 12-16: In the book of Proverbs, a younger Solomon was so sure that wisdom was supreme and worth chasing after, even if it cost everything a person have. As verses 13-14 say, Solomon saw that “wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness. The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness”. Yet here an older Solomon is now struck by the realization that both the wise and the foolish die just the same, “the same fate overtakes them both” (v14). Both will be forgotten one day (v16). So why bother being wise, older Solomon wonders? (v15)
Who’s right? Older Solomon in Ecclesiastes 2:12-16 or his younger self in Proverbs?
Does the same fate really overtake both the wise person and the fool, as older Solomon suggests (v14)? On the surface, yes. If you speak in purely earthly, worldly terms with no hope for eternity, older Solomon’s position is correct insofar as both the wise person and the fool will die. But if, as Jesus says, there is life beyond the grave, if each of us will give an account to God for the way we lived on earth, and if our eternal destinies depend on how we lived temporarily on earth, then older Solomon’s conclusion in Ecclesiastes 2:14 is wrong: the same fate does not overtake the wise person and the fool. Rather, the wise person and the fool will have completely different trajectories in eternity: one will be with God in heaven and enjoy great reward, while the other will be apart from God in hell with great regret.
We need to make a choice. Will we listen to Solomon and accept his take here? Or will we filter his words through the words of someone greater – Jesus – and realize that there’s more to the issue than what Solomon offers here?
Lord Jesus, thank You for showing us that physical death is not the end of any of us, that our existence goes beyond our physical days on earth. Thank You in You we have hope that is stronger than the grave and a life that outlasts it too. In Jesus’ name, AMEN!
Copyright © 2021 Justin Lim. All rights reserved.
