CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecclesiastes 10:5. As an error which proceedeth from the ruler.] Not a mere error, as such, but one which is manifest by its consequences—caprices of despotism like those described in Ecclesiastes 10:6-7.
Ecclesiastes 10:6. Folly.] To be understood, in the concrete form, of mean and ignoble persons, having no title to dignity and advancement. The rich.] Men of noble birth and bearing, inheriting an honourable name and patrimony, and qualified to fill exalted positions in the state. This unnatural inversion of the orders of society was not infrequent under the despotism of Eastern monarchs.
Ecclesiastes 10:7. Servants.] Not merely in condition, but servile in character, destitute of all noble aims and purposes. Princes.] Both in regard of outward rank, and having a corresponding elevation of character and bearing. They are princely minded.
Ecclesiastes 10:8. He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it.] It was the custom, where lions and other wild animals abounded, to dig pits overlaid with branches of trees, in order to entrap them. Hence a man might unwittingly fall into a pit which he had himself digged (Psalms 7:15; Psalms 57:6; Proverbs 26:27). And whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.] Serpents and other reptiles were often found hiding in old walls. Hence he who broke through them ran the risk of being bitten (Amos 5:19).
Ecclesiastes 10:9. Removeth stones … cleaveth wood, shall be endangered thereby.] As such employments required violent exertion, they were the more dangerous.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Ecclesiastes 10:5-10
THE PROMOTION OF FOOLS
The excellencies of wisdom, and the practical uses of it, are evident to all who can feel the force of moral reasoning. Yet the wise often fail of attaining their true place in the world, or having attained it, they are thrust out, and fools set up in their stead. He who is conscious of superior gifts, and rectitude of purpose, is condemned to witness the promotion of men, contemptibly poor in mind and morals, to places of authority and power. How does this perverse disposition of things arise, and wherewith shall good men console themselves in this disappointment?
I. It arises from the Interference of Human Caprice with the Proper Tendencies of Social Forces. The setting up of folly in great dignity, and casting down the wise and noble from their seats, is here ascribed “to an error which proceedeth from the ruler.” (Ecclesiastes 10:5.) Such an unnatural inversion can only proceed from the caprice of some arbitrary authority. It is only possible through those accidents of history when folly and wickedness gain a temporary advantage. That wisdom which is made up of justice, goodness, and practical sagacity in human affairs, is a social force which has a known direction. But it may be turned aside from this direction by some disturbing causes. The fitness of things, their true tendencies and results, must be acknowledged, though they may be interrupted for a while by some disorder.
1. It is fitting that the wisest and best should rule. Such ought to have the highest social influence and power—the chiefest authority in the state. Nations can only maintain their place in the world’s history by means of their noblest and wisest men. Their natural decay sets in when these are displaced, and the sovereignty given to fools. There are conditions of national stability that must not be violated, and it is impossible to preserve the social pyramid poised upon its apex.
2. The most sacred rights of man may be held in abeyance. Wisdom and goodness ought to secure their proper results, and enjoy with dignity their quiet triumphs. But the existence of moral evil introduces a source of complication. It is a disquieting factor in our reckoning of human things. Hence, in this world, what is right does not always prevail. It is the property of evil to hold continual warfare against all order—to rebel against all just dignities—to undo the work of goodness in the world. Thus the progress of humanity towards perfection is retarded.
II. It is an Unstable Condition of Things. The wise man may be consoled when he reflects that such social disorder cannot last long. There are certain fundamental principles of national prosperity, and these cannot be long violated with impunity. Retribution comes at length, and the true order returns. There are certain chemical preparations which are said to be unstable, because they are held together by a slender bond, and the slightest force is sufficient to decompose them. In like manner, there are conditions of society brought about by the irrational caprice of wilful men; but such conditions are unstable. They are always upon the point of rupture. Providence, which permits so much, has yet reserves of force by which these evils find correction. In the disorders of human government, fools may be suddenly raised to rank and authority; but they must at length fall to their true level. They can but, as it were, snatch at greatness: they cannot retain it in their grasp. No power can give their unnatural assumption any fixity or permanence.
1. The devices which procure their promotion may be turned against themselves. (Ecclesiastes 10:8-9.) They were raised to their dignities by flattery, intrigue—by a ruthless trampling upon the rights of others. They employed dangerous weapons which may, at any moment, be snatched from their hands and used against themselves. He who breaks through the boundaries of truth and right runs the risk of arousing indignant justice. The breakers of old walls—moral, social—shall be avenged by the startled serpent’s sting.
2. Human caprice is not to be trusted. When men are not governed by great principles, but by passion and folly, they are ever unsteady. You cannot reckon upon them, for nothing can be trusted that does not rest upon the sure foundations of truth and right. The fools which the wilful monarch promotes to power may soon excite his disgust, and give place to other fools who are likely to meet with the same capricious fate.
3. They lack that fitness which alone can give dignity and efficiency to office. Wisdom imparts an intellectual and a moral fitness for every duty and trust; and without it, no man can fulfil the highest offices in the community.
(1.) He cannot maintain the dignity proper to them. Men hold in admiration those who possess wisdom and knowledge. Even the most ignorant learn to regard, with a feeling akin to adoration, those who are more knowing and wiser than they. Men may pay court to the outward splendour of the fool; they may adore the greatness which is thrust upon him, but they despise himself. The pomp and glory of outward circumstance cannot impart true dignity where the solid endowments of moral worth and wisdom are not found.
(2.) He cannot maintain the efficiency of it. (Ecclesiastes 10:10.) Physical strength, or the power of authority, may accomplish much, but wisdom is necessary for the finest and most ingenious work—for the framing of all purposes that are far-reaching, and the richest in their consequences to man. Human destiny cannot be shaped to the noblest issues by rough tools, though they be wielded with savage strength. There must be the cunning hand—the skilful device—the sharp edge. These are the gifts of wisdom to man, without which he cannot accomplish any work of enduring worth. The power of office and authority is impotent and vain where the highest faculties are blunt.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecclesiastes 10:5. St. Cyril observeth that in the law whereas if others did sin, God appointed a sacrifice and remedy for them, whether they sinned through ignorance or else with knowledge. In the sin of the High Priest there is not appointed any sacrifice for him if that he sinned by ignorance, “as if by no means there were to be admitted in them that do rule ignorance, or defect of that wisdom required for their position.” Besides there had need to be a great care in the ruler that shall choose others to rule and command, because it is a hard thing to discharge it. Nazianzene saith, “It is a hard thing for a man to rule, a most hard thing to instruct and teach men. It seemeth to me to be an art of arts, a science of sciences, to rule man, who is of all creatures most various and changeable” [Jermin].
It is hard for ordinary men to conceive of the full nature and strength of those temptations which beset one who is invested with absolute rule. There are positions in which it is hard for ordinary virtue to stand upright. It is no wonder, therefore, that such monarchs have erred.
The most exalted station and complete investiture of authority cannot confer infallibility.
We must not allow errors to pass unheeded because they are connected with great names.
The errors of the mightiest are the most destructive. There is an “energy of position” in things moral and social, as well as in the region of matter. When power is wrongly directed, the disaster is proportioned to its magnitude.
Ecclesiastes 10:6. There is no function belonging to rulers which they are bound to exercise with greater impartiality, prudence, and caution, than that of selecting men who are to fill the great offices of the state. These men have oftentimes the destinies of a nation in their hands.… To place, out of mere favouritism or caprice, or even from a want of sufficient care and enquiry, an unrighteous or incompetent judge in the seat of justice; an ignorant or dishonest administration in charge of the revenues of a country; a cruel or rapacious governor at the head of the province of the kingdom; an unskilful or inexperienced leader in the command of an army;—for rulers to do such things is to trifle with interests of the greatest magnitude, and to betray a trust of the most solemn and responsible kind [Buchanan].
The highest honours and dignities must sit ungainly upon those who are not prepared for them by sufficient training and capacity. In the obscurest station, folly is a disadvantage, a noticeable evil; but in the most exalted station, it becomes conspicuous and most fully exposed to the eye of ridicule.
When a fool is set in dignity, it is as when a handful of hay is set up to give light, which with smoke and smell offendeth all that are near it. When the worthy sit in a low place, it is as when a goodly candle, that on a table would give a comfortable and comely light, is put under a bushel [Jermin].
When men of true nobility of mind and character are pushed from their seats, they still adorn the lowliest place where they are constrained to sit. They suffer most who cast them down.
Ecclesiastes 10:7. No change of outward condition can alter what is essential in the character. The servile mind is not destroyed by the elevation from poverty to grandeur, nor do royal minds cease to be such when they are stripped of all outward marks of greatness.
It was far from being a very uncommon case, under the despotic government of the East; slaves of the palace being not unfrequently, from caprice, partiality, or secret selfishness, advanced to the highest ranks, to look down in haughty superciliousness on their natural and deserving superiors [Wardlaw].
Ecclesiastes 10:8. He who seeks prosperity and distinction by treacherous ways, or by breaking through the bounds of moral restraint, tempts the vengeance of Heaven.
He who frames designs for the destruction of others is working on the utmost edge of danger.
There are proper boundaries to knowledge as well as to the courses of conduct. He who by needless curiosity adventures to break through them, only prepares misery for himself—the anguish of a restless and unsatisfied mind.
When ambitious heads break through hedges to get to high places, there is a serpent lurking secretly, which bites them by the heel and either stops them from going on, or else bringeth by it some great mischief upon them. Or else the serpent that biteth these ambitious subtle workers is some other more subtle than they, by whom they are undermined in their plots. Indeed, when ambition is set upon it, no hedge, no wall is able to hold it, but it breaks through, and leaps over all. What hedges did Athaliah break, killing all the royal progeny that herself might reign? What hedges did Abimelech break, killing seventy of his brethren that himself might rule? What hedges did Absalom break that he might be king in Israel? But did not the serpent bite them all? [Jermin.]
Ecclesiastes 10:9. The man who sets himself to pull down or to alter the fabric of the constitution of a country, undertakes a work of no light or trifling difficulty, and a work always of hazard to himself, and very often of fearfully doubtful benefit to others. It is a vast deal easier to find fault than to mend; to complain of what is wrong, than to substitute what is right [Wardlaw].
Most men have penetration enough to discover the faults in things that are established, but the knowledge of the deep principles upon which they rest, and by which they are held together, is the possession of only a few. He who attempts the work of a reformer, without sufficient knowledge and prudence, is likely to meet with ill-success and to bring trouble upon himself.
There are times when the corruptions of existing things have grown so great as to demand violent measures for their reformation. But the zeal thus aroused is a dangerous weapon in the hands of frail man.
Ecclesiastes 10:10. A little skill expended in sharpening the edge, will save a great deal of strength in wielding the hatchet. But, just as the unskilful labourer who cannot handle the whetstone must belabour the tree with a blunt instrument, and after inflaming his palms and racking his sinews, achieves less result than his neighbour whose knowledge and whose knack avail instead of brute force, so the servant who does not know the right way to do his work, after all his fatigue and fluster will give less satisfaction than one who has learned the best and easiest methods; and the householder who knows nothing of the mechanic arts, or who knows not what to do when sickness or emergencies occur, must compensate by the depth of his purse, or by the strength of his arm, for the defects of his skill. A blunt axe implies heavy blows and an aching arm; coarse work with a blistered hand. But “wisdom is profitable to direct.” Intelligence is as good as strength, and a little skill will save both time and materials, money and temper [Dr. J. Hamilton].
Even in the most righteous cause, great strength and determination of character will lead a man into many evils unless he has skill and prudence to guide him.
Mere force is blind, and must be directed to proper ends and uses by those who have the power to see.
The triumphs of man over the fierceness and strength of the brute creation, and over all the difficulties which nature places in his way, are the triumphs of mind.
Wisdom gives that fine edge to effort by which many difficulties, that otherwise offer a complete resistance, are easily cleft through.
Wisdom is the director of all forces which can be brought under the control of man. Without intelligent guidance, they cannot become effective for the best ends.