Our Ecclesiastes gives us a frustrated Solomon looking high and low for wisdom, or understanding of why the world does what it does, we keep in mind here that Solomon was an incredibly learned man, well schooled in the arts, the philosophies and sciences, he was basically the Einstein of his generation, and was also a King.
Regardless of all of these bonafides, Solomon was still unable to unlock the mysteries of the world as he tells us us today
Ecc 7:23 I have always tried my best to let wisdom guide my thoughts and actions. I said to myself, “I am determined to be wise.” But it didn’t work.
Ecc 7:24 Wisdom is always distant and difficult to find.
Ecc 7:25 I searched everywhere, determined to find wisdom and to understand the reason for things. I was determined to prove to myself that wickedness is stupid and that foolishness is madness.
We bear in mind here that wisdom is equated to righteousness or living in fear of the Lord, in essence; living without sinning. Solomon found this an impossible task, and looking at Solomon’s life, Solomon may have seemed wise, but just like us, he was born under the curse of Adam. Even at the end of Solomon’s life, he broke God’s law and fornicated with women from different pagan nations, keep in mind that according to Moses’s law, the tribes of Israel were expressly forbidden to co-mingle with these surrounding nations like Canaan, they were up to some real nasty business, some even made child sacrifices to their gods.
Yet, Solomon knew of these commands and still disobeyed them, and what’s worse, is that back then, some of these women that Solomon laid with got Solomon himself worshipping these false gods – which Is a direct violation of one of the Ten Commandments (thou shalt hold no other gods before Me)
At any rate, at the end of his life when Solomon wrote this book, he was bewildered by being so studious and still missing the forest through the trees, as he says, wisdom is always distant and difficult to find.
Fast forward to today and we have all sorts of people that are trying to sell us pills, philosophies, enlightenment and material items that are supposed to make us happy or wiser, yet at the end of the day, without Christ, we are just as lost as Solomon was.
Tying it altogether, man is born with that original sin, just like Solomon was when he sinned with his idolatrous mistresses or even his dad David when he stole Uriah’s wife…we too have that sin that makes us stray far and wide from God’s path…the only true enlightenment and wisdom out there is the humbling. divine power of the Gospel that reveals how broken we are, how we can never get it right, no matter how hard we try, and to submit ourselves to Jesus who did get it right, the only perfect One who was without sin, and He took our sin and made us right with God.
