All right, beautiful now that our time is consecrated in prayer. Let's begin this third and final lesson. This lesson is entitled The Mysteries of Life. We've only had two previous lessons here on Ecclesiastes.
We're moving along quite well. The last lesson was The Vanities of Life. This is The Mysteries of Life. And I'm really just pulling that off from the couple of commentaries that I always recommend for you these great Catholic commentaries.
But you're really going to find here as we dive into these verses. We did chapters one through six, last lesson, now it's time for seven through 12. And what you find at the end of chapter six is a bit of a bridge, a segue, if you want to call it transitional verses, that help really connect these two halves of the book. So let me read here for you.
Chapter six versus 11 through 12. And I want to share with you a couple of different quotations here from some good commentaries that a lot of people recognize that this is a transition going on here. So we talked about this a little bit at the end of the last lesson, but it bears worth repeating. So chapter six, verse 11, the more words, the more vanity, and what is man, the better.
And that's really important. By the way, we're talking about the whole concept of what is better here as we get into chapter seven. But I interrupted myself. So the more words, the more vanity, and what is man, the better.
And there's a couple questions here. For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow. For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun? All right, now, of course, if you remember from the last lesson here, we talk a lot about vanity, the word, hevel, which is like breath or smoke or vapor or fog, or it's kind of like enigmatic, mysterious, and then we also talked about the expression under the sun, a whole bunch in the last lesson as well.
Now, in verse 12 here, there's these two questions. Who knows what is good for man while he lives in the few days of his life, and who knows what will be after him under the sun? Those are two questions that are going to be very, very important as we move into this second half of the book. So let me share with you a couple of quotes here.
Like I said, many people, many commentators, and scholars recognize there's a transition going on here in these couple of verses. So first, the Catholic study Bible says, these verses, chapter 6, verses 10 through 12, are transitional verses that form a bridge between the first half of the book and the second. Several themes developed in later chapters are introduced in this short section, for example, the limitations of man, the limitations of his knowledge, and the limitations of his lifespan, end quote. So ergo, I mean, that flows this title here, the mysteries of life, the Catholic study Bible gave this whole section that title as well, which I'm just following too.
So we have so many mysteries in life. We have the vanities of life, which we discussed at length in the last lesson. All right, so many things that he examined, six different subjects or categories or groupings of life that's just vain and passing away in mysterious. Well, there's a lot more mysteries going on here as well.
All right, so we don't really have, like we don't live forever, obviously. We don't know everything, obviously. We're not as wise as we could be as wise as you are, the more you realize you're not really all that wise. And we have so many different limitations.
So this is a really good little quote, I think, that I wanted to provide for you that helps to identify what's going on as we transition. Now I will read in the first footnote, I did provide another comment from the Navar Bible, which says, the first part of the book ends here with the lessons the preacher has drawn from what he has seen around him. Only these lessons can make man wise. I will fantasies with no basis in reality or of no avail.
What is is beyond man. He knows neither what can make him a better person or what will unfold from his future. He cannot force God who is so much stronger than himself to reveal the truth, end quote. And I really like that one as well, which is why I put it in the footnote right there.
We can't force God to do anything. God is God, we are not God. It's a really important thing to come to grips with in life. We don't really understand why life takes the turns that it does.
We don't really understand why the righteous people tend to suffer a lot or don't have the material blessings you would think that they would have or unrighteous wicked people seem to prosper or so many different things that we're gonna be talking about throughout this lesson here. So we can't force God, he's stronger than us. And he is strength itself. He is put all perfections he has at one at the same time, right?
So he is mercy, he is justice, he is power, he is knowledge, he is love. And if God doesn't reveal things to us, then we are simply called to just trust him and as we're gonna see multiple times here in this lesson to fear him. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That's one of the great hallmarks of the wisdom literature here.
So it's no surprise that Coheleth, the preacher, is going to call his readers as listeners, the assembly, to fear the Lord no matter what happens in the mysteries of life, all right? So those questions, who knows what is good and who can tell man what will be, this state's the limitations of our intelligence without the aid of divine revelation and unless God reveals to us either pride revelation, divine revelation can be private or public, but that's another topic of the time. Still, it must God reveals the reasons for things. We just have to trust him, all right?
So, and then of course, at the end of time, especially at the general judgment, much will be revealed to us and then we can sit down with Jesus, perverbally and ask him questions for eternity about what happened and why it happened. So these questions about the mysteries of life, he's really gonna tee this up a little bit before he died in chapter seven verse one. He's really gonna begin to question a lot of the wisdom of his culture. We'll talk a lot about what's called the doctrine of retribution.
Like I was saying a moment ago, typically you would find especially in the early stages of the divine revelation back in the Pentateuch. There's a lot about how well, if you do what God asks of you, if you obey him and follow the covenant, he sends a material earthly blessings. But if you break the covenant, if you disobey God and rebel against him, then you'll have all kinds of material and earthly temporal curses, right? Well, that doesn't always happen.
And the Job is again, I've spoken about Job before, there's a lot of parallels between Job and Ecclesiastes. Job recognizes that isn't always the case. And there's a lot of mystery behind it. Well, of course, Cohelith here in Ecclesiastes is going to ask a lot of those same questions.
So he questions a lot of traditional wisdom in these chapters, chapter seven through 12. And really the whole book as a whole. All right, so that's enough of a segue there. Now let's dive into chapter seven verse one, where he's going to examine what is better in life for man.
What you think is better for you isn't necessarily better for you. In fact, what you think is less beneficial might actually be more beneficial. So this whole section, chapter seven through eight, or as your Catholic, your Catholic and your Catholic and Christian Testament says, these are four areas in which we cannot know, right? And again, chapter six, verses 12, especially verse 12 asks, he's that nicely, well, what can we know?
Well, very, very little, so we should just fear God. So let me read some of this. You're going to see immediately, this is definitely questioning traditional wisdom. All right, chapter seven, verse one.
A good name is better than precious ointment and the day of death and the day of birth. They're like, what are you talking about? The day of death, better than the day of birth. Verse two, he goes on to explain, it's better to go into the house of mourning than to go into the house of feasting.
Well, that doesn't seem very wise, it doesn't make sense. But this is the end of all men and the living will be hard to it. Verse three, sorrow is better than laughter. For by sadness of countenance, the heart is made glad.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of Mirth. We'll just talk right there, those first four verses here. So we're beginning to address the questions, posed in chapter six, verse 12, by examining some things that again, don't seem to make sense according to traditional wisdom. What he's really talking about here, just to summarize this is, look, the whole book is all about recognizing our limitations, recognizing the heaviness, the vanity, the fleetingness, the enigmatic nature of life.
And so when you go to the house of mourning, when you go to a wake or a funeral or whatever it might be, that's actually really good for you. It's better for you to, because you're gonna realize how short this life really is. And when you begin to reflect on the fact that life is short and life is mysterious, and there's all kinds of twists and turns, life zigs when you think it should zag and all these different things, you're gonna recognize, whoa, hold on a second, I better actually really appreciate and be grateful for what I do have in life and not take it for granted. So there's a lot of wisdom actually in the house of mourning.
There's a lot of wisdom in sorrow, because you recognize what really matters in life. That's what he's getting at right here. And so he's kind of like inverting what you would normally think is, yeah, I'm gonna party it up, I wanna laugh, I want to feast and all this stuff, well hold on a second, if you do that too much. And of course he does recommend doing this within reason, this will say last time in the last lesson we talked about many times, they'll say it again in this lesson, it is important to eat and drink and be married, but you have to realize that that's not what life is all about.
The day of mourning, the day of death comes soon. And when you spend some time pondering that, you'll actually be more beneficial. All right, so then let's go on here verse five. Some more proverbs about what is better.
Verse five, it is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. That seems to make sense. Whereas the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools, this also is hevel. All right, so this goes on to talk about a bunch of different proverbial wise sayings about what is better versus what you think is not better for you.
And again, of course it's better for you to be, if you're wise to be rebuked, it's about what you can grow in your wisdom and grow in your virtue rather than if you're a fool, you can't take rebuked, you can't take fraternal correction. So in any case here, as this quote here, we'll say from the bar Bible, all these verses here, man can certainly see that there are things that are better than their contraries. But if he ponders the matter, he realizes that very often, the things that common sense tells him are less worthy can in fact benefit him more. End quote.
So that's a really good summary of what I'm sharing with you. Things that you think are less worthy, for example, rebukes and corrections, or going to awake or a funeral and pondering sorrow and all these things. They can actually benefit you more because at least in this particular instance, you might get more out of life and appreciate it more. Now as he goes through all of this, it's really verse one through 13 here, he concludes in 14, I'm gonna skip all the way down to verse 14 where he says, kind of as a summary, conclusion, in the day of prosperity be joyful and in the day of adversity consider.
God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. That's definitely answering back to chapter six verse 12. But his point here is after examining what is better for man versus what it may not be more beneficial for him. In the end, whether it's good or bad, whether it's that they have prosperity or that they have adversity, God is in control.
God directs everything according to his will. His providence is rooted in love. It has to be because God is love. So his will and his intellect and all of his actions throughout human history are always ordered toward the good, for our good and for his glory.
So his providence whether good things are bad things happen to us in life, whether it's a day of mourning or the day of feasting or whatever it may be, for example, his providence is mysterious. We may not completely understand it. It's certain uncontrollable, right, uncontrollable. We're not going to tell God to do this, that or the other thing.
Are there so many examples in scripture where you know, can the pot say to the pot or why have you made me that same Paul says? So everything happens according to his will. So when good days happen, praise God. When bad days happen, praise God.
Whether it's raining or whether it's sunny. Hey, God's made bold days and everything is going to happen according to what is good. That is a very fundamental subplot here in this book in all of scripture to trust him no matter what, no matter again, an ups and downs, a left and rights. So here's a quick little quote from St.
Thomas Aquinas who talks about God's power where he says, God's almighty power is in no way arbitrary. That's really important. It's sometimes hard to see life as completely ordered and structured and controlled by God. But it really truly is sometimes like this in arbitrary, but God is not arbitrary.
Anyways, I interrupted myself. God's almighty power is in no way arbitrary, St. Thomas says, in God power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, injustice, they're all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God's power, which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect.
All right, now the more we can rely on this book, not just understand it, but believe it and live it, truly the happier we're going to be and the more detached we're going to be from the twists and turns of life. Because again, remember I've entitled this entire lesson on ecclesiastes or title Bible study, a life of detachment. So we're detached from life because we're trusting in God and we're seeking his will and his provenance above all things. All right, so that's how this chapter seven begins.
All right, so then verse 15 and following then, he's going to talk about the righteous and the wise, which of course is a huge name in this entire book. All right, first he's going to talk about how, again, he's going to start questioning the doctrine of divine retribution. And remember just quickly, divine retribution, or just the retribution doctrine is if you're good, good things will happen to you. If you're bad, bad things will happen to you.
This is what Job's friends thought. This is why if you listen to the Bible study that I put together for you on Job, you're going to find this over and over again, Job's three friends can't get over their limitations of the doctrine of retribution. Job is suffering so badly because he must have sinned badly. And Job said, I haven't, you know, I haven't sinned in any way to deserve all of this.
And so Job questions this doctrine of retribution and really ecclesiastes as well. So again, he's questioning over and over again traditional wisdom in this book. So let's keep reading in verse 15. He says, in my vain life, I have seen everything.
There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life and his evil doing. Again, that doesn't make sense. Why do bad people prosper? They shouldn't prosper.
You would think according to God's provenance, you would think as a human being, if you do something absolutely wicked and horrific to the weak and the vulnerable and the innocent, then you should die on the spot, wouldn't you? That's what I would think. And there's nothing wrong with that. If you do something atrocious to the most innocent of society, you should die on a spot or be struck with some horrible, horrible punishment.
It doesn't happen. Often the wicked are prosperous and they're evil doing, but the righteous die. That doesn't make sense often to us. He goes on, you're not righteous over much and you're not making yourself over wise.
Why should you destroy yourself? You're not wicked over much, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this.
And from that, withhold not your hand for he who fears God shall come forth before them all. That's a really important line, verse 18. In questioning all of these things that happen to both the righteous and the unrighteous, he states that he who fears God, again, a hallmark statement of the wisdom literature, he who fears God shall come forth from them all. The righteous will be victorious through God in his own timing.
The unrighteous will not. Verse 19, wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than 10 rulers that are in a city. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and ever sends. Again, as the proverb says, a righteous man will fall seven times.
So it goes on in verse 21 following the same thing. So the point here is, no one is perfectly wise, no one is perfectly righteous. Everyone makes mistakes, save our Lord and our Lady. But it's another big conversation for another time.
But no matter what, everyone should fear God. And when you fear God, things will work out in the end. Maybe not in our timing, but it will work out in the end. All right, so that's a good example of him questioning traditional wisdom.
Well, here's another example of him questioning traditional wisdom from his culture when he talks about the wise men and what wise men do with regards to women, whether good women or bad women. Now this whole section here, I should state this. In verses 23 to 29, I mean everyone's tempted to skip over it because it's so difficult to understand the more commentaries you read, the more you understand how nobody really understands what Cohalef is saying right here in this section. We're gonna give it our best shot here because it is very, very difficult.
He's gonna question traditional wisdom, talking about cultures, concepts, and views of women here, especially as it's related to the quest of wise men. All right, so let me read this and then we'll dive into it and try to make sense of it. So chapter seven, verse 23. All this I have tested by wisdom.
And I said I will be wise, but it was far for me. Again, that's the point no one is perfectly wise. That which is far off and deep, very deep. Who can find it out?
So I turn my mind to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and to some of things and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness, which is madness. And I found more bitter than death, the woman whose heart is snares and nets and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the center is taken by her. Behold, this is what I have found says the preacher, Cohalef, adding one thing to another to find this up, which my mind has sought repeatedly, but I have not found.
One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found. Behold this alone, I have found that God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices. In other words, sought out many ways to be wicked. All right, this is very, very challenging.
I'm just gonna tell you that right now. And I still struggle to find a really good explanation of this, the more, like I said, the more commentaries you read, the more questions that you have. And, but what I did find, and I like a lot was the Navar Bibles commentary on this. The Catholic Study Bible says, basically what the Navar Bible does, but not as developed.
And you're gonna find some other references in the footnote, number four here, where you can consult if you have the time. All right, so what is going on here? Now, he's questioning traditional wisdom's views on women here. Just like he's questioning the doctrine of retribution, he is questioning the culture's view on women.
That seems to be what's happening here. So this quote from the Navar Bible, it's a little bit long, but I think it does a really great job summarizing it, so I wanted to share it with you and hopefully it'll give you some insights. Hey, this is Doc Neck. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample.
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