Wisdom Incomprehensible (Ecc 7: 23-26)

WISDOM INCOMPREHENSIBLE (Ecc 7: 23-26):

After explaining the importance of self-realization for accepting others, the author says that he used his wisdom to test all of that. The author reflected over the happenings of life and learned lessons through his own feelings, thoughts and actions by analyzing. The author after much thinking and seeking realized that wisdom was beyond him, though he wanted to be wise. The author being king over Jerusalem and a wealthy being, he would surely enjoyed all sorts of training, knowledge and experience, still he knew that the wisdom is beyond comprehension as it comes from the almighty God who is incomprehensible, whose works are marvelous. Wisdom is not only beyond the author but also beyond all the human beings and the author states that it’s far off and most profound. The author’s wisdom seems to be insufficient to attain Godly wisdom, which is stated by himself rhetorically.

The author committed himself to understand, to learn, to search for wisdom and its explanations, and to understand the evil that is foolishness, stupidity, and delusion. Since the author himself found that wisdom is not perfection but the progression in life. The author commits himself to get familiarized as much as possible in rightly getting the meaning by learning and searching for wisdom and the explanations. The author also committed himself to know the wickedness of fools who don’t really think about the worth and values of their actions, the foolishness of the fools are mere stupidity, knowing not the consequences, which is madness.

The author after committed himself to know about wisdom and foolishness found something more bitterly than death, which is the woman whose heart is snares and nets and whose hands are fetters. The author acknowledges that a person who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. Even death could be easily digested as it has nothing after the event or point of time but a person who is caught to a relationship with a woman whose heart is full of imperishable things and foolishness, that person feels heartbreaking, which is more bitterly than death and he could not even come out of it for a stipulated time, due to the bond. But the person who wants to please God doesn’t live for a woman but for God and escapes her. Whereas the sinners put their values on something else and they are captivated by such women.

Stimulations for Self-Reflection:

1.    How the author tested all that he had?

2.    What does the author say to himself? Why?

3.    How the author explains or expresses Wisdom?

4.    What does the author turn?

5.    Why does the author turn his heart?

6.    How can we seek wisdom and explanations?

7.    How can we know wickedness and foolishness?

8.    What does the author find to be bitterer than death?

9.    Who can escape the woman whose heart is snares and nets?

10.    How can we please God?