"Who is really wise?" I was telling my wife a couple of days ago that when I was younger I was drawn to smart, intellectual people. Now that I’ve grown older I have come to a much deeper appreciation of wisdom.

A couple of months back, one of my former professors sat across from me with tears in his eyes. He has just been through another health crisis that affected his academic performance. He had experienced a similar episode a couple of decades before, not long after he had been hired as an assistant professor in a medical school. "I used to publish three to four peer-reviewed articles a year; I was a very productive scholar," he explained. But since then, his academic performance has declined.

I could see sadness in his eyes. I asked how he had coped. The words he shared were filled with wisdom. "I have come to terms with it, and accepted it. I’m OK with it and I learn that in the end who we are is defined by God and only God and not what we have accomplished. It was a very difficult journey."

To him, all that we can do is to live our life to God’s glory. According to Solomon, "Still, I know with certainty that it will go well for those who fear God, because they fear him" (Eccles. 8:12). I thought he really was a wise person. But then I started to read Ecclesiastes 8 and I am not too sure that I know what "wise" really means. I read and reread this chapter over and over using different versions trying my best to grasp the meaning of this chapter.

So who really is wise? When I started reading verses 2–5, I thought that a wise person is someone who obeys the king because the king is in charge and he can do whatever he pleases. Verse 5 states, "Whoever obeys his commands will avoid trouble. The mind of a wise person will know the right time and the right way to act" (5).

But then there is verse 6. "Yet, a terrible human tragedy hangs over people." Verses 7 and 8 read, "They don’t know what the future will bring. So who can tell them how things will turn out? No one has the power to prevent the spirit of life from leaving. No one has control over the day of his own death. There is no way to avoid the war against death" (7–8). According to these two verses, even if we obey the king, there is no way for us really to know the future; there is no way to prevent death. A wise person therefore realizes the inevitable mortality of life.

If the sum of life is unpredictability and death, should we not pursue things that bring us pleasure and forget the rest? In anticipation of that question, Solomon writes, "A sinner may commit a hundred crimes and yet live a long life. Still, I know with certainty that it will go well for those who fear God, because they fear him. But it will not go well for the wicked. They will not live any longer. Their lives are like shadows, because they don’t fear God" (12–13). Solomon seems to suggest that even if wickedness brings good results in a quantitative sense, in the end it is the quality of the interior self that really matters. In the end, what we possess in our hearts counts the most.

Furthermore, it may not be expedient to practice righteousness for profit because, when it comes to spirituality, capitalism does not work. In verse 14 he writes, "There is something being done on earth that is pointless. Righteous people suffer for what the wicked do, and wicked people get what the righteous deserve. I say that even this is pointless" (14). When I first read this verse, my initial response was, "this does not sound pointless to me." If you do good, and reap bad things whereas bad people get what the righteous deserve, then why not engage in wickedness? Perhaps this sentence should be viewed with the understanding that in the end it is less important what we get than who we are. It is the quality of the interior life, according to Solomon, that is important.

Then came the conclusion, "So I recommend the enjoyment of life. People have nothing better to do under the sun than to eat, drink, and enjoy themselves. This joy will stay with them while they work hard during their brief lives which God has given them under the sun" (15). This, to me, is probably the most meaningful part of the chapter. Not only because I like to eat and enjoy myself, but also because the text has a deep spiritual lesson.

In the last verse of chapter 8, Solomon tells us, "then I saw everything that God has done. No one is able to grasp the work that is done under the sun. However hard a person may search for it, he will not find its meaning" (17). To paraphrase Solomon, if you think you understand the meaning of life, you understand nothing. Does this mean that a wise person knows that he or she does not know everything? Could it be that wisdom, in the final analysis, is not about what one knows but about what one does not know? I think Solomon is saying that just because you learn all these profound truths about life, it does not mean you are wise. You are just wiser.

What does it mean to be wise? It is wise to obey your king. But obeying the king cannot save you from the unpredictability of life and death. It is therefore wiser to accept our finiteness. But don’t give in to selfishness because it is wiser still to maintain personal integrity even in the face of our unpredictable mortality. And if you think the journey to wisdom ends here, you are still far from it. Wisdom is found in the embrace of mystery. The wise person does not really know. Those who think they really know are not very wise. So in the embrace of the mysterious unpredictable mortality of life the wise man recommends, let’s eat, drink, enjoy ourselves, and give glory to God—just as my former professor told me.

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