Some readers might remember in John van Druten’s comedy of family life, I Remember Mama, how the daughter, Katrin, wanted desperately to write, but could not succeed until Mama brought her wisdom from writer Florence Dana Moorehead, "No one can write good until they have felt what they write about."1

I think there’s a lot of truth in that thought: we tend to write best what we have known or felt. So Solomon in Ecclesiastes has excellent advice for the youthful, because he followed God’s and his father’s advice during that period of his own life. But when it comes to midlife, he struggles. This is the period during which he gradually departed from the wisdom he had requested and received from God. Wasn’t he the Teacher known as the wisest person? He sought now for knowledge from the basis of his own "wise" thinking. So he moved deeper and deeper into puzzlement, frustration, and despair.

Ecclesiastes could not be Solomon’s father’s book. King David sinned, was made conscious of the depth of his sin by the prophet, and repented (Ps. 32; 51; 2 Sam. 12:13). He stumbled various times, yet throughout life King David remained serious about his relationship with God.

But Solomon in midlife and beyond spun out into his financially prosperous but spiritually futile self-directed escapades. Has God said, when you have a king, he "must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself"? (Deut. 17:16).2 Yes, but Solomon’s self-tutored wisdom says, in this situation we surely must need horses: "Solomon had four thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses" (1 Kings 4:26). He set up a business of importing and exporting horses and chariots (2 Chron. 1:17). Has God said that Israel’s king "must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray"? (Deut. 17:17). Yes, but in this situation King Solomon saw marriages to daughters of kings to be a special way to establish relationships with the reigning fathers, heathen though they were.

Besides, Solomon just plain "loved many foreign women." His "wives of royal birth," we recall, numbered seven hundred, with "three hundred concubines," as well. Think about the provisions necessary, the expense! (This may have had something to do with problems of secession after Solomon, see 2 Chron. 10.) God’s prediction through Moses came true: Solomon’s "wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods" (1 Kings 11:1–4).

In Ecclesiastes, we find Solomon thinking about death. His departure will not be essentially different from that of someone of low estate, he concludes. He "can’t take it with him"; someone quite unworthy may inherit what the king with all his intelligence has managed to accumulate. He can’t peer through the darkness ahead to determine the future (Eccles. 2:14, 18–21; 10:14). All these thoughts are unsettling to him.

At some point, probably in old age, the king begins to recognize and accept certain truths about God and what to expect from him:

When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong. Although a wicked man commits a hundred crimes and still lives a long time, I know that it will go better with God-fearing men, who are reverent before God. Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow. (Eccles. 8:11–13)

In words that begin the final chapter, the Teacher is ready to admonish young people, "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth." Then in elegant poetry he describes what some commentators interpret as effects of aging that I see while working as chaplain in a nursing home: dimming eyesight, loss of hearing, fewer teeth to chew food. Getting old is no picnic! Verses 6 and 7 follow with beautiful metaphors that represent death, at which point

the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (12:7)

The assertion with which the book opened once again is affirmed:

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher.
"Everything is meaningless" (12:8).

All the wisdom the Teacher sought when not consulting with the Author of wisdom has proved empty.

One doesn’t find the word repent in the biblical record of King Solomon. However, the "knowledge" the Teacher imparted to the people, the "many proverbs" he searched out, "the right words" he carefully wrote (12:10), Ellen White sees as the king’s way of recording "for after generations the history of his wasted years with their lessons of warning" (Prophets and Kings, 79).

And so he wrote a book that he could write, based on pain, bitterness, joy, and insights, all of which he had fully felt, and from which through divine inspiration he distilled,

here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil. (Eccles. 12:13–14)

Visit Spectrum’s Message Board for an ongoing discussion of this quarter’s subject, "Ecclesiastes"

Notes and References

1. John van Druten, I Remember Mama in Three Comedies of American Family Life (New York: Washington Square, 1961), 93.
2. All Scripture references are from the New International Version.

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