How It All Adds Up

The Futile Search for Virtue
Ecclesiastes 7:23-29
2007.10.14
one28 Sunday worship

There are math people and there are non-math people; math lovers and math haters. I am a math hater. I have never liked math or anything connected to math. I’ve always taken issue with algebra and geometry and word problems and equations and x and y. Math is perpetually difficult for me to figure out. I hardly ever come to the right conclusion, and even when I do, I can never demonstrate how it all adds up.

Much of life is like a math problem. You hear two sides to the same story and it’s like taking two sides of an equation and figuring out how to match them together. You may be certain that they don’t fit, that things just don’t add up.

And in the last part of Ecclesiastes 7 the Preacher informs us of his investigation into how life adds up. He tells us about some things he couldn’t figure out and other things that he could.

What Solomon Couldn’t Figure Out (vv.23-24)

23 All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. 24 That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?

Solomon didn’t do or say anything without thinking about it or without applying his wisdom to it. The entire book of Ecclesiastes has been a revelation of his wise search for the meaning of life under the sun. In chapter 7 he’s pumped out no less the wisdom, even as he told us in the previous paragraphs (verses 15-18 and 19-22) to enjoy life while fearing God and to humbly get wisdom.

As he moves into a new section he says, All this I have tested by wisdom. He didn’t just assume or guess or imagine, he jumped in and tested and observed the results. All this applies to what he already said and I think it also covers the next few verses (especially since the word find is used numerous times in vv.25-29).

However, there were still limitations of Solomon’s wisdom even though he was blessed by God with more wisdom than anybody else ever. But he still didn’t get it all. Verse 23 continues, I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. This is the preacher’s personal determination and disappointment. He wanted wisdom, but wisdom was far from me.

The explanation continues in verse 24. That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? His rhetorical question implies that some things are beyond comprehension. It is hard to get below the meaning of things; wisdom is deep, very deep. We can observe things at the surface, the what that happens, but the why is deep.

This should stop us in our tracks. If Solomon says some things were far from his understanding, then we need a healthy dose of humility in our own minds. Though we have our own completed copies of God’s Word and though we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit in a way unlike Solomon, let us not think that we’re going to excel him in wisdom (not to mention the fact that too many of us are unfamiliar with Scripture and infrequently walking in the Spirit).

I think this is the whole point for this paragraph. In the previous paragraph he was telling us about the benefits of wisdom with humility. Even Solomon had to be humble, so should we be.

So there are at least some things in life that we may never completely understand even when we devote ourselves to figure them out.

What Solomon Did Figure Out (vv.25-29)

Though there were limitations, there were also some things that Solomon did figure out.

His Search v.25

25 I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness.

Look at the verbs of vigor he piles on top of each other as he talks about his pursuit. He aimed his heart to know and to search out and to seek. While he’s mentioned each one of these already in the book, his repetition of them here highlights that these findings were not a result of sloppy inspection or shoddy research, let alone just bitter musings and complaining from a grumpy old guy. His scrutiny was intense and methodical and thorough.

He says he wanted to know the scheme of things. He repeats the exact phrase in verse 27, so it’s obviously a key to the paragraph. The Hebrew word for scheme is a mathematical term meaning “to reckon” or “to calculate” (and the reason for the title of this message). In Ecclesiastes it refers to how the world works, to the sum of things. The Preacher wants to know how it all adds up. He’s trying to get behind the scene and figure out what makes the world go round; what makes things tick.

But the search is more specific than that. It isn’t just what makes the world go round that he’s after. He’s searching out an understanding of the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. There are more translation suggestions and interpretation possibilities than you care to know. Suffice it to say, the pursuit he’s making in this paragraph is focused on learning wisdom from its contrast in wickedness and foolishness.

His Findings (vv26-29)

The key word repeated in these four verses is “find” or “found” (used 7 times) and there are three subjects that he added up.

1. The Agony of Entrapment v.26

The first discovery is described in verse 26.

26 And I find something 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 sinner is taken by her.

None of these findings are pretty. Of course, he wasn’t investigating where bunnies and flower blossoms come from. Nevertheless, he describes this discovery before defining it. He characterizes it as something more bitter than death. He’s said some fairly unpleasant things about death so far in Ecclesiastes, though he also acknowledged that death is sometimes better than a miserable life.

Here’s a fast track to a miserable life: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. There are some who think this applies to any and every woman, and based on a superficial reading of what Solomon says in verse 28 we might be tempted to think that. But we’d be wrong. The woman Solomon refers to is a particular kind of woman and she’s identified by her heart: a seducing, entrapping heart.

She is like the “strange woman” or the “foreign woman” or the “adulteress” mentioned multiple times in the book of Proverbs. This kind of woman is a seductress; today we might refer to her as a prostitute.¹ Solomon had many things to say about that kind of woman, so it is interesting that he uses the normal word for “woman” here in verse 26. Perhaps it is best to think that the strange woman is an example of a woman whose heart is entrapping, though the reference here is broader.

There are women who trap and who make life bitter and miserable. They are like hunters.

And note the parenthetical thought at the end of verse 26: He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. This is not how men think. They think they are free and clear when in fact just the opposite is true. They are like the ox who thinks he’s being taken for a pleasant stroll, all the while he’s being led to the slaughter. The being seduced is punishment, or at least part of it according to verse 26.

Immoral men tell themselves they are escaping God’s restrictions at the very moment when they are falling into the trap which He has set for them. (Wilson, p.87)

It is part of God’s abandoning wrath where He gives men what they wanted. This truth is found also in Proverbs 22:14

The mouth of forbidden women is a deep pit;
he with whom the LORD is angry will fall into it.

Only when it’s too late do they realize they weren’t free at all. But the one who pleases God is protected by God from the agony and bitterness of entrapment.

2. The Scarcity of Virtue vv.27-28

Verses 27-28 reveal Solomon’s second discovery.

27 Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things— 28 which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found.

In verse 27 he repeats his quest and introduces us to his next finding. He was adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things, in other words, this was an inductive approach. He was putting two and two together to see how they added up.

This was apparently not something he did once or on occasion, it was an ongoing search since verse 28 says his soul has sought repeatedly. But in this particular exploration he kept coming up empty, I have not found. Then, still without telling us explicitly what he was looking for, he tells us what he found: one man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found.

This passage ticks off a lot of women and you might imagine that in our day most people are put off by that kind of statement. But first of all, I don’t think the only option is to see Solomon as an anti-feminist. Besides, we don’t even know what to be mad about yet.

There is some question about what Solomon was looking for. I am convinced in light of verse 29 that what he was looking for, and what he did not find, was men and women who were upright, men and women of virtue. In verse 29 men are no longer “upright,” and the flow of argument suggests that Solomon was looking for upright men and women.² They were almost nonexistent.

So he was looking for uprightness, for virtue. Solomon said One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. Like I said, I don’t think this is necessarily anti-feminist. This is, after all, Solomon’s report. Isn’t it possible that virtue really was this scarce? And don’t you think he was frustrated by what he allowed women to do to him in his own life? There were some thousand women in his harem, wives and concubines, and apparently none of them were noble. And don’t miss that one in one thousand is not really that positive for male virtue either.

He was speaking from experience, and the emphasis isn’t what he found, it’s what he found missing: virtue. I was trying to think what it would be like to read this in Solomon’s day. Probably the first people to read it would have been near the king, part of his palace crew, part of the king’s court.

And you know, I bet there were a bunch of them read through the paragraph we studied last week about not being overly righteous and about the importance of fearing God and getting wisdom, and I bet most of those people were thinking to themselves, “That’s me. I’m not one of those.” And then they get to this–yes they were. They were guilty and without virtue. Solomon found that virtue was scarce.

3. The Irony of Corruption v.29

Here is the third discovery that the Preacher made.

29 See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.

This is the third and ultimate finding, this alone I found. When you add it all up, men are perverse and the current state of things is all due to man’s own fault.

God made man upright. This goes all the way back to Genesis 2. The word upright means to be right, to have moral excellence, to be honest, to do good, to be virtuous. God created Adam and he was upright. But Adam sinned and all humanity was plunged into sin and guilt.

Even though men were made upright, they have sought out many schemes. This is not only a reference to the fall, it is a description of total depravity. The grand total is that men are not upright.

• The corruption is universal (they = man = all humanity after Adam)
• The corruption is deliberate (they sought out many schemes)
• The corruption is deviant (they sought out many schemes)
• The corruption is diverse (they sought out many schemes)

Conclusion

Can we talk for a second about why this section is so important? Ecclesiastes 7:23-29 gives:

• an explanation of our world

The reason the paper is filled with bad news is because men are not upright. It isn’t surprising because left to themselves all men deliberately pursue diverse forms of disobedience.

• an indictment on our sin

The most important thing we can learn from this paragraph is that we are guilty. We are without virtue. We are not upright. It is necessary for us to get this because if we don’t, we won’t fear God. And if we don’t fear God, we will miss joy in this life and find punishment in eternity.

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