Bird's-eye view
The Preacher, Qoheleth, having just concluded his grand experiment with pleasure and finding it to be empty, now circles back to reconsider the relative merits of wisdom and folly. He is like a man who has searched a large house for his keys and, not finding them, decides to go back to the first room to look again, more carefully this time. This section is a candid evaluation of the best the world has to offer, which is wisdom, and it sets that up against the worst, which is folly. The initial conclusion is just what you would expect: wisdom is better. But then the Preacher introduces the great equalizer, the great leveler of all human projects under the sun, which is death. And this reality throws his initial conclusion into a profound crisis. If the wise man and the fool share the same fate, what is the point of being wise? This leads him to a point of deep existential grief, hating life itself. But as is typical in Ecclesiastes, this despair is not the final word. It is a necessary stop on the road to a much deeper, gospel-centered joy. The Preacher is showing us the absolute bankruptcy of all human systems of meaning before he points us to the only one that holds.
This passage forces us to confront the limits of human reason and the stark reality of our mortality. It is a severe mercy, dismantling our idols of intellect and self-reliance. The Preacher is not an ancient nihilist; he is a diagnostician. He is showing us the sickness in order to make us desperate for the cure. The vanity he describes is not that life is meaningless, but that it is a vapor, a puff of smoke you cannot grasp. And only the man who fears God can learn to enjoy this vapor as a gift, not as a wage.
Outline
- 1. The Preacher's Investigation Renewed (Eccl 2:12)
- a. A Return to Wisdom and Folly (v. 12a)
- b. The Limits of Human Endeavor (v. 12b)
- 2. The Apparent Advantage of Wisdom (Eccl 2:13-14a)
- a. Wisdom as Light, Folly as Darkness (v. 13)
- b. The Wise Man Sees, the Fool Stumbles (v. 14a)
- 3. The Great Equalizer: A Common Fate (Eccl 2:14b-16)
- a. The Shared Destiny of Death (v. 14b)
- b. The Preacher's Personal Crisis (v. 15)
- c. The Oblivion of a Shared Forgetfulness (v. 16)
- 4. The Resulting Despair (Eccl 2:17)
- a. Hating Life Under the Sun (v. 17a)
- b. The Grievous Nature of Toil (v. 17b)
Commentary
Ecclesiastes 2:12
12 So I turned to see wisdom, madness, and simpleminded folly. What will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done?
So I turned to see wisdom, madness, and simpleminded folly. After his foray into hedonism, the Preacher pivots. The Hebrew for "turned" indicates a deliberate shift in perspective. He is going to give these three things a hard look. He sets up a three-way comparison: wisdom, which is skill in living; madness, which is a kind of reckless, high-handed rebellion; and folly, which is the dull, thick-headed stupidity of the man who refuses to see. This is not a detached philosophical inquiry. He is looking at real ways of life.
What will the man do who will come after the king except what has already been done? This is a crucial statement about the limitations of the human condition. The Preacher, Solomon, is a king with unparalleled resources. He has done it all. Anyone who comes after him, trying to run the same experiment to find meaning in life, is just going to be repeating his work with fewer resources. It is a rhetorical question that says, "Listen to me. I have run this experiment to its conclusion so that you don't have to." He has taken this project as far as any man can, and so his conclusions are authoritative for all of us who live "under the sun." There is nothing new to try.
Ecclesiastes 2:13
13 And I saw that there is an advantage in wisdom over simpleminded folly as light has an advantage over darkness.
And I saw that there is an advantage in wisdom over simpleminded folly... The Preacher is no fool. He is not a relativist. He begins with the common-sense, observable reality. Of course wisdom is better than folly. To deny this would be to engage in the very folly he is critiquing. Wisdom helps you navigate the world. It helps you build a house, run a business, and raise your children. Folly will ruin all those things. The advantage is real and tangible.
...as light has an advantage over darkness. The comparison could not be more stark. This is not a small advantage. It is the difference between seeing where you are going and stumbling into a ditch. Light reveals, it clarifies, it makes life possible. Darkness conceals, it confuses, it is the realm of danger and death. In the here and now, on a purely practical level, wisdom is vastly superior.
Ecclesiastes 2:14
14 The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that the fate of one becomes the fate of all of them.
The wise man’s eyes are in his head... This is a classic Hebrew idiom. It means the wise man is perceptive. He sees what is in front of him. He anticipates consequences. He lives in reality. He is not governed by wishful thinking. His wits are about him.
...but the fool walks in darkness. The fool, by contrast, is blind. He might have perfectly good eyes, but he does not use them. He stumbles through life, crashing into problems of his own making, oblivious to the dangers he creates for himself and others. He is morally and intellectually in the dark.
And yet I know that the fate of one becomes the fate of all of them. Here is the pivot. This is the great "but" that changes everything. Despite the immense practical difference between the wise man and the fool, one great reality overrides it all. The word for fate here is miqreh, which means "an occurrence" or "what happens to" a person. And what is that one event that happens to everyone? Death. The wise man, for all his perception, cannot see his way around the grave. The fool, for all his stumbling, eventually stumbles into the same grave. Death is the great equalizer.
Ecclesiastes 2:15
15 Then I said in my heart, “As is the fate of the fool, so will my fate be also. Why then have I been extremely wise?” So I said in my heart, “This too is vanity.”
Then I said in my heart, “As is the fate of the fool, so will my fate be also." The Preacher internalizes this truth. This is not an abstract problem for him. He, the wisest of men, will die just like the village idiot. The worms will make no distinction. This is a profound crisis. If the end is the same, what value does the journey have?
Why then have I been extremely wise? This is the cry of a man whose operating system has just crashed. "What was the point?" All his effort, all his study, all his careful living, all his striving for wisdom, it all seems to have been for nothing. If wisdom cannot solve the ultimate problem, the problem of death, then what good is it, really? He is questioning the ultimate utility of wisdom.
So I said in my heart, “This too is vanity.” And here is his conclusion. The pursuit of wisdom, considered as an ultimate source of meaning, is also hebel. It is smoke. It is a chasing after the wind. You cannot grasp it and make it save you. Worldly wisdom, even at its very best, is a vapor that dissipates at the tombstone.
Ecclesiastes 2:16
16 For there is no remembrance of the wise man along with the fool forever, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how the wise man dies with the fool!
For there is no remembrance of the wise man along with the fool forever... The Preacher adds another layer to the problem. Not only do they die the same death, but they share the same oblivion. One might hope that the wise man would at least be remembered, that his legacy would endure. But the Preacher, looking at the long stretch of human history, says no. Given enough time, everyone is forgotten. The memorials crumble. The books turn to dust. The names are erased.
...inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten. The river of time washes everything away. A few generations, perhaps, and then the memory fades into nothing. This is a brutal assessment of fame and legacy from a man who had more of both than anyone.
And how the wise man dies with the fool! This is an exclamation of grief and astonishment. The word "how" expresses a kind of bewildered sorrow. How can this be? How can it be that the man who lived so carefully ends up in the same place as the man who lived so recklessly? It is a protest against the seeming injustice of it all, the futility of it all, from this side of the grave.
Ecclesiastes 2:17
17 So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is vanity and striving after wind.
So I hated life... This is the bottom. When the best that humanity has to offer, wisdom, fails to deliver on its promise of ultimate meaning, the result is despair. This is not a passing frustration; it is a deep, settled hatred for a life that seems like a cruel joke. He is not suicidal, but he is looking at the whole enterprise of life under the sun and finding it repulsive.
...for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is vanity and striving after wind. The word "grievous" means evil or calamitous. All the striving, all the building, all the learning, it all feels like a heavy, meaningless burden. Why? Because it is all hebel. It is all an attempt to bottle the wind. You wear yourself out for a lifetime, and at the end, your hands are empty. This is the necessary end of all attempts to build a tower to Heaven on the plains of Shinar. It must end in confusion and despair.
Application
So what are we to do with this? First, we must let the Preacher's diagnosis sink in. He is telling the truth about life "under the sun." If you try to find ultimate meaning in your wisdom, your career, your legacy, or your pleasures, you are building on sand. Death and decay will wash it all away. This is not pessimism; it is realism. This is the world as it is after the fall. It is subject to futility (Rom. 8:20).
But for the Christian, this is not the end of the story. This despair is the black velvet on which the diamond of the gospel shines. The Preacher shows us that wisdom under the sun cannot save us, precisely so that we will look for a wisdom that is from above. Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). He is the one who entered into our futility, who died the same death that the wise and the foolish die. But He did not remain in the grave. He broke the curse of death and forgetfulness.
Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our fate is not the same as the fool's. Our death is but a doorway into eternal life. Because of Christ, our name is not forgotten, for it is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Because of Christ, our labor is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). This is the key. The Preacher says all work under the sun is vanity. But the Christian works in the Lord. And that changes everything. The very same activities, eating, drinking, working, loving your spouse, that are vanity when done for their own sake, become holy and joyful when received as a gift from God and done for His glory. This book drives us to the precipice of despair so that we might learn to fly by faith.