The Dead End of Wisdom and the Deadliest Trap Text: Ecclesiastes 7:23-26
Introduction: The Limits of Human Reason
The book of Ecclesiastes is a divine revelation of what it is like to live in a world without divine revelation. The Preacher, Solomon, is a man who has been given a divine expense account to test every possible avenue of meaning "under the sun." He has pursued pleasure, wealth, legacy, and here, in our text, he pursues the highest good of the philosophers: raw, unaided wisdom. He is determined to figure it all out on his own terms, to map the cosmos with nothing but the power of his magnificent intellect. And the conclusion he reaches is not that he has succeeded, but that the map is infinitely larger than his ability to draw it. He hits a wall, a very firm wall, and on that wall is a sign that reads, "Thus far, and no farther."
Modern man needs to hear this more than anything. We live in an age that worships at the altar of human intellect. We believe that with enough data, enough processing power, enough peer-reviewed studies, we can solve the problems of the human condition. We think we can reason our way to utopia. But Solomon, a man with more horsepower between his ears than all the talking heads on cable news combined, tells us that this path is a dead end. Human wisdom, when it tries to be autonomous, when it cuts the cord from its Creator, doesn't lead to enlightenment. It leads to a profound and deep exhaustion. It leads to the discovery that the ultimate answers are "far away and exceedingly deep."
But the Preacher's investigation does not end in a simple shrug of agnosticism. His search for an explanation of reality leads him to a stark and visceral conclusion. In his quest to understand the nature of things, he stumbles upon the embodiment of anti-wisdom, the personification of folly. And he tells us that this discovery is more bitter than death itself. It is the trap of the strange woman, the woman whose heart is snares and nets. This is not a random, misogynistic detour. It is the practical, on-the-ground reality of where godless folly leads. It is where the wickedness of foolishness takes concrete, destructive form.
So we have two movements in this text. First, the intellectual dead end of autonomous reason. Second, the moral and spiritual death trap that is the alternative to God's wisdom. One is the vanity of trying to be your own god; the other is the bitter poison of serving other gods. And as we will see, the two are inextricably linked.
The Text
I tested all this with wisdom, and I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. What has been is far away and exceedingly deep. Who can find it? I turned my heart to know, to explore, and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the wickedness of foolishness and the simpleminded folly of madness. And I found more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is good before God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.
(Ecclesiastes 7:23-26 LSB)
The Intellectual Brick Wall (v. 23-24)
The Preacher begins with the honest report of a failed experiment.
"I tested all this with wisdom, and I said, 'I will be wise,' but it was far from me. What has been is far away and exceedingly deep. Who can find it?" (Ecclesiastes 7:23-24)
Solomon sets out with a noble resolution: "I will be wise." This is the cry of the philosopher, the scientist, the seeker of truth. He is not trying to be foolish; he is applying the full force of his created intellect to the task of understanding the "scheme of things." But what is his conclusion? "It was far from me." The more he learned, the more he realized he did not know. The horizon of knowledge receded the faster he ran toward it. This is the humility that true learning ought to produce, a humility that is entirely absent from the arrogant pronouncements of our modern intellectual class.
He describes reality as "far away and exceedingly deep." This is a beautiful, poetic admission of creaturely limitation. We are not God. We did not create the world, we were placed in it. We cannot stand outside of reality to get an objective, bird's-eye view of it all. We are in the stream of it. To use a different metaphor, we are like a man in a rowboat in the middle of the Pacific, thinking he can map the entire ocean floor with a ten-foot pole. The task is absurd. "Who can find it?" is not a question of despair, but a rhetorical question of profound theological importance. The answer is, "No mere man can."
This is the central crisis of all non-Christian thought. Without a transcendent God who has spoken, who has revealed the blueprint, all human attempts to create a totalizing worldview are doomed. You can be a materialist, but you cannot explain where matter came from or why it behaves with such remarkable consistency. You can be a rationalist, but you cannot justify the laws of logic you are using. You are, as Van Til would say, a child sitting on your father's lap, using the strength he gives you to slap his face. All autonomous thought is borrowed thought. Solomon, at the peak of his intellectual powers, runs face-first into this reality. Wisdom is not something you achieve; it is something you receive. And it must be received from the One who is not "far away," but who has drawn near and spoken.
The Moral Investigation (v. 25)
Having hit the limits of abstract wisdom, Solomon turns his attention to the moral landscape. He wants to understand the relationship between wisdom and ethics.
"I turned my heart to know, to explore, and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the wickedness of foolishness and the simpleminded folly of madness." (Ecclesiastes 7:25)
Notice the vocabulary. He is not passive. He "turned," "explored," "sought." He wants an "explanation," a rational account of things. And he specifically wants to understand the flip side of wisdom. He wants to know "the wickedness of foolishness." This is a crucial connection. In the Bible, foolishness is not an intellectual deficiency, like being bad at math. Foolishness is a moral category. It is a wickedness. The fool is not the man with a low IQ; the fool is the man who has said in his heart, "There is no God" (Psalm 14:1). It is a moral rebellion that then produces intellectual blindness.
He goes further, describing it as "the simpleminded folly of madness." Sin is not just wrong; it is insane. It is a form of madness to defy the living God upon whom you depend for your every breath. It is to saw off the branch you are sitting on. When you reject God's definition of reality and try to invent your own, you are stepping into a padded room of your own making. The entire project of secularism is an attempt to make this madness seem respectable, to dress it up in lab coats and judicial robes. But Solomon, the great investigator, sees it for what it is: utter insanity.
The Embodiment of Folly (v. 26)
The investigation into the madness of folly does not remain abstract. It finds its ultimate, most potent expression in a particular kind of person. And this discovery is devastating.
"And I found more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is good before God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her." (Ecclesiastes 7:26)
After all his searching, this is what he finds. More bitter than death. Think about that. Death is the great enemy, the final curse. And Solomon says there is something worse. It is the ensnaring woman. This is the same figure we meet over and over in the book of Proverbs, the "strange woman," the adulteress. She is the personification of the folly that Solomon has been investigating. She is the priestess of the cult of chaos.
Her description here is terrifyingly vivid. Her "heart is snares and nets." A snare is a hidden trap for a single creature. A net is for catching many. Her affections, her desires, her very core are instruments of entrapment. She does not love; she hunts. Her "hands are chains." Her touch, her embrace, does not liberate but enslaves. She promises freedom, excitement, and self-expression, but the end thereof is bondage. She is the embodiment of covenant-breaking. She has forsaken the guide of her youth and forgotten the covenant of her God (Proverbs 2:17). She represents a total rebellion against God's created order for life, for family, for sexuality, for everything.
Why is this experience "more bitter than death"? Because it is a living death. It is a death of the soul that precedes the death of the body. It is to be chained to your own sin, to be captured by your own lusts, to have your conscience seared and your honor destroyed. It is to trade the glory of God for a sty, and to find that you have become a pig. Solomon knew this bitterness firsthand, with his thousand wives and concubines who turned his heart away from the Lord. This is not abstract philosophy for him; it is autobiography written in tears.
But there is a glorious deliverance offered. "One who is good before God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her." Who is the one who is "good before God"? Is it the man who is sinlessly perfect? No, for Ecclesiastes has already told us, "there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins" (Ecclesiastes 7:20). The one who is good before God is the one who pleases God, the one who walks by faith. He is the one who fears God (v. 18). He is the covenant-keeper. He escapes, not because he is stronger or smarter than the sinner, but because God grants him the grace of escape. God delivers him.
The "sinner," in this context, is the covenant-breaker. He is the one who is walking in the folly of his own heart. He thinks he is the hunter, but he is the prey. He walks willingly into the trap because the bait looks so appealing. He is captured because he wants to be captured. He loves the darkness. His bondage is the just and fitting result of his rebellion.
Conclusion: The Wisdom from Above
So where does this leave us? Solomon's quest for autonomous wisdom ends at a brick wall. His investigation into folly leads him to a trap more bitter than death. This is the cul-de-sac of life "under the sun." If this is all there is, then the best we can do is learn to recognize the traps and hope we have the good fortune to avoid them.
But thanks be to God, this is not all there is. The failure of human wisdom is meant to drive us to the wisdom that is from above. The New Testament picks up precisely where Solomon leaves off. "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Corinthians 1:25). All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ (Colossians 2:3).
The strange woman, Folly, whose heart is snares and nets, is set in stark contrast to another woman in Scripture: the Bride of Christ, the Church. Folly is the harlot who lures men to their death (Proverbs 7). The Church is the Bride who calls men to life. Folly's hands are chains of bondage. Christ's hands, pierced with nails, are the instruments of our freedom. To be captured by the strange woman is a bitterness worse than death. To be captured by the love of Christ is a sweetness greater than life.
The escape route is not our own goodness, but God's grace. The one who pleases God escapes. And how do we please God? "Without faith it is impossible to please Him" (Hebrews 11:6). We escape the trap of folly by fleeing to Christ. We abandon our own attempts to be wise and we receive His wisdom as a gift. We confess the madness of our sin and we are clothed in His right mind.
The choice before every one of us is the choice that was set before Solomon. Will you pursue a wisdom that is "far from you," a wisdom that will exhaust you and leave you staring into the abyss? Or will you answer the call of the One who says, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest"? Will you be ensnared by the harlot of this world, or will you be embraced by the Bride of the King? One path is bitter death. The other is life everlasting.