The Fool's Downward Spiral Text: Ecclesiastes 10:12-15
Introduction: Two Ways to Speak, Two Ways to Live
The book of Ecclesiastes is a long meditation on the nature of reality under the sun. The Preacher, Solomon, has shown us that without a reference point in Heaven, everything under the sun is hevel, a vapor, a chasing after the wind. But this is not a counsel of despair. It is a diagnosis that points to the only cure. The man who fears God can eat his bread with joy and drink his wine with a merry heart, because he knows that God has already accepted his works in Christ. He is anchored in eternity, and so he can properly enjoy the fleeting realities of time.
But the fool has no such anchor. He is his own anchor, which is to say he is adrift on a stormy sea, lashed to a millstone. The Preacher now turns his attention to one of the clearest diagnostic tools for distinguishing the wise man from the fool, and that is his mouth. How a man speaks reveals how he thinks, and how he thinks reveals who he worships. Is he oriented to the objective, created order established by God's Word? Or is he oriented to the chaotic, subjective turmoil of his own fallen heart? The mouth is the overflow valve of the soul. What is in the well comes up in the bucket.
Our text today gives us a stark contrast. It sets before us the gracious words of the wise man, which are a source of life and blessing, and the self-devouring words of the fool. And we are shown that the fool's speech is not static. It follows a predictable, degenerative course. It begins in simple folly, a kind of arrogant silliness, and it ends in what the text calls "evil madness." This verbal madness then translates into a life of utter futility, a weariness so profound that the fool cannot even perform the most basic tasks of civilized life. This is not just ancient wisdom literature; it is a spiritual diagnosis of our current cultural moment. We are surrounded by fools who are multiplying words, and who are so exhausted by their own rebellion that they cannot find their way to the city.
The Text
Words from the mouth of a wise man are gracious, but the lips of a fool swallow him up; the beginning of the words of his mouth is simpleminded folly, and the end of what comes from his mouth is evil madness. Yet the simpleminded fool multiplies words. No man knows what will happen, and who can tell him what will come after him? The labor of a fool so wearies him that he does not even know how to go to a city.
(Ecclesiastes 10:12-15 LSB)
Grace and Gluttony (v. 12)
The Preacher begins with the fundamental contrast.
"Words from the mouth of a wise man are gracious, but the lips of a fool swallow him up;" (Ecclesiastes 10:12)
The words of a wise man are "gracious." The Hebrew word here is chen, which means grace, favor, or charm. This is not about being superficially "nice" or avoiding hard truths. Grace is not sentimental fluff. Rather, gracious words are words that are fitting, that align with reality. They are words that bestow favor because they are spoken in conformity with the grain of God's universe. They build up, they bring order, they clarify. Think of the ultimate wise man, the Lord Jesus. It was said of Him that His hearers "were amazed at the gracious words which were coming from His mouth" (Luke 4:22). Yet these were the same words that often brought down the fury of the scribes and Pharisees. Gracious words are true words, spoken in love, at the right time. They are constructive. They are architectural.
In stark contrast, the lips of a fool "swallow him up." This is a startling image. The fool is not just undone by his words; he is eaten by them. His own mouth is a cannibal. This is the logical end of all autonomous, self-referential systems of thought. The fool despises the external standard of God's Word. He has no delight in understanding reality outside of himself; his only delight is in expressing his own heart (Prov. 18:2). His words, therefore, are not tethered to anything. They are a snake eating its own tail. He speaks to hear himself speak, to project his internal chaos onto the world, and the end result is that this verbal vomit consumes him. He falls into the pit that he dug with his own tongue. He is hung on the gallows he built with his boasts. He is poisoned by the venom of his own slander. His words create a world, and then that world collapses on top of him.
The Fool's Curriculum: From Folly to Madness (v. 13)
Verse 13 describes the fool's educational progression. He goes from bad to worse.
"the beginning of the words of his mouth is simpleminded folly, and the end of what comes from his mouth is evil madness." (Ecclesiastes 10:13)
The fool's speech has a definite trajectory. It begins as "simpleminded folly." This is the sort of baseline rebellion against God's order. It is the proud assertion of his own opinion against the revealed wisdom of God. It is the class clown phase of rebellion. He thinks he is clever. He thinks his cynical quips and dismissive sneers are a sign of sophistication. This is the folly that says in its heart there is no God, and then goes out and tries to prove it by acting the part.
But it does not stay there. The end of this road, the graduation ceremony from the fool's university, is "evil madness." The Hebrew word for madness here is holelut, which describes a raving, destructive insanity. This is what happens when a man rejects reality long enough and hard enough. His mind breaks. He is given over to a debased mind (Rom. 1:28). The folly, which began as a moral choice to suppress the truth, becomes an intellectual and psychological reality. He can no longer distinguish up from down, male from female, good from evil. He calls evil good and good evil. He is not just wrong; he is militantly, destructively, ravingly wrong. We are living in a generation that has taken its graduate-level courses in evil madness. When men parade their sin as pride, when they celebrate the mutilation of their bodies, when they insist that you participate in their delusions on pain of cancellation, you are witnessing the end of the fool's curriculum.
The Multiplication of Ignorance (v. 14)
Despite this clear progression into madness, the fool does not grow quiet. He grows louder.
"Yet the simpleminded fool multiplies words. No man knows what will happen, and who can tell him what will come after him?" (Ecclesiastes 10:14)
The fool "multiplies words." The less a man knows, the more he talks. Because his words are untethered from reality, there is no limit to them. He can generate endless streams of verbiage, endless utopian schemes, endless grievances, endless speculations. He is a fountain of nonsense. And the central arena for this multiplication of words is the future. "No man knows what will happen," the Preacher says, stating a basic tenet of creaturely humility. We are not God. We do not know the future. A wise man acknowledges this, and so he speaks with caution. He plans, he works, he trusts in God's providence, but he does not presume upon tomorrow (James 4:13-16).
The fool, however, rushes in where angels fear to tread. Because he has rejected the sovereign God who holds the future, he feels he must fill the vacuum with his own words. He becomes a firehose of predictions, anxieties, and godless prognostications. Think of our modern talking heads, our climate alarmists, our economic central planners. They are fools multiplying words about a future they cannot know, seeking to control a world they did not create. Their verbosity is a direct result of their atheism. If there is no God in charge, then someone has to talk, and the fool always volunteers for the job.
The Exhaustion of Futility (v. 15)
The final verse connects the fool's verbal madness to his practical incompetence. His rebellion is exhausting.
"The labor of a fool so wearies him that he does not even know how to go to a city." (Ecclesiastes 10:15)
All the fool's talk and all his misdirected effort lead to one place: utter weariness. "The labor of a fool so wearies him." This is not the good and honest fatigue that comes from a hard day's fruitful work. This is the soul-crushing exhaustion that comes from fighting against reality. It is the labor of Sisyphus, forever pushing a boulder uphill only to have it roll back down. It is the labor of shepherding the wind. Because his work is not done in submission to God, it is cursed with futility. It drains him, it empties him, it leaves him with nothing but the dust and ashes of his own wasted effort.
And the result of this wearying, futile labor is a profound disorientation. He "does not even know how to go to a city." A city, in the biblical mindset, is a place of order, community, culture, and commerce. It is a center of civilization. To know the way to the city is to know the basics of how to function in the world. But the fool, in his exhausted rebellion, has lost all his bearings. He is so consumed by his internal chaos and so worn out by his war against the way things are that he cannot navigate the most basic pathways of life. He is lost. He is incompetent. He cannot build, he cannot maintain, he cannot participate in the life of the community. He is a force of entropy, de-civilization. His folly not only swallows him up, but it renders him useless to everyone else as well.
Conclusion: The Wisdom of the Word
This passage lays out the path of the fool, a path that begins with proud words and ends in weary, disoriented madness. It is a grim picture, and it is the natural state of every man apart from the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are all born fools, speaking from the overflow of our rebellious hearts.
But God, in His mercy, has provided a way out. He has sent the one truly Wise Man, the Logos Himself, the Word made flesh. Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). His words are the ultimate gracious words, for they bring the grace of salvation. He speaks, and dead men live. He speaks, and the chaos of our sinful hearts is brought into glorious order. He speaks, and the evil madness of our rebellion is replaced by the glorious sanity of the gospel.
When we are united to Him by faith, our speech patterns are to be transformed. We are to put away the old foolishness and put on the new wisdom. Our words are no longer to be self-referential but God-referential. They are to be gracious, seasoned with salt (Col. 4:6). We are delivered from the wearying labor of folly and are enlisted in the glorious labor of building the City of God. We are no longer lost and unable to find our way. We have been shown the way, for Jesus is the Way. He leads us to that city whose builder and maker is God, and He gives us the gracious words and the joyful strength to walk the path all the way home.