Ecclesiastes
Chapter 10
Just as dead flies spoil a jar of perfumed oil, a small act of folly outweighs wisdom and honor.
The heart of the wise man guides him to the right; the heart of the fool guides him to the left.
When the fool is on the road, he goes the wrong way and tells everyone he meets: “There goes another fool.”
If the ruler gets angry with you, stay calm, because composure prevents many serious mistakes.
An evil I have found under the sun: rulers often make a mistake—
folly is praised to great heights, while wealthy men end up in the lowest places.
I have seen slaves riding horses, and princes walking like slaves.
He who digs a pit may fall into it, and a serpent may bite him who pierces a wall.
Those who quarry stones or split logs may get hurt.
If the axe is dull and the edge isn’t sharpened, you must strike more decisive blows; in all this, gain with wisdom.
But if the serpent refuses to be charmed and bites, what does the charmer gain?
A wise man’s words are gracious, but a fool’s words lead to his own ruin.
Folly marks the beginning of his speech and pure madness, then it ends.
Let him keep multiplying his words! (Man does not know what will happen, and who will let him know what comes after him?)
Any work tires out the fool; he doesn’t even know the way to town.
Alas for you, O land! If your ruler is a young man whose princes feast in the morning.
Happy is the land where the king is nobly born and where the princes eat at proper times, as suits the people, rather than being drunk.
Laziness in a person causes a ceiling to sag, and due to a person’s slackness, a house leaks.
A man prepares a meal for enjoyment; wine brings joy to life, while money is the solution to everything.
Even in your mind, do not curse the king; and in your bedroom, do not curse the rich, for the birds of the air may tell what you say, and winged messengers may make it known.
Commentaries
Various Proverbs.
The most distinctive feature of the wisdom texts in the Old Testament is that they are full of proverbs that, in most cases, are grouped without following a single theme, as if the most important thing is that they are sayings of the wise, regardless of whether they are systematically ordered.
Ecclesiastes shares this same fate, and this new section exemplifies it. The topics covered are very diverse: mistakes and successes, the mindset of the wise and the fool, relationships with authorities, and injustice in public service. In fact, if we removed 10:5-7, we could say that this text could belong to the book of Proverbs or any other classic Old Testament wisdom literature. Let’s look at some examples: we find echoes of 10:4 in Proverbs 8:2-5; 10:13 aligns with Proverbs 18:6-7; the powerless boy of 10:16 is mentioned in Isa 5:11; 10:20b is an existing proverb, and a similar one appears in the wisdom of Ahikar, a Mesopotamian text from the 6th century B.C.
In the Old Testament, there is a belief that the wise are those who, among many other qualities, have been able to gather and create numerous proverbs, which express wisdom gained from experience. Qohelet provides a good example of this in this section.
Reading this section, we realize our duty to deepen our understanding of life, not to merely expand our knowledge, but to become more sensitive to appreciating God’s ways throughout history.