Command the Raven

Ecclesiastes 1:13 [show/hide]Ecclesiastes 1:13 [13]And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. (ESV)

And I applied my heart and mind to seek and search out by [human] wisdom all human activity under heaven. It is a miserable business which God has given to the sons of man with which to be busied. [Amplified]
Ecclesiastes 2:8 [show/hide]Ecclesiastes 2:8 [8]I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the children of man. (ESV)

I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of provinces ….. Concubines very many. [1 Kings 9 [show/hide]1 Kings 9 The LORD Appears to Solomon [9:1]As soon as Solomon had finished building the house of the LORD and the king's house and all that Solomon desired to build, [2]the LORD appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. [3]And the LORD said to him, "I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. [4]And as for you, if you will walk before me, as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, [5]then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, 'You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.' [6]But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, [7]then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. [8]And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, 'Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?' [9]Then they will say, 'Because they abandoned the LORD their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the LORD has brought all this disaster on them.'" Solomon's Other Acts [10]At the end of twenty years, in which Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the LORD and the king's house, [11]and Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold, as much as he desired, King Solomon gave to Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee. [12]But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the cities that Solomon had given him, they did not please him. [13]Therefore he said, "What kind of cities are these that you have given me, my brother?" So they are called the land of Cabul to this day. [14]Hiram had sent to the king 120 talents of gold. [15]And this is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon drafted to build the house of the LORD and his own house and the Millo and the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer [16](Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and captured Gezer and burned it with fire, and had killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and had given it as dowry to his daughter, Solomon's wife; [17]so Solomon rebuilt Gezer) and Lower Beth-horon [18]and Baalath and Tamar in the wilderness, in the land of Judah, [19]and all the store cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion. [20]All the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the people of Israel-- [21]their descendants who were left after them in the land, whom the people of Israel were unable to devote to destruction--these Solomon drafted to be slaves, and so they are to this day. [22]But of the people of Israel Solomon made no slaves. They were the soldiers, they were his officials, his commanders, his captains, his chariot commanders and his horsemen. [23]These were the chief officers who were over Solomon's work: 550 who had charge of the people who carried on the work. [24]But Pharaoh's daughter went up from the city of David to her own house that Solomon had built for her. Then he built the Millo. [25]Three times a year Solomon used to offer up burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar that he built to the LORD, making offerings with it before the LORD. So he finished the house. [26]King Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, which is near Eloth on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. [27]And Hiram sent with the fleet his servants, seamen who were familiar with the sea, together with the servants of Solomon. [28]And they went to Ophir and brought from there gold, 420 talents, and they brought it to King Solomon. (ESV)
: 28; 10: 10, 14, 21].
Ecclesiastes 6:12 [show/hide]Ecclesiastes 6:12 [12]For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun? (ESV)

For who [limited to human wisdom] knows what is good for man in his life, all the days of his vain life which he spends as a shadow [going through motions, but accomplishing nothing]? For who can tell a man what will happen [to his work, his treasure, his plans] under the sun after he is gone?

The “wisdom” of Proverbs is not the “wisdom” of Ecclesiastes. The former is Godlike, the latter is usually human.

Throughout this book not once is the Supreme Being recognized as “Lord” [of lord and King of kings].

The word used to designate Him is invariably the one that may be applied to God or to idols – “Elohim,” the God recognized “under the sun.” The wisdom which is thus limited can end only in “miserable business” and vexation of spirit until it fins “the wisdom that is from above” [James 3:17 [show/hide]James 3:17 [17]But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (ESV)
], “the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world for our glory” [1 Cor. 2:7 [show/hide]1 Corinthians 2:7 [7]But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. (ESV)
].

Solomon’s reign began under most promising conditions: “he loved the Lord and walked in the statutes of David his father….. the people feared him, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do judgment.”

But soon his own “wisdom” alone was guiding him. He openly affronted God by taking many wives, even heathen women. They seduced him into intoleration or practice of idolatry [1 Kings 11:1 [show/hide]1 Kings 11:1 Solomon Turns from the LORD [11:1]Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, (ESV)
].

The divine purpose of including Ecclesiastes in the Bible is obvious. It gives a startling picture of how fatal it is for even the wisest of men to substitute man’s wisdom for God’s wisdom and attempt to live by it. Solomon’s reign began with God, gold and glory.. It ended with bafflement, brass and bewildered acceptance of man’s having “no-eminence above a beast”! – man, who was made “in the image of God” and “but a little lower than God” or “the angels” [Gen. 1:27 [show/hide]Genesis 1:27 [27]So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
; Ps. 8:5 [show/hide]Psalm 8:5 [5]Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.
with the margin, ASV]. [Eccl. 3:19 [show/hide]Ecclesiastes 3:19 [19]For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. (ESV)
, Amplified}

[According to the Septuagint and Syriac reading.] Jesus recognized the unprecedented glory which Solomon’s human wisdom had brought him, but He said that Solomon arrayed in all of it was not equal in glory to one tiny lily of the field – which God’s wisdom had made [Matt. 6:29 [show/hide]Matthew 6:29 [29]yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (ESV)
].

How impressive throughout Ecclesiastes is the evidence that, while Solomon is doing his utmost to prove that life is futile and not worth living, the Holy Spirit is using him to show that these conclusions are the tragic effect of living “under the sun” – ignoring the Lord, away from God the Father, oblivious of the Holy Spirit – and yet FACE TO FACE with the mysteries of life and nature ! [Amplified Bible]