Sermon: Ecclesiastes Resumed (Part Thirty-Six): Ecclesiastes 10:5-11

Errors and Accidents
#1791
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 16-Nov-24; 73 minutes 2024-11-16

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Back in the 1980s, during the first Reagan administration especially, a term became a household word because it lay at the heart of a vigorous debate over the nation's finances. And that word, actually a phrase, is "trickle down economics." It was the heart of Reaganomics, also known as "supply side economics." And Reaganomics itself was based on the Laffer Curve. I do not know if you have heard that. It was developed by economist Arthur Laffer in 1974. And what Laffer had come up with was a bell curve that showed how tax cuts could stimulate the economy by ultimately expanding the tax base. As Kimberly Amadeo of the Balancemoney.com, an online personal finance library, writes in her article, "Would Reaganomics Work Today?":

Tax cuts reduce the level of federal taxation immediately. These same cuts have a multiplier effect on economic growth. Tax cuts put money in consumers' pockets, which they spend. That stimulates business growth and more hiring. The result? A larger tax base. Reaganomics was consistent with the theory of supply side economics. It states that corporate tax cuts are the best way to grow the economy. When companies get more cash, they should hire new workers and expand their businesses. It also says that income tax cuts give workers more incentive to work, increasing the supply of labor. That's why it's sometimes called trickle down economics.

Now, I am less interested in the economic theory of trickle down economics than in the overall principle of trickle down effects, the principle rather than the theory. Trickle down economics or trickle down effects are a natural corollary of the law of cause and effect, which works in every facet of human activity. And even in physics, there is an action and there is an equal and opposite reaction. There is always some kind of effect that is going to happen from a cause. So something happens, it could be anything. It does not matter who does it, where he does it, when he does it, but something happens and it does not occur in a vacuum. There are other things around, other people, nations, anything, small or large, it occurs in an environment and something else must give, something must respond, something must resist or react. It is just a natural thing. Nothing happens without causing another reaction and it causes effects down the line. That is just how things work.

That is why when a person believes he has sinned and no one knows, he is caught later on finding out that actually his sin was not as invisible as he thinks it was because there are other spiritual laws at work.

Now, we can imagine what I am talking about, this original cause let us say, the thing that causes all the dominoes to tumble on down the line—we can think of it as lake or river water breaking through a dam. That is the cause. The cause is this water moved at such a rate or eroded the dam so much that it broke through. That is the cause. And then the water flows rapidly downstream. It is a gusher coming out of that dam and then it cannot but alter the landscape downstream. Whatever that water flows through, it changes things, things are altered.

Let us go, if you will, to Proverbs the 26 chapter. There is a verse here that essentially explains this in a few words.

Proverbs 26:2 Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not alight.

It is saying here that if one feels cursed or one is cursed, there is a reason for it. But this is telling us that things happen for a reason. And we need to understand that there are things behind the things that are happening and sometimes they happen to you and you are innocent of them, you are just a bystander. And that happens all the time, as we will see as we go on here. Sometimes you are a cause, you are part of the cause that this curse comes and that is more serious and we have to take a lot of things into account there. But this verse is telling us in a general way that things happen for a reason. And we can probably go back through the chain of events and find out what the cause was.

Now in society, events or changes often make their way down in a hierarchical manner; that they will start at the top, let us say in government, and they will work their way down into and through society until it affects everybody in the country. And often, it is government affecting a company, a company selling products at higher rates, people buying them because they need them. But let us say, they are very expensive, and so it affects their budget and they cannot buy anything else because this is a necessity and people scream because the inflation rate is killing them. And you know, that could ultimately lose an election for somebody or it could cause a civil war.

There are lots of things that a small change in government could cause way down the line and it tends to trickle down into society from a leader or a group of leaders, like a congress, until it affects just about everybody in the society.

What we see in Ecclesiastes 9:13 through 10:20, as I mentioned last time, is at least partially based on this trickle down principle. In this section, Solomon, Qoheleth as he is called, contemplates leadership and government and politics, and their effects on the nation and its people. It is not always that these things are political but there are always leadership principles that we can take. And a lot of these principles do not have to be political at all. The principles can affect you in your ordinary life. Because in almost every case, a person is a leader and these principles apply. We are also followers and they can come down on us, trickle down to us, and cause us to be affected that way.

Now, primarily, what Solomon is talking about here, considering for our benefit, are foolish leaders, foolish rulers, foolish laws, or foolish commands, and unfortunate situations the people are forced to bear because they are essentially powerless because these things have happened from above. They had no part in making the decision, in issuing the command, in whatever that made this foolish command or foolish ruler act that certain way. Yet, because of the trickle down principle, they, the people, are forced to bear these things, the brunt of them. They take the brunt of the negative results that follow these bad commands or foolish leaders; like they have to bear financial loss. In other cases, they have to bear oppression or they get involved in strife of some sort between, let us say, parties or factions of the government.

There are a lot of things that governments do which ultimately produce chaos because they are not thought out very well. And this would fall into the foolish commands or foolish law category. And of course, if they end up angering enough people, they are going to end in destruction, either through some sort of civil strife or war or what have you, criminality even. You know, they could go and really burgle Joe and he would have been totally innocent, but it came down because of something like this.

So in this section, Ecclesiastes 9:13 through 10:20, Solomon offers advice about how to react to such situations that you may find yourself in. Remember in chapter 10, verse 4, last time, where he tells those under authority to remain at their posts and do their foolish ruler's bidding in a placating manner. "Yes, Lord. Yes, sir. Whatever, I'll do it. I'll make sure that gets done." Because refusing to do it or quitting or pushing back against that command is futile and will only worsen matters. It is better to defer, it is better to comply because that creates peace.

Now, you have to worry about this in terms of as those of us who are over the sun, we have to worry about the ruler's command if it is legal, ethical, moral. And then we have to think about it more in depth about our response. We may be forced to sacrifice those things, sacrifice the job, say no, and face the consequences or whatever it happens to be. But we have to be wise in those matters because in those situations, we have no power. All we have is the power of God at our back and hopefully we have the faith to face what comes.

In chapter 10, Solomon continues to contemplate the problem of poor, foolish, immature, and misguided leadership, whether in a nation, a family, a company, or even a community group like a church. Under the sun, that is, in this world, cut off from God, subject to the limitations and anti-God bent of the knowledge of good and evil, we will face situations in which we must react or respond to foolish or inept leadership. And in this chapter, Solomon gives us pointers about the best way to handle these predicaments—and he does not cover every situation. Obviously, he cannot. Ecclesiastes would be a million chapters long. (And would that not be a long sermon series?) But he gives some overall principles that we can contemplate. We should think about these things before such situations happen and have them top of mind or as close to top of mind as we can, so when they happen, and they often happen very quickly and out of the blue, we can make the right decision, make the right choice, make the right moves to make sure that we mitigate the effect on us as much as possible.

Let us go to Ecclesiastes 10 and we are going to read verses 5 through 7. This is one section; like in my New King James, it is set off as kind of a paragraph here.

Ecclesiastes 10:5-7 There is an evil I have seen under the sun, as an error proceeding from the ruler: Folly is set in great dignity, while the rich sit in a lowly place. I have seen servants on horses, while princes walk on the ground like servants.

The situation in these verses is among the easiest for us to understand because we are very familiar with this, and that is, a leader makes a mistake. That happens all the time. Leaders are not infallible. They are very often very foolish. They do things without thinking, they do a lot of things because it is kind of a rote thing. They act or they say something and they really have not thought it through. There are a lot of reasons why leaders make poor decisions. We need to understand what kind of decision here or what kind of error Solomon is talking about.

The word in Hebrew for error here in verse 5 is segaga. It is a noun found 19 times in the Old Testament. In the sin and trespass offerings in Leviticus 4 and 5 it is used to indicate inadvertent or ignorant sin. Elsewhere, the Hebrew writers use it to indicate an error, a mistake, negligence, or misjudgment. So what Solomon is saying here is the second of those two. That the error of the leader is one of two things. He either knows the law and unintentionally violates it or he acts without knowing. That is, he is ignorant that he has done wrong. One of these two.

So he makes an error. It is not a purposeful error, it is not a willful error. It is just something that happens either through, like I said, negligence, misjudgment, or ignorance. It is inadvertent.

However, Scripture, as we see in Leviticus 4 and 5, demands a sacrifice for these kinds of errors. They are still sins, they are a sin or a trespass. Because that is what the offerings are for. The sin offering and the trespass offering both contemplate this kind of sin or trespass, the one of negligence or inadvertent sin. What this means is, is that the leader who makes such an error is guilty of wrongdoing. It is not something, "Ah, it doesn't matter." This is something that is serious enough that God says, this is a sin and the person who committed it is guilty. He is culpable, he is responsible for the outcome or the effects of this sin.

So these errors that he makes are black marks on his leadership. And the error, as we see in verse 5, that Solomon is considering here, he calls an evil. That ratchets it up one more place because this is rá-ah. This is an evil done on other people. Even though it is done in ignorance or done inadvertently, the results of it are still evil. Now, the particular situation has to do with the leader's choices of whom to elevate to high office in his administration. This is the specific one he is talking about that is an evil and an error in judgment that causes a great deal of evil. And ironically, Scripture shows that his son Rehoboam is guilty of this error.

Let us see the sort of thing that he was talking about. This is I Kings 12. We will read starting in verse 1 and we are going to be reading down through verse 17. We need to get the whole story because we not only need to see the background, but we also need to see how it ends, what it costs.

I Kings 12:1-17 And Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had gone to Shechem to make him king. So it was, when Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard it (he was still in Egypt, for he had fled from the presence of King Solomon and had been dwelling in Egypt), that they sent and called him. Then Jeroboam and the whole assembly of Israel came and spoke to Rehoboam, saying, "Your father made our yoke heavy; now therefore, lighten the burdensome service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you." So he said to them, "Depart for three days, then come back to me." And the people departed. Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who stood before his father Solomon while he still lived, and he said, "How do you advise me to answer these people?" And they spoke to him, saying, "If you will be a servant to these people today, and serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever." [sounds good] But he rejected the counsel which the elders gave him, and consulted the young men who had grown up with him, who stood before him. And he said to them, "What counsel do you give? How should we answer this people who have spoken to me saying, 'Lighten the yoke which your father put on us'?"

Then the young men who had grown up with him spoke to him, saying, "Thus you should speak to this people who have spoken to you, saying, 'Your father made our yoke heavy, but you make it lighter on us.'—thus you shall say to them: 'My little finger shall be thicker than my father's waist! And now, whereas my father laid a heavy yoke on you, I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges!'" So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king directed, saying, "Come back to me the third day." Then the king answered the people roughly, and rejected the counsel which the elders had given him; and he spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men, saying, "My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges!" So the king did not listen to the people; for the turn of affairs was from the Lord, that he might fulfill His word, which the Lord had spoken by Alijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat. Now when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, "What portion have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel! Now, see to your own house, O David!" So Israel departed to their tents, but Rehoboam reigned over the children of Israel who dwelt in the cities of Judah.

So Rehoboam, as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 10:6, sets folly, the foolishness of youth, his insensitive, aggressive yes men cronies that had grown up with him in, I guess, the harem or whatever, maybe many of them were his half brothers, but he sets them in exalted positions. That is what the margin says in my New King James Bible here. "For great dignity, he set them in exalted positions." And what was the result? He promptly lost control over three quarters of his kingdom! Ten tribes went to Jeroboam, while he only had the three tribes of his own. And later Judah, Simeon, mostly Simeon because it was down there, Benjamin, and later Levi as they trickled down, came to Jerusalem from the north. And when that happened, what did he get? Civil war. Israel was at Judah's throat. Judah was at Israel's throat. Would you not call that an evil error? Because he listened to the wrong men, he put the wrong men in exalted positions of being the king's counselor and it caused nothing but trouble.

Now we know that God, I mean, he says it right in here, that God made this work out because He was moving His plan along. His purpose was to tear Israel in two and have Judah and Israel as separate kingdoms. But I wonder how much He had to do. I would imagine Rehoboam's character was such that he trusted the guys he grew up with rather than the old men who had advised Solomon. And he wanted to make a clean split between him and his dad and his first big decision he did terribly. He did an evil. He made an error. And this trickled down to involve everybody in Israel and Judah.

Let us get back to Ecclesiastes 10:6 because there is more here. Basically that episode with Rehoboam explains the first clause of verse 6, "Folly is set in great dignity," while the next modifies it just a little bit, "while the rich sit in a lowly place." This is the opposite. So he gives us the one side and now he gives us the other.

The rich, we would think, are wealthy men. I mean, somebody says a rich man, you think somebody who has a lot of money, has a lot of wealth, has a lot of assets. And usually this word in Hebrew indicates the privileged class, but it does not need to be just the 1%, as we say in these days. We think of the rich as the 1%. We can broaden Solomon's meaning to include other groups that are at the top of certain areas of life, like the wise, the educated, the experienced, the aged. It does not necessarily have to be those who have a lot of money. It is those that are rich in qualities that would help the nation. He just uses rich men as kind of a group to include all these other types of skilled people. Like in a company, there might be somebody who is not paid all that much but is significant because of, let us say, his experience or his skill in doing what the company does. Whether it is sales or engineering or whatever, he would be among those that would be classified in this case as the wealthy because he has wealth in experience or knowledge or a technical skill.

Now, granted, those with status and money and prestige usually possess a lot of these qualities because, as he goes on to say in verse 19, money answers everything, money opens doors, money can get you the education that you need to be one of these people that are significant to a government or a company or some sort of community group or whatever. That is just how it works. Money does open doors and can get you the skills that set you apart from somebody else.

This is not something I think I need to over-explain because we see it in the New Testament used in spiritual ways, this idea of being rich, meaning that you are rich in some kind of spiritual quality. For instance, I will give you a list of these. Many of these are about Christ. So as our model, we can see how that works.

In II Corinthians 8:9, Paul describes Christ as rich, meaning His glory, His power, His position, His divine prerogatives. These are things He divested Himself of to become a man. So He was rich in heaven, but He became poor to come be our Savior, to be a man, to be a servant. In Luke 12:21 (this was in the Forerunner article this week), Jesus speaks about being rich toward God, that our riches are in heaven and not on earth. In Ephesians 1:7, Paul writes of Christ's riches, of His grace. In Ephesians 2:4, Paul talks about God being rich in mercy. In Romans 2:4 of the riches of His goodness. Luke 16:11 speaks of true riches as opposed to mammon. And Romans 11:33 describes God's wisdom and knowledge as riches.

There are a lot of these, I only gave you half a dozen or so of these verses describing spiritual things, qualities, what have you, as riches. That is part of the wealth of a person, not just whether he has gold clinking in his pocket but what he has in his head, what he has in his heart, what he has developed as good character over time. Those are great riches. Those are the ones that God is looking for.

So feeding this back into Ecclesiastes 10:6, we get the point. Not all riches are wealth, money, or privilege. Solomon is just making a contrast here. He contrasts worthy, responsible, suitable, deserving advisors and administrators to fools and incompetents. He is trying to give us a way to look at this from both sides. The error is exalting the unworthy and demoting or ignoring the worthy.

That is what he is getting at here. That there is a great error done by leaders in government or whatever else—companies, legislatures, whatever—when they do not use the wealth that is there in the room that is at their disposal. They need to use all of those skills and other things that really make intellectual or character wealth and use it for the good of the administration or the company.

Usually when this happens, the leader who makes this error puts personal preference over wisdom. He likes that person, they have been buddies. But this guy over here whom he ultimately does not choose, maybe has an irascible personality or something, you know, something that he does not like, but he has got a wealth of something, of knowledge, of wisdom, of technical experience, or what have you. And so he ignores him and chooses the one who really does not add a lot to the organization. That is what he is talking about, choosing the unworthy over the worthy.

Now, verse 7 is an illustration that he gives so that we can understand his point. He says, "I have seen servants on horses, while princes walk on the ground like servants." So he is showing it this way: the servants stand for the unqualified, those jumped up far beyond their abilities. And princes stands for their betters in whatever way. It was not necessarily in class or anything like that, but ones who have more experience, more knowledge, more skill, what have you. They are the ones who are actually trained and qualified for their positions.

And when he talks about this idea of servants riding on horses and princes walking beside them and managing the horse, while they just walk around town like Haman in Esther, what he is describing is a world that has gone topsy-turvy. It is a world that has flipped, where the competent are now no longer in charge and it is the fools that are running the show. And he is indicating without saying the words, that this will result in societal upheaval. All this is evil because its effect, the result of this turning things upside down, will be incompetence in the administration leading to oppression and misery and chaos and destruction, if we want to take it all the way. And all of that falls down to the lowest member of society, it all trickles down to include everyone. This is trickle down evil if you will. And he says this is a great evil.

Let us go to the next section.

Ecclesiastes 10:8-11 He who digs a pit will fall into it [He is a poet and he did not know it.], and whoever breaks through a wall will be bitten by a serpent. He who quarries stones may be hurt by them, and he who splits wood may be endangered by it. If the ax is dull, and one does not sharpen the edge, then he must use more strength; but wisdom brings success. A serpent may bite when it is not charmed; the babbler is no different.

This needs some explaining. How does it fit into the theme, the political theme that he has going on here, the theme of leadership in government. Here, we turn from errors and mistakes to accidents and unforeseen mishaps, so we are on a totally different subject.

Now, we are not talking about errors that happen in ignorance or inadvertently. We are talking about accidents that happen, real accidents that happen to people and some unforeseen negative things that happen just seemingly out of the blue. We know that such negative events, accidents, are a common element in life under the sun. Things happen, things go awry. You know, you had no idea that your engine was going to blow or a storm comes through and tears the roof off your house. Those are accidents, misfortunes, that happen maybe through no fault of your own. Maybe they actually are through some fault of your own. But to you, they hit you like a ton of bricks because it seems like it just happened and you had no warning.

This is what Solomon is trying to get us to turn our minds toward here. Accidents that happen in the course of our lives that we think happen and we are innocent. Now, accidents happen for a reason. Usually they are not actually out of the blue. You do often have warnings that you ignore or you are lazy or for some reason or another, you neglect to take certain factors into account and it results in an unfortunate accident or in a mishap or something even worse, even death. So we are not talking about silly things here. We are talking about things that are consequential to us that may end up putting us in a hospital for six weeks or whatever. I am just trying to be general to let you know that these are things that happen to everyone.

Peter says, if you are going through fiery trials, they are common to man. Accidents are the same way. Accidents are common to everyone, but there is a reason accidents happen. Normally, we may try to make ourselves feel good that we had no culpability in this accident. But oftentimes we are just trying to clear ourselves from any kind of guilt because we do have a lot of responsibility and a lot of times we neglect that responsibility, we neglect the duties that we have to do to maintain things. So accidents happen because of negligence, ignorance, lack of preparation, errors in planning, and sometimes yes, they are just out of the blue. Something happens but we all have to deal with them because they happen to us all.

Everybody has an accident or two or 600 in their lives. Some people are more accident prone and there may be a reason for it and we have to be honest with ourselves. If we are accident prone, why are we accident prone? And that is what Solomon is trying to get us to think about. Why do these accidents happen? How can wisdom help avoid these accidents?

Now, we cannot forget that Solomon's background theme here concerns leadership and politics and government. That is where he is really focused on and he aims this advice about accidents at those working under such a leader, someone in politics or someone in government or someone leading a company or what have you. He sets his conclusions in two pairs of aphorisms, two proverbs. The two proverbs are in verses 8 and 9. That is the first one. And then the second one is verses 10 and 11.

There are two pairs in each. The first pair speaks to the risks and uncertainties of political life and the second to the timely application of wisdom to a particular problem. Let us take these one at a time.

The first set of aphorisms about politics and life in an organization:

Ecclesiastes 10:8-9 He who digs a pit will fall into it, and whoever breaks through a wall will be bitten by a serpent. He who quarries stones may be hurt by them, and he who splits wood may be endangered by it.

These two aphorisms are two situations, both clandestine and legitimate. Remember, we are talking about leadership, politics, government, administration, that sort of thing. Now, the first thing that he talks about, the first metaphor, he speaks to here, the digging of the pit, is an illustration of setting a trap for somebody. This happens a lot in politics; that somebody is not playing ball the way they think he should be playing it. So they set a trap to catch him, to get him out of the way. It could be a person that one is trying to trap, it could be another group or a party. We see this a lot in American politics; that somebody high up in the Republican Party will set a trap for somebody in the Democrat party or for the whole Democrat party and vice versa. They are doing it all the time, taking potshots at each other, trying to entrap them in a negative look and having to tell the American public why they do such a thing or think such a thing or said such a thing. It could even be, you could take it out to national things, where one nation digs a trap for another nation or digs a pit to entrap another nation. It is all part of the great game, as it were, between nations.

Now, what Solomon is doing here in both of these, not only digging a pit but breaking through a wall, is that such plots often backfire and they actually entrap the predator rather than their intended prey. So they fall into their own pit. They have this great scheme that is going to win them the election and they end up totally bungling the scheme and having the finger pointed at them. I mean, look at Richard Nixon. I do not need to say anything more. Watergate was something like that and it surely came back to haunt them.

The second part of the couplet in verse 8, "and whoever breaks through a wall will be bitten by a serpent," has as its background a thief digging through a wall of a house. Remember, back then in Israel, most of the dwellings were made of dried brick and it was easy if you had a shovel or a pick or something to dig through the wall and get into the house. If they were not dried brick, they might be soft stone and they could dig through that wall as well. That is what he is talking about. Somebody clandestinely trying to dig through a house to get something, to steal something, to pin something on another person by planting evidence or whatever, talking about some nefarious action where they dig through a wall. And places like that are the habitat of snakes.

So whatever the reason for the nefarious activity, whether they are killing, stealing, getting information, planting information, he is saying that those things also often backfire and the wrongdoer, the thief, the agent of the government or whatever he is, he suffers, he gets caught, he ends up going to jail.

Now, both of these also have a broader context. Anyone, even the innocent, can fall in their own pits that they dug innocently for whatever reason. Or they could be bitten by a snake when they are repairing a wall. Both of those things can happen. So this works on the government, political level and it works on the practical level of the common man. These are things that happen all the time.

These dangers we have to understand, Solomon makes sure that we can get this, these dangers are inherent to these particular activities, whether you do it innocently or whether you are politically motivated or whatever. If you dig a pit, you are liable to fall in it. If you repair a wall or dig through a wall, you have a good chance of being bitten by a snake. That is just how it is.

So, what do you take from that, this idea that these are inherent problems with this particular activity? Solomon wants us to understand that we have to think that those who engage in these type of activities must plan properly and safeguard themselves against these things that might happen, these accidents that may strike them, and they need to do this thoroughly. So they must plan properly and safeguard themselves as much as possible.

But Solomon is telling us here without coming out and saying it, he is saying, do not be surprised when things go wrong because these things happen. When you dig a pit, you are likely to fall in it; you mess with a wall, you are likely to be bitten by a snake. So plan, prepare, check things out, do whatever you can, wear gloves, you know, stay away from the edge. Those are things you have to do.

Let us move on to the next aphorism in verse 9. Remember, there are two for each.

Ecclesiastes 10:9 He who quarries stones may be hurt by them, and he who splits wood may be endangered by it.

These two are very common activities, quarrying and felling timber. They happen all around the world. In every area where there are quarries and forests, people quarry stone, they fell trees. Large stones pulled from a quarry, whether they are stones for a house or a palace or a temple (it could be anything), stones from a quarry can crush the stone worker. He may just hit the rock a little, a way that he did not intend, and it comes loose and tumbles on him, right? Crushes him or mangles a leg or what have you.

Trees, and this has been my experience, have a way of falling in places that they should not. Oh, you go out there and you line it up and you say, I want it to fall this way, and you cut this and you cut that and you think you have got it right so it is going to fall right there where you planned. And then there is the physics or the biology or whatever of the way that tree grew and the direction of the cut and all of that stuff, makes it spin around and fall back to you or off the mark into your shed or it could be a lot of different things, or where your child is standing! It is dangerous work. He is saying quarrying is dangerous, being a woodsman is dangerous, carrying around a chainsaw is dangerous.

So Solomon desires this proverbial statement to ensure that when you do one of these dangerous jobs, and just about every job you have to do, that you approach it with caution and prepare carefully, wear gloves, send your children inside. You know, a lot of different things we could think about what we have to do to ensure safety and avoid any kind of disaster in this job we are doing. He is saying do not be negligent, think it through, do everything you can to control the situation to avoid the accident. There is a lot we can do, but we have to think about it. We have to be very careful. We have to try to imagine the worst things that could happen and do what we can to make sure that they do not.

He is instructing leaders or advisors and whatever project that they have to present to the king, let us say, or to the CEO of the company, he is telling them to plan their projects carefully and thoroughly. That is the dangerous job he has. He has to come up with some sort of strategy for the nation or for the company and he has to make sure that he looks at it from every angle, and he imagines every bad thing that could happen, every evil that could happen because of this plan and make sure he avoids that so that he gets only the result that he wants.

Because if that advisor or leader does not account for every contingency, the project may turn around like that tree and crush him or fall out of the quarry and crush him, because in a project or some sort of plan that one has to do for a nation or a company, if they are the ones that are giving that plan to the leader, they are responsible for that plan. They are the one culpable if something goes wrong. And do not think that the king or the CEO or whatever is going to say, "Oh, it's my fault." No, the person who came up with the project is going to be the fall guy. He is the one that is going to have to pay the price. So it is worth it for a person who is coming up with a plan or a project to think it through as much as possible to avert the accident of failure. That is wisdom, that is skill.

Let us go on to verses 10 and 11.

Ecclesiastes 10:10-11 If the ax is dull, and one does not sharpen the edge, then he must use more strength; but wisdom brings success. A serpent may bite when it is not charmed; the babbler is no different.

Now, verse 10 here is linguistically difficult to translate. Let me give you three different translations. One in the Septuagint, one in the Latin Vulgate, and one in the Peshitta, which is Aramean.

The Septuagint Greek may be translated as, "If the ax falls and it troubles the face, then he will strengthen his strength. The advantage of man is wisdom." Does that make a whole lot of sense? Next is from the Latin Vulgate also being translated into English, "If the iron is blunt and it is not as before, but if it is dull, it can be sharpened with much labor. And after industry follows wisdom." Again, kind of like a headscratcher. Now the Peshitta, the Aramean, "If the ax be blunt and it troubles the face, and increases the slain, and the advantage of the upright is wisdom."

The meaning though, once you kind of dig through all of this and try to figure it out, is clear. If the ax is not sharp enough, its wielder must exert himself more strenuously to cut the wood effectively. That is basically what he is saying. But the final clause, the one that the New King James has here, "But wisdom brings success," in verse 10, the final clause is quite complex and that is why you have got all these weird things out of these three. "The advantage of man is wisdom"; "After industry follows wisdom"; "The advantage of the upright is wisdom." That is a lot of different ways, different diverse ways to read what it said. Literally, the Hebrew reads, I will, I guess, translate it into English words. But you know how they are, they just have words that you are supposed to know from the way that the word is written how it is supposed to fit in a sentence. The Hebrew reads, "Advantage [or gain] succeeds wisdom." These are the words yitron, hachser, and hachman. So it literally reads in Hebrew, yitron hachser hachman. Now, yitron is a singular noun. Hachser is an infinitive to succeed. And hachman is also a singular noun.

Now, most translations rearrange those three words and/or change their parts of speech in order to make it intelligible into English. So the English Standard Version has, "Wisdom helps one to succeed." The Lexham English Bible says, "The advantage of wisdom is it brings success." The New American Bible Revised Edition has, "The advantage of wisdom is success." God's Word Translation has, "Wisdom prepares the way for success." The Revised English Bible has, "The skilled worker has a better chance of success," And the Berean Study Bible has, "Skill produces success."

These three words seem to mean, success is the fruit of wisdom.

Let us go back to the ax that is not sharpened. The wise experienced woodsman would sharpen his ax first, save him the effort, and allow him to be more precise in his cuts, perhaps avoiding those accidents that we read about in verse 9. Now, the wise use of one's abilities, then, will bring success to one's endeavors. This principle applies to political advisers as much as to the common man. Wisdom or skill in living is indispensable for performing any job. If you are going to do anything, the more skillful you are at it, the more success you should find. This is because wisdom helps to eliminate errors and accidents, allows a person to work more quickly, work more thoroughly, please his employer, help him make more money or put out more of a product so that he can sell it and make more money.

Solomon is saying you have to have this mindset if you are going to be able to function in this world. You have to be able to develop skills, apply them in whatever job that you have, and that will, in most cases, guarantee a certain level of success. You cannot just blunder through life, doing whatever without any skill. It will never work. You want to become a plumber, go to a trade school, learn how to plumb, learn how to do all those things. The same would apply to any trade or any career that you want to have. If you want to be an English teacher, be an English major; write, read a lot; write, read a lot. Learn all the parts of speech, learn how they go together, learn how to diagram sentences, be an editor. Those things will help you be an English teacher.

Let us go on to verse 11. I do not want to linger too long here. "A serpent may bite when it is not charmed; the babbler is no different." This is the second part of the second aphorism. This is connected actually to verse 10, so I will read it all together. "If the ax is dull and one does not sharpen the edge, then he must use more strength; but wisdom brings success [or skill will bring success]. A serpent may bite when he is not charmed; the babbler is no different."

Now, what is happening here is that Solomon is reminding us of something that he had said before. And that is, that human under the sun wisdom has its limits. It is not guaranteed when you apply human wisdom under the sun, that it is going to actually produce what you want it to produce. There are things that happen in the world of men, the world of humanity, that cause wisdom to go awry. We saw this in the last sermon, that wisdom has limitations.

For instance, human wisdom or skill cannot eliminate all problems. There are things that are well beyond human wisdom happening in this world that it, human wisdom, cannot solve. It is going to take the return of Christ to solve some of these problems. Timing is essential in applying human wisdom. You can have the best solution to something, but if it is not implemented at the right time, it will not work. Situations can change on a dime. So you may have an actually a good solution, but the situation slightly changes and the solution does not work anymore.

This is one of the worst ones—that people are fallible and untrustworthy. And so even if you have a great solution to a problem coming out of your head, you have this wonderful idea that you think is going to solve the problem, and you assemble a team and you start to get everything going, and the people who are on your team let you down and the plan does not work because somebody forgot to do something or somebody said something to a rival and gave them the information and they took the bait and ran with it and were successful. But you are too late, you were too slow, or whatever.

And of course, we saw in that last sermon that one of the big problems is that one person, one lonely, single person can destroy a great plan or an achievement. All it takes is one doing something he should not do at just the right time and everything goes to smithereens.

So in verse 11, Solomon provides another illustration of wisdom's limitations. He uses to illustrate this the mysterious abilities of a snake charmer, who had developed his skills over time to soothe and motivate the snake to follow his directions, to dance for him as he plays his little recorder. But what good is a snake charmer and his wisdom, all his skill, if the snake has already bitten someone?

That is what he is talking about here in verse 11. The damage has already been done and his skills are of no use. Somebody has died. What is he going to do? Charm the snake and bring the person back to life? No, it does not work that way. He was too late. He did not get there on time. So his skills were of little use, and that is what he is saying about wisdom. Wisdom can be useless in certain situations, especially in those situations where the worst has already happened. As we say, the horse has already left the barn. What good is closing the door? In the snake charmer's world, snakes often strike without warning when they are disturbed. Like when somebody digs a wall, they just react.

So he is saying even experts fail if they do not apply their skills at the right time, especially before disaster strikes. Have you noticed this theme? He is trying to get us to do what we can before the accident happens. That is the best way to avoid it. Think it through, try to be timely, but you have got to do whatever you are going to do and whatever the project is before the accident happens.

Now, the New King James version really mangles the second half of the couplet here, "The babbler is no different." Let me give you a few other translations. ESV, "There is no advantage to the charmer." Lexham English Bible, "The snake charmer will not succeed." Revised English Bible, "The snake charmer loses his fee." The Berean Study Bible, "There is no profit for the charmer."

These are much better translations than "The babbler is no different." And I have to think that they were using a different text there and made the wrong decision about the wording. These other translations are better because they parallel what is said in verse 10. And that is, verse 10 speaks of applying skill or wisdom to gain an advantage or to be successful. That is what the second clause of this couplet has to say.

But verse 11, the second clause of the second aphorism, puts it in the negative. Basically saying there is no profit, there is no gain, there is no advantage, in applying one's skill too late. That is what he is trying to get us to understand. All the wisdom one has is not going to be successful in doing what you do if it is after the fact. Why even do it?

Now, all of these things that Solomon has said, all of his wisdom in these passages applies to government, administrations, and also to everyday ordinary activities. They can be taken both ways because they are universal principles designed to make life a little easier under the sun.

Those of us who have the mind of Christ through His Spirit, living or trying to live in heavenly places above the sun, we can develop and demonstrate skill in living through the application of God's wisdom. And it should come easier to us because we have the power of God's Spirit behind us and have a forward-looking mind to try to live as best as we can in this world. And this will help us avoid errors, accidents, laxity, and untimeliness common to life in this world.

But we have to gather the wisdom, we have to consider the wisdom, and we have to apply the wisdom—all with the help of God's Spirit. And if we do this, we can live in this world, as messed up as it is, pretty well and avoid a lot of those problems that come upon the common man.

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