Ecclesiastes 2:1 - Meaning and Application

Solomon, in his search for the highest good, the true happiness of human life, left his study, library, workshop, and council room. He went instead to the park and the playhouse, to his garden and summer-house. He left the company of philosophers and serious leaders and joined the witty and stylish people at court to see whether real satisfaction could be found there.

This was a long step downward, from the noble pleasures of the mind to the lower pleasures of the senses. Still, if he meant to make a full test, he had to try this path too, because many people think they have found happiness there. He decided to test what laughter and wit could do, whether a person could be truly happy by always entertaining himself and others with jokes, clever sayings, teasing, and funny stories. He wanted to see whether endless amusement could bring contentment.

He found that much wisdom often brings much grief, and that serious people can be prone to sadness. So he said to himself, “Come now, I will test you with mirth.” In other words, he would see whether delight and amusement could satisfy his heart. He had every advantage for this, both inward and outward, so he resolved to give pleasure a fair trial and to cast off care, as if he were taking a lease on happiness that way.

Many people can be merry without having the riches or comforts Solomon had. Even poor people can be cheerful, and the proverb about beggars in a barn shows that. Mirth is a pleasure for the imagination, and though it is lower than the solid joys of reason, it is still better than pleasures that are only fleshly and crude. Some say that human beings are not only rational animals, but also laughing animals.

Solomon then judged the result: “This also is vanity.” It gave no true satisfaction. He said of laughter that it was mad, and of mirth and all forms of entertainment, “What does it do?” Innocent mirth, used in a modest, timely, and proper way, is a good thing. It can fit a person for work and ease the hardships of life. But when it becomes excessive, it is foolish and empty.

It does no real good. What use is it? It cannot quiet a guilty conscience, and it cannot truly ease a sorrowful spirit. Singing cheerful songs to a heavy heart is deeply unpleasant. Laughter may distract for a moment, but it does not satisfy the soul. At best, it is only a temporary relief from present troubles. Great laughter often ends in a sigh.

It also does much harm. Solomon calls it mad because it often makes people act madly, leading them into foolish behavior that shames both reason and religion. Those who love to be merry too much often forget how to be serious. While they take up music and pleasure, they practically say to God, “Leave us alone” (Job 21:12, Job 21:14). We may test ourselves, as Solomon did, by asking how we respond to mirth. Can we be merry and wise? Can we use it like a sauce, not as our food? But we do not need to repeat Solomon’s experiment to know the answer. We can trust his judgment: it is mad, and it accomplishes nothing.

Solomon then found that if laughter could not satisfy, perhaps the pleasures of the palate might. Since knowledge alone would not fill the heart, he decided to see what the free use of food and wine could do. He says he sought in his heart to give himself to wine, that is, to good food and drink. Many people run after these pleasures without any thought at all, caring only about their appetite. But Solomon approached the matter thoughtfully, like a man making an honest trial.

He did not allow himself these pleasures until he had first wearied himself with serious study. Only after his increase of sorrow did he think of giving himself to wine. When we have worn ourselves out in doing good, we may then refresh ourselves with God’s gifts. The pleasures of the senses are rightly used when they are used like medicine, only when needed, as Timothy drank a little wine for his health’s sake (1 Timothy 5:23).

He also viewed this whole pursuit as folly, and he entered it reluctantly. He did not want folly to master him. He wanted to lay hold of it and measure it, to see how far it could go in making people happy. Yet he found that it was harder to control than he expected. At the same time, he took care to keep wisdom beside him. He wanted to manage his pleasures wisely, so they would do him no harm or leave him unable to judge them fairly.

So, while he indulged his body with wine, he led his heart with wisdom. He kept up his search for knowledge and did not make himself dull or ruled by pleasure. His studies and his feasts stood as checks on each other, and he tested whether joining them together would give him the satisfaction he could not find in either one alone.

Solomon tried this for himself, but he found it was empty. People who think they can give themselves to wine and still keep wisdom in their hearts fool themselves, just as those do who think they can serve both God and money. Wine is a mocker, a great deceiver. No one can safely say, “I will go this far and no farther” when it comes to it.

His goal was not pleasure for its own sake, but finding out what makes life truly good for people. He wanted to test that claim along with the rest. He describes human happiness as the good that people should do under heaven all the days of their life. What we should seek is not mainly the good we get, since we can leave that to God, but the good we do. That is where our concern should be. The question is like the one in the Gospels, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do?” Happiness is not found in being idle, but in doing what is right and staying busy in a good way. If we do what is good, we will surely find comfort and approval from it.

It is good to do this under heaven, while we are still here in this world, while it is day, while our time for action lasts. This life is our time of work and service. In the next world, we will receive what our works deserve. Our deeds will follow us there. And this good is to be done all the days of our life. We must keep doing it to the end, for as many days as God gives us. He has numbered our days, and they are all to be used as he directs.

But for any man to give himself to wine, hoping to find in it the best way to live, is absurd. Solomon himself now admits that. It is impossible that this could be the good people should do. No, it is plainly very bad.

Seeing quickly that wine was folly, he next tried the costly pleasures and entertainments of princes and great men. He had a very large income, and he spent it in ways that pleased his own tastes and made him seem great. He gave himself much to building, both in the city and in the country. Since he had already spent so much at the start of his reign building a house for God, he was more excusable if he later chose to build for himself. He had begun in the right place, seeking first God’s house and kingdom (Matthew 6:33), unlike those who panel their own houses while God’s house lies in ruin (Haggai 1:4).

In building, he also had the satisfaction of employing the poor and providing something lasting for future generations. The buildings of Solomon, described in (1 Kings 9:15-19), were great works, fitting for his wealth, his spirit, and his high rank. Yet here is his mistake: he asked what good works he should do, and then turned to great projects. Good works are truly great, but many things people call great works are not good at all. They may look amazing, but they are not holy or pleasing to God (Matthew 7:22).

He also loved gardening, which can charm people as much as building. He planted vineyards, helped by the soil and climate of the land of Canaan. He made himself gardens and orchards (Ecclesiastes 2:5). The art of gardening may not have been less skilled then than it is now. He had forests of timber trees and also trees of every kind of fruit, all planted by his own hand. If any worldly business could make a person happy, surely it would be work like Adam’s in innocence.

He spent a great deal on waterworks, ponds, and canals, not for play, but for use, to water the wood that grows trees (Ecclesiastes 2:6). He planted, watered, and then left the growth to God. Springs of water are a great blessing (Joshua 15:19), but when nature provides them, human skill must direct them so they are useful (Proverbs 21:1).

He also increased his household. Since he planned great works, he needed many workers, so he got servants and maidens, bought with his money, and also servants born in his house (Ecclesiastes 2:7). In this way his retinue grew, and his court looked more splendid. See (Ezra 2:58).

He did not neglect country business either. He enjoyed it and profited from it, and neither study nor pleasure kept him from it. He had large holdings of cattle, herds and flocks, as his father had before him (1 Chronicles 27:29, 1 Chronicles 27:31). He did not forget that his father David had once been a shepherd. Those who deal in cattle should not look down on their work or grow tired of it. Solomon counts livestock among his great works and pleasures.

He also grew very rich, and his building and gardening did not leave him poor, as they do many people, who then call them vanity and grief. Solomon scattered, yet he increased. He filled his treasury with silver and gold, but it did not just sit there. It moved through his kingdom, so that silver was as common in Jerusalem as stones (1 Kings 10:27). He also had the special treasure of kings and provinces, things prized for their wealth and rarity more than silver and gold. Nearby kings and distant provinces sent him rich gifts to gain his favor and hear his wise counsel.

He had every sort of pleasant and entertaining thing, all kinds of music, sung and played. There were male singers and female singers, the best voices he could find, and all the wind and string instruments then in use. His father had a gift for music, but it seems he used it more for worship than the son did. Solomon used it more for enjoyment. These are called the delights of the sons of men, because most people set their hearts on pleasures of the senses. The delights of God’s children are of a very different kind, pure, spiritual, and heavenly, the kind that belong to angels.

He enjoyed, more than any man before him, a mix of thinking and sense pleasure at the same time. In this way he was greater than all who came before him, because he remained wise while surrounded by a thousand earthly enjoyments. It was strange, and unlike anything commonly seen, that his pleasures did not ruin his judgment or conscience. In the middle of all these entertainments, his wisdom stayed with him (Ecclesiastes 2:9). Even among childish pleasures, he kept his spirit strong, held onto his own soul, and kept reason ruling over desire. He had such a great store of wisdom that this way of life did not waste or weaken it, as it would have done in any other man.

Let no one be encouraged by this to give free rein to sinful desires and then think they can still keep their wisdom. Most people do not have Solomon’s depth of wisdom, and even Solomon was led astray. How could his wisdom be said to remain with him when he fell so far from true religion that he built altars to false gods to please his foreign wives?

Yet wisdom did remain with him in this sense, that he was master of his pleasures and not their slave. He could still judge them for what they were. He went into the enemy’s country, not as a deserter, but as a spy, to see what it was really like.

Still, his judgment and conscience did not restrain his pleasures or keep him from seeking the fullest taste of what sense and comfort could offer, as Ecclesiastes 2:10 says. Someone might argue that if wisdom stayed with him, he could not have given himself the freedom needed for a full personal experience of it. Solomon’s answer was that he allowed himself as much freedom as any person could, for whatever his eyes desired he did not keep from them, so long as it could be gained by lawful means, even if it was hard or expensive.

He also withheld from his heart no joy it wanted. He did not hold back his mind from any pleasure, but with full use of his wisdom, he enjoyed his delights as much as any pleasure-seeker ever did. Nothing about his circumstances or his spirit made those pleasures bitter or dull. In short, he found real pleasure in his work. “My heart rejoiced in all my labor,” so his toil did not spoil his enjoyment.

He also gained no less profit from his work. He did not meet with disappointment that troubled him. “This was my share from all my labor.” He could not only see the result of his efforts, but also enjoy it. That was all he had expected from his labor, and it was enough to sweeten his work that he could enjoy its success, and enough to sweeten his enjoyments that they came from his work. On the whole, he was as happy as the world could make him.

At last, we come to the judgment he carefully gave about all this, in Ecclesiastes 2:11. When the Creator finished his great works, he looked at them and saw that all was very good. Everything pleased him. But when Solomon looked over all the things his hands had done, with all the expense and care he had put into making himself comfortable and happy, nothing met his hopes. He found that all was vanity and a chasing after wind. He got no lasting satisfaction from it, and no real gain from it. There was no profit under the sun, neither in the work itself nor in the pleasures it brought.