Ecclesiastes 10:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ecclesiastes 10:1

Comments

It is a serious mistake to read Ecclesiastes as if it is just an exposition of practical wisdom. Efforts to get moral instruction out of the book torture it. What you find in many evangelical commentaries is unhelpful – sundry applications to believers. They may be helpful to figure out what it says, but the application to believers is shallow and superficial, which is not surprising because it is not what Solomon intended. Eastern people were fond of proverbs and understood them, and Solomon was adept at using them. We live in a functional scientific culture and we can make heavy weather of them, but it is possible to make them live again if we first figure them out. This chapter is a series of illustrations about how we appear in God’s sight if we have not come to know him together with illustrations and appeals to seek him. The seeker is in danger of making fatal mistakes in his approach, and these illustrations provide vital correction to these mistakes.The first mistake he deals with is self-righteousness. The picture is of an apothecary, a chemist in ancient times, who mixes up costly ingredients to make balms, ointments with healing properties, as well as perfumes. If a fly got in and died, then soon the whole lot turned putrid. Today some ingredients would look after putrefying intruders, but these various products were not very antiseptic, and because they tended to use large containers he stood to lose a lot. A customer came in and, when the pot was opened to scoop out some of the preparation, the mixture stank, and the apothecary was embarrassed: the whole lot was ruined by one or two little flies that had fallen in.

Application

So does a little folly, says the Preacher. We tell people about ourselves – how good we are. ‘I do this; I do that’, but we do not take count of the little fly that has fallen in. Here is someone with a good reputation who outwardly lives an acceptable life. He has honour and accomplishments, and then something happens. Maybe he gets drunk and makes a fool of himself at the office party and has to leave the company; or maybe he gets into an argument and everyone hears his foolish reasoning but he will not back down; or a moment of uncleanness, unfaithfulness. As a result he loses credibility; they have seen another side of him. Human beings see themselves as righteous, but they can’t see the real person within them. They stop seeing their need of the forgiveness of God. They overlook the pride, selfishness, bad temper within them. Shows us weakness of the human heart. I have a good intention, yes, but look again – buried inside is some selfish desire. This does not mean that person can be charming and have one fault and it makes him stink. It is more that you would never have known from the outside. It is about the contrast between what we are on the outside, and what we are within – the real person which God sees.

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Ecclesiastes 10:1 Commentary and Bible Study