Ecclesiastes 10:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ecclesiastes 10:20

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Here is a high king or some significant official. Don’t curse him, not even in your thought. Quite plainly this is a picture. Those who expound Ecclesiastes as literal precepts come unstuck with verses like this. Solomon’s illustration is taken from court life in his time, the life he was familiar with, and from his extensive experience of how people behaved in that environment. It is the nature of life at court that it is very difficult to find someone who will keep confidence and will not take what a man has disclosed in private and pass it back eventually to the ears of the king. An information network automatically develops around the king because it is in the interests of individuals to curry favour with the king and to report matters to him. You are a courtier or servant. You have to serve the king and to pay his dues, and you don’t like it, so you mutter against him and you think it is safe and you can get away with it. You nurture your complaints in the secrecy of your own thoughts, or else to some confidant in the privacy of your own bedchamber. Certainly, you think, your complaints will never reach the king’s ear from there. But a bird of the air will report the matter. What is this bird of the air? It might be the expression on your face. The king of course cannot read his minister’s thoughts, and yet if he is shrewd, he will pick up on all sorts of inadvertent comments and reactions which will tell him even about the their inner attitudes. The kings will see that you are not so happy. Your dissatisfaction will be a burden that shows in your features. A courtier’s reluctance and tone of voice and refusal to obey speak volumes. Similarly, sometimes you get a rotten line manager, then your expression will show and the reluctance with which you work.

Application

How much more with God! You mutter against God and don’t you consider that there are a flock of birds to carry the message to him. ‘All things are naked and opened unto the eye of Him with whom we have to do.’ The verse is about independence being the policy of your life. You want to determine your own affairs, to do as you like, to behave as if God isn’t there. But if you disdain the Lord and will not hear him, don’t you think that he who is mightier than the greatest will see it? Every secret thought is known to God; all things are naked and open to him. This is Solomon reasoning with the recalcitrant and the tardy. It is about the person who delays coming to Christ or refuses to come. Moreover, when we approach God let us come to him with a single heart not a divided heart; let us approach him in sincerity, having reverence for him and both saying and thinking what we know to be acceptable to him. Do you imagine that as a seeker, you can hold one view of God in your heart and present another view of him to his face? Can you feign sincerity to him and convince him that you are going to follow him with all you heart when in fact you intend to carry on with certain sins that you know are unacceptable to him? He will surely find this out. Therefore, let us come into the open before him, into the light, and disclose our hearts unreservedly to him. Confess to him the sins you are ashamed of; if there are temptations which you struggle against, then ask for his help and do not try to keep them out of his sight.

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Ecclesiastes 10:20 Commentary and Bible Study