Ecclesiastes 4:13 Commentary and Bible Study

These next four verses are about the vanity of earthly fame. Solomon relates a particular remarkable case which he had come across, and draws a solemn lesson from it. There was a young man, he tells us, who was born in poverty in the kingdom in which he lived and he was noted for his wisdom, and yet he was – presumably unjustly – put in prison. It happened that the king of that kingdom was elderly and set in his ways, and the general feeling was that he was not governing the kingdom wisely, in fact he was regarded as a fool. The king had held power for years, but had reached a position where he was no longer prepared to take advice or listen to anyone else, even though everyone could see that he was not governing his kingdom well. The people therefore wanted to remove him from power. By a remarkable turn of events, the young man who was in prison, was released and put on the throne in place of the old king. The young man was noted for his wisdom, just as the old king was noted for his foolishness and stubbornness. Circumstances brought the young man to occupy the thrown in place of the old king. Yet in spite of all this his new found status brought him no lasting gain, for the next generation forgot entirely about his unexpected rise to power.The point of these two verses is not that every poor young man who possesses wisdom is bound to be elevated to high office, for by the nature of the case that event will be very rare. The thought of the verses is compressed and we are to understand only that such an unlikely event could happen and indeed, in the case of Joseph, something approaching this has happened.