Ecclesiastes 7:6 Commentary and Bible Study

The awakened sinner learns to hear the world in a different way, to hear what he has never heard before. Previously the world seemed like a safe place, a place in which he felt at home, but now there is something alien about it. The laughter of men and women at the what seems amusing has changed in his ear. When their laughter mocks God, or when it communicates their carelessness about what is right, what is true, what is holy, then it begins to sound something sinister in the ear of the seeker. It is a dangerous sound, a sound by which the world urges on its own to forget eternity and sacrifice everything for the here and now. The awakened soul is now afraid to do that, and re-interprets this sound as something destructive. Laughter is infectious and insistent, and invites others to join in. It invites them to see things in the same way as the one laughing. It signifies camaraderie among friends, who are secure together, who approve of each other, who have no great danger threatening them. But as Solomon listens to the fool’s laughter, he hears the sound of thorns placed under a pot and burned up to produce heat. As they burn, they crackle, and they are entirely consumed. That laughter says, live for this world; live for pleasure; life is not serious; there are no consequences to how you live. But that sound is a prelude to the fool’s destruction, and his laughter is vanity. Like the cracking of thorns, his laughter will soon die. It expresses something which will not last because is not real.