Ecclesiastes 10:8-15

"He who digs a pit will fall into it, and a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall. He who quarries stones is hurt by them, and he who splits logs is endangered by them. If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed. If the serpent bites before it is charmed, there is no advantage to the charmer. The words of a wise man’s mouth win him favor, but the lips of a fool consume him. The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is evil madness. A fool multiplies words, though no man knows what is to be, and who can tell him what will be after him? The toil of a fool wearies him, for he does not know the way to the city." (Ecclesiastes 10:8-15, ESV)

In another set of proverbial tidbits, the Preacher offers warnings about the dangers of foolishness. The first two proverbs make the point that you need to know the dangers of what you are getting into. The proper conclusion to be drawn here, I think, is just as splitting logs and breaking walls produce certain expected dangers so also playing with folly produces certain obvious problems. What follows then is four lessons on the dangers of folly and the corresponding benefits of wisdom.

Lesson 1: Folly requires more labor and gives less success. A fool is like a man working with a blunt blade. He tries and tries to succeed, but never addresses the real issue. Wisdom, on the other hand, discerns the error and so succeeds. The blade, I think, is the person. The fool works to fix all the things around him, which demands extraordinary effort. When he fails, he concludes that it’s the circumstances or people around him. He never stops to think, “Hmm, maybe I’m the problem. Maybe my blade is dull.” Whereas, the wise man knows that most of his problems are due to his own character, or lack of it, and so focuses his effort on self-reform.

Lesson 2: The fool destroys himself with his own words. He is like a snake charmer who, rather than calming and charming the snake, stirs it to strike. Not real effective. Likewise, a fool stirs up those around him to strike rather than gain their favor. His mouth is his own worst enemy. The wise man wins people with his gracious, beneficial, and intelligent speech. So if you are looking to sharpen your blade, your mouth is a pretty good place to start.

Lesson 3: The fool talks a lot . . . about . . . nothing. Oh he thinks he is talking about something. He heaps pile after pile of words about what is and what is going to be. No matter the subject, home life, parenting, career choices, politics, religion, restaurants, ad infinitum, he is an expert. And he is more than willing to share his effusive wisdom. So if you are looking to sharpen your blade and looking at your mouth, your perceived wisdom might be a really good place to start.

Lesson 4: The fool has no idea where he is going. All his efforts are a wearying, draining, frustrating toil. Why? Because they have no purpose. He is not going anywhere. He is accomplishing nothing. He has no plan. This lesson seems aimed directly at American youth these days. Fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-five year-olds have no plan. They have no goals. They don’t know where they are going, or where they should be going. Let’s face it, our younger generations (of which I am a part) are lazy. But are we lazy because we just don’t want to work, or because we can’t see the point of working? For many, I think it is the later. A life without a plan or without great, significant, world-changing goals is a tedious, pointless life.