Ecclesiastes 7:1-12; Wisdom (Part 1)
Today’s passage is Ecclesiastes 7:1-12. Please join us in study.
The heart gets mentioned five times in today’s passage, in vv. 2, 3, twice in v.4 & in v.7. This same word gets translated as ‘mind’ in 2:2 (”…my mind still guiding me with wisdom…” NIV) and 2:23 (”…even at night his mind does not rest…” NIV).
The ancients saw the heart as the seat of thought, the place where the ‘inner self’ resided. The heart was where one pondered, contemplated and put two in two together in order to see what it looks like. Our culture tends to see the heart as the seat of emotion, where one feels, rather than thinks.
One of the themes that we noticed studying through this passage is the idea of long-term vs. short-term. Many of the ideas and concepts that the Teacher contrasts and asks us to think about deal with this whole idea of short-term, immediate gratification vs. a long-term approach, which in turn suggested the whole idea God setting the ‘eternal’ in every man’s heart (3:11) and the conflict we have with it.
A second, related theme is that of beginnings and endings.