Ecclesiastes 4:13

DANGERS OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND ISOLATION

"Better is a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king, who knoweth not how to receive admonition any more. For out of prison he came forth to be king; yea, even in his kingdom, he was born poor. I saw all the living that walk under the sun, that they were with the youth, the second that stood up in his stead. There was no end of all the people, even of all them over whom he was: yet they that come after shall not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind."

Some have tried to find the Biblical story of Joseph in this, but without success. "It is probably a parable, of a poor youth who through wisdom rose to be king."[13]

"They that come after" (Ecclesiastes 4:16). "This refers to those of a later generation who were not present when the youth became king."[14]

We find it difficult to understand what is meant here. Kidner's interpretation appears to be the best available. "The paragraph has its obscurities; but it portrays something common in public life, the short-lived popularity of the great. First there was the stubbornness of the old man who had been king too long."[15] There are elements in this which suggest both the rise of Joseph to kingly dignity, and that of David whose second half of the kingship so vividly contrasted with the first half; but nearly all scholars agree that, "The passage was not designed to be historical."[16]

The big points in the paragraph are (a) the bad example of the foolish old king too stubborn to take advice, who, of course, lost his throne, and (b) the fickleness of the public who afterward hated the wise youth who succeeded the old king.

Sir Walter Scott, whom I quoted in my first commentary (Matthew), and whom I'm glad to quote also in this my last one, paid his respects to the fickleness of public opinion in these words:

"Who o'er the herd would wish to reign?

Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain,

Vain as a leaf upon the stream,

And fickle as a changeful dream,

Fantastic as a woman's mood,

And fierce as frenzy's fevered blood;

Thou many headed monster thing,

O, who would wish to be thy king"?[17]