Ecclesiastes 10:4-15

For Reading and Meditation:     Proverbs 10:9-17

We look now at the fifth pillar of wisdom - watchfulness with words. Anyone who does not understand the importance of words and the impact they can produce for good or bad is not a wise person. The book of Proverbs has a good deal to say about the power of words: this is without doubt one of its major themes. Today's...

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 10:8-11

We begin a section now that most commentators regard as baffling and bewildering. Several dangerous activities are identified. In all of these, says Solomon, watch out because you can get hurt. Solomon uses graphic language to drive home the point that fools can't see further than their noses. They go blindly on...

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 10:12-15

Question: What has stirred up more strife than any other thing in the history of the world? Answer: The tongue! Sometimes when you go for a medical examination the doctor says: "Put out your tongue." Our tongue, Solomon suggests, the little thing we use to frame words, needs examination. Whereas the words of a...

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 10:4-7

A further characteristic of a fool, says Solomon, is that he cannot control his anger. If a boss is hot-headed then don't react in the same way, he instructs us (v. 4). A fool quits his job in a fit of temper, but a wise man remains calm. How many people reading these lines, I wonder, look back to difficulties that...

Oppressors may get their will of poor and needy men as easily as they can split logs of wood, but they had better mind, for it is a dangerous business, and a splinter from a tree has often killed the woodman. Jesus is persecuted in every injured saint, and he is mighty to avenge his beloved ones. Success in treading down the poor and needy is a thing to be trembled at: if there be no danger to persecutors here there will be great danger hereafter.

To cleave wood is a common...

Upstarts frequently usurp the highest places, while the truly great pine in obscurity. This is a riddle in providence whose solution will one day gladden the hearts of the upright; but it is so common a fact, that none of us should murmur if it should fall to our own lot. When our Lord was upon earth, although he is the Prince of the kings of the earth, yet he walked the footpath of weariness and service as the Servant of servants: what wonder is it if his followers, who are princes of the...