TEXT [Commentary]

6. No one is like the wise! (8:1)

1 How wonderful to be wise,

to analyze and interpret things.

Wisdom lights up a person’s face,

softening its harshness.

COMMENTARY [Text]

Here we see Qoheleth at his sarcastic best. We have seen again and again how he considers the wise person better than the fool—but only relatively. The wise person’s abilities are severely hampered under the sun (3:11b), and ultimately both the wise and the fool will die and be no more (2:12-16). Indeed, the immediately preceding section asserted a clear comment on the impossibility of becoming wise (7:23-24).

How, then, do we interpret Qoheleth’s statement, “How wonderful to be wise, to analyze and interpret things”? The Hebrew is a rhetorical question, literally rendered “Who is like the wise man and who knows the interpretation of a matter?” The assumed answer is absolutely no one! Except, of course, God, but God isn’t letting his human creatures in on the secret (3:11).

One cannot miss the sarcasm of the verse when reading the second bicolon of the verse: “Wisdom lights up a person’s face, softening its harshness.” We know Qoheleth much too well by this stage to miss the humor. No one is more sour than Qoheleth. How many times so far has he called out in anguish, “Everything is meaningless . . . completely meaningless”? This is not a man who goes around with a smiley face!