Though bitterly worded, chapter 10 is as close as Qohelet will get to a moment of comic relief. As if to counter the impression left by the end of chapter 9, that despite psychological and sociological problems, a small group of properly situated and appreciated wise people of voice and standing will suffice in order to prepare for the worst (amid a pleasure-bent majority hoping for the best; 9:15–16), Qohelet turns to consider the disturbingly disruptive potential of energetic fools of voice and standing: how a single death-fly can rot a precious ointment (10:1).

Qohelet shows us two kinds of fool: busy fools on the one hand—overconfident in their knowledge and ability—and passive, slothful fools on the other. Both are contrasted with those whom Qohelet deems to be genuinely wise.

Fools of the first type deny Qohelet’s hevel principle, that ‘all is vapour [hevel]’; transient and provisional. They object to the claim that all human knowledge is time-bound and hypothetical. Qohelet’s uber-wise fools are still very much with us today. The triumphs of science, our widely accepted moral principles, and the marvels of technology, many people argue, are living proof of our ability to recognize certitude. But they confuse broad, momentary agreement with actual truth, and feeling certain with proving certitude. If history teaches us anything, it is that radical paradigm shifts puncture and dissect the long march of human accomplishment into a discontinuous patchwork of undeniable, yet later abandoned, certitudes. These fools’ brazen, cocksure self-confidence, for which the hesitant, self-doubting, deliberating, and humbly thoughtful wise are seldom a match, is capable of winning over the heart of a city.

Fools of the second type fully accept Qohelet’s hevel premise but answer his big question negatively: because our knowledge of the good and the true can never be ascertained, our worldly undertakings can never be properly deemed worthy. As a result, they face the world with apathetic indifference.

Qohelet’s satirical depiction of the topsy-turvy disruption of the city’s social fabric through the slapdash projects of cocky, reckless fools which unwittingly bring greater harm than they were meant to prevent (10:6–10), together with the pathetically neglectful disrepair caused by idle fools of the second category (10:18–20), is more effective than any philosophical argument to bar such strategies from entering the discussion.

‘Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days’ (11:1) is the motto that captures the precariousness of prospective action, hoping that, yet never knowing if, our investments might eventually yield a reward. But the mention of bread and water lends a pungent urgency to the clichéd piece of friendly advice. Our very existence depends on bread, and our bread on water—the great unpredictable necessity on which Qohelet’s agrarian world depended for its very life. Yet clever farmers do eventually ‘find it’. Uncertain as to which crops will survive, or when the rain will come, they wisely hedge their bets by subdividing their plots. They have to sow in advance of rain, but not too early. If they wait for clouds to gather, they will have missed their chance and will never sow in time. Nor can they predict the rainfall by gauging the ever-changing wind (11:3–4). It is as impossible to chart nature’s course as it is to chart the formation of a foetus in its mother’s womb (11:5). Acutely aware of the hevel premise, as of the vital yitaron (worth, value) of bringing forth bread from the earth, good farmers wisely hedge their bets again by subdividing their time, as they did their fields: sowing both morning and evening, instead of vainly forming futile forecasts or gambling recklessly.

And so, from being the critical obstacle to life’s yitaron, Qohelet’s cruel hevel-premise as to our inherent and unsurmountable mist-like temporality and fallibility has morphed into the key to achieving life’s yitaron. We are able to live worthy lives devoted to the great tasks with which God has given us to contend. To do so, we are not required to overcome and transcend the time-bound uncertainties of our hevel existence—the idea that we can do so is a dangerous delusion—but, on the contrary, to properly endorse and internalize them. Being forever on the lookout for what we deem to be failings and problems, shortcomings and wrongs, we form tentative plans to solve and right them, forever humbly aware, that others, past and present, may well have seen and done things differently, and still do. Availing ourselves to the mutual challenge of such a constructively critical environment, we can rest assured by the end of the day that we have done our human best.

References

Band, Debra, and Fisch, Menachem. 2023. Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living (Waco: Baylor University Press)

Fisch, Harold. 1988. ‘Qohelet: A Hebrew Ironist’ in idem, Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press)