Ecclesiastes 10:20

Verse 16 opens with ʼîy, a short cry of “alas!” or “woe!”. It mourns over a land in trouble and warns of the ruin coming on it, and it speaks to the land itself, ʼerets, because the whole country and its people bear the cost of what their rulers do. Verse 17 answers it with the opposite cry, “Blessed”, and the two verses belong together as one picture of the same land under two kinds of rule.

The first cause of the woe is a king, melek, who is a child. The word naʻar covers a boy at any age from infancy to youth, and it can also mean a servant. A king could be a child in years, as Joash was when he began to reign over Judah at seven (2 Kings 11:21). The main weight of the phrase falls on a ruler who is childish at any age, short of the wisdom, experience and seriousness the throne needs. Such a king acts on impulse, listens to flatterers and is easily steered by poor counsel, and his decisions unsettle the whole kingdom. Isaiah speaks of this very thing as a judgment on Jerusalem: “And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them” (Isaiah 3:4–5).

Verse 17 begins with ʼesher, a word for happiness used as a cry, “how happy!”, and it shows the same land under different rulers. Its king, melek, the same word as in verse 16, is “the son of nobles”, in Hebrew ben-chorim. Bên means son, and Hebrew uses “son of” in a wide sense, for a grandson, a subject or a nation as well as a child, and for the quality or condition someone belongs to. Chôr properly means white or pure, and from that it came to mean noble in rank. The phrase speaks of noble birth, and with it of the upbringing that trains a ruler in discipline, wisdom and a sense of responsibility. Character matters in it as much as lineage, and the son of nobles stands opposite the child of verse 16, who lacks that training.

Verse 18 turns to an ordinary house. “By much slothfulness the building decayeth.” ʻAtslâh is indolence, a settled unwillingness to work. The building, mᵉqâreh, is properly a frame of timbers, the beams that hold up the roof, and mâkak means to tumble into ruin, to sink and be brought low. The second line says the same thing in other words. Through shiphlûwth, remissness or idleness, of the hands (yâd), the house (bayith) “droppeth through”. Dâlaph means to drip, and the picture is a leaking roof.

Houses in Israel were built of mud brick, stone and timber, often with a roof of packed earth or thatch laid over wooden beams, and they needed constant upkeep against weather, pests and wear. Leave the roof alone for a season and the rain comes in, the beams rot, and the house sags and at last falls in. Proverbs knows the misery of that dripping, comparing a quarrelsome wife to “a continual dropping” (Proverbs 19:13, Proverbs 27:15).

The ruin is slow, and it happens a little at a time as neglect does its work, which is why the verse speaks of “much” slothfulness, a habit kept up over years. Coming straight after the idle princes, the house can stand for a kingdom as well as a home, and for every part of life that needs steady care. Character, marriage, friendship and the life of faith decay in the same way when the hands that could keep them up hang idle.

Proverbs sends the sluggard to learn from the ant (Proverbs 6:6–11) and describes the field of the slothful, overgrown with thorns and its stone wall broken down (Proverbs 24:30–34). In Jesus’ parable of the talents, the master calls the servant who hid his talent “Thou wicked and slothful servant” (Matthew 25:26–27).

Verse 19 reads, “A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.” The word for feast is lechem, bread or food, here a meal made (ʻâsâh, to do or make) for laughter. Sᵉchôwq covers laughter of every kind, merriment and also scorn. Wine, yayin, is the fermented drink of the banquet, and “maketh merry” is sâmach, to brighten up or make glad, joined in the Hebrew to chay, life. A psalm speaks of “wine that maketh glad the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15), and feasts and wine marked the joyful times of Israel’s life, its celebrations, covenants and festivals.

Then comes money. Keçeph means silver, named from its pale colour, and by implication money, because silver weighed out on the scales paid for goods and wages. The verb ʻânâh means to answer or respond, and money “answers” every practical demand, the feast and the wine among them. “All things” is a sweeping phrase, and the Preacher knows its limits, because silver answers nothing at the grave and buys no meaning for a life. Coming after the princes at their table, the verse also reminds us that the laughter of every feast is paid for by someone.

Verse 20 warns against contempt for those in power, however private. The same verb, qâlal, stands under both “curse”s in the verse. Its root sense is to be light, and from that it comes to mean making light of someone, treating him as trifling or vile, and so reviling or cursing him. The warning about the king (melek again) reaches even “thy thought”, maddâʻ, a word for knowledge, consciousness or thought that comes from yâdaʻ, to know. So it passes from the tongue into the mind.

The rich, ʻâshîyr, a word used of the wealthy and also of the noble, are the men of influence and standing in the land. The bedchamber is in Hebrew a “chamber of the bed”, cheder (an inner room) with mishkâb (a bed), the most private room in the house, where a person feels safest from being overheard.

The reason is a vivid picture. “A bird of the air”, ʻôwph of the shâmayim, the sky, “shall carry”, yâlak, a verb for walking that in this form means to carry, “the voice”, qôwl, the sound of the words. “That which hath wings” is literally baʻal kânâph, an owner of wings, and it “shall tell”, nâgad, make known, “the matter”. Dâbâr means a word, and also a matter or thing, so the whole of what was said comes out. In the kingdoms of that day contempt for the king was treated as a grave offence close to sedition, and informers and gossip carried news quickly. The words we think safely hidden get out by roads we never foresee.

Behind the proverb stands a deeper truth, that every word and thought lies open to God. “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3), and every creature is manifest in his sight (Hebrews 4:13). Jesus says that what has been spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops (Luke 12:2–3), that we will give account for every idle word (Matthew 12:36–37), and that evil thoughts proceed out of the heart, the same source as what comes out of the mouth (Matthew 15:18–19). So the verse speaks both to prudence and to the heart. A secret curse on a ruler is dangerous, and it also builds in us a contempt that God sees. From here the Preacher moves on to the uncertainty of life and the call to sow and work all the same (Ecclesiastes 11:1–6).

Each picture in these verses finds its answer in Jesus Christ. The land of verse 16 suffers under a childish king, and Christ is made unto us wisdom from God (1 Corinthians 1:30). He is the true son of nobles, the son of David by descent (Matthew 1:1), and of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end (Isaiah 9:6–7). He is the King of righteousness and of peace that Hebrews describes in Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:2), his kingdom is “not of this world” in its source (John 18:36), and one day “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ” (Revelation 11:15).

The princes of verse 16 feast at dawn for their own pleasure, and “the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He humbled himself to death on the cross (Philippians 2:5–8). The princes of verse 17 eat for strength, and Jesus said, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). His whole life was diligent obedience to his Father.

Against the sagging house of verse 18 stands the church Christ builds, against which “the gates of hell shall not prevail” (Matthew 16:18), held up by the One who upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). The house built on the rock of his words stands through the storm (Matthew 7:24–27), and work built on him as the foundation will be tried by fire and abide (1 Corinthians 3:10–15).

Money answers much in this world, and Christ answers the needs it leaves untouched: reconciliation with God, forgiveness and eternal life. He is the bread of life (John 6:35) and the giver of living water (John 4:10), and the joy he gives is a joy that no man takes from us (John 16:22). He calls us to lay up treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19–21), and “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). The laughter of earthly feasts points ahead to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9).

The secret curse of verse 20 is the sin of the heart that Jesus exposed when he taught that anger without a cause stands under judgment like murder and that lust is adultery in the heart (Matthew 5:21–22, Matthew 5:27–28). He bore our sins on the cross, and God promises a new heart and a new spirit within us (Ezekiel 36:26–27), so that we honour God and those he has placed over us out of love.

These verses give us God’s wisdom for public life and private life together. They show that God cares how a land is governed, because the immaturity or the faithfulness of its rulers reaches every family under them. They show that the small daily habits of the powerful, when they eat and why, shape the life of a nation, and that slow neglect works the same way in an ordinary home. They give money its true place, as a useful thing that answers the needs of this life and leaves the deepest ones to God. And they show us a God who hears what is said in the bedchamber and knows what is thought there, so that the heart, the house and the throne all lie open before him. In Christ we have the King the blessed land longed for, wise, diligent and faithful, and under his rule steady work, thankful enjoyment of his gifts, prayer for those who govern and a clean heart toward them all have their place.