He wrote a book about it. The purpose of Proverbs was to show us how to make life happy by following the light of Wisdom. It is a completely practical book. There is no hint of academicism or of trying to impress others with one’s capacity for abstract reasoning.
And every word in it is true. All the advice Solomon gives is very good advice. He depicts Wisdom as a woman standing on the street corner and calling out to humanity to come and eat that which is wholesome and sweet, that which can satisfy. Wisdom, in this view, is the key to contentment.
Proverbs is also a deep book. Solomon informs us that “a soft answer turns away wrath” and a “gentle tongue can break a bone.” These observations are true, but they are by no means self-evident. They go against all instinctive wisdom and human nature itself.
Through his proverbs and judgments, Solomon earned a reputation as the wisest man in the world. The Queen of Sheba, laden with riches, came to riddle him because of this shimmering reputation. But this raises a very interesting question.
How is it possible that the wisest man in the world could wind up being so very unhappy?
A sore travail to fatigue themselves with.
At one time there was nothing he wanted more than to pursue wisdom, but in his old age he has come to regard it as a sore travail that eventually brings great weariness.
Don’t worry; he is going to tell us why later on. But for the moment let’s think about the change itself. It is a simple fact that we all grow weary as we grow old. Projects we would not have hesitated to undertake begin to seem daunting if not impossible.
Part of this is the loss of energy and strength. But partly it is something else, too. Our perspective on the ambitious projects of youth changes. We no longer see them in a glowing light. Knowing they cannot make us happy, we begin to have doubts about their value.
The project Solomon has in mind is his avid pursuit of wisdom. Just as it is possible to become skeptical about the excellent addition which we have built with our own hands, so it is possible to become skeptical about the pursuit of wisdom if it does not lead to happiness.
There is no identity more desirable than that of a wise man or woman. You can be a successful politician or a great athlete or musician, but if you do not have wisdom you are a very inferior star. Everyone admires wisdom. Everyone loves wisdom because to have it is to know how to be happy.
But in Solomon’s case—not so much. Wisdom, the thing he used to love with all his heart, now seems like a great travail to him, hard to obtain, and, as we will see, sometimes even harder to bear.
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun;
and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
Why has wisdom become a burden? Partly because it reveals things like this to him.
All of our great works are vanity because we do them for identity. When we are building our addition with our own hands we are also building ourselves. The addition is an outward thing of finite value, but the labor and devotion are inward and full of dreaming.
It is the disparity between the dream and reality that becomes exposed over time. We begin to realize we did not build the addition just to expand our living space but also to expand ourselves. And when happiness does not materialize we begin to wonder if it was an exercise in vanity.
Our spirit is vexed because we did not obtain what we were looking for. We wanted happiness but what we found was sore travail and a certain emptiness. All works done under the sun are scorched by the sun. They cannot give us the refreshment we desire.
Other than his writings, the “work” for which Solomon was most famous was the temple he built. No, he did not build it with his own hands, but it was his firm hand that carried it through to completion. Surely such a magnificent accomplishment can make a man happy!
But this was not the case. No edifice, no matter how splendid, can fill up the infinite space of our longing. As soon as it is built we begin to have doubts about it. We see things that could have been done better. We wonder how we could have been so stupid as to miss them.
Worse, nothing in this world is permanent. The temple cannot give Solomon the identity he desires because it will not last forever. He was explicitly warned that it would not last if Israel did not remain faithful. And in a time of great unfaithfulness it was utterly destroyed.
Solomon had an example of the futility of great works right next door in the pyramids. The Egyptians, thinking their kings were divine and lived on after death, filled the pyramids with things the kings would need in the afterlife. Those things remained untouched until the tomb raiders came along.
Our works, no matter how great they may be, become vexing when we see that they cannot fill the sea of our desire. They cannot make us happy. We must look somewhere else.
That which is crooked cannot be made straight.
Through our great works and search for wisdom we are trying to redress a certain perceived crookedness. We want to present an upright image to the world—we want to be straight—but we cannot deceive ourselves. In old age it becomes very plain that what is crooked cannot be made straight.
Solomon has had his own crookedness revealed to him. For one thing, he debased marriage with his multiple wives and concubines. He had a personal warning about taking foreign wives and turning away to their gods, and yet he did it anyway.
There was also a warning in the law. While the Israelites were still wandering in the desert, they were told that if they appoint a king, “neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.”
Solomon did both of those things to glorious excess, as he himself tells us. The purpose of Proverbs was to make the crooked straight, but in his old age Solomon has seen that what is crooked cannot be made straight, not by human hands anyway. The crookedness is part of who we are.
Augustine had a term for this, but we will not use it here. Suffice it to say that old men know their crookedness better than anyone, lying awake on their beds under the cold, full moon. But to someone like Solomon, this is a crushing revelation. What good is his wisdom if he cannot make the crooked straight?
In fact, it is no good. The only way we can ever be truly happy is to have an identity that is straight, that reflects our heroic concept of ourselves, our desire to be thought of as good. This is the identity the philosophers tried to obtain through their endless discussions about “the good.”
But if we are crooked by nature, then wisdom is powerless to give us what we want. We can be the wisest man in the world, like Solomon, but our wisdom cannot make us straight. This is the reason for Solomon’s reevaluation of wisdom, the thing he loved the most.
That which is wanting cannot be numbered.
Another take on the same idea. It is literally impossible to number that which is wanting.
We have theories or accountings of government laid down over the ages by the wisest sages, but no one has ever counted up the perfect government. Much of the time it is not even clear to us what is holding the world together, other than sheer inertia.
We have seen many marvelous medical advances, but we cannot take away crippling arthritis; we cannot cure cancer; if someone has “essential hypertension” we cannot make it unessential; if someone has tinnitus, we cannot make his ears stop ringing.
The more minute our measurements become, the more we see that no amount of labor will ever amount to a full accounting. The human body alone is so complex with its complementary systems and redundancies that literally hundreds of peer-reviewed journals are dedicated to trying to understand it.
The stars in the sky—who has counted them?