Radical Wisdom vs Conventional Wisdom
Astonishingly, in Ecclesiastes we have an all-out, fundamental challenge to the view of life, Wisdom, and even revelation presented in Proverbs, the book immediately preceding it. Nor is it a polite debate; as the TEV’s renderings show, it is more like a brawl. You could sum up much of this book in the words of a vulgar slogan I’ve seen on more than a few bumpers: “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
This assault on the confidence of Proverbs is deepened by the text that many Bible students consider to be the crown of the Hebrew scriptures, if not the entire Bible, the Book of Job.
The Book of Job deserves its own post. Here I’ll stick with Proverbs ad Ecclesiastes (or rather, one versus the other).
One reason to highlight this siege is that, as gloomy as these parts of the Wisdom writings may seem to some, I find them tremendously refreshing, even uplifting. In fact, I’m not sure I could believe that the Bible was really a special, “revealing” book, if the clash of Proverbs vs. Ecclesiastes weren’t part of it.