In Chapter 2 of Kohelet, King Shlomo reviews everything he explored in this world - joy, laughter, wine, buildings, and possessions - and arrives at the conclusion that there is no advantage under the sun. Yet in the middle of these reflections, he pauses and testifies to one thing that indeed holds an advantage: contemplating wisdom as opposed to madness and folly. In this lesson, we will examine two central verses - "And I turned to consider wisdom" and "Then I saw that wisdom excels folly" - and discover in them great depth regarding the paths of divine service, faith versus secular disciplines, and education.
וּפָנִיתִי אֲנִי לִרְאוֹת חׇכְמָה וְהוֹלֵלוֹת וְסִכְלוּת כִּי מֶה הָאָדָם שֶׁיָּבוֹא אַחֲרֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ אֵת אֲשֶׁר כְּבָר עָשׂוּהוּ׃ (ב, יב) - And I turned to consider wisdom, and madness, and folly; for what can the man do who comes after the king, regarding that which has already been done? (2:12)
Rashi explains: Shlomo says, I turned away from all my pursuits to contemplate the Torah, and also to observe madness and folly. That is, in order to understand the advantage of good, one must view it against the deficiency of evil. I contemplated the Torah and its virtues in contrast to sins and evil matters, which are termed madness and folly - mitzvot versus transgressions - and weighed them one against the other.
And why? "For what can the man do who comes after the king" - Rashi explains: to plead with him regarding a decree he has already issued against him, "regarding that which has already been done," when the execution of the decree has already taken place. In simple terms: do not delay or wait until the decree becomes irreversible. Shlomo says: I turned to contemplate the Torah and to contrast wisdom with folly, good deeds with transgressions, so that I would choose the right path in advance. If a person says to himself, "Let us proceed, and if we get stuck we will figure out what to do," he may find himself stranded in a place from which there is no escape. A decree has already been issued from Heaven, and once sealed in blood, there is no remedy and nothing left to do. It is too late to come and plead.
The Imrei Shefer follows a similar approach. Shlomo says: True, I said that there is no advantage under the sun, that nothing a person pursues here in this world yields an enduring gain - yet I found one thing that does possess an advantage, and that is "to consider wisdom, madness, and folly": to scrutinize human actions, weighing wisdom against madness and folly, refusing to follow the whims of one's eyes and desires, and choosing wisdom instead.
He illustrates this with a wonderful parable. A king appoints ministers throughout the realm to govern the people, empowering them even to judge capital cases and execute the wicked. In one province, a man murdered his fellow and was sentenced to death. The condemned man's father went to the king, begging him to show mercy to his son, to commute his sentence to a different punishment, and to pardon him this once. The king consented and accompanied him to the courthouse to oversee the son's release from the gallows by royal decree. Yet when they arrived, it turned out they were a single moment too late. The man had already been executed by the judges, and nothing could help him now. All the effort - securing an audience, persuading the king, bringing him to the scene - was completely in vain. For is it within the king's power to bring the dead back to life?
The moral of the parable: The Holy One, blessed be He, is King of all the earth, governing the entire universe; yet the governance of the "small city" - the human body - He entrusted to man himself, who possesses free will. If one of his limbs chooses evil and thrusts a hand into fire, will the Holy One decree that it not be burned? If a person puts his hand into a machine and his hand is severed, and then begins to plead with Hashem - what will come of it? Will a new hand grow back? Certainly not. This is the meaning of "for what can the man do who comes after the king, regarding that which has already been done" - once the act has materialized into reality, it is over. This is the lesson: a person must align his actions in advance, rather than waiting until he is mired in the mud and only then searching for a way out.
The holy Alshich explains that here Shlomo comes to teach us that external wisdom is madness, in contrast to inner wisdom, which is the wisdom of the Torah, the wisdom of Hashem. All secular wisdoms are termed madness and folly - for "what can the man do who comes after the king, regarding that which has already been done."
He brings a parable for this from the Rambam in The Guide for the Perplexed (Part II, Chapter 17) - a wonderful parable that remains profoundly relevant to our very day, intended to refute the views of the heretics: those who deliberate on the fundamentals of the divine, pose questions about the Master of the Universe, challenge His providence, and base their inquiries on philosophy and natural science.
A parable of a pregnant woman who was brought into a fortress surrounded by towering walls, completely uninhabited. She gave birth to her son there and departed, leaving the infant to grow up in that place. He was weaned, and they taught him knowledge and wisdom to the utmost - they instructed him in all the natural sciences inside that palace, yet he never ventured outside the fortress and never saw another human being. When he grew up, he asked, "How do people come into the world? How did I get here?" They told him: "There is a creature resembling man, and when a man approaches her, he places human seed in her womb. The fetus remains enclosed there for nine months - its mouth closed and its navel open, for it eats through the navel from whatever its mother eats. After it emerges from the womb, its navel closes and its mouth opens, and through the mouth it nurses milk from its mother's breasts until it grows up."
Upon hearing this, the young man grew furious at the speaker and cursed his day, saying: "Shame and disgrace upon those who speak falsehood! Do you not know that if a person were enclosed for nine months inside another person, he could not live - he would suffocate! And if his mouth were closed and his navel open, even without placing him inside another person, he would perish before his time. Therefore, what you say is impossible."
Says the Rambam: His words are undeniable truth, and yet they also did not speak falsehoods to him. Both are correct. What he says is true - plug a person's mouth and open his navel, and he dies. And what they say is also the absolute truth - a baby in its mother's womb has its mouth closed and its navel open. What is the explanation? The nature of one born of woman before leaving the womb is not identical to his nature after he emerges. The misunderstanding arises from deducing the earlier state from the later: there is a reality now, and from this reality you infer that it must have been the same beforehand, and according to that assumption, what you are told makes no sense. But inside the mother's womb, the form of existence is completely different. The question you asked is excellent based on the information you have today, but who says that conditions in the past necessarily matched what exists today?
And exactly the same thing, says the Alshich, happens to those who raise objections against Hashem's providence and attempt to judge what took place before the creation of the world based on the nature that the Holy One, blessed be He, embedded into the world He created. Because you observe reality as it is now, you claim it could not have been different beforehand. But if you realize that beforehand the entire reality was different - it is precisely like the difference between a fetus in its mother's womb and its condition after it emerges. How then can a human being judge regarding His divinity, the creation of the world ex nihilo (chiddush ha'olam), and other inquiries concerning Hashem, using human intellect that observes nature only after the fact? It is entirely invalid to raise questions from the present against the past. This is what Shlomo meant: Know why I characterized secular wisdom - the natural sciences and the like - as madness; for "what can the man do who comes after the King," the King of the universe, to scrutinize His providence and deeds, "with what has already been done," that which He already created and established previously. To judge what existed before the Holy One, blessed be He, created nature based on what you see now - that is madness and folly.
This is one of the answers used to this day to respond to those who raise arguments regarding the creation of the world. For example, one method used to estimate the age of the world is carbon-14 dating - a type of carbon whose concentration in objects allows one to estimate their age, leading to conclusions of thousands and tens of thousands of years based on its rate of decay. But the problem here lies in a fundamental misunderstanding, as we have elaborated in our study of the Kuzari.
It is told that a team of researchers once visited a stalactite cave in the United States and began studying it. After several months of research, they concluded that the cave had existed for several thousand years. How? They measured how many millimeters the stalactite (hanging from above) and the stalagmite (rising from below) grew each day, multiplied by the days, months, and years, and thereby determined how long they had been forming. The trouble was that local residents who knew the area testified that they had entered the cave forty years earlier, and there were no stalactites, no stalagmites, nothing at all. The researchers determined thousands of years, yet the locals testified that in the past there was nothing there. What became clear? Their faulty assumption. Stalactites form from mineral-rich limestone deposits that seep through the rock when moisture is present, slowly drying and creating stalactites and stalagmites. Today, with the stream above having dried up, the dripping is very slow. But when the stream was flowing, the dripping was rapid, and the volume of limestone was far greater - what takes a month today may have taken only an hour back then.
I once saw a wonderful illustration of this: a student decided to study the growth rate of a rabbit. He found that it was born weighing 333 grams, and by the end of its first year, it reached one kilogram. The study's conclusion: a rabbit triples its size every year. What follows from this? That at two years old it will weigh 3 kilograms, at three years 9 kilograms, at four years 27, at five years 81, and at six years old you will need a flatbed truck - 243 kilograms! And do not argue, he did a study... How absurd. Will what occurred in the first year necessarily continue in subsequent years? Incidentally, the same could be said of a newborn baby. In precisely this manner, when you extrapolate from a reality observed today to what occurred in the past, it is a complete error, for who is to say you understand the past reality correctly?
One such example is brought by the Malbim. Ancient bones are discovered, from which researchers deduce that the bone is thousands, tens of thousands, or perhaps millions of years old, assigning it to this era or that, to Neanderthal man, and so forth. Says the Malbim: They fail to take one factor into account. If you take a bone and boil it for an extended period, and then hand it to a scientist to examine - based on its degree of softening and the compounds released from it, he will date it to the distant past; he will never tell you it is a bone from two days ago. Yet for forty days and forty nights the Flood descended, and the Flood was a boiling of the entire world - all living creatures in the world were boiled, as Chazal teach, for there were scalding waters from below and cold waters from above. A bone that underwent cooking in the tremendous heat of boiling water followed by intense cooling in freezing waters - anyone testing it would surely date it to thousands of years.
There is, however, one thing we know adds the same measure each year - tree rings. There, one cannot easily claim that it grew rapidly at one time and slowly at another. And remarkably, no tree found to this day can be dated to more than 5,000 years; there is no tree with more than 5,000 rings. Take the oldest living trees - not one of them testifies to the world's existence beyond 5,000 years.
Another example is our distance from the stars. It is well known that there are galaxies and stars steadily receding, and calculations are made: if its velocity is such-and-such and the distance it has traveled is such-and-such, it follows that everything began millions of years ago. Where lies the flaw? Chazal teach that the entire world was created in its full stature and maturity (b'tzivyonam uv'komatam). Had a researcher arrived on the sixth day when Adam HaRishon was created and begun investigating how long he had lived and how old his mother was, or examining the trees, stones, and minerals to assign each an age - we would have told him: "Sir, do not indulge in fantasies! Everything was created today, everything was created this week; only when it was created, it was created fully formed." So too, when the Holy One, blessed be He, created the galaxies and the receding stars, He brought them into being mid-course. He created everything complete; Adam HaRishon was not created as a single cell or an amoeba, but as a man, in the image of God, in full maturity. And this is precisely what the Rambam writes regarding that youth: he was wise in the natural sciences, yet he failed to grasp that a reality could exist different from what he observed in the present, and that in that reality, things functioned differently. Therefore, says the Alshich, you can understand how secular wisdom is considered madness: "what can the man do who comes after the King," the King of the universe, to scrutinize His deeds, "with what has already been done."
וְרָאִיתִי אָנִי שֶׁיֵּשׁ יִתְרוֹן לַחׇכְמָה מִן הַסִּכְלוּת כִּיתְרוֹן הָאוֹר מִן הַחֹשֶׁךְ׃ (ב, יג) - Then I saw that wisdom surpasses folly, as light surpasses darkness. (2:13)
The Imrei Shefer explains: wisdom is great, important, and vastly superior to folly. Do not think this is merely a slight advantage - rather, it is "as light surpasses darkness," a tremendous, immense advantage. This is a reality where anyone who observes it sees that the two do not even approach each other: all matters of folly, which are the external disciplines, contrasted with wisdom, which is internal wisdom - it is like light versus darkness.
There is a wonderful explanation here by the Gra (the Vilna Gaon), well-known from the Pesach Haggadah. "What does the wise son say? 'What are the testimonies, the statutes, and the judgments that Hashem our God commanded you?' What does the wicked son say? 'What is this service to you?'" The Gra, who was a master of conciseness, writes a brief gloss there: "'Then I saw that wisdom surpasses folly, as light surpasses darkness'" - he quotes our verse. Many have wondered: what was the Gra hinting at, and what was he coming to resolve? After all, the Gra's words are always profound and meant to clarify something.
Commentators explain that the Gra is coming to answer the famous question: what is the difference between the claim of the wise son and the claim of the wicked son? After all, both of them used phrasing that seemingly warranted having their teeth set on edge. The wicked son said "to you" - and on this it was said: to you and not to him; he excluded himself from the collective, and had he been there, he would not have been redeemed. Yet the wise son also said "that Hashem our God commanded you" - you and not him! Why do we not set his teeth on edge? Why is he treated leniently? Many answers have been offered to this question, but see how the Gra resolves it with a single verse.
The Gra explains: the advantage of the question of the wise son over that of the foolish son - who is the wicked one - is like the advantage of light over darkness. And what is the advantage of light over darkness? Let us look at the creation of light: "And God called the light Day" - whereas regarding darkness, it does not say "and God called," but rather "and to the darkness He called Night," without the Name of God. Our Sages already derived from this that the Holy One, blessed is He, does not associate His Name with evil, and darkness is an aspect of evil. Thus, the advantage of light over darkness is that with light, the Name of God is mentioned, while with darkness, it is not mentioned.
So too in our case: regarding the wise son, it says, "that Hashem our God commanded you" - he accepts Hashem as our God. And as for his saying "you" - commentators have already explained that he is a child, "when your son asks you," and as a minor he is not yet obligated, which is why he said "you." Do not imagine this stems from disrespect, for he said "Hashem our God." In contrast, the wicked son, who represents folly and darkness, says, "What is this service to you?" - to him everything is burdensome labor, and "Hashem our God" is completely absent. Just like darkness, in which God's Name is not mentioned. Here we see how, by citing a single verse, the Gra resolved a difficulty raised by all the commentators. This was his genius: while many answers require strained and forced interpretations, the Gra shows us - just read carefully; the verse itself answers your question.
The Kol Efraim explains that here Kohelet comes and says: come and see, I have found an advantage under the sun. After all, we established that there is no profit or advantage under the sun, yet here Kohelet says that he did find one: "I turned to see wisdom, madness, and folly," and afterward, "Then I saw that wisdom surpasses folly." However, anyone who examines the subsequent verses sees that whatever he presented as an advantage is not truly an advantage. As he said earlier, "He who increases knowledge increases sorrow" - being wiser does not guarantee that you will be spared from afflictions, it does not guarantee a better livelihood, and it does not guarantee life in the World to Come; at times, added knowledge only adds sorrow. Therefore, there is no real advantage in wisdom itself, and even what seems like an advantage of wisdom over folly - know that it is not truly so.
We have already explained, based on the Malbim, that wherever the phrase "and I saw" appears, it refers to something that is not ultimate truth, in contrast to "and I spoke," which represents truth. Here too, the matter is ostensibly not true: the observer sees that the sage's wisdom often brings him heartache, as he will state later - what will become of everything I produced in the world, what will remain of it, what will be done with it? This heartache turns the entire advantage of wisdom, and everything he created and achieved in his life, into something that yields only grief over what will happen to all that was given to him and all that he possesses.
The holy Alshich asks: "And I saw" - what is the significance of "I"? The emphasis is on "I, the master of wisdom." For Hashem granted wisdom to Shlomo, and his wisdom was supernatural. It was not just anyone who observed this, but one who truly received wisdom - and he saw that wisdom has an advantage. And through what did he observe and discern this? "Over folly," as the advantage of light over darkness.
Often, when someone gives you something, you ask: Is this fine? And they tell you: Yes, it is fine. But when they show you the genuine article, the truly good thing, you say: Not at all, there is no comparison, the first was terrible. Previously it seemed fine because you measured it on its own; but when you measured it against something else, it paled in comparison. Here it is the reverse: When I looked at wisdom on its own, I said, fine, wisdom is a good thing. But when they showed me folly, I realized that wisdom is magnificent and tremendous. Through folly, I understood the advantage of wisdom. This is "as the advantage of light over darkness" - if you turn on a light during the day, or someone shines a flashlight, you cannot measure its benefit; you measure its benefit at night, and then you see the advantage of light over darkness. So too here: when you want to understand the greatness of wisdom, view it in contrast to folly.
Let us cite a contemporary example to illustrate this. As is well known, we face many educational challenges today that did not exist in the previous generation, struggling with great dedication against the influx of new technologies and the pull of the street. Frequently, this leads to intense internal criticism: regarding what is happening within our own camp, regarding methods of education, and regarding the teachers - are they doing their work faithfully? But they are not to be blamed at all; know that they face immense difficulties. Educating today is no simple task. If it is hard for a parent, how much more so for an educator who must manage thirty young children and everything they bring with them, or for a yeshivah rebbe and mashgiach - it is not simple at all.
Do you want to understand the advantage of wisdom over folly? The advantage of one who studies Torah compared to one who pursues vanity? The advantage of one who educates his children according to the Torah compared to one who is connected to all forms of media? Reflect upon "the advantage of wisdom over folly, as the advantage of light over darkness." If you have ever seen the conduct of those raised on the street - their demeanor, their speech, their appearance, their manners, their emptiness, what their minds are constantly occupied with - you would say: we are dealing with pure gold. You would have no more complaints or grievances. This does not mean there is nothing to improve or no need to strive, but one must realize the generation we are facing and the reality we must confront. Look at what the outside world has to offer, and then you will realize that here, Baruch Hashem, it is pure gold.
Then there will be no doubt that you should send your child only to a place of Torah, where they teach Torah at the highest level, without side distractions and without thinking about practical careers, learning a trade, and having both this and that. And why ask so many questions? Go to the institution you are considering and see how the children turn out - not at the beginning. At age seven or eight, everyone is sweet and cute. Look at them at seventeen, and see whether a hollow youth emerges or whether they grow into true bnei Torah with yirat Shamayim. Do not look at kindergarten - look at the finish line, the final stretch, and even beyond: at age twenty-five and thirty. Check how many remain God-fearing, establish fixed times for Torah study, remain bnei Torah, and raise their children in the Torah way - and how many, unfortunately, become "datlashim." The term is well known: formerly religious. Know that today there are even communities of datlashim, banding together to establish their own community, Hashem yishmor.
Once, people came to Rav Shteinman and said: "Rebbe, there are those who want to establish a political party for working bnei Torah, for the current party does not represent us; it represents only the avreichim, and working people need representation too." Rav Shteinman told them: "There is a halachah of mayim acharonim; we all know it is an obligation. There are those who do not wash mayim acharonim, and they have various rationales and approaches as to why not, fine. But we have yet to hear of anyone founding a party of those who do not wash mayim acharonim. Have you ever heard of such a thing?"
The same applies here. Suppose someone is incapable of learning all day - not every mind can bear it, not everyone is capable of it, and a person is forced to go out to earn a livelihood. It is an unavoidable circumstance, for if a person were able, what else is there to do in this world other than connect with his Creator? But there is no choice; one must support a wife and children, as obligated in the ketubah, and is therefore forced to work. Yet a person who did not wash mayim acharonim does not found a political party over it. A party of the compelled? What kind of thing is that? How true these words are. When one reflects, one sees that when a person remains attached to the Torah, he raises his children properly and they grow properly - and that is the advantage of light over darkness.
The Panim Yafot explains: "As the advantage of light over darkness" - the advantage of light emerges precisely after the darkness that preceded it, and it is from within the darkness that light shines forth and emerges. As we say, "He forms light and creates darkness": by first creating darkness, the light subsequently emerged and was revealed. We see this likewise in the creation of the world - first, "and darkness was upon the face of the deep," and only afterward, "And God said, 'Let there be light.'"
This offers a wonderful chassidic insight: Do you wish to shine? It must come from within darkness. If a person considers himself something and views himself as great, that is not how one illuminates. But if a person conducts himself according to the Gemara's dictum, "Be obscure and you will endure" - remain hidden and humble, and you will shine and endure. One who seeks publicity will not achieve true greatness. Behold, when Hashem revealed Himself at Mount Sinai, it says, "When you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness" - revelation comes specifically out of darkness. And how did Moshe Rabbeinu attain all his lofty levels? "And Moshe approached the thick darkness," and what was in the thick darkness? "Where God was." As mentioned previously in the name of the Baal HaTanya: Why did Moshe merit attainments that the rest of the nation did not? Because they did not want to enter the thick darkness. The darkness is intimidating, it is obscure, and they were afraid. The only one willing to enter into the thick darkness was Moshe.
In other words, often in clinging to Hashem, there is darkness at first, there is fog, and there is struggle. But just like everything in nature - from the decay of the seed the tree grows, and from the breakdown of the egg the chick emerges. Such is the way of nature, that light emerges from darkness. And this is the meaning of "the advantage of wisdom over folly is like the advantage of light over darkness": when light emerges from darkness, then it shines as it truly should. A person who desires to reach true perception must first pass through darkness, striving and toiling, and through this he will ultimately reach the immense light, the light of the Creator, blessed be He. One who truly humbles himself, conducting himself with modesty and lowliness - he is the one who merits to shine properly.
These two verses have taught us profound foundations here. "And I turned to consider wisdom" - that a person must weigh wisdom against folly in advance and choose the right path, rather than waiting until an irreversible decree is sealed, for "what can the man do who comes after the king, regarding that which has already been done?" And on a deeper level: that external secular wisdoms are akin to madness, since one cannot deduce what existed prior to Creation from what we observe in the world today, as in the Rambam's parable of the boy raised in an isolated fortress. And "there is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness" - for with light, the Name of God is mentioned, while with darkness it is not, as the Gra expounds regarding the difference between the wise man and the wicked; that the true value of wisdom is measured specifically in contrast to folly, as taught by the Alshich, pointing us to reflect on the value of Torah education compared to what the outside world offers; and that the light itself emerges specifically from darkness, through toil, humility, and lowliness - and only then does it shine as it should.