Joy at the End of the Tether: The Inscrutable Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

Most Christians view the book of Ecclesiastes as an enigma, a puzzle from which we might draw a few aphorisms but little else. Douglas Wilson’s fresh, lucid treatment of this wonderful book enables us to see that its message is not a confused riddle but an incisive indictment of “the wisdom of the world.” We learn that what we call “modernity” is simply a term for men sinning in old ways with new toys and tools. There is truly nothing new “under the sun,” and man’s problems today are exactly what they have been since the Fall. And the answer to man’s problem is just as old, yet forever new—“the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”