We're going to just spend about, again, I said probably 10 or 12 minutes, we'll watch the clock and cut it off so that we can move on to the book of Ecclesiastes. But I do want to give opportunity to talk about a few further questions, ask you questions of theme and application because I know as you've read these books, you undoubtedly have learned some things from them and I think will help us to share those. Let me pose a couple of questions first and then feel free to jump in when something sparks an idea in your head. Is this book anti-wisdom? That's something on your outline, so actually it's not on your outline, but it could have been that's on my outline and I left that part out. But under theme is this book anti-wisdom and by that I mean does it turn on its head the wisdom that we read, for instance, in the book of Proverbs or in the Psalms. Remember, we worked earlier on Psalm 1 in verse 3 of Psalm 1, it speaks of the righteous man and it says, he is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season whose leaf does not weather whatever he does prosperous. Now can you imagine Job reading that particular Psalm, that particular verse and what would have been his response? I'm going to call on people that I haven't called on before if I see hands going up. What would Job have likely responded to that or address the general question? Is this anti-wisdom? Is the book denying what was said in this Psalm and the book of Proverbs? Yes? Yeah, this is Psalm 1, just verse 3 which we looked at earlier. He is like a tree planted by the rivers of water by those artificial water courses. Cedric? Okay, it doesn't contradict because in the end Job prosperous but in the meantime there was a lot of withering of leaves, I would say. Was there not? Okay. Yeah, Todd? But the first thing was that Job, like the other wisdom books, underscores the premier principle of wisdom, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it too underscores that. Job 28, 28. So it's not anti-wisdom in that respect and also when we talk about prospering we need to understand that that does not have to do with necessarily the things that we have or even the experiences that we go through in this life. But rather, our relationship with God being strengthened through those relationships, that's real prosperity. And I would further say that prospering our way is accomplishing the mission that God has for us. And sometimes that mission, since we are soldiers, where Christian soldiers may involve injury and harm and hurt in this life, and yet we are accomplishing our mission. We are prospering our way. And so if we take it in that sense, then no, it's certainly not anti-wisdom. I've got other questions. I know you have comments. So let me just, what I would say is that really Job is very much in sync with, say, the Book of Proverbs. The only difference is a matter of emphasis. The Book of Proverbs, as Derrick Kiddner points out in the beginning of his introduction, the book that you read, he says that the Book of Proverbs really is discussing that which lies at our feet, that which we see at a close distance and can inspect rather clearly. So the Book of Proverbs talks about what we can know. But remember when we were looking at the Book of Proverbs every now and then, the writer would say, trust in the Lord, don't lean on your own understanding is all that you can see, don't lean on it, that your fear may be, that you may fear the Lord I teach you today, even you, that your trust may be in the Lord. The Book of Proverbs itself mentions the limitations of our ability to sort everything out. The Book of Job dealing with one of these deepest of life's issues, why is it that the innocent seem to suffer so greatly, is really casting its gaze to the distant horizon where things are rather fuzzy. And so the emphasis shifts to how much we don't understand and how often we don't have a clear view of the ways and purposes of God. And so it's a matter of emphasis, Job emphasizing the limitations, Proverbs emphasizing what we can know, but both per take of both elements. So it's not anti-wisdom. What else, thematically, would you say, what about the freedom and sovereignty of God? I think that's a theme that comes through. Integrity is highly prized by God. What else do you think of as themes? Or let's move to applications, too. What do you see by way of application? Yes, Keeling? Yeah, the comment is that in God's commending job and calling Him blameless and upright, that was God's statement about what He knew He was accomplishing in Job's life, more than just a human commendation of what Job was as a human being. Yeah, I think theologically we would have to understand that it is God that works within us both to will and to do His good pleasure, but I think we're drawing on our biblical theology to do that. Right. Right. Okay, yeah, yeah, that a theme is that even in Job's distress, God was nevertheless sustaining Him and enabling Him to be to remain blameless and upright. Good. Now, let's talk about application, too. Themer application, draw them together, what did you learn from this book? Yeah, Steve. Okay, I'm going to act like an interpreter and say, you know, soundbites. Steve says he would want to be a lot slower to speak in difficult situations. Okay, it might be better to understand the tumult and the confusion that these situations create. I'm not sure I followed the... I see. Yeah. Yeah, that, in a sense, our own belief in God, our own theism, magnifies sometimes our struggle to know above those who perhaps are non-theists or atheists and just say, hey, life is tough. We live in a dangerous world. Bad things happen. Sometimes they happen to us, case closed, bad luck, in other words. But if we believe in a sovereign God, yeah, that in a sense that does, if that's all we know about God, that God is sovereign, that God is all good and all powerful, or at least all powerful and all knowing, and then bad things happen. If that's all we know, then, yeah, magnifies our suffering because we're thinking, God, you could have prevented this. You could have done otherwise. Why didn't you? And that's where I think a book like The Book of Job really helps because Job asks those questions. God could have given him the answers and he didn't. Now it came up in the break. I think Job knows now. I think our questions, our legitimate questions, will ultimately be answered. What I learned, though, is it's okay if I take some of my questions to the grave with me unanswered and I need to learn to trust God. I don't trust God because I know it all. I trust Him because He's God and He's real. Yes. Dave. Right. Right. Good. Again, I wish I had a mic that was being passed around, but if I can summarize, Dave's comment is basically that the notion, the fact that a cosmic drama is being played out and somehow our earthly existence, including our suffering, is sometimes a part of a drama far larger than what we see. I'm putting a lot of words into his mouth and he may not like the way I'm doing this, but he did better. Believe me, he did better than I'm doing, but I'm trying. That enables us to find meaning. Victor Frankel's man search for meaning as he sought for meaning in his suffering and came from kind of a Judeo perspective, I believe, but nevertheless was sort of existential. I think we can go beyond existentialism and just sort of infusing meaning into our suffering. We can understand that really there is a cosmic drama going on in New Testament terms. We struggle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. Can we see them? No. Do we know the significance of our actions day by day in terms of that more important drama that's being played out? No. We don't know that. And so that's why we are called upon simply as Job was to trust God. Trust Him when we don't have all the answers. And again, I think that that brings rest to my soul that when I get up in the morning and realize I may be confused today, I may be perplexed, I may suffer today, I may suffer injury today, and I may not know why, but that's not my job. My job is simply to be faithful and to allow God to be God. He still is, and I'm still not as one of the groups so brilliantly put it last time. Any last thing? Yes. Wait a minute. Who hasn't had a chance? I want to call somebody to never have a chance to say anything. You've not said anything publicly. I'm sorry. I'll talk to you later. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. The comment question is referring to some recent visitors we had on campus who talked about the loss of their son and the way in which that had created treasures in their lives. That's deep suffering that they could share to others. Do we have to suffer in order to have those treasures to share? I think God's, this is my opinion, you know, I think God's path of maturing differs from person to person. Suffering we know does deepen a person. If a person responds in all of life, what I would say is in all of life, whatever circumstances we confront, we will be matured if we, by God's grace, respond to those circumstances. Be they good or bad, a man is tested by the praise he receives. You know, praise can be a person can mature through the praise he receives if he responds to it by deflecting the glory to God. And likewise, through suffering, if we respond to it appropriately, it has a maturing effect in us. But suffering in and of itself is no guarantee that we will grow spiritually. In fact, some people are embittered by what they suffer. So the key is whether we are responding to whatever life brings our way in a godly fashion that will by his grace enable us to grow closer to him rather than driving wedge between us and him. Yeah, I do think God, when those who have been called upon to suffer, I think they should see that not as God kicking them but as God honoring them. You know, and I say that as a person who in this life has not been called upon to suffer very much and yet those whom God calls to suffer, I see that as an honor in that he, these are his most trusted servants. They are the ones that he can trust with that, whereas some of the weaker ones of us may not be able to fare as well under those circumstances. So I do think there is deep meaning in suffering and we do comfort others with which we have been comforted. So we can help other people when we have been through things. Okay, well, I'm continuing to watch the clock. So we will leave behind the book of Job. It can still come up in conversation but let's leave it behind for now and turn to the next of the speculative wisdom books, the book of Ecclesiastes. And I think what I'm going to do, since this is a kind of a time to break things up and break things down, we're going to do something, I'm going to go ahead and let us do our little group project here before we begin, sort of diving in, we're going to go in and taste one of the more inigmatic and difficult verses in the book of Ecclesiastes. So if you will pull out the sheet you got that has at the top, one man among a thousand, but not a woman among them all, just stay seated for just a minute, don't go to your groups yet. But I want to tell you what your project is, found that sheet. Okay, just a brief explanation. At the top of the sheet, you have verse 28 which includes this phrase in the NIV, which reads while I was searching, but not finding, I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. Did you know that was in the Bible? Are you glad it's in the Bible? Is it really in the Bible? Anything strange, orthographically that you notice there? That means in terms of the writing? Yeah, upright is in brackets, twice, okay? So let me begin by saying that word, that adjective is not in the text. Now you can have elliptical texts that leave things out there to be assumed from context, and you can find other translations that will say, I found one faithful man among a thousand, but not a faithful woman among them all. I found one wise man among a thousand, but not one wise woman among them all. You can find all different kinds of auditory adjectives, the end effect being to make men one one thousandth, minimally, but nevertheless one one thousandth better, more upright, wiser, whatever, than women. Is that what the text is saying? Now there's been a tendency for a long time to try to figure out this difficult text by expanding in one way or another, and I gave you the targum, which is the aromatic translation of this verse, just more or less for your own entertainment, to show to the links to which this can go in antiquity back in the latter centuries of the before Christ, and then in the centuries immediately following Christ, in synagogue service, often aromatic targums would be read because the Jewish people at that time were not that well-versed perhaps in the Hebrew themselves, and so they needed aromatic translations, and sometimes those would be sort of expansive and interpretive, and this is one. So this is what the targum says in this verse, there is another thing which my soul still sought, but I have not found, namely, a perfect and innocent man without blemish from the days of Adam until Abraham the righteous was born, who was found faithful and innocent, among the one thousand kings who were assembled to make the power of battle, but I did not find a worthy woman among all the wives of those kings. Everything that's in italics is an expansion, so you can see how this expansionistic tendency can take over. Now your job is simpler than that, I believe that the key to understanding this verse, and this is going to be your little group, entertaining group project tonight, but I hope instructive also, I think the key is to explore the word find. I found one man among a thousand, but not one woman among them all. The key word in the passage is find, it occurs a number of times in the span of a very few short verses. What I've done is I've given you the RSV and the new international version, and every time that word that we often translate find appears in these texts, in the book of Ecclesiastes, by the way, this is all the references, all the times this word occurs in the book of Ecclesiastes, I've put it in bold. So what I want you to do is to try to come to some determination in your groups as to what the proper connotation of the word find is, by inspecting these occurrences in the book of Ecclesiastes, and then using that connotation translate, you can paraphrase, but translate the verse 28 and see what you think the writer is actually saying. Now in doing that you may also want to explore the context in which verse 28 is found, read the verses right around it, and they're printed here for you many of them, but you may want to even start a little bit earlier. Does that make sense? You understand the project. I think it'll be fun to see how this actually says quite a different light on this verse if you come to the right conclusion, and I'll let you know if you do. So at this time, let's go ahead and break up into our groups, and we will go for, I think we can do this in 15 minutes, so we'll go for 15 minutes and see if you can do that together in a group and come up with a translation, each of you write a translation down though on your sheet. So you can break now, and I'll stop you in about 15 minutes, maybe a little bit longer. Don't forget to glance at the board and see the assignment for next time, which is to read the remaining two chapters of Kidner. Chapter 8 is very short. Chapter 7 deals with Ecclesiastes in academic study. You should have read chapter 6, which deals with Ecclesiastes as interpreted by Derek Kidner. Read 7 and then 8, which sort of ties them together. 8 is voices encounter point, and also read the song of songs. The rabbinic tradition said you should read the rest of the Bible several times before you're prepared to read the song of songs, so be careful, great book in the Bible. Okay, well, let's talk about this issue of what Ecclesiastes 728 means after all. I know that some of you, how many of you, without saying it, how many of you feel that you came up with the simple truth of the matter? Yes, yes, okay, in my opinion, how many of you have read my mind and know what I wanted you to come up with? Okay, let's go through the process which I helped you pursue, and maybe you'll sense, oh, that's where we didn't do that or where we got off track. The first thing was to eliminate the inserted material, in other words, don't put upright or wise, or whatever in there. Now, again, it's possible that we sometimes have biblical texts that are elliptical and expect us to assume something from some other sentence that precedes or follows, and many of you noticed that verse 29 does have the word upright in it, and so on that basis, the translators of the NIV may have chosen to use that word rather than maybe wise or faithful or good as the adjective. But my suggestion is, let's leave the adjective aside for the moment and explore what is by many people's admission, many, many commentators have noted that the key word in this passage is the verb motsah in Hebrew or to find as a basic definition, and you can really see that in terms of what I handed you, if you look at Ecclesiastes 724, notice there's a bold word there, discover, which is the verb motsah, 26 again, 27, we have it twice, 28, we have it twice, 29, we have it again, so that is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 times in the space of 6 verses. That's a key word, and I think that's probably the key word in this section, and we'll confirm that in a just a minute by looking at sort of the overall structure of the book of Ecclesiastes, and I'll use my computer over there to graph a couple of things so that you can see them graphically. Okay, now, but let's eliminate the adjective and explore the range of meaning of a word. So I'm going to just draw this, this is the word, okay, and I'll even write the Hebrew up here for your viewing pleasure since Hebrew is such a beautiful language motsah, okay, that's the Hebrew word. Now, we know it can mean to find what else did you discover in exploring this word? What else can it mean? Discover? Now, by the way, this is a rather loose way of doing a word study, this is not a technical way of doing it, but you can do this kind of thing with, by comparing English versions, you noticed, for instance, that the RSV is pretty much trying to stick with one translation for that word. Right? I mean, throughout you have either found out, find out, you know, find or found out. Really, the RSV never varies from that, so whereas if you were just reading the NIV, you would never have the clue that you were dealing with the same word because the one word is translated in various different ways, drawing on its range of meaning as appropriate to a particular context. So in addition to find, discover, what else? Fathom, what did you say? Encounter? What'd you read that? Yeah, you're just passing it on and kept, yeah, you're paraphrasing for me and we're really sticking with just what's in bold here, so you have to pull one out of the bold. Comprehend, okay? Okay, live, that's the red herring, that could throw you off, because literally, if you look at the RSV, it says, but there was found in it, a poor man, and English would say, man, live there, he was found there. Okay, so there the meaning is still found, right? So we're beginning to get kind of a range of meaning. In terms of this range of meaning, are we dealing with a literal kind of action, a physical action, or an intellectual, mental action? Mental? Mental? I mean, in this context, you're exactly right, certainly. The word can mean both. You could literally find something, but you could also find out something. We have a lot of words that are like that. A good analog would be the word grasp. I'm grasping your paper, but I don't grasp the point you're making. Okay, I've grasped it in my hands, but I don't grasp it intellectually. And my size used very much in that same way, and there's been a paper written that says, most of the time, and I think you saw that, most of the time in Ecclesiastes, and you have all the references here, it's in this intellectual sense of finding out, figuring out, grasping something. So the idea is, let's translate the verse as simply as possible without adding adjectives, drawing on this range of meaning, and what might we come up with? One man among a thousand? One man among a thousand? I understood, or I understand, but not a woman among them all. One man among a thousand, I fathom, but not a woman among them all. Does that work? I think it does. Now, look at this. I mean, and after all, that is so simple, that's probably why you couldn't find it. I heard the most elaborate theories, you know, about who the one man was, and even federal headship came out rather early up here up front, and all kinds of glorious things, and some of them were already really preached, maybe one sermon, but simpler is better, if it works. Now, look at what he's saying. He begins, and well, we could begin as early as verse 23. All this I tested by wisdom, and I said, I'm determined to be wise, but this was beyond me. I'm determined to be wise, but it's beyond me. Whatever wisdom may be, it is far off, the most profound, who can find it? And I said, who can discover it? Who can comprehend it? Who can fathom it? It's far off, and most profound. So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate, and to search out wisdom, and the scheme of things. See what he's after? The writer is trying to figure out the key to life, trying to find out the grand scheme. He goes on 25b, or 25 again. So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate, and to search out wisdom, and the scheme of things, and to understand the stupidity of wickedness, and the madness of folly. And then I think he gives an example, and this throws some people off. It makes them think, all right, now he's talking about women, and he's going to then make an unfair, favorite comparison, and say, man, or better. But I think he's trying to figure out the stupidity of wickedness, and the madness of folly. And he's a man, and so he says, I find more bitter than death, the woman who is a snare. Notice there's no comma after woman. He doesn't say the woman, comma, who is a snare. He's not absolutizing women. This is a limited group of women. He finds women who are snares to be more bitter than death, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are changed. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare. That's madness. That's folly, to be ensnared by one of those women, and he's saying, God help us. God protect me from such a woman. And conversely, God protect women from such men, and we all know they're existent as well. But then he goes on in verse 27. Look, says the teacher, this is what I have found. This is what I have discovered. This is what I have fathomed, comprehended, adding one thing to another to discover, comprehend, find the scheme of things. While I was still searching, but not understanding, not finding, not comprehending, and then I think, why Norman Library and his commentary says, this is an intrusion, this next phrase, I think it's just an aside. He's just said, while I was still searching, but not really finding, but not grasping much, not finding out much, I think he then says, oh, I understand one man in a thousand. I don't even understand my fellow human beings. I understand maybe one man in a thousand. Not a woman among them all. Now, that's a typically male sentiment. It's not necessarily a misogynistic statement, you know, a chauvinistic statement. Some people that maybe are hypersensitive might take it as such, but I think people who know anything about men and women know that, when it comes to understanding women, men are adults. I mean, I see some knowing smiles, and we have to be told, men are littleists, women are intuitive, men don't read between the lines very well. Did I tell the story about going shopping for white shoes? Good, I won't. No, I'll tell you in just a minute, but let's finish this first. So he's saying, I was looking to find the key to life, the scheme of things I was searching, but not finding much, not understanding much, oh, I understand one man among a thousand. Not a woman among them all, but this only have I found. This only have I found out, this I figured out, this one thing I've grasped, I'm certain of this one thing God made mankind up right that men have gone in search of many schemes. Now, that really fits his argument to this point. He's saying, there's only one thing I know for sure, if not God's fault, he got it right, we blew it. Now, that's an important theological conviction to come to, it's not insignificant, but that's, he's saying I just really haven't figured out much. I've been questing, I'm on this quest for wisdom, but it's far off and most profound, who can find it out, who can figure it out. Well, I was saying that men are dense when it comes to women, and we're different, and here's an example that I heard once that I think illustrates it. So, I imagine that my wife tells me that she needs a pair of white shoes, and it asks me if I would go shopping with her. You know what my mentality is? She said she needed white shoes, she wants me to go with her, we have a task to accomplish. Yeah, we have a job, I'm a man, I'm concerned with being adequate, you know, that's what drives me as being adequate, I'm terribly threatened and become judged for the defense immediately if anyone accuses me of being inadequate. I mean, of course, you know, so she says, would you go shopping with me, I need to buy a pair of white shoes. We go, I calculate my mind, I know where there are three shoe stores within our price range, and they're all within five minutes of each other, and they're all ten minutes from our house, so including drive time, we should be able to find, flush out, shoot, and bag a pair of white shoes, even if she's very particular. I should have those white shoes home, and I can get back to work so that I will prove adequate, because I've got a lot of work to do, I can do that in two and a half hours, and I will prove my adequacy as a husband because I'll fulfill her request. Now, is that what, is that what she is thinking about, the white shoes, the quest for the white shoes? Now, what is she thinking about? Right, she's thinking, I'd like to spend a little time with you, you know, I need some white shoes, why don't we go shopping? Now, see, and so what happens is, I go in there, and I'm looking white, you know, I'm looking for white, where's white, where's white, where's white? You know, I find the white, I pull them out, look at this, look, isn't this nice? This is your size, what's wrong with that? I don't know, you know. Well, what about this one, you know, and I keep pulling out white shoes, and she's not shooting at any of them, and I begin to get frustrated, you know. And so by the end of the time, I'm thinking, she's just trying to provoke me here. She never, she never meant to kill any shoes in the first place. She's just killing time, she's wasting my time and I'm going to be, I'm not going to get back to work, this is dragged on to four hours now, no white shoes, we could end the total failure. And she's thinking to herself, what a jerk, why do I want to spend the afternoon with him in the first place? That's, you know, that's a story that illustrates how men and women are different. She didn't even buy me lunch, she expected me to pay for that. How can we, how can we, how can we help ourselves over that? Here's the charge card, go buy your lousy shoes. Well I think, you know, there's a lot in our culture that says except for a few obvious physical differences, men and women are exactly the same. And I think that is an improper view of God's creative genius in creating men and women to be. Yes, there's a great commonality to our humaneness, but there is a wonderful distinctiveness to not only the way we're built, but the way we think. And so as we learn to think and understand, I'm going to, I'm thinking about this because I'm supposed to preach on, on living with your wives according to a knowledge, according to understanding on Monday, so I'm thinking a lot about this recently. If, as we learn to understand the way the other things, if she says, would you come with me to buy some white shoes, I automatically think, that's what she said, what does she really want? What she interested in and doesn't take too much cleverness to realize, she might just want to spend some time together. And then on the other hand, she needs to realize that I'm a man, I'm a literalist, and if she says white shoes, she might do me a favor if she says, look, I'd really love to spend the afternoon together. Why don't we go shopping and besides if we turn up some white shoes, I could use a pair of white shoes. And then I, as a man, have been helped to read between the lines and understand that she really wanted to spend some time together. I think that's what the writer of Ecclesiastes is saying, just that common, simple, male sentiment. I hardly even understand my fellow men, and I've been to promised keepers and all that stuff, and I hardly even understand men and women remain a mystery to me. Now, let's see if this works out. We're all geared to do something on the computer here, so let me show you how this works out. No kind of ignoring our outline intentionally for a moment here. Now, the one problem with my interpretation is that no one has seen to have thought of it, and that always makes me very nervous when no one has thought of it. This also makes me nervous when, oh, that's Doc Cam no wonder it didn't come on. Also makes me nervous when I had this all set up and nothing comes up. Don't worry, don't worry, you didn't have anything liberating during the break. Now, you've seen this very briefly last week. This is again the program Accordance, I'm not trying to do ads for the program necessarily, but I do want to alert you to the wonderful potentials of computers to do a lot of things in interesting ways. What I'm going to demonstrate for you right now is how we can get a sense of the overarching thematic structure of the book of Ecclesiastes just by doing some searches and then graphing frequency of a couple of key words. I'll start by asking you a question. What word more than any other? You've just read Ecclesiastes if you followed the assignment. What word more than any other do you associate with the book of Ecclesiastes? Vanity, excellent. Meaninglessness, okay, that's another translation for the same word. Now, for the sake of accuracy, I'm going to make it most accurate. I'm going to search this in Hebrew, but you could do it and come up with the pretty much the same thing using an English word and say the RSV. You saw how different the RSV and the NIV were in terms of translating the same Hebrew word or original word in various different ways. RSV is more straightforward in that regard. So what I'm going to do is switch this over, and I'm going to limit the range of our search to the book of Ecclesiastes, okay, see where I am choosing Ecclesiastes. And then I'm going to put in the Hebrew word, which means vanity, which is heath, as the way that's pronounced. And now we're going to search that. Whoops. Can I hit it? Yes. Searching slowly, and you see that it picked up Ecclesiastes 1-1. Vanity of Vanity says the preacher Vanity of Vanity is all his vanity. Now, we can do a number of things with this. I could ask it to analyze it in which case it would parse all the verbs for me. But what we want to do for the sake of our exercise tonight is graph it. And notice that there's a slight, I'll make that graph a little larger. There's a certain weighting, though this word continues throughout the book. It does rise higher in the early portion of the book, really the first half of the book. And as we talk more, we'll probably talk next time more about the structure of the book. We will discover that the first half of the book is really seeking for the meaning of life, the meaning that we can find in our toil under the sun. What does a man gain for all his toil under the sun? And the writer comes to the conclusion, well, it's pretty much meaningless in an ultimate sense. I can earn all this stuff and build up this big bank account, and death may catch up to me, or when it does, I may hand it over to a fool. Who's to say to the person who will inherit all my endeavor will not simply be a fool? What is it? What good has it done me, ultimately? So he's searching for meaning, he's searching for the key to life under the sun, and he's coming to the conclusion, it's how meaningless in an ultimate sense. It's all vanity. Now, you see, it trails off in the second half of the book, so let's, we're going to keep this graph. And then we're going to go back and do another search, go back to our search window. Plots will not be kept if the search text or search range has changed, okay? Thank you for your help. Now, in the second half of the book, what verb have we been looking at just now? To find, okay? And I'm going to, because he's, in the second half, he's talking about what he has not found. Well, maybe I'll just leave it find. You could either do it, have not found, or simply find. I'm going to do find, but I'm going to also do know, because that's the third quarter of the book really focuses on what he's able to comprehend, what he's able to find. And then, and the key word is mutsah. And then the next quarter deals with what he's able to know. And those are related terms. What I'm able to find out, what I'm able to know. So I'm going to also include, I'm going to say that word, or the Hebrew word for know, which is yada. And then we'll search that, and now let's plot that. Okay? Notice, notice how the range is quite different there. Now, I'm going to see if this, I hope I didn't mess things up by re-sizing those windows. Now, I can pull these up, I think, and they should be overlapping. Okay. And then, thank you. I'm so pleased with anything mechanical works. I've got Terry right there to run up and rescue me if it doesn't work out. But you notice, you notice then this, this sort of inverse relationship, but notice how, how strongly this, this key word of mutsah, the finding and knowing peak in this section just that we were dealing with. Now, to me, that's, that's not the end of the story, but I think that serves as some confirmation of what we were arguing, that really what he's talking about in that particular verse, is not that men are one-one thousandth better than women. People make all kinds of qualifications and say, well, it's only his experience, which is true, shouldn't absolutize what he says, which is true. He's only talking about what he has experienced. But I think what he's saying is not that he has found men to be better, he just found them to be minimally more understandable. He's comprehended maybe one man and a thousand and women remain a mystery to him. He's not found very much in his quest to understand. Okay. Comments or questions? Yes, buy it. I'm sorry. Now, come on. Yeah, you know, that hasn't, I even teach this stuff and that hadn't occurred to me. But I think that's like, that's right. Hey, I understand one man thousand. What's more, I don't understand a single woman among them all. That, that works. I mean, I'll add that in a footnote. Thank you, Mike. Yeah. Yeah, could that, could, could it be an admission of, at admission of the fact that he, he's not very perceptive. Is that what you're saying? And thus he, yeah, I think actually he's just, I think I would rather understand this, makes more sense to me at least to understand this as simply an example of how futile his quest has been. You know, that should be comprehensible to me. You know, I should be able to understand my fellow human beings, but I can't even, I can figure out maybe one man and a thousand. I mean, people even baffle me much less finding the key to life. And it will talk more about this next time in terms of how this fits within the overall structure of the book. I just want to take the last five or so minutes since it's too late to launch into something more, you know, more in line with the outline I've got here. To just do a little free dialogue, a free open exchange of things that you would like to talk about next time in Ecclesiastes from having read it ideas that come to mind. Questions that you have. Yeah, Robert, I'm not promising by the way to do it. I just want to know what you think. Yes. What about discussing some of the things, you know, that's not we all laugh these questions. What about discussing some of the things we'd like to have on the test. If you bring a test question to class next week, I will gladly collect them and possibly use them, but not necessarily. Okay, I would gladly collect them, but only one per customer, please, you know, don't give me 30 and insist that I use them all, but that's not I meant to put on the end of the midterm. What would you think would be a good test question as sort of a bonus point at the end, but I would love to collect questions in advance and then play with them and distort them and twist them and make them evil. Yeah, Dave. Give me the reference on that. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, well, let's let's look at the one he mentions is 10, 19, you though, who couldn't hear the quotation, we'll have to look it up. But yeah, we'll look at some like that. There are some curious proverbs or sayings that occur in this book of Ecclesiastes. I think Sandra was next.
Okay, who was it that saying that song a time? Yeah, the birds, I do it as the birds or some kind of animal or something. Yeah, okay, again, I can't promise to cover them all in equal depth, but I'm interested in what you're interested in from having read it. What else? Yeah, keep it. Yeah. Okay, trying to understand Solomon, that does raise the question, which, okay, trying to understand Solomon, that does raise the question. Which is an interesting question. Is this Solomon's work? Did he write Ecclesiastes or did someone else write Ecclesiastes or is there some ground in the middle? So we'll talk, I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, but we'll talk briefly about it next time. Yes. Okay. Yeah, what is the apologetic value of this book? Could we use it nowadays to read that's part of practical application in our own engagements? Yeah, the short answer is yes, by all means, but we'll want to talk about that. Other, yeah, this is helpful. A lot of this stuff is already planned, but it's good for me to hear it from you. Yes. Okay. Work is a gift of God, and compare that to a pre-fall situation. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I'll think about that one. I may assign you a paper on that one. Others. Okay. People are getting geared to leave. Let me, let me say one more thing before we go. Remember, in terms of your life issues, I think I spoke a little prematurely when I said, oh, that'll be more the grace factor. Actually, having thought more clearly about what the assignment is, what work you put into it, and having looked at it, I think it's going to be more significant than just that. We are, and I say we, that is I and my TA are working through those things, both kind of duplicating our own effort, so we get some cross-fertilization.