"13 Better was a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who no longer knew how to take advice. 14 For he went from prison to the throne, though in his own kingdom he had been born poor. 15 I saw all the living who move about under the sun, along with that youth who was to stand in the king's place. 16 There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind."
Ecclesiastes 4:13-16
The emptiness and disappointment of even the supreme earthly elevation, kingship, is the Preacher's next observation. Even the most glittering prizes life holds out are vain. One commentator thinks there may well be an allusion here to some historical episode in which an old and decrepit monarch was displaced by a young man who came to the throne out of prison amid great rejoicing and jubilation, only to fall into disfavour himself in course of time. There is a considerable cynicism here in this comment on the fickleness of human popularity. Another commentator writes 'The promise of youth is always preferred to the petrification of age (as witness the studied illusion of perennial youth in contemporary fashion). But youth inevitably becomes age, and then it must endure the pain of seeing the fickle fancy of the mob turn elsewhere'. The fickleness of fame and popularity! The verses speak, as another commentator suggests, of what we might call 'the generation gap', the conflict between the old and the young and the competition between youth and age. They seem to speak of that part of life that is temporary and passing, and urge us to think that the story Jesus told about the two men who built their houses, and their lives, on shifting sand and solid rock. Such, then, is life 'under the sun'. Is there any answer? How can one find contentment in such a situation? There is only one answer: by drawing resources from above. We shall seek to illustrate this in the next Note.