Abstract
The words of the wise are as nails! (Eccles 12:11).
Alone among the writers of the scriptures the author of this book, who hides behind the word Ecclesiastes, which means preacher or public speaker, sounds always just a little jaundiced—as though he had no expectation that the passing world will care a straw for his philosophy and teaching. He is conscious, we might feel, of casting pearls before swine—except that he puts that thought in another way. He has no doubt about the high value of his teaching, the good sense of his advice; but experience has taught him that, in the estimation of the average citizen, ‘The words of the wise are as nails’—that is, they’re painful when they’re driven home.
Wise counsel tends to get beneath the skin, to irritate, to hurt—perhaps that’s why so frequently it is ignored.
‘A, gentle dames!’ we have just been reciting, ‘it gars me greet
Tae think hoo mony counsels sweet, Hoo mony lengthened, sage advices
The husband frae the wife despises!’— and not just husbands and their wives are thus involved. Human history is full of instances when wisdom was neglected and good sense ignored. The Greek wise man Diogenes was one day lecturing on Virtue—and began to notice that his audience was dwindling—and dozing; so he stopped talking about virtue and instead declaimed a ribald nonsense song—and almost instantly a crowd collected, all on the alert. ‘See!’ he said, ‘how willingly a fool is listened to, when a wise man is neglected.’
The words of the wise will tend to be ignored because they hurt; and this is truest of the wisest words, words stamped with the authority of God Himself, the words of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ wisdom has a piercing, penetrating quality.
Take some examples. There is His counsel to the admirable Pharisee called Nicodemus, a pious upright Jew with a respectable CV and some achievements to his name, and who had an interest in the Christian way of living. ‘You must simply start life all over again!’ was Jesus’ word to him—‘You must be born again’. That’s sharp enough!
There is his turning upside-down of most of the accepted values of His day—and ours—in the Beatitudes. ‘He’ll put his name on the map’, is our assessment, generally, of the pushy, domineering type. ‘Not so’ says Jesus—‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’ That nails a lie, for sure!
There is His almost casual assumption, underlying all His teaching, about God’s amazing grace and abundant pardon, that every one of us without exception, needs forgiveness, stands enormously and abjectly in debt—that’s a wounding word of wisdom.
There is His ever-so demanding teaching on discipleship—Forgive, time after time—and turn the other cheek—and walk the second mile—and don’t come trying to please God unless you’ve first been reconciled with your brother—sharply pointed sayings, these!
There is His startling word, designed to stab us into wakefulness, about renouncing all that’s dearest to us for His sake—‘if anyone hate not his father and his wife and his children . . . he cannot be my disciple’ There’s a word to puncture all complacency.
There’s His staggering call to people crushed by poverty and malnutrition and endemic illness and foreign tyranny to throw away their cares—‘Take no thought for the morrow—trust and submit—God’s will be done’.
We haven’t any more than skimmed the surface of His words of wisdom; but we have done enough, perhaps, to call to mind the piercing, painful quality of much of what He said, the sore cost of discipleship, the agony of heeding Him.
Of course, many great leaders of men have set out clearly the terms of allegiance to their cause. Garibaldi offered to his followers hunger and death—and the freedom of Italy. King Arthur bound his knights ‘by so strait vows to his own self’ that they were dazed, as ‘if half blinded at the coming of a light.’ Winston Churchill promised the embattled British nation ‘blood, sweat and tears’. But no man sought such strait vows as the man of Nazareth—just as no man drove home such home truths. Humiliating, irritating, penetrating, pointed – such were the words of the Wisest – piercing as nails; so much so that real nails were used to stop them.
Nails pierce; but more than that, nails keep things together—as much as cords that cannot be broken. Nails construct, upbuild and strengthen.
Pull out the nails and half our homes and furnishings would fall apart—and the words of the wise are as nails. They play a vital part in the coherence of the person and the integration of society. Ignore them, let them rust away, and life will fall apart, the world will speedily disintegrate—and this again is truest of the wisest words. They may be painful to the ears—but without them, and our obedience to them, character collapses and the world reverts to moral chaos.
Here is Amos Wilder, writing about Jesus’ teaching.
It awakens men to immense seriousness and responsibility and quickens the conscience to unexpected ranges of obligation. It plants a seed of permanent dissatisfaction in the soul. WOE INDEED! to him who hears or reads Christ’s words, for they are so formulated and proclaimed that the obligation they impose is self-evident – and one can never thereafter free oneself of their burden. In this sense Jesus’ teaching creates conscience where it did not exist before. No one can possibly estimate its total impact on the life of the world, when we think of the compounding of its influence on countless individuals throughout the history of Christianity.
And possibly the sharpest nails contribute most towards the building of our characters and our community—Christ’s word on reconciliation quoted earlier—‘If you bring a gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother, your neighbour, your fellow-citizen, your fellow-human being, has something against you, leave your gift and first be reconciled to your brother. In other words you can’t be friends with God if you are out of sorts with those around you.
That isn’t just plain speaking—it’s the truth. It is a psychological impossibility to be at peace with God or with yourself if you are in the midst of quarrelling with someone else. This painful rebuff that turns us back from the very throne of grace is in reality a word to help us reconstruct relationships with God and with God’s people.
Or take His word about renunciation, the costly self-denial that He builds into discipleship—costly to the point of hurting, but not costly for the sake of hurting. The nail is hammered home to build. As Walter Lippman said ‘It is a fact, and an arresting one, that in all the great religions it is taught that one of the conditions of happiness is to renounce some of the satisfactions that human beings seek.’
Consider finally His word about submission, the attitude that older Christians called RESIGNATION. It seems a spineless, negative approach to life, a near-humiliation; yet it has been a source and secret of much courage. The late Lord Rowallan, Chief Scout and Christian gentleman, once testified that he coped with the pain and misery of cancer only by repeating, and meaning, ‘Thy will be done’.
The words of the wise are as nails. The words of the Wisest are as deeply piercing nails; but always they are driven home by Christ the Master-Carpenter, to strengthen us for life’s hard wear.