Continuing where the previous chapter left off, Solomon reasserts the warning to his younger employees that they accountable first and foremost to their Creator.
If you wait until you are older, the youthful habits of folly will blind you to the truth. We get the feeling Solomon is rather old when he writes this, as he describes old age with such poetic imagery. The grinders would be molars older people lose too soon. Faces in the windows would be more than your eyes, but keeping them open and paying attention. The doors to the outer world are the ears. Even when nearly deaf, it is still too easy for the slightest sound to awaken you and lose sleep at night, and hard to stay awake in the day. The hair is white like almond blossoms and old men drag their limbs like injured grasshoppers. Near the end he describes the hanging lamp that falls from its fixture and goes out, then the well of wisdom what dries up or becomes inaccessible. In the end, the body returns to dust.
But this is more than the gripes of aging. Solomon knew all too well of missed opportunities for God’s glory. He gave himself to just about everything else, but knew he had missed out on what really mattered. You can’t go back and demand a second chance to do it right. People who embrace their God early find life worth living, aging just a minor insignificance, and death a mere circumstance. They aren’t wrapped up in the futile things of this world.
Solomon reminds his young employees that he has done so very much with human wisdom, writing books, collecting and cataloging proverbs. He has accomplished just about everything he started, and this current training manual is just one more. But in the next breath, he warns it is very easy to waste time on knowledge and miss out on serving God. Don’t let knowledge and wisdom become your god. There is a God in Israel, and your first duty is to know what He made you for, what He demands from you. All things must be evaluated through His eyes and if you are going to study anything at all, study His Word. If you miss His justice, nothing else you have will matter. If you are walking in His justice, nothing else matters.
Indeed, there is no wisdom outside understanding God’s justice.
