13 I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. 14 There was a little city with few people in it. A great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. 15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. 16 So I said, “Wisdom is better than might; yet the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heeded.”
17 The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded
than the shouting of a ruler among fools.
18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war,
but one bungler destroys much good. (NRSVUE)
The Hebrew word for “bungler” is “sinner,” and it’s the same word translated “sinner” in 9:2. The context above, however, gives a little more color to this particular sinner. He lives in times characterized as “the shouting of a ruler among fools.” He is the “great king” who builds “great” things. He is powerful (“might”), noisy, and foolish. And because of the toxic combo of being powerful, popular, and unwise, he is a particular kind of sinner who “destroys much good.”
And yet the crowds love him…
Fleshing out the profile further, the bungler is the incompetent loudmouth, the man or woman who is always talking or always talking above others. They know it all and have little use for deference, reflection, or established norms. They tend to be arrogant and rash. Eugene Peterson captures this last descriptor well in his translation of v. 18: “Wisdom is better than warheads, but one hothead can ruin the good earth.”
In the world of carpentry (or insert your profession), bunglers aren’t just those who ruin things with their shoddy workmanship; they’re those with the power or authority to reward incompetence, impose half-ass solutions, or undermine quality work. They say a lot of crazy sh—, but it’s their popularity, wealth, or position that gives them the power to “reward,” “impose”, and “undermine.”
The bungler gives credence to the grade school slight: “If brains were dynamite, you’d be dangerous.” Only, in the bungler’s case, it’s not so much brains; it’s brawn and especially bluster. They don’t have the four-dimensional chess brain that the multitudes think they do; rather, it’s the size and volume of their megaphone, along with their constant presence, that maximizes the wake of their devastation.
And yet the masses adore him or her…
This may be due to their charisma, political savvy, ability to threaten and bring destruction to dissenters, identify with the common person, play to people’s fears and deal with their enemies, or some unique combination of any of these.
But lest we’re tempted to get too cynical and focus only on that one particular person we don’t like, let’s turn a lens toward ourselves. Viewed simply, the bungler is the sinner who brings destruction or messes things up on a larger scale. And who among us, if we’re being honest, hasn’t screwed things up royally a time or two? Singer-songwriter John Foreman captures well both the honesty and holy desire for repentance that we all often need: “I’ve made a mess of me… I want to reverse this tragedy.”
Or as N.T. Wright has wisely said—and this quote has been a saving grace these last few months:
There are many parts of the world we can’t do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls ‘myself.’”