Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them. Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.
Ecclesiastes 7:16-21, ESV
This is a fascinating passage and the plain sense of “Don’t be overly righteous” makes many Christian commentators a little nervous. Here are a couple of ways “don’t be overly righteous” is handled in my own tradition:
- Puritan Charles Bridges says, “The danger obviously lies in defect, not in excess…”[1] and then goes on to explain it away the statement as some kind of self-righteousness.
- The ESV Study Bible does something similar: “The Preacher is not advocating moral laxity (cf. 8:12–13). Bearing in mind that he is using the term ‘righteous’ in the sense of being ‘right in one’s cause’…, his counsel is a warning against the obsession of always being proved right in an argument or dispute. To insist on this is ultimately self-destructive: people who have to win every argument will eventually alienate everyone around them.”
But these are just ways of taming the text—although, admittedly, the intent is often to honor or seek consistency with other parts of Scripture like Matt. 5: 48 (a passage we’ll look at next week). The main problem is, well-intended or not, that both interpretations above are totally inconsistent with the parallel thought in verse 17 about not being overly wicked. There “excess”—not “defect”—in wickedness is clearly the problem. Further, “wickedness” there is not reduced and limited to just one poor expression of wickedness (like the ESV Study Bible’s take on being overly righteous).
The New Oxford Annotated Bible offers a reading that is more honest and faithful to the context of Ecclesiastes. Their take is that “if you do not accept your inevitable failures, you will destroy yourself.” They further note that the full context of 16-22 is saying “the one who fears God will reject the search for pure righteousness, and accept both wisdom and folly as necessary parts of life. This will [then] help one accept the failures of others as well, even a servant’s offhanded criticism.”[2]
As you and I continue to reflect on “the Preacher’s” meaning, here are two huge ways this passage helps us:
- As Old Testament scholar Iain Provan observes, both being overly righteous and overly wicked “represent, in their own way, a refusal to accept the limitations God sets on mortal beings.”[3] Reflecting on this can help us repent of the subtle attitudes of control and manipulation that are often behind even our best behavior and desire for wisdom. For example, “Maybe God will do x for me if I do better at y…” And let’s be honest, even wisdom, as good as it is (19), can give us the illusion that we have more control over life than we actually do (13-14).
- Again, Provan notes, “One’s attitude toward other human beings should be conditioned by the awareness of one’s own flawed humanity.”[4] (20-22) In other words, acknowledging our own profound lack will cause us to fixate less on what others say about us (true or false), paving the way for us to become more empathetic and gracious people.
[1] Charles Bridges, The Geneva Commentary Series: Ecclesiastes (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1981; first published in 1860). 163.
[2] New Oxford Annotated Bible, Fifth Edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 954.
[3] Iain Provan, The NIV Application Commentary: Ecclesiastes/Song of Songs (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,2001) 153.
[4] Ibid., 152.