- He who quarries stones is hurt by them,
and he who splits logs is endangered by them. -
Probably should have mentioned this in the last post, but the rest of chapter ten is going to consist of these pithy proverbs.
They’ll wrap up in chapter eleven bringing us back to the problem that Ecclesiastes has been addressing, though these sayings are addressing it as well.
Solomon can’t help but write a few Proverbs whenever he picks up his pen.
Our verse today is relatively straight forward. Hard manual labor is fraught with injuries that can occur only when the work is taken on.
If you wish to split stone, be prepared to be hurt by the process. If you fell trees or split wood, be prepared for the tree to fall your way.
Does this happen in our modern office work? Yes, typically the consequences look a little different.
A blown schedule leads to losing the firm’s best client. A poorly managed budget puts the company under extreme financial stress.
The copier jamming causes you to lose your mind as you follow the prompts on the screen without ever seeing the miniscule piece the contraption is stumbling over.
Just me? Fine. People don’t print that much anyway.
What’s the idea here? To engage in work is to engage in risk. If you want to make money or deliver something of value, then you risk failure.
It definitely looks different in our day and age then in Solomon’s time and thank God for that. The removal of all that hard labor has undoubtedly contributed to our longer lives.
When I was a child, I had a very simple but reasonable lie I believed. I thought that it was in everyone’s best interest that they avoid pain whenever possible.
I was extremely scared of being hurt when I was young. I don’t mean breaking a bone or needing stitches. I mean getting scrapes and the like.
Yes, six-year-old me was no fun.
But, I realized as I grew up how untenable that was, primarily to good parenting. I learned, like everyone does, that by doing I could accomplish my desires and a part of doing at times included pain.
A scraped knee or finger here was nothing compared to the fun day of riding with my friends or helping dad where I could as he built our tree fort.
Now, there is a reason we struggle to understand this verse, at first. This largely depends on the industry you work in as well.
It’s almost impossible for most of us to suffer physical injuries at our work. Sure, it can happen, but something seriously has to go wrong for that to happen.
That isn’t true for steel workers, or electricians, or plumbers, or masons or truck drivers or farmers etc. etc.
We’ve removed a lot of the physical cost of work from our lives. We are able to be more efficient, store value in dollars, and create services our agrarian forefathers would claim as acts of the devil.
That doesn’t mean that we aren’t physical beings that need physical work done. Plumbing is a matter of survival, and it’s difficult body breaking work, that most of us know nothing about.
Why are we talking about this? Isn’t this supposed to be a Bible study?
Why did you not understand this verse the first time you read it? Perhaps it’s because unlike when it was written, not every job today is blue collar work.
What does the Bible teach us here?
Gratitude; for others, history, and vanishing striving.
Ecclesiastes 10:9