ECCLESIASTES 1.16-18

16. I communed with my heart, saying, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. My heart has experienced great wisdom and knowledge."

17. Then I applied myself to understand wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for [shepherding] the wind.

18. For in much wisdom is much grief, And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

“I should be able to understand all this stuff!” Solomon seems to be saying in so many words – “because, Look, I am the wisest person who ever lived!” Thus he sets about trying to understand the essence of human madness and folly.

Although God has designed the world to humble man and teach him lessons, Solomon now seems to consider the possibility that some of the pain and frustration people experience may be self-imposed by the way they live and be quite easily avoidable as a result.

He then begins to meditate and apply his creative intelligence to understand the actual essence and attainability of wisdom and knowledge -- and also their opposites, the foolishness and ignorance, and the madness and folly that mar the lives of so many people.

The Hebrew word rendered as Madness means to act on the basis of emotion rather than logic -- on impulse, selfishly, proudly, impetuously, angrily, greedily, lustfully, irrationally. Folly, on the other hand, implies an act of ignorance -- doing something without adequate knowledge, planning, analysis and timing, without logic and research, and with no consideration for the cost to be paid, or the predictable consequence.

Perhaps Solomon could change the world . . . if only people would listen and learn, and love wisdom and embrace knowledge, matters on which Solomon was a great expert -- and perhaps the book of Proverbs was an attempt to accomplish that very thing. However, this hope too, he soon saw, was futile, like trying to grasp the wind, or, as some translations put it, like a shepherd trying to gather the wind into a sheep pen. In fact, the more he observed the way people willingly embraced madness and folly in their lives, the more it depressed him – because in much wisdom is much grief.

Might this have been the starting point of Solomon's own problems, as he opted instead, as we shall see in a moment, to focus now on living his own life and minding his own business -- undertaking great creative works and tasting every pleasure possible, as we shall in a moment.