Ecclesiastes Chapter Two, Testing Mirth

Ecclesiastes 2:2 I said of laughter—“Madness!”; and of mirth, “What does it accomplish?”

Remember, the preacher’s first objective was to test the path of pleasure through wisdom. He already deemed the entire affair to be vanity, but he presses on. First, he focuses on laughter.

Of course, laughter is the response of hearing or seeing something that one finds amusing. Therein is a little clue. The word amuse, when dissected is interesting. To muse means to thoughtfully ponder a matter. The Greek prefix “a” affixed before it denotes the absence of something. So to amuse, or be amused, means the absence of thoughtful pondering. Amusement then is trivial or frivolous. As far as mental exercises went, it was low on the list.

There is a strange preponderance on humor in modern media. Everything is funny now. Very little, if anything is not made to be laughed at, without thinking overly hard about what we’re laughing at, why, or if we should be. Sometimes laughter is the hallmark of cruelty. Some things ought not to be made a joke of. The preacher later writes, “Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men; and the living will take it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by it the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth,” Ecclesiastes 7:2-4.

Focus on the finale of the passage, that the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. That is our present consideration, as it is with the preacher. He considers mirth and laugher madness and folly. They are to him synonymous. Fixation on them distracts people from considering their final end: death. The pleasure of laugher is an opiate that people imbibe to inoculate them from considering the outcome of human existence, one which no person may escape: death, Ecclesiastes 8:8.

The term “mirth” here is identical to the one given in the previous verse, “simchah.” It is the either an external or abstract expression of joy. Amusement then, with its resultant laughter, embodies this concept. The preacher likens laughter to insanity and mirth to pointlessness. The question he poses is rhetorical. In his search for meaning through the wisdom given him, he inquires about pleasure, specifying external (or superficial) expressions of joy in laughter, wondering what good it does mankind?

Now this is not to say that the preacher condemns finding anything funny. Far from it. Later in his letter he refers to the house of feasting, where fools indulge in mirth. The momentary absurdity that makes a man laugh becomes an institution to distract humanity from musing over life and its theoretical consequences. It is embodied in the house of feasting, where making merry is a career choice, pursued passionately. It may be observed with some sobriety that while Jesus our Lord rejoiced in the Spirit during His earthly ministry, none of the apostles record an incident of Him laughing. That is not to say that our Lord never laughed; I am merely pointing out that it was inconsequential to record it. 

His life was not a pursuit of sundry pleasures, but instead found genuine pleasure and joy in serving the will of the Father. In a world obsessed with laughter and comedy as a distraction from contemplating life, the preacher commends the house of mourning as an antidote, because, “that is the end of all men, and the living will take it to heart.” As Moses, the man of God wrote, “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom…Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days!” Psalm 90:12, 14. True wisdom apart from this world takes our mortality into account and relegates comedy and laughter to a very minor role, an incidental role as it were. Our true joy, in form and function, must come from the Lord, which will be both fulfilling and eternal.