AS NAILS FASTENED

In a chapter so full of pictures and parables here is an illustration par excellence! The wise preacher diligently searches out accept­able words with which to teach the written word. He must reach the hearts and consciences of his hearers. To those who are unre­sponsive and lethargic his words must act like the goads which, with their sharp points, prodded the oxen to a quicker step. His words, however, must not be lost to any, nor must they be easily forgotten, and so the reason for his metaphor of the fastened nails.

These masters carried the heavy responsibility of teaching truth. Whether ‘masters of assemblies’, meaning that they are teachers of congregations, or, as some think, masters of collec­tions of written works to which perhaps their hearers had no access, it was the duty of wise preachers to so teach that their instructions would be fixed in the minds of their hearers. Their words must be driven home just as sharp pointed nails are driven into the wood by the blow of the hammer.

It may well be that in those days and in the context of Ecclesias­tes, these public teachers were men appointed by an overseeing prince, or even by the king himself, in which case he would be the one shepherd to whom they would be accountable. But most read­ers will know that there was, and is, a Shepherd greater than any earthly monarch. Jehovah has, at least since the days of Jacob, been recognised as the Shepherd of His people. The patriarch spoke of ‘the God that shepherded me all my life long’, Gen. 48. 15 JND. Solomon, the writer of this book of Ecclesiastes, must have known so well that his father David, himself a shepherd, wrote and sung of Jehovah as his Shepherd as in the lovely twenty-third Psalm, ‘The Lord is my shepherd’.

These wise masters, as all public teachers today, must be ever conscious of the greatness and value of the truth which they are teaching. The words of truth which they are expounding are the very oracles of God. In every age of testimony for the Lord, teachers are but under-shepherds responsible to the chief Shepherd, 1 Peter 5. 4. But, then, this is encouraging too, to know that such an One is overseeing all that is done for Him.