The Purpose of Sensory Distraction

To water with them the wood of the growing forest (Eccl 2:10). And all that my eyes desired, I did not withhold from them; I did not prevent my heart from all joy (Eccl 1:1-4). The soul does not seek knowledge by word, but by purity; 'for not everyone saying to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father' (Matt 7:21). For according to the proportion of the state, we receive knowledge, just as the measure by which we measure shall be measured to us. Therefore, a request is a mental apathy of a rational soul, overlaying holy knowledge. Thus, he who makes himself receptive, providing all knowledge, does not take anything away from the eyes; but I say, all knowledge that is natural, which happens to a soul bound by blood and flesh.

He who sins in nothing does not prevent his heart from all spiritual joy (Eccl 2:9). And behold, all is vanity and a choice of the spirit (Eccl 2:11). Spirit is what names the soul; for choice is a certain movement of the mind. And David: 'Into your hands I will commit my spirit' (Ps 31:5); and Stephen: 'Lord Jesus, says he, receive my spirit' (Acts 7:59); and in the Kingdoms: 'David did not grieve the spirit of Amnon his son' (1 Kings 2:2).

Of the wise man, his eyes are in his head (Eccl 2:14). If 'Christ is the head of every man', and a man and the wise man are real, the head of the wise man is Christ; but our Christ is wisdom—'for wisdom was born to us from God' (Isa 9:6)—so the head of the wise man is therefore wisdom, in which the wise man has the eyes of the intellect, contemplating in it the words of things that have come to pass.

That it happens to a man in all his toil and in the choice of his heart, by which he toils under the sun (Eccl 2:22). From this it is shown that the choice of the spirit is a choice of the heart.

For who eats and who drinks besides him? (Eccl 2:25). For who without Christ will be able to eat his flesh or drink his blood, which are symbols of virtues and of knowledge (John 6:54)?

And to the one sinning, he gave a distraction to add and to gather and to give the good before the face of God (Eccl 2:26); for even this is vanity and a choice of the spirit. This is like the proverb which says: 'He who increases his wealth with interest and abundance, to him who gives alms...'

"He gathers the poor" (Psalm 68:5) and "a foolish man hastens to be rich, not knowing that mercy will prevail over him" (Proverbs 28:22); therefore, let us be satisfied with the commentaries placed there. However, it must be understood that he defined the gathering of sins as vanity, not that it was by chance for him to have a good teacher from God.

He saw, along with the distraction which God gave to the sons of men to be distracted in it, all things which He made beautiful in His time (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and He also gave eternity in their hearts, so that man might not find the work which God made from the beginning until the end (Ecclesiastes 3:11). He knew that there is nothing good in them, except to be made glad and to do good in his life (Ecclesiastes 3:12); and indeed every man who eats and drinks and sees good in all his labor, this is the gift of God (Ecclesiastes 3:13).

He says, I saw the sensible things distracting the mind of man, which God gave before the purification to men so that they might be distracted in them. But he calls their beauty temporary and not eternal; for after purification, the pure one does not see sensible things as only distracting his mind, but as things dwelling within him for spiritual contemplation. For the mind is struck by the sensible through the senses, imposing itself sensorially, and in another way it prepares the meanings stored in the sensible things being seen; but this latter knowledge happens to the pure alone, while the comprehension of things through the senses happens to both the pure and the impure.

Therefore he also called the distraction temporary, given from God; for God, foreseeing the passionate soul, gave to it senses and sensible things, so that, being distracted and thinking through them, it might flee from those who are about to cast thoughts upon it from the opposing things. And He gave to them, he says, also eternity, that is, the meanings of the age; for this is the kingdom of heaven which the Lord said we should have within us (Luke 17:21), which, being covered by the passions, is not found by men. Therefore he says, he knew that the things themselves are not good, but the meanings of the things, upon which it is the nature of the rational to be glad and to do the good; for nothing feeds and gives drink to the mind like virtue and the knowledge of God.