The Laughter of a Fool

“For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool; this also is vanity.” —Ecclesiastes 7:6

    I recently walked around my neighborhood and I passed by a house with it’s garage door open.  Inside were about three or four guys holding cans of beer and laughing loudly.

   Ecclesiastes 7:6 came to my mind. “Yep, the laughing of these jokers in the garage was like ‘the crackling of thorns under a pot.’”  

    Our text describes the laughter heard in taverns; honky-tonks; night clubs; dance halls; and on Hollywood movies and TV sit-coms.  When the fun is over, the laughter stops and people are left empty. It is vanity.

    Ecclesiastes describes how the natural man looks at life “under the sun.” He lives with a horizontal perspective. He sees something funny and might laugh about it for a moment. It doesn’t last. His laughing is only  an emotion response to a sensual stimulus. It is like “the crackling of thorns under a pot.” Albert Barnes commented, “Noisy while it lasts, and quickly extinguished.”

    Don’t misunderstand me. I like to laugh.  There is “a time to laugh” (Eccl. 3:4). God created us with the capacity to laugh.  There is nothing wrong with laughing as long as it clean and moral. Even God laughs (Psalm 2:4; 37:13; 59:8)!   When God turned the captivity of Israel, the Bible says, “Then was our mouth filled with laughter” (Ps. 126:2).

    If anyone has a right to laugh it is the people of God.  The world might as well laugh while it can.  There is coming a day when the world’s laughter will be turned to mourning (James 4:9).