The Scroll

13 - Wisdom

When Kohelet came back to his senses, it was dark outside, and Benjamin was snoring beside him in the bed. He had a faint recollection of Benjamin giving him medicine. Eli and Esther had been there too along with the frowning, narrow face of the healer. Whatever was in the healer's potion had put him into a deep sleep.

He was hungry, and that was a good thing. Swinging his feet to the floor, he carefully stood up. There was no dizziness in his head or pain in his chest.

Shuffling over to his desk, he sat down and looked out at the night sky. The moon was almost full, which meant the Feast of Booths would start any day now. He hadn't just been sick for the night, he had been in bed for more than a week!

A covered clay bowl sat next to the unlit oil lamp. He lifted the lid; the potent smell of a lamb curry wafted out. There was flatbread inside, and although the curry was cold, it tasted wonderful. He ate it all and then searched in the bucket overhead, where he found an orange. Standing there, peeling the fruit, he found himself staring at the torn edge of the Ptahhotep scroll. It was a parchment version, a practice scroll from his young days when Simeon had taught him the art of transcribing texts.

His journey from a mere scribe, responsible for copying out the texts put on his desk, to the chief archivist in charge of the entire collection had been a slow climb. In those early days he'd never dreamed of someday being in charge of the king's library and had been content with his job as a scribe. His love of learning kept him at his desk long after the other scribes departed for the evening, especially if a new scroll was assigned to him.

He could still remember the day when Simeon, the former chief archivist, had brought him a copy of The Instructions of Ptahhotep, a book of Egyptian wisdom written almost two thousand years earlier.

"We need a new copy," Simeon growled, but there was a sparkle in his eyes. "I want you to only work at it when the others are gone so you can concentrate and make sure it's a perfect copy. But first you must read it over many times, for I will check your work personally when you are done."

Kohelet's hand shook as he unrolled the scroll. Ptahhotep was the crowning jewel of ancient wisdom literature, and never before had a younger copyist been permitted to touch the king's copy. Simeon must have known how badly he wanted to read this scroll.

For the next few months, Kohelet poured over the words, learning them by heart before carefully transcribing them onto the new parchment. He carefully digested each sentence as he memorized the book and added it to the wise sayings he already carried in his mind.

Kohelet brought his thoughts back to the present and touched the brittle parchment. An edge broke free and fluttered to the ground. Decay pervaded even the transmission of wisdom. He had seen it throughout his time in the library but had tried to ignore it. There had been the ancient tablet Melek dropped and shattered before it was even read. Then there was the scroll the slave boy ruined and the many parchments eaten by rodents or simply decaying back into dust.

Leaving the Ptahhotep scroll in the bucket, he pulled out his own and unrolled it on the desk. He found where he had read to Esther just before he went down to buy Simca back from Caleb. The thought of that day brought back a sorrow that pressed down on him. He sank into his chair, took a deep breath, and traced a finger over the last words he had scratched onto the scroll.

Wisdom earns a person more respect than ten rulers in a city, yet there is not a righteous person on earth who always does right and never sins. So do not pay close attention to everything people say, or you will eventually hear someone insult you. Even then, do not get upset, for you know in your heart you have done the same to others.

He had made this very mistake with Eli when he first arrived in the market, entering into an argument with him over a theoretical idea that was both impossible to prove and also trivial. At the time Kohelet had been desperate to have the market worker's approval and had insulted Eli's intelligence. It was only Eli's humility and grace that had repaired their relationship and forgiven those rash words. Even the wisest person in the world could instantly become a fool by speaking in haste, in anger.