The things of the world are like dust in the wind
The Wise Man: I see your beauties and your adornment as grass and as the flower of the grass, and your goods in the hands of thieves and in the teeth of worms; your delights are dust and smoke, rising into the air in a great cloud, and scattered at once, as though they had never been.
Do not grieve seeing the kings of the nations powerful
The World: Woe to you, thoughtless and foolish one, who keeps saying you understand things well! With what knowledge and what reasoning do you say this word? Look, take heed and think of kings — how they tear down and build up cities, how they destroy and gather armies, how they kill and pardon, how they take and how they give! Think of the rich, whom I make wealthy, so that nothing at all is lacking to them, and if they desire something, they obtain it at once! Is it not from me that they have all this, or do they not take it from me?
The Wise Man sees clearly: everything the world offers as adornment — beauty, wealth, delight — is nothing but grass that withers and a flower that falls. His word is not new; he only echoes, with a mind enlightened by prayer, what the prophet had already declared: “All flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flower of the field… The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:6-8). What we call wealth ends up, sooner or later, in the hand of a thief or the tooth of a worm — and what we call delight is only smoke rising into a great cloud, and then suddenly nothing at all. So too the glory of the proud dissolves: “They vanish like smoke” (Psalm 68:2).
Here the World does not stay silent. She rises and rebukes the Wise Man, pointing him to kings: those who build and tear down cities, gather and disperse armies, kill and pardon at will. And to the rich, who lack nothing they desire. “Is it not from me that they have all these things?” she asks — and there is truth in her voice, for the visible world is indeed the storehouse from which man draws food, clothing, and bodily strength. The holy Fathers never despised the world as God’s creation — they despised only the passion that clings to it as to a master.
But here lies the World’s error: she speaks as though the gift came from her, rather than through her. Kings do not give themselves their own power, however firmly they believe it: “The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will” (Daniel 4:17). The Apostle says the same of any authority: “There is no authority except from God” (Romans 13:1). Even the raising of one man above another comes “neither from the east nor the west nor the desert,” but from God, who humbles one and exalts another (Psalm 75:6-7). The World is only the hand through which the gift passes — not its source.
And this is precisely why the powerful ones the World shows off so proudly remain under the same law the Wise Man had already spoken: “Do not be afraid when a man grows rich… for when he dies, he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down with him” (Psalm 49:16-17). James says plainly that the rich man will fade “like a flower of the grass,” even in the midst of his pursuits (James 1:10-11). It is not the power of kings that proves the World’s strength, but precisely her fragility — for a gift that fades is not a sign of dominion, but of passing.
So the two voices do not contradict each other; they clarify one another. The Wise Man is right that everything the World offers is dust in the wind. The World is right that, through her, man receives power and goods. But both remain under a third Word, which neither shakes nor withers: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
