May 5
Reading: Ecclesiastes 1
1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.
7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.
8 All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.
12 I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind. 15 What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. 18 For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
Beware, the book of Ecclesiastes can bring you down.
Ecclesiastes is an enigma, maybe the most puzzling book in the entire Bible. This is on purpose. There is a cynicism in this book. The author who presents himself as “the Preacher” is King Solomon, the son of King David. (vss. 1:1, 12) In spite of this he sometimes refers to himself in the third person. (Ecclesiastes 1:2, 7:27, 12:8-10) This too is an enigma. We do not know why. It is possible that a scribe is writing down what Solomon is saying.
Many verses in Ecclesiastes are essentially proverbs. They read like proverbs and are meant to be taken as proverbs. However, they are incorporated into a narrative structure. The entire book is written from the perspective of an old man looking back on his life and his efforts to understand life and the wisdom needed to live it. He has discovered some truth, but much has remained elusive. To see this is, in itself, wisdom.
You might sum up the message of Ecclesiastes in a sentence full of intentional ambiguity: Seek to understand life in God’s world, but you won’t.
If you are someone who looks at life and wonders, “What is the point of all of this?” you will find that the writer of Ecclesiastes will lead you along through familiar territory. He is a companion to the cynical and disillusioned. And yet, at the very end, and a few times along the way, he will aim you in the direction of the God who hides his purposes in His hands. He will not take you all the way there. He only shows you where you need to go.
In Ecclesiastes 1:2 the Preacher begins by saying, “Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” For most of the book he will give evidence to support this thesis. In verses 3-11 we find a poetic presentation of this aspect of life “under the sun.” The Hebrew word “vanity” means brevity, ephemeralness, a breath, like a candle in the wind. Life is here today, then gone tomorrow. Honestly, often, life on this planet does seem pointless, “vanity and striving after wind.” (vs. 14) And when you seek to understand it all, you find that the more you know the more you hurt. (vs. 18)