Ecclesiastes: vanity under the sun, and God
In Ecclesiastes a wise king searches out everything under the sun and finds that a life grasped without God slips through the fingers like breath. At the end he teaches us to fear God and to receive with joy the days God gives.
About the book
The book opens, "These are the words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem" (Ecclesiastes 1:1). Teacher, or Preacher, renders the Hebrew Qoheleth, one who gathers an assembly and speaks to it; the Greek Old Testament called him Ekklesiastes, and our name for the book comes from there.
Jews and Christians long identified the Teacher as Solomon. He was king over Israel in Jerusalem (Ecclesiastes 1:12), wiser than all before him; he built houses and gardens and tasted every pleasure (chapter 2); and "he pondered, searched out, and arranged many proverbs" (Ecclesiastes 12:9). The portrait fits Solomon closely.
Many scholars, evangelicals among them, who stress the authority of Scripture and the telling of the gospel, nonetheless date the book later, often to the Persian period or after. Its Hebrew has late words and borrowings from Aramaic and Persian; Solomon's name never appears; and the closing words (12:9–14) speak of the Teacher in the third person. So they read the king as a role: a wise man who stands in Solomon's place to test, one by one, the goods of life under the sun. Some scholars still hold to Solomon, answering that such language may reflect the book's genre or its region. On either view the church receives the book as God's word. The map under the Jesus tab sets it, as the book presents itself, in Solomon's time, the united monarchy (about 1050–930 BC).
How it unfolds
| Chapters | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1–2 | The search: pleasure, great works and wisdom, all a pursuit of the wind |
| 3–6 | Times and seasons, injustice under the sun, the emptiness of riches |
| 7:1–12:8 | Wisdom's limits, joy today in the face of death, remembering the Creator young |
| 12:9–14 | Epilogue: fear God and keep his commandments |
The book's key word, translated ‘futility’ or ‘vanity’, is . Its first meaning is breath or vapour: something there one moment and gone the next, that slips through the hand that grasps it. Looking at everything ‘under the sun’, at life in this world seen only from within it, the Teacher finds it all "futile, a pursuit of the wind" (Ecclesiastes 1:14).
That does not make the world evil. John Wesley writes that things are vain "Not in themselves for they are God's creatures and therefore good in their kinds" Wesley: they are vain as the happiness people seek in them. So the Teacher says again and again that to eat and drink and enjoy one's work "is from the hand of God" (Ecclesiastes 2:24).
Key passages
The book cries out the same words at its beginning and at its end (Ecclesiastes 12:8):
“Futility of futilities,” says the Teacher, “futility of futilities! Everything is futile!”
Ecclesiastes 1:2
The Teacher sings, "To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1): a time to be born and a time to die, to weep and to laugh. Those times are not in our hands. Yet God has put something greater within us:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom the work that God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Augustine confessed that longing: "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee" Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1. So the Teacher urges the young, "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth" (Ecclesiastes 12:1), and closes:
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, along with every hidden thing, whether good or evil.
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
The book and Christ
Paul says that the whole creation now lies under futility: "the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope" (Romans 8:20). The Greek word he uses for futility is the very word by which the Greek Old Testament renders hevel in Ecclesiastes. Yet the subjection is in hope: creation "will be set free from its bondage to decay" (Romans 8:21).
Under the sun the Teacher mourned that all toil is futile. But Christ has risen from the dead, and a hope has opened beyond the sun. After his long chapter on the resurrection Paul concludes, "your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58). By showing honestly how empty life is without God, Ecclesiastes leads us to the hope that is in Christ.
Reading it
Two chapters a day takes six days; begin with Ecclesiastes 1. On a first reading you might read it through at one or two sittings.
Watch for ‘under the sun’ and ‘futile’, and look for the places that call eating, drinking and enjoying one's work a gift from God (2:24, 3:13, 5:18, 9:7). Do not stop at a verse of lament; read on to the epilogue in chapter 12. Then go on to Song of Songs.
Practice
- Practice 1 of 6
What is the first meaning of hevel, the Hebrew word translated ‘futility’ or ‘vanity’ in Ecclesiastes?
- Practice 2 of 6
What does the Teacher give at the end as "the conclusion of the matter"?
- Practice 3 of 6
According to Ecclesiastes 3:11, what has God set in human hearts?
- Practice 4 of 6
Which is true of who wrote Ecclesiastes?
- Practice 5 of 6
What hope does the New Testament give in the face of the futility under the sun?
- Practice 6 of 6
Which is a good way to read Ecclesiastes?
Reading to the end marks it read; tap to switch it.
Related topics
Source
- Augustine, Confessions Read
Lessons from the Bible, the church's creeds and classic commentary. Each book's author and date are given as the church has received them, and scholars who see them otherwise are presented fairly. Scripture quotations: BSB.