All is Vanity (Is life Meaningless?).
Jeff Unsworth
Ecclestiastes 1: 1 – 11.
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 profit has a man from all his labour n which he toils under the sun?
4 One generation passes away, and another generation comes; ut the earth abides forever.
5 The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, And hastens to the place where it arose.
6 The wind goes toward the south, And turns around to the north; The wind whirls about continually, And comes again on its circuit.
7 All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come, There they return again.
8 All things are full of labour; Man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.
Ecc 1:1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
There is much debate on who the author of Ecclesiastes is. Some believe it was written by someone writing about Solomon and others believe that it was Solomon himself.
I have no problem accepting that it was Solomon. Solomon was famous because he was the wisest of men,
1Ki 10:24 And all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.
Ecc 1:16 I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.
Solomon was the son of David, he was the king of Jerusalem and the writer speaks in the first person.
No one fits the description of the writer any more than Solomon.
The Preacher calls himself “the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” one who has increased in “wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me,” and one who has collected many proverbs (Ecclesiastes 1:1, 16; 12:9). Solomon followed David on the throne in Jerusalem as the only Davidic son to rule over all Israel from that city (1:12).
He was the wisest man in the world during his time (1 Kings 4:29–30) and wrote most of the book of Proverbs (Proverbs 1:1; 10:1; 25:1). Therefore, we can safely identify Solomon as the qoheleth of the opening verse.
The word Ecclesiastes means someone who gathered people together to speak to them. Hebrew – Qoheleth means Preacher, Teacher.
Ecclesiastes is from the word Ecclesia, which mean those called out.
One may ask the question to who is the Preacher speaking. Is it the unbeliever or is it the called out ones?
Throughout this study, it would do well for Christians to remember that we are the Ecclesia, the called of God and that this book means something completely different to one who believes and one that doesn’t.
Hence the truth of this study is the fact that this is what life is like without God.
Ecc 1:2 “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
Vanity here means meaningless, the quality of being worthless or futile.
His statement is, There seems to be no purpose in anything’.
Beginning in verse three, the writer explains the reason for making his statement.
Ecc 1:3 What profit has a man from all his labour, In which he toils under the sun?
You work hard all of your life and what does it get you. You may have a job that you love and you get paid for it. You can use the money you earn to buy nice things, to live well but in the end, it’s worthless, for when you die, it is useless to you. The old adage says, “There are no pockets in shrouds”, you can’t take it with you when you die.
The question is, what do you do with it whilst you are alive?
Jesus spoke about this very thing in Mark 8:36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?
Without purpose, without God in his life, it is all meaningless, futility.
Ecc1:4 One generation passes away, and another generation comes; But the earth abides forever.
A man is born, he lives, he dies. He passes on and another comes in his place. The world carries on after he has gone.
Nothing ever changes. Things just go on as normal.
People may be remembered for a little while, until all those that knew them die also and then they are forgotten.
One can understand why Ecclesiastes is seen as a depressing, a cynical book and how it can bring about the feeling of despair.
Yet to those that know God, this is not so, why?
Because this life is not the end. It may well be the end of life in the flesh but Christians know that there is something more to life than this life on earth.
It is not difficult to see the message of meaningless outside of God.
Ecc1:5 The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, And hastens to the place where it arose.
6 The wind goes toward the south, And turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about continually, And comes again on its circuit.
7 All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come,
There they return again.
The Preacher uses what we all know as fact, to push the point home.
The sun comes up and brings the dawn, as usual.
Well before the era of meteorology, we see the wisdom of Solomon. The rising and setting of the sun, the circuit of the wind, the cloud formations through evaporation and rainfall, before anything was known of the trade winds and the gulf stream. There is a cycle they go round and round,, it rains but the sea is never full. Whilst all this is constant, man comes and goes, he lives, he dies and is replaced by others.
Ecc 1:8 All things are full of labour; Man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing.
Whatever men do in life, it seems that there is no satisfaction. All our experiences in life never satisfy or fulfil the heart’s desire. No matter how many countries we visit, no matter how many sights we see, we are never satisfied.
No matter how much we read or hear, we know that there is always more and we have only a short time to experience them.
Ecc 1:9 That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.
The Preacher points out that there is nothing new under the sun. Under the sun, this is a term that is used a lot in this book. It means this side of eternity, on the earth.
We think we invent something new, we are reminded the concept has gone before.
I remember watching a TV documentary on spiders.
Man thinks he invented the door, yet a spider did this long before man did.
There is a spider called a Ctenizidae, it is a small family of medium-sized mygalomorph spiders that construct burrows with a cork-like trapdoor made of soil, vegetation and silk. In other words, an hinged door.
Man boasts the invention of the diving bell to go to the bottom of a body of water.
The diving bell spider or water spider (Argyroneta aquatica) is the only species of spider known ... As with other spiders it breathes air; when submerged in water, an air bubble is trapped by a dense layer of hydrophobic hairs on its abdomen. It can submerge and breathe beneath the water.
Ecc 1:10 Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us.
Everything that existed in the past will continue to exist. People will continue to do everything that they have done before. The Teacher is describing events to us. They will happen in this way if we think about the world without God. Then nothing can change. This is different from what the Israelites believed.
They believed that God controls human history. God is able to change people and events.
One example is Joseph. His brothers had intended to hurt him. But Joseph believed that God had a purpose for him. God intended him to save lives in Egypt (Genesis 50:20).
We know as Christians that things can change when God is involved. Things don’t have to go on in the same way. God can change people’s lives and attitudes and whilst the world goes on as normal, our involvement in the world can make a difference.
People often think that they have found new things. People may invent something that is new. But they use what God has created. And people soon forget what happened in the past. They do not remember people who lived before them. The word ‘people’ can also mean ‘things’. So people also forget things. And they forget events that were in the past. People always want something ‘new’.
Ecc 1:11 There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.
A believer does not need to wrestle with what goes on under the sun, for they know that God is in complete control of all things and a life given over to the things of God are never wasted and that there is meaning to this life.
