INTRODUCTION TO ECCLESIASTES

Ecclesiastes reports the vanity, or utter futility, of life under the sun, a term which signifies life without fellowship with God, as revealed by personal experiences and observations of the great king Solomon. The vast resources of Solomon were used unstintingly to examine the many and varied aspects of life under the sun (Ecc 8:9). The report includes Solomon’s acknowledgment of days of vanity in his own life.

Ecclesiastes reveals many failures of man, but it is inspired of God and has a purpose to call all, both young and old; to FEAR GOD. This term refers to a reverential trust in God that prompts love for and obedience to Him (Ecc 3:14; Ecc 5:7; Ecc 7:18; Ecc 8:12-13; Pro 1:7; Pro 9:10).

Ecclesiastes was written in the l0th century B. C., in the latter days of Solomon.

ECCLESIASTES

CHAPTER I

AUTHOR IDENTIFICATION

Verse 1 Identifies the author as the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem, further identified as king over Israel in Jerusalem (Ecc 1:12) and as a ruler of wisdom (Ecc 1:16; Ecc 12:9) and great wealth (Ecc 2:4-8). This description thus identifies as author, Solomon, the only son of David to reign over Israel in Jerusalem. The term “preacher” is from a word meaning convenor, one who called people together for religious purposes.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

THE WOULD-BE WISE MAN

Ecc 1:1-18.

THE word Ecclesiastes means Preacher or Convener of Assemblies. The Book of Ecclesiastes seems to be a sermon, delivered, according to its own testimony, by Solomon, son of David, King of Jerusalem (Ecc 1:1; Ecc 1:12). Upon first reading it, it impresses one as the pessimistic utterances of a dyspeptic spirit; but when one has gone over these pages again and again, new light and truth break forth from them, and he finds himself instructed by a sage in the most serious concerns of life. The evident purpose of the preacher is to prove that the world cannot satisfy the heart of man. He draws upon his own experience to illustrate his position, as we shall see when we come to study the second chapter of this volume, under the theme, The Would-be Happy Man.

The first chapter falls naturally into the main divisionsThe Acquisition of Knowledge, The Evidence of Knowledge, and the Anguish of Knowledge.

THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE

Solomon makes three things clear concerning the acquisition of knowledge. 1. It requires earnest application. 2. It involves severe mental exercise. 3. It incites an insatiable appetite.

It requires earnest application. After declaring, Vanity of vanities; ail is vanity, he says, What profit hath a mm of all his labour which he taketh under the sun (Ecc 1:3). Later he tells us the sort of labor in which he has been engaged. I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven (Ecc 1:13). It is sometimes said, There is no royal road to learning. Let it be understood that the ancient traveled an even more difficult way in coming to the same than the modern man is compelled to take. And yet, notwithstanding all who have gone before us, and the well-beaten paths they have made into the realms of knowledge, the man who walks there, still does it with difficulty. The educational process is a process of sacrifice and suffering. Benjamin Franklin was a printers apprentice. He yearned to know, but books were expensive. Casting about for a way to acquire them he concluded that he would abstain from meat in the interest of his mind, and the apprentice lad got his master to consent to give him the difference in the expense of his board, and by living upon rice, hominy and potatoes, made himself the proud possessor of some valuable volumes. One reason why some of our forefathers were uncrowned kings, is found in the fact that they had surmounted almost impassable obstacles in their search for knowledge.

The acquisition of knowledge involves severe mental exercise. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes says, It is a sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. When man sinned and was dismissed from the Garden of Eden, he went out with the information that he should henceforth earn his bread in the sweat of his brow. His knowledge comes after the same manner. Dr. P. S. Henson once said that lots of men, aspiring to be public speakers, trust to the inspiration of the hour, but he had found that perspiration was more likely to produce desired results.

We are told that Daniel Webster, in the prime of his fame as an orator, was invited to speak at the Annual Meeting of the New England Agricultural Society. He arrived, was received with honors, and spoke for two hours on The Coming Importance of the United States as the Greatest Food Producing Nation in the World. When he had finished and was being banqueted, a simpering young man said to him, evidently intending a compliment: Why, Mr. Webster, you spoke with such fluency and accuracy your words sounded as if you had prepared your speech. I have always understood orators spoke by inspiration. Young man, replied Webster, fixing his piercing eye on him, the only true inspiration God ever gave man is to be found in work. I gave two days and three nights to the preparation of that speech. The theme deserved it. A sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

The acquisition of knowledge incites an insatiable appetite. The preacher says, The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing (Ecc 1:8). A little later in the sermon he says, All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled (Ecc 6:7).

But the mouth of man is not more insatiable than his mind. In his Book of Proverbs, Solomon writes, Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied (Pro 27:20). That text might have reference either to the lust of the eyes or to the love of knowledge, for it is alike applicable to both. Boswell quotes Samuel Johnsonas having said, All knowledge is of itself of some value. There is nothing so minute or inconsiderable that I would not rather know it than not. A man would not submit to learn to hem a ruffle of his wifes, but if a mere wish could attain it, he would rather wish to be able to hem a ruffle. To be sure he would like to know how to rule a kingdom, and he ever craves to sound the mysteries of the whole universe. The starry heaven has an irresistible fascination to the mind. The wide earth is its challenge. The depths of the sea excite its desire to know, until we are compelled, to a man, to consent that our seeing only increases our desire to see more and our hearing our desire to hear more. The world may be satisfied with the attainments of great scientists, but the scientist himself grieves his short-comings and sorrows over his superficial knowledge.

THE EVIDENCE OF KNOWLEDGE

This chapter contains indisputable evidence of the Preachers superior wisdom. I confess I stand before its revelations amazed.

His scientific information is a marvel. It is only within recent years that I ever thought of the great, splendid scientific discoveries which Solomon in this chapter anticipates by thousands of years. Let me call your attention to them.

He voices here in accurate language, the basis of our Weather Bureau:

The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits (Ecc 1:6).

One of the very modern discoveries is this sure circuit of the winds. It is just about three thou-

sand years now since Solomon penned these words, and it is less than seventy years since the Weather Bureau was conceived.

And yet men glorify the discoveries of scientists and discredit inspiration.

The seventh verse contains an equally marvelous revelation of Solomons knowledge. He puts into it as perfect a statement of the law of evaporation as the scientists of today could phrase. Two hundred years ago not a scientist in the world understood why seas did not fill and overflow. They saw the rivers pouring into them from every side, yet for some strange reason, they kept substantially the same level. And today Hally, Le Roy, Franklin, Desagualiers, Desaussure, and Dalton are praised for their investigations and instructions on the subject of evaporation. But hear Solomon while he tells it clearly:

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

Men now are prating about the uniformity of natural law, and parading it as the shibboleth of modern scientific discovery. Thousands of years before the eyes of Solomons critics ever opened to the light of this world, the great man of God was saying, by inspiration:

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us (Ecc 1:9-10),

The longer one studies the Bible the more he is disposed to say with the great Dr. Gaussen,

There is no physical error in the Word of God. God is not a man, that He should lie; nor the son of man that He should be mistaken. He, no doubt, in order to His being understood, stoops to our weakness, but not in the least partaking of it; and His language will always be found to witness to His condescension, never to His ignorance.

A glory gilds the Sacred Page,

Majestic like the sun;

It gives a light to every age,

It gives but borrows none.

His philosophy was free from any error. These are days when we are discussing the inerrancy of the Word. Men have talked about the mistakes of Moses, and the unscientific philosophies of the Scriptures.

Point to an error in this mans philosophy if you can. Will you dispute him when he declares concerning earthly things, All is vanity?

Will you take issue with him when he says, One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever?

Will you condemn him for using common language, the very language which you use today, The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hast eth to his place where he arose? Dare you dispute him when he says, There is no new thing under the sun?

One reason why I have had no sympathy with the critics of the Scriptures, nor yet any with other persons who institute comparisons with the Bible and other so-called sacred books, is at this very point. Every instructed man knows perfectly well that the ZendAvesta, the Shaster, the Chonking, and all the rest of the hoary systems of the East which we now hear glorified, are filled with false philosophies. Their philosophy of the heavens is childish. Their idea of the earth upon the heads of elephants is an ignorant explanation. Their triangular, seven-stage world, containing a circle of honey, one of sugar, another of wine, and so forth, has long since been proven false.

The Greek and Roman philosophers have done little better. Who now would follow Aristotle and Pliny, or Plutarch, or Cicero? Who would accept the cosmogony of Buff on, or Voltaires vaporizings of natural law? Even the great Christian teachers of yesterday blundered in their opinions and opposed the theory that the world was round, and laughed at the idea that it was hung on nothing; but Gods Word never fell into any such blunder, and Gods Prophets never voiced a one of them. Their philosophies are as sound as their science is secure; and of the Book, it has been justly written by the poet:

The hand that gave it still supplies

The gracious light and heat:

Its truths upon the nations rise;

They rise, but never set.

Yet again, He was not enamored of novelties. Athenianism did not profoundly impress this wisest of men. Had you brought to him your New Theology, he would have said, New? and with scorn, Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us, and history confirms his speech.

There is not a declaration of the modern critic that did not pass the lips of some unbeliever thousands of years before the former was born. In Jesus day, the unregenerate Gentile disputed the inspiration of the Old Testament Prophets, and the unregenerate Jew the inspiration of the Apostles. In Jesus day, certain men mocked the notion that He was begotten of the Holy Ghost. Scarce one of His miracles, but men both denied them and derided them. When He rose from the grave they spread abroad the report that His body had been stolen. Not a hundred years had passed when they were saying, Where is the promise of His Coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation The veracity of the Book, the Virgin Birth, the exercise of supernatural power, the resurrection from the grave, the sure Returnto deny these is nothing new. It hath been already of old time, which was before us.

I think that the Preacher means to say that the men who prated their infidelities are no more, and even the remembrance of them is forgotten. Their successors will soon be in their graves and neither shall there be any remembrance of them.

THE ANGUISH OF KNOWLEDGE

One reading Solomon will find that he makes a clean distinction between worldly knowledge and the wisdom that is from above. To the latter he pays his tribute, urging upon his son to get wisdom, affirming:

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding,

promising,

Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her.

She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee (Pro 4:7-9),

Concerning purely secular, or worldly knowledge, he makes three remarks: it results in much weariness of the flesh, it reveals many irreparable wrongs, and its increase often adds sorrow, to sorrow.

It results in much weariness to the flesh. It involves labour. It is a sore profit. Some years ago I noticed in the newspapers a statement to the effect that a mans thoughts emit color; and that an instrument had been invented which would photograph that color and tell whether your thoughts were pure or not; whether you were contemplating some good thing, or a bad one; or whether you were thinking at all. The invention was attributed to Prof. Elmer Gates, of Washington, D. C., and was said to be especially accurate in recording melancholia.

It is fairly certain that a man who comes into knowledge suffers sufficiently in the process to have blue thoughts; and yet it is equally understood that that same suffering is at the basis of any success. John Watson declares: The cross is the condition of every achievement. Modern Europe has emerged from the Middle Ages, Christianity from Judaism, Judaism from Egypt, Egypt from barbarism, with throes of agony. Humanity has fought its way upwards at the point of the bayonet, torn and bleeding, yet hopeful and triumphant, As each nation suffers, it prospers. England was begotten in the sore travail of Elizabeths day; and the American nation sprang from the sons of its martyrs.

The truth obtains no less in the individual life. Whosoever will save his life shall lose if. And he that would escape folly must suffer weariness of the flesh.

But the Preacher reminds us of the fact that the way of knowledge is not flower-strewn. Instead of disclosing to our eyes beauty-bewitching scenes

It will reveal irreparable wrongs. You will come to see that that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and the undesirable things cannot be numbered (Ecc 1:15).

It is unquestionably a fact that the knowing man enjoys more than any other; it cannot be successfully disputed that he suffers more than any other. The Scotchman found a scientific man tramping across his fields. The professor brought out his magnifying glass and laid it against the moss and beckoned the farmer to look. When once he had peered into the bosom of the moss and had seen the myriads of delicate, tender little flowers blooming in beauty there, flowers too tiny for the naked eye to detect, he broke into sobs, and said, I wish you had never shown me that. I will never again be able to walk these hills without grieving to crush such beauty under my feet. The old King of Belgium did not care to have brought to his ears the atrocities of his soldiers in Africa. He could be happier without that knowledge. Fifty years ago the Gzar of Russia was doing his best to escape the persistent reports of bad government and oppression in the different parts of his realm. He felt his inability to right them, and would fain escape the knowledge of the same.

Jesus Christ Himself declared that one reason why men were condemned was because of the light which they had. When they had both heard and seen, their sin was established. Paul, writing to the Romans, said:

I had not known sin, but by the Law: for I had not known lust, except the Law had said, Thou shalt not covet. * *

For I was alive without the Law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

And the commandment, Which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.

For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me (Rom 7:7-11).

You have read Hawthornes Twice Told Tales, and will remember his definition of the unpardonable sin. Ethan Brand is the spokesman. He is talking to the old lime-burner; and he affirms it is not in some overt act, not in some outburst of passion or temper, but adds, It is a sin that grew in my own breast. A sin that grew nowhere else. The sin of an intellect that trampled over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims. The only sin that deserves a recompense of immortal agony. Freely, were it to do again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the retribution!

Ethan Brand was not far wrong. There is a knowledge that saves men, and there is a knowledge that dooms them. Of His auditors Jesus once said,

If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin.

And again,

If I had not done among them the Works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father.

But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their Law, They hated Me without a cause (Joh 15:22; Joh 15:24-25).

A knowledge of the Truth of God is either a savor of life unto life or of death unto death. Consequently one can increase his knowledge and by the very process, seal his soul in perdition forever. Before these evident truths, what better can any man do than join with the poet in saying:

Let me lean hard upon the Eternal Breast,

In all earths devious ways I sought for rest

And found it not. I will be strong, I said,

And lean upon myself, I will not cry,

Nor importune to Heaven with my complaint

But now my strength fails, I fall, I faint.

Let me lean hard.

Let me lean hard upon the Unfailing Arm,

I said, I will walk on, I will fear no harm,

The spark Divine within my soul shall show,

The upward pathway where my feet should go,

But now the heights to which I most aspire,

Are lost in cloud. I stumble and I tire.

Let me lean hard.

Let me lean harder still, that Swerveless Force,

Which speeds the solar systems on their course,

Can take unfelt the burden of my woe,

Which bears me to the ground and hurts me so.

I thought my strength enough for any fate,

But lo, I sink beneath my sorrows weight.

Let me lean hard.

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

CRITICAL NOTES.

Ecc. 1:1. The Preacher.] The word properly signifies The Assembler. Solomon collected the people together for the purpose of addressing them as a public speaker. A difficulty has been felt in applying this term to him, because in Hebrew this word has a feminine form; but we may regard Solomon as an impersonation of Wisdom, the word for which in Hebrew is also feminine.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Ecc. 1:1

THE NECESSARY QUALITIES OF THE TRUE PREACHER

I. He has the True Public Spirit. Solomon gave his invitation to all, as in Prov: Unto you, O men, I call. The words of the Sacred writer of Israel have a popular character, as distinguished from the writings of heathen nations, which were addressed only to minds capable of lofty speculation. The wisdom of the world despises and spurns away the ignorant. It is addressed to classesthe heritage of the favoured few. But, the true preacher is a public benefactor in the widest sense. He who seeks the highest and most lasting good for man is the genuine lover of the race. His benevolent designs are not circumscribed by sect, country, social position, or mental culturethey are wide as the wants of the soul, which are seen beneath all appearances and disguises.

1. This public spirit is opposed to all selfish ends. The true preacher does not seek wealthhis own gloryhas no desire of display. His aim is to proclaim the only remedy for the worlds disease. He is lost in the supreme glory of his theme.

2. It is opposed to all lesser forms of benevolence. Solomon had acquired skill to increase the nations wealth, to adorn and beautify cities, palaces, etc. Yet he does not exhort men to attain this power, but rather to seek the Chief Good. The work of the true preacher promotes mans temporal welfare, sharpens the spur of progress, spreads civilization, purifies and elevates literature. The collateral effects of Christianity are not to be despised. But the great end of the preacher is to convey lasting spiritual good. The good, of which he is the channel, has the stamp of immortality.

II. He has the impulse to utter the Great Verities of Religion. Solomon could not keep his knowledge of Divine truth and fervour of piety in the seclusion of his own mind and heart. He must let it forth for the good of all. The true preacher has an irresistible impulse to utter the message God has given him. Why?

1. Because he has true views of manhis position before God, and his destiny. He has his eye on the four last things. This gives him earnestness, and singleness of purpose.

2. Because he has a Divine call. No mere culture or training can fit a man to be a successful messenger of Divine truth. The true preacher is the creation of the grace of God. The Divine fire, hot within him, will be resplendent without. Every true preacher will be both a burning and a shining light.

3. Because the nature of his message must fill him with compassion, and this has the property of loving to spend itself. The messenger of mercy must catch the inspiration of true charity.

III. He has a Soul-History. Solomon had an eventful history of spiritual conflict with sin, sorrow, doubt, and disappointment. He had attained to peace through a terrible struggle. Woe to that man who has nothing but an outward historyno stirrings of an inner life. It may not be necessary for the true preacher to fight over again all the soul-battles of Solomon, but he must know what moral conflict isthe crisis of victory must have taken place in his life. Without such a history,

1. The symbols of Divine truth will be mere words, having no life or spirit.

2. His utterance of truth will be only professional.

3. He, at best, can only promote the religion of habit, taste, or culture, instead of true spiritual feeling.

IV. He has True Regal Power. Solomon was a Royal Preacher, and every preacher can be royal in his influence over souls. As mental power is superior to physical, so is spiritual to either. The men of literature are monarchs of the empire of mind. But the men who place spiritual principles deep in the heart of humanity have attained the greatest sovereignty beneath the Supreme Majesty. To gain a soul is to enhance the glory of our royal diadem. He who bears witness to the truth is a king. To possess Divine wisdom, and the power to utter it, invests a man with true kinghood. The Apostles still rule the Church by their words.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSE

Ecc. 1:1. The methods God employs in the conveyance of His truth to man are not peculiar to religion. Men seek by spoken and written words to impress their thoughts on other minds. All who would affect public assemblies by speech must use the expedient of preaching. The great masters of knowledge, in every age, were, in their several ways, preachers.

Solomon was the inspired teacher of the people. His words of wisdom were not only uttered by the voice, but they were also made permanent in sacred literature, and so their influence is perpetual. But though the Christian preacher may not commit his words to the immortal custody of the press, they are engraven on human minds and hearts. That which is written on the soul lasts longer than inscriptions on brass or marble, than the still more enduring works of genius, or even than the Bible itself. The writing which Gods truth traces upon the spirit of man will outlast all the imperfect appliances of human learning. If a preacher is inspired by the Spirit, he can write books which will furnish the library of heaven.
Words become ennobled when they are used to convey spiritual ideas. The cross was once suggestive of disgrace and contempt; it now brings to our mind the dear remembrance of the deed of infinite love.
The common expressions of our daily life have deep spiritual significations. Hunger, thirst, truth, freedom, life, deaththese words, as the preacher uses them, have meanings of sublime importance. The Holy Ghost can turn the common elements of human language into a celestial dialect. There is a better and a more enduring substance in language than the literature of the world can express.
The words of the true preacher.

1. Instruct.

2. Persuade.

3. Gain the affections.

4. Unite true souls here.

5. Prepare souls for the great assembly on high.

Solomon taught the people knowledge. Paul was preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ (Act. 28:31). The preaching that does not teach is worthless.

Talent, logic, learning, words, manner, voice, action, all are required for the perfection of the preacher: but one thing is necessary,an intense perception and appreciation of the end for which he preaches, and that is, to be the minister of some definite spiritual good to those who hear him [J. H. Newman].

Words are the garments with which thoughts clothe themselves. The mind cannot rest in what is vague or diffused: it can only apprehend ideas which have a definite expression. This law of our mental constitution makes the superior revelation of the Gospel a necessity. God has given us an expression of Himself.

1. By the Incarnate Word. Thought itself is invisible. We cannot follow the silent excursions of anothers mind. But speech is thought enbodied. The Invisible God has been manifested forth in His Sonthe Divine Word. Logos signifies in Greek, both the word which expresses the thought outwardly, and also the inward thought, or the reason itself. The Eternal Word reveals the Eternal Reason. Christ is the power of God, and the Wisdom of God.

2. By His works. These are the thoughts of God as manifested by material things. Physical science is but the intelligent reading of those ideas of God which have taken form and shape in the universe of matter. Here are the Divine thoughts on beauty, force, mechanism, and contrivance to compass special ends for the welfare of His great family. Nature is a volume whose meaning is ever unfolding, and enhancing our conceptions of the Infinite Mind. The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.

3. By the Scriptures. These are the thoughts of God concerning us men and our salvation. They reveal

(1.) His thoughts on our natural condition.

(2.) His thoughts on the means of our recovery.

(3.) His thoughts on the conditions of our welfare in the great future.

The Church can only be maintained by keeping spiritual thought alive by means of fitting words. The disciples were commanded to teach all nations.
A king does not lower his dignity by undertaking the office of a preacher. That sacred calling is honourable, because it is occupied with what is of infinite value and importancethe soul of man. The words of secular speakers are only concerned with the fleeting things of time, but the words of the preacher are concerned with mans interest beyond the grave.
The statesman deals with the concerns of empires; but empires, though they flourish through a life of centuries, yet ultimately share in the mortality of their founders. The advocate vindicates the claims of individuals whose earthly existence is still more transient; but to the preacher alone is appropriated the assertion of a subject whose extent is infinite, whose duration is eternal. To him alone it is given to consider man in the one aspect in which he is unchangeably sublime. With every other view of his nature the low and the ludicrous may mingle; for in every other view he is a compound of the wondrous and the worthless; but in the contemplation of a being whose birth is the first hour of an unending existence, no artifice can weaken the impression of awful admiration which is the great element of sublimity [Archer Butler].

The Church, by the voice of her teachers, possesses a power to gather men together, and to unite them by the surest bonds. The society thus held together by the ties of a common heritage of truth, experience, and hope, has no elements of decay. Outside the Church, we find disunion and desolation. We have turned every one to his own way. Men can never be truly united into one family until they bear the same gracious and loving relations to our Heavenly Father. Success in preaching serves to expand the Parental Empire of God.
Christ is the true Solomonthe true collector of assemblies. He said to Jerusalem, How often would I have gathered thee! He will, in the end, collect all His people into one great assembly, and unfold to them the riches of His mind. He has yet many things to say unto us, but we cannot bear them now.

Human language cannot fully reveal the riches of infinite truth. The substance of Divine truth in the Bible is superior to the forms of language by which it is conveyed. The preachers best words fall short of the sublime verities of which they are the vehicle.
The garment of mans speech must be narrower than the body of Gods truth, which by one means or another has to be clothed with it [Trench].

The preacher should be careful in the choice of words, for their right use and ordering is not merely an accomplishment, but is bound up with the interests of truth itself.
The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error [Hooker].

The preacher must avoid the danger of accepting the words of religion instead of the things which they represent. There is behind the words a life-giving Spirit, without which they are vain. The advice of Bacon is to the point: ipsis consuescere rebusto accustom ourselves to the things themselves.

The preachers words are a debt due to the Church.
The sun does not monopolize its beams, and engross its light; but scatters them abroad, gilds the whole world with them. It shines more for others than itself; it is a public light. Look on a fountain; it does not bind its streams, seal up itself, and enclose its waters, but spends itself with a continual bubbling forth. It streams forth in a fluent, liberal, and communicative manner; it is a public spring [Culverwell].

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

INTRODUCTION: Ecc. 1:1-11

A. AUTHOR: SOLOMON, Ecc. 1:1

TEXT 1:1

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 1:1

1.

Name three distinctions claimed by the author.

2.

What Bible character fits the description given in this verse?

3.

From the evidence of this verse, would Solomon qualify as the Preacher?

4.

Read Ecc. 12:9-10 and list the goals the Preacher sets for himself.

PARAPHRASE 1:1

These are the words of the one who assembled the people in order to preach to them. In addition to being identified as a preacher, he is Davids son and king in Jerusalem.

COMMENT 1:1

Ecc. 1:1 This verse identifies the author of Ecclesiastes as the Preacher, and son of David, king in Jerusalem. Views vary sharply concerning the actual author of Ecclesiastes, but there is little doubt that Solomon fits this description. The name Solomon never appears in the book. This does not mean, however, that he is thus discounted as the author. The Jewish tradition held to the Solomonic authorship as did most non-Jewish writers until Hugo Grotius argued against this possibility in 1644 A.D. Since that time modern critics have woven fanciful theories concerning possible authors. Even among conservative writers, there is an uncertainty as to whom the book should be ascribed. Recent tendencies, however, on the part of conservative scholars fashion a return to the more traditional view that Solomon wrote the book.

An overwhelming amount of evidence within Ecclesiastes sustains the contention for Solomonic authorship. The following list of internal evidence, consistent with Solomon and his day, is offered as worthy of serious consideration: (1) Verse one identified Solomon precisely; (2) The statement in Ecc. 1:12 requires that the author be identified as a king in Jerusalem over Israel; (3) The extensive and elaborate experiments recorded in chapters one and two required wealth and opportunity available only to one of Solomons greatness; (4) References such as Ecc. 1:16 necessitate an authoritative position and identifies Jerusalem as the base of activity; (5) Collaborating evidence from I Kings, Song of Solomon, Nehemiah, and I Chronicles complements the information of Ecc. 2:1-9 and thus confirms our contention; (6) The inequities identified with the close of Solomons reign along with the social conditions created by his desire for self enjoyment are in harmony with the descriptions of Ecc. 4:1-6 and Ecc. 5:8; (7) The allusion in Ecc. 4:13 to an old and foolish king (Solomon) and one who has come out of prison (Jeroboams return from his exile in Egypt) to replace the king, fits the closing days of Solomons reign explicitly; (8) A final reference noted is found in Ecc. 12:9 where the author of Ecclesiastes has searched out and arranged many proverbs. This is in harmony with 1Ki. 4:32 where it is recorded that Solomon spoke three thousand proverbs.

Solomon is undoubtedly the one to whom we are indebted for this marvelous book. Read also 2Sa. 12:24 and 1Ki. 1:39 to identify the Preacher of Ecc. 1:1.

The words of the Preacher implies that a definite message is in the mind of the author and he intends to proclaim it to all who will hear. We are aware immediately that the Preacher is a proclaimer of truth. From the very first line in the book we note the purpose of his writing. The definite article the suggests a specific message. The content and direction of thought are not revealed at this time. It is the discovery of that message and its practical application to life that shall be the reward for the diligent student of Ecclesiastes.

The goal of the Preachers words is clearly stated in Ecc. 12:10 : The Preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly. It is like a breath of fresh air to discover his intention so refreshingly isolated for all to see. There can be little doubt about his purpose. He wants to find delightful words, and write words of truth correctly. He clarified his purpose further by stating that a Preacher uses his words as goads to prod and drive toward a goal (Ecc. 12:11). He wants the truth of his message to be secured in the minds of his readers as surely as well-driven nails hold fast the carpenters masterpiece. Although the lessons he teaches us may arise from his own experience, or out of the cultural situation of historic Israel as she struggled under her oft-times foolish king, the Preacher does not want us to miss the fact that it is God who gives us the book! He declares that the words are given by one Shepherd (Ecc. 12:11). Once we see that, regardless of the myriad approaches to the interpretation of the book, we must admit that there is a single well-defined purpose for its writing. Solomon eliminates the possibility of debate over this issue when he writes: The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person (Ecc. 12:13).

Any pathway taken to unlock the mystery of the book of Ecclesiastes has at least one inescapable criterion: it must lead to Solomons stated conclusion.
Solomon arrives at an exciting, positive conclusion. His thorough examination of all things, and his extensive experimentations with greatness, work, and pleasure, led him to the frustration of dead-end streets and blind alleys. His conclusion in reality is a fresh, new beginning. The entanglements of the world of vanity are behind him and a clear new horizon looms before him. He draws his reader to the inescapable doorway to the new life. A burst of heavenly sunlight drives all the meaningless experiments and observations of the past deeper into the ever darkening shadows of the outer periphery of little concern. His grip now is on his new found truth. He clings to it and to it alone. He has finally managed his priority list in such a way that life becomes worth living and filled with purpose and enjoyment. He has managed to bring into focus, in the center of his existence, the central truth alone worth knowing, and most importantly worth believing. He declares this single truth with a note of triumph: Fear God and keep His commandments (Ecc. 12:13).

It is a long, difficult journey from Solomons opening statement that all is vanity, and his final conclusion to fear God, but at least the reader knows from the beginning the road Solomon intends to travel.

FACT QUESTIONS 1:1

1.

What Bible character best fits the description of Ecc. 1:1?

2.

Until what year did both Jews and Protestants generally ascribe to Solomonic authorship?

3.

List evidence within Ecclesiastes that supports Solomon as the author.

4.

What is implied by the definite article the in reference to the words of the Preacher?

5.

What is the Preachers goal as clearly stated in Ecc. 12:10-11?

6.

The words of the book are given by whom? (Ecc. 12:11)

7.

Could this reference be speaking of Divine inspiration? Cf. 2Ti. 3:16.

8.

What single truth does Solomon arrive at in the final analysis? (Ecc. 12:13).

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(1) The words.The Book of Nehemiah begins similarly; so do the prophecies of Jeremiah and Amos, and of Agur and Lemuel (Proverbs 30, 31)

The Preacher.Rather, convener (see Introduction). This word (Kohleth) occurs in this book, Ecc. 1:1-2; Ecc. 1:12; Ecc. 7:27, where, according to our present text, it is joined with a feminine, being elsewhere used with a masculine; and Ecc. 12:8-10, having the article in the first of these passages, and there only, being elsewhere used as a proper name.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

1. Words of the Preacher The title of the book is already discussed in the Introduction. The writer here announced, whether a real or an assumed personage, challenges the highest reverence, as being fully competent to his proposed task. There is no nobler name in sacred literature.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Chapter 1 The Vainness and Meaninglessness of Life.

All Is Vanity ( Ecc 1:1-3 ).

Ecc 1:1

‘The words of the preacher (Qoheleth – assembly leader), the son of David, king in Jerusalem.’

The word ‘qoheleth’ is a feminine singular participial form connected with the root ‘qahal’ which means ‘to assemble’. Thus it signified one connected with an assembly either as speaker, leader or member, possibly of a group that met in the royal court to consider wisdom. So here Qoheleth is possibly to be seen as ‘the preacher’ or ‘the speaker’ or ‘the appointed leader’ of a recognised group of seekers after wisdom.

He identifies himself as ‘the son of David and king in Jerusalem’. ‘Son of David’ simply identifies him as being of the Davidic royal house. It does not mean that it was his direct heir. While Solomon is favoured by tradition, no doubt because of his fame as a wisdom teacher and because of his grand lifestyle, there are in fact a number of arguments which make this unlikely (see below). Alternatives would include the ‘good’ kings’ such as Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah or Josiah, or some other king, even one who ruled in Jerusalem after the Exile (this last would tie in with the apparently ‘late’ grammar). But we know nothing else about the writer, except what was in his heart. He clearly does not want to be openly recognised. He rather wants to be known as ‘a wise man’.

The identity of the author is somewhat restricted by the following facts:

1). The author’s name is nowhere mentioned. This militates against Solomon because he was so well known and so influential that had he written it his name would surely have been attached to it, as it was to other writings connected with him, such as the Song of Solomon and part of Proverbs.

2). The official title ‘king in Jerusalem’ in Ecc 1:1 (see context) fits strangely with Solomon who is usually called ‘king of Israel’. It is true that in Ecc 1:12 the title is extended to ‘king over Israel in Jerusalem’ but this only tends to emphasise the point. The ‘in Jerusalem’ is clearly the main emphasis. It may indicate that there were rival kings (or a prince-regent who was also called king) at the time so that there was a king ‘in somewhere else’, or that he was an under-king under an Overlord, but it does not indicate the all powerful, despotic ruler of a large empire like Solomon.

3). In Ecc 1:16 the author says that he ‘had increased in knowledge over all who were before him in Jerusalem’. If this refers to ‘all kings’ then the writer could clearly not have been Solomon, for it is very unlikely that previous Canaanite kings were in mind. It is feasible that it refers to a group of wisdom teachers gathered by David. On the other hand we might well feel that the impression given is that the author was looking back on a longish tradition of wise men or wise kings.

4). In Ecc 1:12 the writer says, ‘I Qoheleth WAS (hayithi) king in Jerusalem.’ That seems to suggest that he no longer was so. That is one reason why Uzziah has been mooted, for he became a leper and could therefore have been seen as ceasing to be king in Jerusalem as a result of his isolation. And his isolation could well have turned him to an expression of religious philosophy. It could also be seen as true of Manasseh for a period when he was carried off to Babylon. No doubt other kings could have fitted into the pattern. Alternatively it may simply indicate a period of retirement in old age when his son had been left to hold the reins of the kingdom, in which case the king is unidentifiable due to insufficient historical evidence. But it would appear to exclude Solomon, for there is no suggestion that his son was ever co-regent.

On the other hand it may simply mean that he did what he did while he was king, without necessarily signifying that he had now ceased to be king, with what had ceased being his search for truth, not his reign. In other words he had done it while he was king in Jerusalem, but had now ceased to do it.

5). More importantly the background of the book does not fit into the age of Solomon. It appears to have been written in a time of misery and vanity (Ecc 1:2-11) when the splendour that was Solomon’s had departed (Ecc 1:12 to Ecc 2:26). It appears to have in mind a dark period for Israel (Ecc 3:1-15), when injustice and violence were common and nothing was being done about it (Ecc 4:1-3). That seems to exclude the magnificence of the time of Solomon.

6). The Hebrew in which the book is written does not, in the view of many scholars, appear to favour the time of Solomon for it is seen to be of a later style, although the presence of Aramaisms is not to be seen as indicating a late date, as Aramaisms were present at Ugarit. The grammar would appear to be of a much later period than Solomon, and many examples are cited. Arguments from style are, however, notoriously equivocal and should be treated cautiously because of the limited material at our disposal.

All these reasons, and especially 3) and 5), appear to militate against Solomonic authorship. But it does not affect the importance and truth of what follows in the slightest.

The Meaninglessness Of What Man Seeks To Accomplish ( Ecc 1:1-3 ).

Ecc 1:2-3

‘Vanity of vanity,’ says the preacher, ‘all is vanity. What profit does a man have of all his labour with which he labours under the sun?’

The writer begins his words with an eye-catching statement, (and ends them with the same in Ecc 12:8). All man’s labour and toil is ‘vanity’, indeed it is ‘vanity of vanities’, total vanity (compare Ecc 12:8). The word for ‘vanity’ (hebel) can mean a fleeting breath, a puff of wind. What he means by vanity is that it is spiritually and rationally profitless and meaningless, of no permanent worth, not worth the trouble except as a means of survival, not having deep significance and ultimate meaning, not contributing to the essence of life, not having lasting value. All that is connected with man’s labour is transient and passing. See Psa 39:5-6; Psa 39:11; Psa 94:11; Psa 144:4; Isa 49:4; Jer 16:19. For six days he labours, and on the seventh he rests. And then he begins to labour all over again. But it is all part of the earthly pattern ‘under the sun’. Apart from enabling him to survive it takes him nowhere. (Later we will learn that it is his attitude in his labouring, whether he does it before God, that is in fact important – Ecc 2:24-26; Ecc 5:18-20; Ecc 9:7-10; compare Ecc 8:13).

It is not without significance that the same phrase ends the main section of the work (Ecc 12:8), thus encapsulating the whole of his argument about the futility of things. But we must not overlook the fact that within that argument he constantly introduces flashes of inspiration which reach outside it, when he introduces God into the situation (Ecc 2:24-26; Ecc 3:10-17; Ecc 5:1-7; Ecc 5:18-20; Ecc 8:12-13; Ecc 9:1; Ecc 9:7-10; Ecc 11:9; Ecc 12:1; Ecc 12:7). And the whole is then capped off by the final conclusion in which awesome reverence and obedience towards God is required, followed by the warning of final judgment (Ecc 12:13-14).

The phrase ‘under the sun’ is repeated throughout the book and is found elsewhere in Elamite and Phoenician inscriptions. Its main meaning is undoubtedly a reference to ‘everything that exists and functions on earth’. But we might also see in it a reference to the fact that it is the ‘greater light’ of God’s creative work (Gen 1:14-17), which controls the earth system which He has created. This might be seen as confirmed by the fact that the writer unquestionably has Genesis 1 in mind elsewhere (Ecc 6:10-12). Furthermore its constant repetition in this book possibly also acts as a polemic against the idea of a sun-god. In those days, in a context like this, its constant repetition could hardly fail to be seen as an indictment of the sun, which could add no meaning to life. Other nations and people worshipped the sun, it was extremely prominent in Egyptian thought, (which had almost certainly influenced the writer) and everywhere popular, but under the sun (Shemesh), he stresses, was only long term uselessness and a failure to find anything meaningful. The noun was thus two-pronged. The sun was to be seen as being as transient and passing and as lacking in other-worldly influence as everything else.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Title – The opening verse serves as the customary Hebrew title to the book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecc 1:1  The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Ecc 1:1 Word Study on “the Preacher” Strong says the Hebrew word “preacher” “qoheleth” ( ) (H6953) means, “a (female) assembler,” and used abstractly, “preaching,” or “preacher.” The Enhanced Strong says this word is used 7 times in the Old Testament, being translated in the KJV as “the preacher.” All seven uses are found in the book of Ecclesiastes and are used as a proper name. Strong says this Hebrew word is derived from the primitive root “qahal” ( ) (H6950), which means, “to assemble, gather.” The Hebrew, Greek and English titles of the book of Ecclesiastes have been taken from “qoheleth” ( ). Strong says the Hebrew word “qoheleth” ( ) is the feminine singular active participle of the primitive root “qahal” ( ) (H6950) The fact that this participle is used within Ecclesiastes with a feminine verb suggests that it at least on one occasion intends on identifying with the feminine noun “wisdom” as its subject, which words were spoken by the inspired king.

Comments We must remember that oral tradition held strong roots in the Oriental culture. Thus, the Preacher, as well as his predecessors, could have recited these words in Ecclesiastes many times before they were put into written form. In other words, the words of the Preacher may have been orally transmitted years before they were recorded.

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Introduction: The Preacher Concludes that This Life is Vanity The book of Ecclesiastes opens with the Preacher acknowledging that God has predestined this world to mortality and vanity (Ecc 1:1-11). We know from the book of Genesis that all of this vanity was the result of the Fall of mankind in the Garden, although God will one day bring redemption back to man and to His creation. In these first eleven verses the Preacher expresses the uselessness of his efforts to make things better for himself and for others in this life. The theme of this passage is stated in the second verse, which says, “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” (Ecc 1:2). He then asks the rhetorical question, “What profit does a man have of all his labours in this life?”(Ecc 1:3) He sees the generations of the earth testifying to its course of vanity (Ecc 1:4-7), and generations of mankind testifying to the same (Ecc 1:8-11).

As a result the preacher will attempt to answer this question throughout the rest of the book of Ecclesiastes, in which the Preacher records his efforts to find the purpose and essence of life. This pursuit of man’s purpose is reflected in his repeated statements, “I gave my heart” (Ecc 1:13), “I communed with mine own heart” (Ecc 1:16), “I said in mine heart” (Ecc 2:1), “I sought in mine heart” (Ecc 2:3) “Then said I in my heart” (Ecc 2:15), “I said in mine heart” (Ecc 3:17-18), “I applied mine heart to know” (Ecc 7:25), “I applied my heart” (Ecc 8:9), “I applied mine heart” (Ecc 8:16), and “I considered in my heart” (Ecc 9:1). Within these passages, the Preacher tests life with knowledge, wisdom, mirth, great works and gardens, and in summary, all of life’s pleasures. However, in these pursuits he finds only vanity (Ecc 2:17).

Ecc 2:17, “Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

He will later find a purpose in eternal things, but he will have to look beyond this life in order to find meaning as to why things are the way they are. For example, in Ecc 3:1-15 he begins to acknowledge that God intervenes in the affairs of mankind and establishes seasons of purpose in our lives. The Preacher initially notices the repetition of cycles, or seasons of life when he says, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecc 1:9). He will later acknowledge God’s hand in orchestrating these cycles and seasons in Ecc 3:1-8.

The opening passage of Ecclesiastes is a cry about the vanity of life on earth. More particularly, it is a cry regarding the vanity seen in the affairs of this life, the natural realm when contrasted to the eternal realm. The Preacher cries out in despair regarding life’s vanities (Ecc 1:2-3) with the realization that man is bound by the realm of time (Ecc 1:4-11), yet hoping for redemption in eternity.

After the author introduces himself as the Preacher (Ecc 1:1) he immediately sets the theme for the book of Ecclesiastes by asking the rhetorical question regarding the meaning of man’s mortal life (Ecc 1:2-3). He evaluates man’s efforts in this life as being full of vanity. Therefore, he will answer this rhetorical question in the body of this book by giving us things we can do to overcome the vanities of life.

It is important to note that the Preacher does not refer to God at all during this introduction in Ecc 1:1-11, although the word “God” is used forty times in this book. This is because he is making his evaluation from the perspective of this life only, without considering the divine perspective. Although his search will soon take this divine perspective into consideration, he begins by assessing the fallen state of man and creation as a result of the Fall in the garden.

In Pro 1:2-11 the Preacher presents the question and the dilemma of mankind. In Pro 1:12-18, the Preacher begins to seek the answer to this problem. In chapter 2 and the following chapters of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher continues to seek this answer, which will come in the final chapter. The Preacher will conclude by telling us that in this mortal life we are to fear God and keep his commandments, for that is all that God requires of us in this life in order to prepare us for our immortal lives (Ecc 12:13-14).

In order to understand the Preacher’s negative evaluation of this life in the opening passage, we must go back to the book of Genesis. If we go back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall, we find that the curse that God placed upon mankind subjected them to vanity. Why did God place these particular curses upon mankind? We know that the woman’s primary job was to be fruitful and multiply while the man’s job was to till the ground. Thus, the woman is more focused upon her family and her children while the man is often focused upon his work. Women often talk about their family while men most often talk about their jobs. But after the Fall, God placed a burden upon each of their jobs. Therefore, God placed a burden upon each of these activities so that mankind would look to God for help. Jesus Christ said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mat 11:28-30)

The endless toils and travails of this life now reveal the vanity of our labours. Such vanities turn our hearts towards more eternal issues, such our enduring hope of eternal life and rest in the presence of God our Creator. When man labours and is heavy laden, he looks to God through Jesus Christ and finds rest. When woman looks to God in fear and reverence, she finds salvation through child bearing (1Ti 2:15).

1Ti 2:14-15, “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”

Mankind now eagerly awaits the redemption from our mortal bodies in hopes of taking on immortality (Rom 8:23). Thus, the curse that God placed upon mankind works for our good so that through our travail we will look to eternal issues.

Rom 8:23, “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

This is the focus of the book of Ecclesiastes. The Preacher realizes that God has subjected us to vanity and he searches for answers as to man’s role in the midst of such travail.

In Ecc 1:4-8 the Preacher refers to the elements of God’s creation that were recognized by men during the ancient times. Man believed that all matter and energy could be found in four states: in the heat from the sun, in the solid elements such as the earth, in the liquid elements represented by water, and in the vapor state of elements represented by clouds. He describes these four states of God’s inanimate creation as being in constant motion, or labor. These elements represent the cycles of nature. He concludes that all of creation has been subjected to vanity, which Paul also concludes in Rom 8:19-22.

The repetition of these cycles of nature teaches us that there are also repetitions in the cycles of human history. Therefore, man has been subjected to vanity just like creation.

Outline Here is a proposed outline:

1. Title Ecc 1:1

2. Opening Statement Ecc 1:2-4

3. The 3-fold Testimony of the Generations of the Earth to Vanity Ecc 1:5-7

4. The Testimony of the Generations of Man to His Subjection to Vanity Ecc 1:8-11

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

Predestination: The Vanity of Human Life and Creation The Preacher begins his book by acknowledging that God has predestined this world to mortality and vanity (Ecc 1:1-11). He will base this conclusion upon his own personal experiences (Ecc 1:12 to Ecc 2:11) and upon his evaluation of society (Ecc 2:12-26).

Solomon, in his old age, looks at the effects of his life on society. In chapter Ecc 1:1-11, the Preacher expresses the uselessness of his efforts to make things different and better for others. In Ecc 1:12 thru Ecc 2:26 he gives examples of his vain efforts. Had he made things better for his nation, for the world around him? In despair, He saw everything the same. He felt that all of his labor and travail had not created the changes that he so desired. He concludes this book with the insight that his duty is not to change the world, but to fear and serve the Lord, for each man will give an account of his own life before God.

Outline Here is a proposed outline:

Intro: The Preacher Concludes that This Life is Vanity Ecc 1:1-11

1. The Preacher Explains His Conclusion Ecc 1:12 to Ecc 2:26

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

General Introduction

v. 1. The words of the Preacher, in the sense of one who, from the rich stock of his knowledge, gives wise and profitable instruction, the reference being to Solomon, the son of David, king in Jerusalem, the capital of the entire kingdom of Israel and Judah at that time. The fact that Solomon does not mention his given name is easily accounted for by the fact that the entire book breathes the spirit of repentance, together with admonitions and warnings, such as are to be expected from an aged and experienced man rather than from a king.

v. 2. Vanity of vanities, the most utter vanity, saith the Preacher, thereby announcing the theme of his entire book, vanity of vanities; all is vanity, that is, all earthly nature and everything pertaining to temporal things has been perverted, in consequence of sin, so that it no longer serves the original purpose of God, but the vain objects of sin.

v. 3. What profit, what lasting value, what enduring advantage, hath a man of all his labor, the toil and exertion with which he fatigues himself, which he taketh under the sun? The author does not say that man’s labor is useless, but that, in itself, it has no enduring, eternal value. While the sun runs his course with unfailing regularity, the doings of men seem altogether changeable and variable. The work of their hands is good, if done in the Lord’s service, but the misery and the hardships connected with it set the imprint of vanity upon their entire life.

v. 4. One generation passeth away, sinking down into the dust of death, and another generation cometh, replacing those who are laid in the grave; there is a continual going and coming; but the earth abideth forever, it stands the same, as long as the Lord so decrees, in the midst of the turmoil of changing centuries, calmly remaining while generations come and go.

v. 5. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, steadily pursuing his course, and hasteth to his place where he arose, to come up again in the east, governing time as the Lord ordered, Gen 1:16.

v. 6. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north, following certain fixed laws of the universe; it whirleth about continually, in an ever-returning change, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits, in courses whose general regularity has been learned even by human observers.

v. 7. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full, it does not overflow on account of the immense masses of water which it constantly receives; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again, in a constant evaporation and condensation, the cycle of ocean, clouds and fog, rain and dew, springs, creeks, and rivers continuing without intermission.

v. 8. All things are full of labor, full of trouble, weariness, fatigue on account of the curse following sin, Gen 3:19; man cannot utter it, the endlessness and burden of human troubles cannot be told by human tongue, it is beyond man’s ability to express it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing, the senses become wearied in trying to master the endless succession of impressions and phenomena which press upon them from all sides in the course of this sinful existence.

v. 9. The thing that hath been, that which has happened time and again in the past, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done, occurring over and over again in human experience; and there is no new thing under the sun, no matter how men may change their environment and place the newest achievements of science and invention into their service, the misery and the toil of life is ever the same, and the abuse of God’s gifts and the transgression and the dissatisfaction of man’s heart are ever the same.

v. 10. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? Has human nature and the misery of human life changed since the fall of man? It hath been already of old time, which was before us, always, within the memory of man.

v. 11. There is no remembrance of former things, men forget the lessons which the insufficient records of the past teach them; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after, for the impressive warnings of even the greatest cataclysms in the history of the world have gone unheeded. Cf Mat 24:37-39.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Ecc 1:1

THE TITLE.

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem; Septuagint, “King of Israel in Jerusalem” (comp. Ecc 1:12). The word rendered “Preacher” is Koheleth, a feminine noun formed from a verb kalal, “to call” (see Introduction, 1), and perhaps better rendered” Convener” or “Debater.” It is found nowhere else but in this book, where it occurs three times in this chapter (Ecc 1:1, Ecc 1:2, Ecc 1:12), three times in Ecc 12:8, Ecc 12:9, Ecc 12:10, and once in Ecc 7:27. In all but one instance (viz. Ecc 12:8) it is used without the article, as a proper name. Jerome, in his commentary, translates it, ‘Continuator,’ in his version ‘Ecclesiastes.’ It would seem to denote one who gathered around him a congregation in order to instruct them in Divine lore. The feminine form is explained in various ways. Either it is used abstractedly, as the designation of an office, which it seems not to be; or it is formed as some other words which are found with a feminine termination, though denoting the names of men, indicating, as Gesenius notes, a high degree of activity in the possessor of the particular quality signified by the stem; e.g. Alemeth, Azmaveth (1Ch 8:36; 1Ch 9:42), Pochereth (Ezr 2:57), Sophereth (Neh 7:57); or, as is most probable, the writer desired to identify Koheleth with Wisdom, though it must be observed that the personality of the author often appears, as in Ecc 1:16-18; Ecc 7:23, etc.; the role of Wisdom being for the nonce forgotten. The word “king” in the title is shown by the accentuation to be in apposition to “Koheleth” not to “David;” and there can be no doubt that the description is intended to denote Solomon, though his name is nowhere actually given, as it is in the two other works ascribed to him (Pro 1:1; So Pro 1:1). Other intimations of the assumption of Solomon’s personality are found in Ecc 1:12, “I Koheleth was king,” etc.; so in describing his consummate wisdom, and in his being the author of many proverbsaccomplishments which are not noted in the case of any other of David’s descendants. Also the picture of luxury and magnificence presented in Ecc 2:1-26. suits no Jewish monarch but Solomon. The origin of the name applied to him may probably be traced to the historical fact mentioned in 1Ki 8:55, etc; where Solomon gathers all Israel together to the dedication of the temple, and utters the remarkable prayer which contained blessing and teaching and exhortation. As we have shown in the Introduction ( 2), the assumption of the name is a mere literary device to give weight and importance to the treatise to which it appertains. The term, “King in Jerusalem,” or, as in 1Ki 8:12, “King over Israel in Jerusalem,” is unique, and occurs nowhere else in Scripture. David is said to have reigned in Jerusalem, when this seat of government is spoken of in contrast with that at Hebron (2Sa 5:5), and the same expression is used of Solomon, Rehoboam, and others (1Ki 11:42; 1Ki 14:21; 1Ki 15:2, 1Ki 15:10); and the phrase probably denotes a time when the government had become divided, and Israel had a different capital from Judah.

Ecc 1:2-11

PROLOGUE. The vanity of all human and mundane things, and the oppressive monotony of their continued recurrence.

Ecc 1:2

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity (comp. Ecc 12:8). “Vanity” is hebel, which means “breath,” and is used metaphorically of anything transitory, frail, unsatisfying. We have it in the proper name Abel, an appropriate designation of the youth whose life was cut short by a brother’s murderous hand. “Vanity of vanities,” like “heaven of heavens” (1Ki 8:27), “song of songs” (So Ecc 1:1), etc; is equivalent to a superlative, “most utterly vain.” It is here an exclamation, and is to be regarded as the key-note of the whole subsequent treatise, which is merely the development of this text. Septuagint, ; other Greek translators, , “vapor of vapors.” For “saith” the Vulgate gives dixit; the Septuagint, ; but as there is no reference to any previous utterance of the Preacher, the present is more suitable here. In affirming that “all is vanity,” the writer is referring to human and mundane things, and directs not his view beyond such phenomena. Such reflection is common in sacred and profane writings alike; such experience is universal (comp. Gen 47:9; Psa 39:5-7; Psa 90:3-10; Jas 3:14). “Pulvis et umbra sumus,” says Horace (‘Carm.,’ 4.7. 16. “O curas hominum! O quantum est in rebus inane!” (Persius, ‘Sat.,’ 1.1). If Dean Plumptre is correct in contending that the Book of Wisdom was written to rectify the deductions which might be drawn from Koheleth, we may contrast the caution of the apocryphal writer, who predicates vanity, not of all things, but only of the hope of the ungodly, which he likens to dust, froth, and smoke (see Wis. 2:1, etc.; 5:14). St. Paul (Rom 8:20) seems to have had Ecclesiastes in mind when he spoke of the creation being subjected to vanity ( ), as a consequence of the fall of man, not to be remedied till the final restitution of all things. “But a man will say, If all things are vain and vanity, wherefore were they made? If they are God’s works, how are they vain? But it is not the works of God which he calls vain. God forbid! The heaven is not vain; the earth is not vain: God forbid! Nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor our own body. No; all these are very good. But what is vain? Man’s works, pomp, and vain-glory. These came not from the hand of God, but are of our own creating. And they are vain because they have no useful end That is called vain which is expected indeed to possess value, yet possesses it not; that which men call empty, as when they speak of ’empty hopes,’ and that which is fruitless. And generally that is called vain which is of no use. Let us see, then, whether all human things are not of this sort” (St. Chrysostom, ‘Hem. 12. in Ephes.’).

Ecc 1:3

What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? Here begins the elucidation of the fruitlessness of man’s ceaseless activity. The word rendered “profit” (yithron) is found only in this book, where it occurs frequently. It means “that which remains over, advantage,” , as the LXX. translates it. As the verb and the substantive are cognate in the following words, they are better rendered, in all his labor wherein he laboreth. So Euripides has, , and (‘And. Fragm.,’ 7.4), . Man is Adam, the natural man, unenlightened by the grace of God. Under the sun is an expression peculiar to this book (comp. Ecc 1:9, Ecc 1:14; Ecc 2:11, Ecc 2:17, etc.), but is not intended to contrast this present with a future life; it merely refers to what we call sublunary matters. The phrase is often tact with in the Greek poets. Eurip; ‘Alcest.,’ 151

“By far the best of all beneath the sun.”

Homer, ‘Iliad,’ 4:44

.

“Of all the cities occupied by man
Beneath the sun and starry cope of heaven.”

(Cowper.)

Theognis, ‘Parcem.,’ 167

.

“No mortal man

On whom the sun looks down is wholly blest.”

In an analogous sense we find in other passages of Scripture the terms “under heaven” (Ecc 1:13; Ecc 2:3; Exo 17:14; Luk 17:24) and “upon the earth” (Ecc 8:14, Ecc 8:16; Gen 8:17). The interrogative form of the verse conveys a strong negative (comp. Ecc 6:8), like the Lord’s word in Mat 16:26, “What shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?” The epilogue (Ecc 12:13) furnishes a reply to the desponding inquiry.

Ecc 1:4

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. The translation rather weakens the force of the original, which is, a generation goeth, and a generation cometh. Man is only a pilgrim on earth; he soon passes away, and his place is occupied by others. Parallelisms of this sentiment will occur to every reader. Thus Ben-Sira, “All flesh waxeth old as a garment: for the covenant from the beginning is, Thou shalt die the death. As of the green leaves on a thick tree, some fall and some grow; so is the generation of flesh and blood, one cometh to an end, and another is born. Every work rotteth and consumeth away, and the worker thereof shall go withal” (Ecclesiasticus 14:17, etc.; comp. Job 10:21; Psa 39:13). The famous passage in Homer, ‘Iliad,’ 6.146, etc; is thus rendered by Lord Derby

“The race of man is as the race of leaves:
Of leaves, one generation by the wind
Is scattered on the earth; another soon
In spring’s luxuriant verdure bursts to light.
So with our race: these flourish, those decay.”

(Comp. ibid; 21.464, etc.; Horace, ‘Ars Poet.,’ 60.) But (and) the earth abideth forever. While the constant succession of generations of men goes on, the earth remains unchanged and immovable. If men were as permanent as is their dwelling-place, their labors might profit; but as things are, the painful contrast between the two makes itself felt. The term, “for ever,” like the Greek , does not necessarily imply eternity, but often denotes limited or conditioned duration, as when the slave is engaged to serve his master “for ever” (Exo 21:6), or the hills are called “everlasting” (Gen 49:26). This verse gives one instance of growth and decay in contrast with insensate continuance. The following verses give further examples.

Ecc 1:5

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down. The sun is another instance of ever-recurring change in the face of an enduring sameness, rising and setting day-by-day, and resting never. The legendary ‘Life of Abram’ relates how, having been hidden for some years in a cave in order to escape the search of Nimrod, when he emerged from his concealment, and for the first time beheld heaven and earth, he began to inquire who was the Creator of the wonders around him. When the sun arose and flooded the scene with its glorious light, he at once concluded that that bright orb must be the creative Deity, and offered his prayers to it all day long. But when it sank in darkness, he repented of his illusion, being persuaded that the sun could not have made the world and be itself subject to extinction. And hasteth to his place where he arose; literally, and panteth (equivalent to hasteth, longeth to go) to its place arising there; i.e. the sun, sinking in the west, eagerly during the night returns to the east, duly to rise there in the morning. The “place” is the region of reappearance. The Septuagint gives, “The sun arises, and the sun sets, and draws () unto its place;” and then carries the idea into the following verse: “Arising there, it proceedeth southward,” etc. The Vulgate supports the rendering; but there is no doubt that the Authorized Version gives substantially the sense of the Hebrew text as accentuated. The verb (shaaph), as Delitzsch shows, implies “punting,” not from fatigue, but in eager pursuit of something; and all notions of panting steeds or morning exhalations are quite foreign from the conception of the passage. The notion which Koheleth desires to convey is that the sun makes no real progress; its eager punting merely brings it to the old place, there to recommence its monotonous routine. Rosenmller quotes Catullus, ‘Carm.,’ Ecc 5:4-6, on which, Doering cites Lotich; ‘Eleg.,’ 3.7. 23

“Ergo ubi permensus coelum sol occidit, idem
Purpureo vestit lumine rursus humum;
Nos, ubi decidimus, defuncti muncre vitae,
Urget perpetua hmina nocte sopor.”

But our passage does not contrast the revival of the sun every morning with man’s eternal sleep in death.

Ecc 1:6

The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; literally, going towards the south, and circling towards the north. These words, as we have seen above, are referred to the sun by the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Syriac; but it is best to make this verse refer only to the winda fresh example of motion continually repeated with no real progress to an end. Thus each verse comprises one subject and idea, Ecc 1:4 being concerned with the earth, Ecc 1:5 with the sun, Ecc 1:6 with the wind, and Ecc 1:7 with the waters. There seems to be no particular force in the naming of north and south, unless it be in contrast to the sun’s motion from east to west, mentioned in the preceding verse. The words following show that these two directions are not alone intended. Thus the four quarters are virtually included. It whirleth about continually. The original is more forcible, giving by its very form the idea of weary monotony. The subject is delayed till the last, thus: Going towards the south circling, circling, goeth the wind; i.e. it blows from all quarters at its own caprice. And the wind returneth again according to his circuits. And on its circlings returneth the wind; it comes back to the point whence it started. The wind, seemingly the freest of all created things, is bound by the same law of immutable changeableness, insensate repetition.

Ecc 1:7

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full. Here is another instance of unvarying operation producing no tangible result. The phenomenon mentioned is often the subject of remark and speculation in classical authors. Commentators cite Aristophanes, ‘Clouds,’ 1293

(sc. )

,

“The sea, though all the rivers flow therein,
Waxeth no greater.”

Lucretius attempts to account for the fact, De Rer. Nat.,’ 6:608

“Nunc ratio reddunda, augmen quin nesciat sequor.
Principio mare mirantur non reddere majus
Naturam, quo sit tantus decursus aquarum,
Omnia quo veniant ex omni fiumina parte.”

This Dr. Busby thus versifies

“Now in due order, Muse, proceed to show
Why the deep seas no augmentation know,
In ocean that such numerous streams discharge
Their waters, yet that ocean ne’er enlarge,” etc.

No particular sea is intended, though some have fancied that the peculiarities of the Dead Sea gave occasion to the thought in the text. Doubtless the idea is general, and such as would strike every observer, however little he might trouble himself with the reason of the circumstance (comp. Ecclesiasticus 40:11). Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again; rather, unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again. As Wright and Delitzsch observe, after verbs of motion has often the signification of ; and the idea is that the streams continue to make their way into the sea with ceaseless iteration. The other rendering, which is supported by the Vulgate undo, seems rather to favor the Epicurean poet’s solution of the phenomenon. Lucretius, in the passage cited above, explains that the amount of water contributed by rivers is a mere drop in the ocean; that a vast quantity rises in exhalations and is spread far and wide over the earth; and that another large portion finds its way back through the pores of the ground to the bed of the sea. Plumptre considers that this theory was known to Koheleth, and was introduced by him here. The rendering which we have given above would make this opinion untenable; it likewise excludes the idea of the clouds being produced by the sea and feeding the springs. Thus Ecclesiasticus 40:11, “All things that are of the earth do turn to the earth again; and that which is of the waters doth return into the sea.”

Ecc 1:8

All things are full of labor. Taking the word dabar in the sense of “ward” (compare the Greek ), the LXX. translates, “All words are wearisome;” i.e. to go through the whole catalogue of such things as those mentioned in the preceding verses would be a laborious and unprofitable task. The Targum and many modern expositors approve this rendering. But besides that, the word yaged implies suffering, not causing, weariness (Deu 25:18; Job 3:17); the run of the sentence is unnecessarily interrupted by such an assertion, when one is expecting a conclusion from the instances given above. The Vulgate has, cunetse res difficiles. The idea, as Motais has seen, is thisMan’s life is constrained by the same law as his surroundings; he goes on his course subject to influences which he cannot control; in spite of his efforts, he can never be independent. This conclusion is developed in succeeding verses. In the present verse the proposition with which it starts is explained by what follows. All things have been the object of much labor; men have elaborately examined everything; yet the result is most unsatisfactory, the end is not reached; words cannot express it, neither eye nor ear can apprehend it. This is the view of St. Jerome, who writes, “Non solum do physicis, sed de ethicis quoque scirc difficile est. Nec sermo valet explicare causas natu-rasque rerum, nec oculus, ut rei poscit dignitas, intueri, nec auris, instituente doctore, ad summam scientiam pervenirc. Si enim nunc ‘per speculum videmus in aenigmate; et ex parte cognoscimus, et ex parte prophetamus,’ consequenter nec sermo potest explicate quod nescit; nec oculus in quo caecutit, aspiecre; nec auris, de quo dubitat, impleri.” Delitzsch, Nowack, Wright, and others render, “All things are in restless activity;” i.e. constant movement pervades the whole world, and yet no visible conclusion is attained. This, however true, does not seem to be the point insisted on by the author, whose intention is, as we have said, to show that man, like nature, is confined to a circle from which he cannot free himself; and though he uses all the powers with, which he is endowed to penetrate the enigma of life and to rise superior to his environments, he is wholly unable to effect anything in these matters. Man cannot utter it. He cannot explain all things. Koheleth does not affirm that man can know nothing, that he can attain to no certitude, that reason will not teach him to apprehend any truth; his contention is that the inner cause and meaning elude his faculties, that his knowledge is concerned only with accidents and externals, and that there is still some depth which his powers cannot fathom. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. Use his eight as he may, listen to the sounds around him, attend to the instructions of professed teachers, man makes no real advance in knowledge of the mysteries in which he is involved; the paradox is inexplicable. We have, in Pro 27:20, “Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied; and the eyes of man are never satisfied.” Plumptre quotes Lucretins’s expression,” Fessus satiate videndi.” “Remember,” says Thomas a Kempis (‘De Imitat.,’ 1.1.5), “the proverb, that the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. Eudeavour, therefore, to withdraw thy heart from the love of visible things, and to transfer thyself to the invisible. For they that follow their sensuality do stain their conscience and lose the grace of God.”

Ecc 1:9

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be. The LXX. and the Vulgate render the first clauses of the two parts of the verse in both cases interrogatively, thus: “What is that which hath been? The very thing which shall be. And what is that which hath been done? The very thing which shall be done.” What has been affirmed of phenomena in the material world is now affirmed of the events of man’s life. They move in an analogous circle, whether they are concerned with actions or morals. Plumptre sees here an anticipation or a reproduction of the Stoic doctrine of a recurring cycle of events, such as Viral mentions in his fourth ‘Eclogue’

“Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo,” etc.

But Koheleth is speaking merely from experience, and is indulging in no philosophical speculations. There is no new thing under the sun. The Vulgate transfers this clause to the next verso, which, indeed, supports the assertion. From classical authors commentators have culled examples of the same thought. Thus Tacitus, ‘Annal.,’ 3.55, “Nisi forte rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis, ut quem ad modum temporum vices, ita morum vertantur.” Seneca, ‘Epist.,’ 24; “Nullius rei finis est, sod in orbem nexa sunt omnia; fugiunt ac sequuntur Omnia transeunt ut revertantur, nihil novi video, nihil novi facio. Fit ali-quando et hujus rei nausea.” M. Aurelius, ‘Medit.,’ 6.37, “He that sees the present has seen all things, both that which has Been from everlasting and that which shall Be in the future. All things are of one birth and one form.” Again, Ecc 7:1, “There is nothing new; all things are common and quickly over;” 12:26, “Everything that comes to pass was always so coming to pass, and will take place again.” Justin Martyr, ‘Apol.,’ 1.57, has, perhaps, a reminiscence of this passage when he writes,

Ecc 1:10

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? The writer conceives that objection may be taken to his statement at the end of the preceding verse, so he proceeds to reiterate it in stronger terms. “Thing” is dabar (see on Ecc 1:8). Septuagint, “He who shall speak and say, Behold, this is new,” seil. Where is he? Vulgate, “Nothing is new under the sun, nor is any one able to say, Lo! this is fresh.” The apparent exceptions to the rule are mistaken inferences. It hath been already of old time, which was before us. In the vast aeons of the past, recorded or unrecorded, the seeming novelty has already been known. The discoveries of earlier time are forgotten, and seem quite new when revived; but closer investigation proves their previous existence.

Ecc 1:11

There is no remembrance of former things; rather, of former menper-sons who lived in former times. As things are considered novel only because they had been forgotten, so we men ourselves shall pass away, and be no more remembered. Bailey, ‘Festus ‘

“Adversity, prosperity, the grave,
Play a round game with friends. On some the world
Hath shot its evil eye, and they are passel
From honor and remembrance; and stare
Is all the mention of their names receives;
And people know no more of them than they know
The shapes of clouds at midnight a year hence.”

Neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after; rather, and even of later generations that shall be there will be no remembrance of them with those that shall be in the after-time. Wright quotes Marcus Aurelius, who has much to say on this subject. Thus: cap. 2.17, “Posthumous fame is oblivion;” cap. 3.10, “Every man’s life lies all within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain;” cap. 4.33, “Those words which were formerly current and proper are now become obsolete and barbarous. Alas l this is not all: fame tarnishes in time, too, and men grow out of fashion as well as language. Those celebrated names of ancient story am antiquated; those of later date have the same fortune; and those of present celebrity must follow. I speak this of those who have been the wonder of their age, and shined with unusual luster; but as for the rest, they are no sooner dead than forgotten” (comp. Wis. 2:4). (On the keen desire to live in the memory of posterity, see Ecclesiasticus 37:26; 44:7, etc.)

Ecc 1:12

Ecc 6:12.Division. I. PROOF OF THE VANITY OF EARTHLY THINGS FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND GENERAL OBSERVATION.

Ecc 1:12-18

Section 1. Vanity of striving for wisdom and knowledge.

Est 1:12

I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. Koheleth relates his own experience as king, in accordance with his assumption of the person of Solomon. The use of the past tense in this verse is regarded by many as strong evidence against the Solomonic authorship of the book. “I have been king” (not “I have become king,” as Gratz would translate) is a statement introducing the supposed speaker, not as a reigning monarch, but as one who, in time past, exercised sovereignty. Solomon is represented as speaking from the grave, and recalling the past for the instruction of his auditors. In a similar manner, the author of the Book of Wisdom (Est 8:1-13) speaks in his impersonation of Solomon. That king himself, who reigned without interruption to his death, could not have spoken of himself in the terms used here. He lost neither his throne nor his power; and, therefore, the expression cannot be paralleled (as Mr. Bullock suggests) by the complaint of Louis XIV; unsuccessful in war and weary of rule, “When I was king.” Solomon redivivus is introduced to give weight to the succeeding experiences. Here is one who had every and the most favorable opportunity of seeing the best side of things; and yet his testimony is that all is vanity. In the acquisition of wisdom, the contrast between the advantage of learned leisure and the interruptions of a laborious life is set forth in Ecclesiasticus 38:24, etc. King over Israel. The expression indicates a time before the division of the kingdom. We have it in 1Sa 15:26, and occasionally elsewhere. The usual phrase is “King of Israel.” (For in Jerusalem, see on 1Sa 15:1.)

Ecc 1:13

I gave my heart (Ecc 1:17; Ecc 7:25; Dan 10:12). The heart, in the Hebrew conception, was the seat, not of the affections only, but of the understanding and intellectual faculties generally. So the expression here is equivalent to “I applied my mind.” To seek and search out. The two words are not synonymous. The former verb (, darash) implies penetrating into the depth of an object before one; the other word (, tur) taking a comprehensive survey of matters further away; so that two methods and scopes of investigation are signified. By wisdom; . Wisdom was the means or instrument by which he carried on his researches, which were directed, not merely to the collecting of facts, but to investigating the causes and conditions of things. Concerning all things that are done under heaven; i.e. men’s actions and conduct, political, social, and private life. We have “under the sun” in Ecc 1:9, and again in Ecc 1:14. Here there is no question of physical matters, the phenomena of the material world, but only of human circumstances and interests. This sore travail (rather, this is a sore travail that) God hath given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. The word rendered “travail” (, inyan) occurs often in this book (e.g. Ecc 2:23, Ecc 2:26, etc.), and nowhere else in the Old Testament. The same root is found in the word translated “exercised;” hence Wright has, “It is a woeful exercise which God has given to the sons of men wherewith to exercise themselves.” If we keep to the word “travail,” we may render, “to travail therein.” It implies distracting business, engrossing occupation. Septuagint, ; Vulgate, occupationem. Man feels himself constrained to make this laborious investigation, yet the result is most unsatisfactory, as the next verse shows. “God” is here Elohim, and so throughout the book, the name Jehovah (the God of the covenant, the God of Israel) never once occurring. Those who regard Solomon as the author of the book account for this on the plea that the king, in his latest years, reflecting sadly on his backsliding and fall, shrank from uttering with his polluted lips the adorable Name once so often used with filial reverence and beloved. But the true reason is found in the design of Koheleth, which was to set forth, not so much Israel’s position under the covenant, as the condition of man in the face of the God of nature. The idiosyncrasies and peculiar features of the chosen people are not the subject of his essay; he deals with a wider sphere; his theme is man in his relation to Divine providence; and for this power he uses that name, common alike to the true and false religions, Elohim, applied to the Supreme Being by believers and idolaters.

Ecc 1:14

Here is the result of this examination of human actions. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun. In his varied experience nothing had escaped his notice. And behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit; reuth ruach; afflictio spiritus (Vulgate); , “choice of spirit,” or, “wind”; (Aquila and Theodotion); , “feeding on wind” (Symmachus). This last translation, or “striving after wind,” seems to be most agreeable to the etymology of the word , which, except in this book (Ecc 2:11, Ecc 2:17, Ecc 2:26, etc.), occurs elsewhere only in the Chaldee portion of Ezra (Ezr 5:17; Ezr 7:18). Whichever sense is taken, the import is much the same. What is implied is the unsubstantial and unsatisfying nature of human labors and endeavors. Many compare Hos 12:2, “Ephraim feedeth on wind,” and Isa 44:20, “He feedeth on ashes.” In contrast, perhaps, to this constantly recurring complaint, the author of the Book of Wisdom teaches that murmuring is unprofitable and blasphemous (Wis. 1:11). Bailey, in ‘Festus,’ sings

“Of all life’s aims, what’s worth the thought we waste on’t?
How mean, how miserable, seems every care!
How doubtful, too, the system of the mind!
And then the ceaseless, changeless, hopeless round
Of weariness, dud heartlessness, and woe,
And vice, and vanity! Yet these make life
The life, at least, I witness, if not feel
No matter, we are immortal.”

Ecc 1:15

That which is crooked cannot be made straight. This is intended as a confirmation of Ecc 1:14. By the utmost exercise of his powers and faculties man cannot change the course of events; he is constantly met by anomalies which he can neither explain nor rectify (comp. Ecc 7:13). The above is probably a proverbial saying. Knobel quotes Suidas: . The Vulgate takes the whole maxim as applying only to morals: “Perverse men are hardly corrected, and the number of tools is infinite.” So too the Syriac and Targum. The Septuagint rightly as the Authorized Version. The writer is not referring merely to man’s sins and delinquencies, but to the perplexities in which he finds himself involved, and extrication from which is impracticable. That which is wanting cannot be numbered. The word , “loss, defect,” is in the Old Testament. We cannot reckon where there is nothing to count; no skill in arithmetic will avail to make up for a substantial deficit. So nothing man can do is able to remedy the anomalies by which he is surrounded, or to supply the defects which are pressed upon his notice.

Ecc 1:16

Koheleth now arrives at his first conclusion, that wisdom is vanity. I communed with mine own heart. The expression suggests, as it were, an internal dialogue, as the Greek Venetian puts it, (comp. Ecc 2:1, Ecc 2:15). Lo, I am come to great estate. If this be taken by itself, it makes Koheleth speak of his power and majesty first, and of his progress in wisdom afterwards; but it is best to connect it with what follows, and to confine the clause to one idea; thus: “I have obtained great and ever greater wisdom”I have continually added to my stores of knowledge and experience. Than all they (above all) that have been before me in (over) Jerusalem. Who are the rulers alluded to? Solomon himself was only the second of the Israelite kings who reigned there; of the Canaanite princes who may have made that their capital, we have no knowledge, nor is R likely that Solomon would compare himself with them. The Targum has altered the approved reading, and gives, “Above all the wise men that were in Jerusalem before me.” The reading, “in [instead of ‘over’] Jerusalem,” has indeed some manuscript authority, and is confirmed by the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Syriac, but it is evidently a correction of the text by critics who saw the difficulty of the authorized wording. Motais and others assert that the preposition in the Masoretic text, (all, often means “in,” as well as “over,” when the reference is to an elevated spot; e.g. Isa 38:20; Hos 11:11. But even granting this, we are still uncertain who are the persons meant. Commentators point to Melchizedek, Adonizedek, and Araunah among rulers, and to Ethan, Heman, Chalcol, and Darda (1Ki 4:31) among sages. But we know nothing of the wisdom of the former, and there is no tangible reason why the latter should be designated “before me in Jerusalem.” Doubtless the words point to a succession of kings who had reigned in Jerusalem, and the writer, involuntarily, perhaps, betrays his assumed character, in relying an excusable anachronism, while giving to the personated monarch a position which could not belong to the historical Solomon. Yea, my heart had great experience of (hath seen abundantly, Venetian) wisdom and knowledge, used adverbially qualifies the word before it, “hath seen.” The heart, as we have observed (verse 13), is considered the seat of the intellectual life. In saying that the heart hath seen wisdom, the writer means that his mind has taken it in, apprehended and appropriated it (comp. Ecc 8:16; Job 4:8). Wisdom and knowledge; chokmah and daath; , the former regarding the ethical and practical side, the latter the speculative, which leads to the other (comp. Isa 33:6; Rom 11:33).

Ecc 1:17

And I gave my heart. He reiterates the expression in order to emphasize his earnestness and energy in the pursuit of wisdom. And knowing, as St. Jerome says, that “contrariis contraria inteiliguntur,” he studies the opposite of wisdom, and learns the truth by contrasting it with error. And to know madness and folly (Ecc 2:12). The former word, holeloth (intensive plural), by its etymology points to a confusion of thought, i.e. an unwisdom which deranges all ideas of order and propriety; and folly (here sikluth), throughout the sapiential books, is identified with vice and wickedness, the contradictory of practical godliness. The LXX. has , “parables and knowledge,” and some editors have altered the Hebrew text in accordance with this version, which they consider more suitable to the context. But Koheleth’s standpoint is quite consistent. To use the words of St. Jerome in his ‘Commentary,’ “AEqualis studii fuit Salomoni, scire sapientiam et scientiam, et e regione errores et stultitiam, ut in aliis appetendis et aliis declinandis vera ejus sapientia probaretur.” On the other hand, Den-Sirs gives a much-needed warning against touching pitch (Ecclesiasticus 13:1), and argues expressly that “the knowledge of wickedness is not wisdom” (Ecclesiasticus 19:22). Plumptre unnecessarily sees in the use of the term” madness ‘an echo of the teaching of the Stoics, who regarded men’s weaknesses as forms of insanity. The moralist had no need to travel beyond his own experience in order to learn that sin was the acme of unwisdom, a declension from reason which might well be called madness. The subject is handled by Cicero, ‘Tusc. Disput.,’ 3.4, 5. We are reminded of Horace’s expression (‘Carm.,’ 2.7. 27)

“Recepto Dulce mihi furere est amico.”

And Anacreon’s (31.), . Thus far we have had Koheleth’s secret thoughtswhat he communed with his own heart (Ecc 1:16). The result of his studies was most unsatisfying I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit; or, a striving after wind, as Ecc 1:14 Though the word is somewhat different. As such labor is wasted, for man cannot control issues.

Ecc 1:18

For in much wisdom is much grief. The more one knows of men’s lives, the deeper insight one obtains of their actions and circumstances, the greater is the cause of grief at the incomplete and unsatisfactory nature of all human affairs. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow; not in others, but in himself. With added experience and more minute examination, the wise man becomes more conscious of his own ignorance and impotence, of the unsympathizing and uncontrollable course of nature, of the gigantic evils which he is powerless to remedy; this causes his sorrowful confession (Ecc 1:17). St. Gregory, taking the religious view of the passage, comments, “The more a man begins to know what he has lost the more he begins to bewail the sentence of his corruption, which he has met with” (‘Moral.,’ 18.65); and, “He that already knows the high state which he does not as yet enjoy is the more grieved for the low condition in which he is yet held” (ibid; 1.34). The statement in our text is paralleled in Ecclesiasticus 21:12, “There is a wisdom which multiplieth bitterness,” and contrasted in Wis. 8:16 with the comfort and pleasure which true wisdom brings.

HOMILETICS

Est 1:1, Est 1:12

Koheleth, the Preacher.

I. THE PREACHER‘S NAME. Koheleth, signifying:

1. The Assembler, or Collector (Delitzsch, Bleek, Keil), not of sentences (Grotius), but of people. Hence:

2. The Preacher (Delitzsch, Wright), since the object for which he calls or convenes the assembly is to address it with words of wisdom (Ecc 12:9).

3. The Debater (Plumptre), since “the Ecclesiastes was not one who called the ecclesia or assembly together, or addressed it in a tone of didactic authority; but rather an ordinary member of such assembly (the political unit of every Greek state) who took part in its discussions” (ibid.).

II. THE PREACHER‘S PERSON.

1. Solomon. In support of this, the traditional view, may be urged:

(1) That the work is, or seems to be, ascribed to him by the writer (verse 1).

(2) That the experiences assigned to the Preacher (Ecc 2:1-3), the works declared to have been wrought by him (Ecc 2:4, Ecc 2:5), and the wisdom represented as possessed by him (verse 17), are in perfect accord with what is known of the historical Solomon.

(3) That the composition of this book cannot be proved to have been beyond the ability of Solomon (1Ki 3:12; 1Ki 10:3, 1Ki 10:4; 1Ki 11:41; 2Ch 1:12; 2Ch 9:22, 2Ch 9:23).

(4) That the writer obviously wished his words to be accepted as proceeding from Solomon.

(5) That if Solomon was not the author, then the author is unknownwhich is, to say the least, unfortunate.

2. A late writer, belonging to the Persian period (Delitzsch, Bleek, Keil, Plumptre, Hengstenberg, Wright, Cox). Arguments in support of this view are:

(1) The author expressly distinguishes himself from Solomon (Ecc 12:9-14), which, however, assumes that the Preacher could not have spoken about himself in the third person.

(2) The Preacher writes of himself in the past tense (verse 12), which Solomon would not have done, it is thought, though a late writer might have done so, putting his words into Solomon’s mouth. This argument loses part of its validity if “was ‘is taken as equivalent to “was and still am “(Professors Douglas and Given), or if Solomon wrote towards the end of his reign (Fausset).

(3) The Preacher talks of kings as having been before him in Jerusalem (verse 16; Ecc 2:9), whereas anterior to Solomon only David reigned in Jerusalem. But a late writer could just as little as Solomon have used the expression cited, since it was Solomon whom the late writer intended to represent as speaking. Besides, as Jerusalem had been a royal city from the days of Melchizedek, it was open quite as much to Solomon to take into his mouth as to a post-exilic author to put into his mouth the words alluded to.

(4) The real Solomon could not have written as the Preacher represents (Ecc 4:1; Ecc 5:8; Ecc 10:4, Ecc 10:7, Ecc 10:16, Ecc 10:20); which once more assumes that Solomon could only write of what he beheld in his own dominions, and not of what he may have learnt concerning other peoples with whom he had come into contact.

(5) The language bears the stamp of the post-exilic period, being full of Aramaisms or Chaldaisms (see Exposition). If this be undeniable, it is partly counterbalanced by the fact that Ecclesiastes contains Solomonic words occurring in Proverbswhich may certainly have been derived by a late writer from a study of pre-existing Solomonic writings, but which may also be explained by common authorshipand partly accounted for by supposing that Solomon adopted them from pre-existing Aramaic writings, “owing to the Aramaic influences which surrounded and pressed upon him, and owing to the influence which he desired to exert throughout his widely extended dominions, which embraced the whole of the Aramaic communities as far as the Euphrates” (Professor Douglas, in Keil).

(6) “The gloomy view of the world, and the philosophy of life which meet us in it, point us at once to the times after the exile” (Keil); but similar views and philosophies have more or less characterized all periods.

(7) The complaint about much book-making must have issued from a late age (Bleek). Probably the preponderance of argument will be held as lying on the side of the non-Solomonic authorship of the book; though from the considerations just advanced two things will appearfirst, that the Solomonic authorship is not destitute of foundation; and second, that the non-Solomonic authorship is not absolutely unassailable.

III. THE PREACHER‘S CHARACTER.

1. Not an atheist. Since besides making frequent (thirty-seven times) mention of the name of God, he expressly recognizes God as the true God, exalted above the world (Ecc 5:8), the Object of man’s fear (Ecc 5:7; Ecc 12:13) and worship (Ecc 5:1, Ecc 5:2), and the Disposer and Governor of all (Ecc 7:13); acknowledges the existence in man of a spirit (Ecc 12:7), and of such things as truth and error, right and wrong, holiness and sin (Ecc 5:4 6; Ecc 7:15, Ecc 7:16; Ecc 9:2, Ecc 9:3); places the sum of duty as well as the secret of happiness in fearing God and keeping his commandments (Ecc 12:13); and hints his belief in the coming of a day when God will bring the secrets of all into judgment (Ecc 11:9).

2. Not a pantheist. The God he believes in is a personal Divinity, distinguished from the works he has made (Ecc 3:11) and the man he has created (Ecc 12:1); who issues commandments (Ecc 12:13), and can be worshipped by prayer, sacrifice, and vows (Ecc 5:1-7); who should be feared (Ecc 5:7), and who can accept the service of his intelligent creatures (Ecc 9:7).

3. Not a pessimist. Though at times seeming to indulge in gloomy views of life, to imagine that all things on earth are going to the bad, that the sum of human happiness is more than counterbalanced by that of human misery, that life is not worth living, and that the best a wise man can do is to escape from it in the easiest and most comfortable way he can; yet that these were not his deliberate opinions may be gathered from the frequency with which he exhorts men to cultivate a cheerful mind, and to enjoy the good of all their labor which God giveth them under the sun (Ecc 2:24-26; Ecc 3:12; Ecc 9:7; Ecc 11:9), and from the emphatic manner in which he repudiates morose conclusions concerning the degeneracy of the times (Ecc 7:10).

4. Not a libertine. This notion (Plumptre) may appear to derive countenance from what the preacher says of himself (Ecc 2:1-3); but his language hardly warrants the conclusion that the author of this book had in his lifetime been a person of dissolute morals and profligate manners. If he was, before he penned this work he must have seen the error of his way.

5. But a deeply thinking and religious man. When he looked upon the mystery of life he felt perplexed. He saw that, apart from God and religion, life was an emptiness and vanity. Yet was he not thereby driven to despair, or impelled to renounce life as an unmixed evil; but rather offered it as his opinion that man’s highest duty was to fear God and keep his commandments, to accept whatever good Providence might pour into his cup, bear with equanimity and submission whatever trials might be mingled in his lot, and prepare himself for the moment when he should pass into the unseen to render an account for the things done in the body (2Co 5:10).

IV. THE PREACHER‘S AIM. Neither:

1. To expound the doctrines of pessimismto show “that the past has been like the present,” and “the present like that which is to come,” that “the present is bad,” that “the past has not been better,” and “that the future will not be preferable” (Renan). Nor:

2. To furnish an autobiographical confession (ideal, but based on personal experiences) of the progress of a Jewish youth from skepticism through sensuality to faith (Plumptre). But possibly:

3. To comfort God‘s people, the Hebrew Church, under oppressionthat of Persian rule, e.g; supposing the book to be a late composition, by showing them the vanity of earthly things, and exhorting them “to seek elsewhere their happiness; to draw it from those inexhaustible eternal fountains, which even at that time were open to all who chose to come” (Hengstenberg). And certainly:

4. To exhibit the true secret of felicity in the midst of life‘s vanities, which consisted, as above explained, in fearing God and keeping his commandments.

LESSONS.

1. The inspiration of a Scripture not dependent on a knowledge of its date or author.

2. The value of the Bible as a key to the problem of the universe.

3. The succession of Heaven-sent preachers that have appeared all down the centuries.

Est 1:2-11

Vanity of vanities.

I. THE UNPROFITABLE CHARACTER OF ALL HUMAN LABOR. (Est 1:3.) Passing over the pathetic picture these words instinctively call up of human life as a ceaseless round of toila picture which modern civilization, with all its appliances and refinements, has not obliterated, but rather, in the experience of many, painted in still more lurid colors; a picture which has always possessed for poetic minds, sacred (Job 7:1, Job 7:2) no less than profane (Thomas Hood, ‘Song of the Shirt’), a peculiar fascinationreaders may note the melancholy truth to which the Preacher here adverts, viz. that the solid outcome of human labor, in the shape of permanent advantage to either society at large or the individual, is comparatively small.

1. This cannot mean that labor is wholly useless (Ecc 5:19), since without labor man cannot find that bread which is needful for his bodily sustenance (Gen 3:19). It would be misconceiving the Preacher to suppose he disapproved of all that has been effected by human industry and genius to enrich, enlighten, and civilize the race, or desired to teach that men had better times of it on earth when they lived like savages upon the spontaneous fruits of the earth.

2. Nor is it likely that he designed to glance at what has been a sore evil under the sun ever since men began to divide themselves into laborers and capitalists, viz. the small portion of labor‘s fruits which usually fall to the former, without whom there would be little or no fruits at all.

3. It is rather probable that the writer was thinking, not of laborers so called, to the exclusion of other workers, but of all toilers without distinction, when he said that the outcome of man’s activity, so far at least as attaining to felicity was concerned, was practically nothing.

II. THE UNCEASING CHANGE TO WHICH ALL MUNDANE THINGS ARE SUBJECT. (Est 1:4-7.)

1. Illustrated in four particulars.

(1) The passing by of human generations, in comparison with which the globe seems stable (Est 1:4);

(2) the daily revolution of the sun (Est 1:5);

(3) the circling of the winds (Est 1:6); and

(4) the returning of the rivers to the seas (Est 1:7). The writer means not to assert that these different cycles have no uses in the economy of naturewhich uses may be here illustrated; merely he pitches upon what belongs to them in common, the element of changefulness, to him a picture of man’s condition on the earth generally.

2. Explained by four clauses. It is as if he said, “Look around and behold! All things of earth are perpetually on the movethe sun in the sky, the winds in the firmament, the clouds in the air, the waters in the ocean, the rivers on the meadow, man himself upon the surface of the globe. Nothing bears the stamper finality. Everything is shilling. Nothing remains long in one stay. ‘All things are full of labor and weariness; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing'” (Est 1:8)by which he means that the changeful condition is never done; there never comes a time when the eye says, “Enough!” or the ear repeats, “Behold! I am full.” This view of life had occurred to many before the Preacher’s day (Gen 47:9; 1Ch 29:15; Job 4:19, Job 4:20; Job 7:6; Job 8:9), as it has occurred to some sinceto the Greek philosophers who described nature as in a state of perpetual flux, to modem poets such as Shakespeare, and to sacred writers like John (1Jn 2:17) and Paul (1Co 7:31.)

III. THE WEARISOME MONOTONY OF LIFE. (Verses 9, 10.)

1. What the Preacher could not have meant. That no new occurrence ever happens on the earth, that no new contrivance ever is devised, that no new experience ever emerges. Because since the Preacher’s day multitudes of new discoveries and inventions have been made in all departments of science; while in the sphere of religion at least one new thing has taken place, viz. the Incarnation (Jer 31:22), and another will take place (Isa 65:17).

2. What the Preacher did mean. That the general impression made by life upon beholders is that of sameness. Going back to the above illustrations, he would have said, “See how it is in nature. No doubt one new day succeeds another, one gale of wind follows another, and one body of waters hastens after another. But every day and always it is the same thing over again; the same old sun which reappears in the east; and the same gusts of wind to which we are accustomed that blow from the north to the south, and whirl about continually to all points of the compass; and the same stream that keeps on filling up its fountains and sending forth its waters to the sea. And if you will look at the world of humanity it is the same. A new generation appears on the globe every thirty years, and every hour of every day new individuals are being born; but they are substantially the same old men and women that were here before. ‘Fed by the same food, hurt by the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter’ as those who preceded them, they go through the same experiences their fathers and mothers went through before them.” This feeling of monotony is even more emphasized when attention is fixed on the individual. Try to think of how monotonous and wearisome an ordinary human life is! An attempt to realize this will awaken surprise.

IV. THE UNIVERSAL OBLIVION INTO WHICH MEN AND THINGS MUST EVENTUALLY SINK. (Verse 11.) So obvious is this that it scarcely needs illustration. Consider what a small portion of the earth’s incidents during the past six thousand years have survived in history, and bow few of the world’s great ones have left behind them more than their names. The memory has been preserved of a Flood, but what about the ordinary words and actions that make up everyday life during the years between the Creation and the Deluge? A few particulars have been preserved of the histories of an Abraham and a David, a Sennacherib and a Nebuchadnezzar, an Alexander and a Caesar; but what about the myriads that formed their contemporaries? How much has been transmitted to posterity of the history of these islands? How few of the events of last year have been recorded? How many of those who then died are still remembered? This is, no doubt, all as it should be; but still it is a proof of the vanity of things below, if these be regarded simply in themselves.

CONCLUSION. This view of life should not be possible to a Christian who enjoys the fuller and clearer light of the New Testament revelation, and views all things in their relations to God, duty, and immortality.

Est 1:15

Concerning crooked things and things wanting.

I. IRREGULARITIES AND DEFECTS EXIST IN THE WORLD‘S PROGRAM. This the teaching of the two proverbs, that crooked things cannot be straightened, i.e. by man, or wanting things numbered. To the seeker after wisdom, who surveys all the works that are done under the sun, and gives his heart to search into and to seek out by wisdom with regard to these what is their end and issue, there appear in the physical, mental, and moral worlds anomalies, irregularities, excrescences, deviations from the straight line of natural order, as well as defects, wants, imperfections, gaps, cleavages, interruptions, failures to reach completeness, which arrest attention and excite astonishment.

1. Of irregularities or crooked things, such phenomena as these may be cited:

(1) In the physical world, storms, tempests, accidents, diseases, sudden and unexpected calamities.

(2) In the mental world, perverted judgments, erroneous beliefs, false conclusions.

(3) In the moral world, wicked principles and depraved actions, sins of every kind, transgressions of human and Divine law.

2. Of things wanting or defects, may be reckoned these:

(1) In the material realm, scenes where some element is wanting to complete their beauty or utility, as e.g. a Sahara without a green leaf to refresh the eye, or a well at which to quench the thirst; or forms of life that never attain to maturity, as e.g. buds that drop before ripening into flowers or fruit.

(2) In the intellectual sphere, ignorance, limited knowledge, defective education, one-sided apprehension of truth, narrow and imperfect views.

(3) In the moral domain, actions that, without being wholly wrong, yet fall short of being fully right, as e.g. where one tells a half-truth, or does less in particular circumstances than duty demands of him.

II. SUCH IRREGULARITIES AND DEFECTS ARE BEYOND THE POWER OF MAN TO REMOVE OR REMEDY. This, at least, is the doctrine of the above two proverbial sayings.

1. The doctrine, however, is not absolutely and universally true. In the physical, mental, and moral worlds, man can do something to straighten what is crooked and supply what is lacking. For instance, by skill and foresight he can guard himself to some extent against the virulence of disease, the violence of storms and tempests, the destructiveness of unexpected calamities; by education he can protect himself and others against the perils arising from defective knowledge and erroneous judgments; by personal cultivation of virtue he can at least diminish the quantity of its opposite, vice, in the world. If he cannot straighten out all the crooks, he can even some; if he cannot remedy every defect, he can remove a few.

2. Yet the doctrine is true in the sense intended by the Preacher. This is, that after man has done his utmost there will remain anomalies that baffle him to explain, a sense of incompleteness which nothing he can attempt will remove. Let him prosecute his investigations ever so widely and vigorously, there always will be “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy”enigmas he cannot solve, antinomies he cannot reconcile, defects he cannot fill up.

III. THE EXISTENCE OF SUCH IRREGULARITIES AND DEFECTS SUGGESTS SOME IMPORTANT LESSONS. AS:

1. That the present system of things is not final. Nothing that is imperfect can be final. The crooked things that want straightening and the lacking things that need supplying contain a dim prophecy of a future and better order, in which the crooked things will be straightened and the defective things supplied.

2. That man‘s power of apprehending things is incomplete. From this probably arises not a little of that sense of disorder and incompleteness in the outer world of which he complains.

3. That things impossible to man may be possible to God. Though man’s faculties are limited, it does not follow that God’s power is. The crooked things that man cannot straighten, God can straighten if it seem good to his wisdom.

4. That man‘s duty meanwhile is to submit and wait. Instead of fretting at what he cannot rectify, he should aim at extracting from it that moral discipline which, doubtless, it is intended to impart; and instead of rushing to hasty conclusions from what he only imperfectly apprehends, he ought in a spirit of hopefulness to wait for further light.

Est 1:18

Increase of knowledge, increase of sorrow.

I. BECAUSE NOT WITHOUT LABOR AND PAIN, OFTENTIMES PROTRACTED AND ACUTE, CAN KNOWLEDGE OF ANY KIND BE INCREASED. No royal road to wisdom any more than to wealth. He who would acquire knowledge must dig for it as for hidden treasures (Pro 2:4). Those who have attained to greatest distinction, as philosophers, poets, astronomers, etc; have all been hard workers. The information that renders them so wise and their society so agreeable has been slowly and painfully collected by diligent and unremitting effort, sustained through years, often amid hardships, and by means of serf-denials which would have caused them to abandon their enterprises had they been common men, sometimes at the expense of restless days and sleepless nights, and in the midst of bodily infirmities not soothed but aggravated by close and severe study. No doubt, to one inspired with a love of knowledge, such labors and anxieties are more than compensated by the knowledge so acquired; but the proposition of the Preacher is that the largest amount of wisdom one may gather is an insufficient requital for all this toil and anxiety, if the knowledge be only earthly and seculari.e. has no connection with God, duty, or immortalityand one cannot help asking if the Preacher is not right.

II. BECAUSE, AS THE CIRCLE OF KNOWLEDGE WIDENS, THE SPHERE OF IGNORANCE APPEARS TO ENLARGE. One is prone to imagine that, as the circle of information widens, that of ignorance contractswhich it does in the sense that, the more one knows, the sum of what remains to be known diminishes; but in another and important sense the amount of what remains to be known increases. As in mountain-climbing, the higher one ascends he sometimes discovers heights beyond of which previously he had no suspicion, so in footing it up the steep and difficult slopes of Parnassus, one actually comes to see that the more extensive the boundaries of this knowledge become, the vaster grow the regions beyond into which he has not yet penetrated. A child, for instance, looking up for the first time into the evening sky, imagines he has understood it all at a glance; but afterwards, when he has learnt the elementary truths of astronomy, there rushes on him the conviction that what he knows is but a small part of a very large whole; and as he prosecutes his search into the wonders of star-land, he realizes that the more he knows of it the more there remains to be known, till he feels that with respect to this, at least,” he that increases knowledge increases sorrow.” Nor is this experience confined to one department of knowledge, but in every department it is the same; the larger and clearer one’s acquaintance becomes with it, it only seems to open up untrodden realms beyond, the bare contemplation of which exercises on the mind a strangely depressing influence.

III. BECAUSE AS ONE EXTENDS HIS KNOWLEDGE HIS DIFFICULTIES SEEM TO MULTIPLY. Especially in dealing with the problem of existence. Contrast the states of childhood and manhood, of ignorance and learning, of savage peoples and of civilized nations. The child is unconscious of anxieties that oppress the parental bosom. The peasant, innocent of geology, biology, astronomy, and history, is not troubled with mental, moral, and religious difficulties such as perplex those acquainted with these themes. The heathen, with crude and ill-defined ideas of God, duty, and immortality, are incapable of appreciating those questionings concerning the future life that proceed in Christian minds. Not that it is not better to increase in knowledge, even should such increase awaken and foster doubts; only to increase in knowledge does not necessarily bring peace to the heart or happiness to the soul. It enables one to discern dark problems where none were discerned before; it pushes one on to inquire after solutions for those problems which, nevertheless, constantly elude the grasp. In the region of morals and religion especially it burdens one with a sense of weariness and pain, because of the endless questionings it raises and cannot answer. One who has never been launched upon this sea of doubt can hardly appreciate the wretchedness of those who have been tossed by its raging billows. Those who can hold on by ideas of God, duty, and immortality for the most part escape these perplexities; the man who tries to solve the problem of the universe without these fundamental and regulative conceptions does not, but becomes entangled in a labyrinth of difficulties, and commonly ends by finding himself “in wandering mazes lost.”

IV. BECAUSE AS ONE EXTENDS HIS KNOWLEDGE, HE EXTENDS AT THE SAME TIME HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE WORLD‘S SORROW. Often said, “One half of the world knows not how the other half lives.” How much, e.g; does the civilized Briton know of the degradation of “darkest Africa;” or the religiously educated youth or maiden of the sin that runs rampant in modern society; or the well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed citizen of the aching hearts and miserable lives of the houseless and breadless poor who herd in great cities? Because these things are not known, the Christians of Great Britain are comparatively indifferent to the sad and sorrowful condition of the poor and criminal classes at home, and of the heathen abroad. Did they properly consider these things, they would be filled with sorrow. Should this be adduced as a reason why one should not trouble himself with such disagreeable subjects, the answer is that if God, duty, and immortality are fictions, it is perhaps better to let the world stew in its own wretchedness and profligacy, and to guard one’s felicity from being invaded by such disquieting influences; but if God, duty, and immortality are realities, it may be perilous to exhibit such indifference towards the world’s wretchedness and sin.

V. BECAUSE INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE AUGMENTS MAN‘S POWER BOTH OF CAUSING AND OF FEELING SORROW. Knowledge is power. Insight into nature’s laws enables one to apply these to mechanical uses which, in the absence of such insight, would be impossible. A person of large intelligence and mature experience can do things transcending the capacity of youth. Yet this increased efficiency, which springs from increased knowledge, does not always augment the sum of happiness. If it helps man to multiply instruments for good, it also enlarges his ability to perpetrate evil. It was once believed that crime and misery would disappear from society with the general diffusion of education. No one believes that now. Mere knowledge has no tendency to make men good. (Milton’s Satan was not a fool.) It will help such as are good to means and opportunities for doing good; but just as certainly it will aid the wicked in their wickedness, and add to their power of causing misery. Then, in so far as knowledge or education has a tendency to refine the nature, intensify the feelings, quicken the susceptibilities, to that extent it augments the sum of human sorrow.

Learn:

1. Not to glorify ignorance or despise knowledge, but to seek first that wisdom which cometh from above (Jas 1:5; Jas 3:17).

2. To seek other knowledge, not so much for their own sakes, as for the purpose of using them in God’s service and for his glory.

HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS

Est 1:2

All is vanity.

If we regard this book as Solomon’s own record and statement of his remarkable experience of human life, it must be deemed by us a most valuable lesson as to the hollowness and emptiness of worldly greatness and renown. If, on the other hand, we regard the book as the production of a later writer, who lived during the troubled and depressed period of Jewish history which followed the Captivity, it must be recognized as casting light upon the providentially appointed consequences of national sin, apostasy, and rebellion. In the former case the moral and religious significance of Ecclesiastes is more personal, in the latter case more political. In either case, the treatise, as inspired by Divine wisdom, demands to be received and studied with reverential attention. Whether its lessons be congenial or unwelcome, they deserve the consideration of those of every age, and of every station in society. Some readers will resent the opening words of the treatise as gloomy and morbid; others will hail them as the expression of reason and wisdom. But the truth they contain is independent of human moods and temperaments, and is only to be fully appreciated by those whose observation is extensive and whose reflection is profound. The wise man makes a broad and unqualified statement, that all things earthly and human are but vanity.

I. THIS MAY BE A STATEMENT OF A MERE MOOD OF FEELING OWING TO INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE. There are times when every man who lives is distressed and disappointed, when his plans come to naught, when his hopes are blasted, when his friends fail him, when his prospects are clouded, when his heart sinks within him. It is the common lot, from which none can expect to be exempt. In some instances the stormy sky clears and brightens, whilst in other instances the gloom thickens and settles. But it may be confidently asserted that, at some period and in some circumstances, every human being, whose experience of life is large and varied, has felt as though he has been living in a scene of illusion, the vanity of which has been perhaps suddenly made apparent to him, and then the language of the writer of Ecclesiastes has risen to his lips, and he has exclaimed in bitterness of soul, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!”

II. THIS MAY BE A STATEMENT OF PAINFUL EXPERIENCE, DEPENDENT UPON THE SPECIAL TIMESPOLITICAL AND ECCLESIASTICALIN WHICH THE LOT IS CAST. Such is the mutability of human affairs, that every nation, every Church, passes through epochs of prosperity, confidence, energy, and hope; and again through epochs of adversity, discouragement, depression, and paralysis. The Israelites had their times of conquest and of progress, and they had also their times of defeat, of captivity, of subjection, of humiliation. So has it been with every people, every state. Nor have the Churches into which Christian communities have been formed, escaped the operation of the same law. So far as they have been human organizations, they have been affected by the laws to which all things human are subject. In times when a nation is feeble at home and despised abroad, when faction and ambition have reduced its power and crippled its enterprise, there is proneness, on the part of the reflecting and sensitive among the citizens and subjects, to lament over the unprofitableness and vanity of civil life. Similarly, when a Church experiences declension from the Divine standard of faith, purity, and consecration, how natural is it that the enlightened and spiritual members of that Church should, in their grief over the general deadness of the religious community, give way to feelings of discouragement and foreboding, which find a fitting expression in the cry, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!”

III. THIS MAY BE A STATEMENT OF PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION UPON THE FACTS OF NATURE AND OF HUMAN LIFE. It would be a mistake to suppose that the cry of “Vanity!” is always the evidence of a merely transitory though powerful mood of morbid feeling. On the contrary, there have been nations, ages, states of society, with which it has been a settled conviction that hollowness and emptiness characterize all human and earthly affairs. Pessimism may be a philosophical creed, as with the ancient Buddhists and some of the modern Germans; it may be a conclusion reached by reflection upon the facts of life. To some minds unreason is at the heart of the universe, and in this case there is no ground for hope. To other minds, not speculative, the survey of human affairs is suggestive of aimlessness in the world, and occasions despondency in the observant and reflective mind. Thus even some who enjoy health and prosperity, and in whose constitution and circumstances there is nothing to justify discouragement and hopelessness, are nevertheless found, without any serious satisfaction in existence, ready to sum up their conclusions, derived from a perhaps prolonged and extensive survey of human life, in the words of the writer of Ecclesiastes, “All is vanity!”

IV. THIS MAY BE A STATEMENT OF RELIGIOUS CONVICTION, BOTH SPRINGING FROM AND LEADING TO THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNAL AND GLORIOUS GOD. The student of physical science looks at facts; it is his duty to observe and to classify facts; their arrangement under certain relations, as of likeness and of sequence, is his business, in the discharge of which he renders a great service to mankind. But thought is as necessary as observation. A higher explanation than physical science can give is imperatively required by human nature. We are constrained, not only to observe that a thing is, but also to ask why it is. Here metaphysics and theology come in to complete the work which science has begun. Human life is composed not only of movements, which can be scientifically accounted for, but of actions, of which the explanation is hyperphysical, is spiritual. Similarly with the world at large, and with human life and history. The facts are open to observation; knowledge accumulates from age to age; as experience widens, grander classifications are made. Still there is a craving for explanation. Why, we ask, are things as they are? It is the answer to this question which distinguishes the Pessimist from the theist. The wise, the enlightened, the religious, seek a spiritual and moral significance in the universematerial and psychical. In their view, if things, as they are and have been, be regarded by themselves, apart from a Divine reason working in and through them, they are emptiness and vanity. On the other hand, if they be regarded in the light of that Divine reason, which is order, righteousness, and love, they are suggestive of what is very different indeed from vanity To the thoughtful and reverent mind, apart from God, all is vanity; seen in the light of God, nothing is vanity. Both these seeming contradictions are true, and they are reconciled in a higher affirmation and unity. Look at the world in the light of sentience and the logical understanding, and it is vanity. Look at it in the light of reason, and it is the expression of Divine wisdom and Divine goodness.

APPLICATION. It is well to see and feel that all is vanity, if we are thus led to turn from the phenomenal to the real, the abiding, the Divine. But it will be to our hurt if we dwell upon the vanity of all things, so that pessimism be fostered, so that we fail to recognize Infinite Reason at the heart of all things, so that we regard this as the worst of all worlds, so that for us the future has no brightness.T.

Est 1:3, Est 1:4

The vanity of man’s life.

At the very outset of his treatise, the wise man gives his readers to understand that the vanity which is ascribed to all things that are, is distinctive in an especial and obvious manner of human life. This is the most interesting of all things to observe and study, as it is the most precious to possess. And there is some danger lest, if the study of it lead to despondency, the possession of it should cease to be valued.

I. THE FACTS UPON WHICH THE CONVICTION OF THE VANITY OF LIFE IS FOUNDED.

1. The unsatisfying character of human toil. Labor is the destiny of man, and is in most cases the indispensable condition of not only life itself, but of those things for the sake of which many men value lifewealth, comfort, pleasure, and fame. Yet in how many cases does toil fail to secure the objects for the sake of which it is undertaken! Men labor, but reap no harvest of their painful, wearying efforts. And when the result is obtained, how commonly does it yield little or nothing of the satisfaction desired! Men toil for years, and when they attain that upon which their hearts were set, disappointment and dissatisfaction take possession of their nature.

2. The brevity of human life, and the rapid succession of the generations. The reflection of the wise man is a reflection which must have been current among men from the earliest ages No sooner has a laborious and successful man reached the summit of his ambition, grasped the object of his desire, than he is taken away from the enjoyment of that for the sake of which he was content to “scorn delights, and live laborious days.” The next generation renews the quest, only to repeat the experience of disappointment. Changes and improvements take place in many details of our life; but life itself remains throughout the ages, subject to the same limitations and the same calamities, to the same uncertainties and the same close.

3. The contrast between the transitoriness of human life and the stability of the unconscious earth. It appears strange and inexplicable that man, with the great possibilities of his nature, should be so short-lived, and that the earth should outlast generation after generation of mankind. The writer of Ecclesiastes felt, as every reflecting observer must feel, the sadness of this contrast between the perpetuity of the dwelling-place and the brief sojourn of its successive inhabitants.

4. The impossibility of any generation reaping the harvest for which it has sown. The toil, the genius, the enterprise of a generation may indeed bear fruit, but it is the generation which follows that enjoys that fruit. All men labor more for posterity than for themselves. “This also is vanity.”

II. THE CHARACTER OF THE INFERENCE FROM THESE FACTS, VIZ. THAT LIFE IS PROFITLESS AND VAIN.

1. It is attributable to the reflecting and aspiring nature of man. A being less endowed with susceptibilities and imagination, with moral capacities and far-reaching aims and hopes, would be incapable of such emotions and such conclusions as this book expresses. The brute is content to eat and drink, to sleep, and to follow its several instincts and impulses. But of man we may say that nothing that he can be and do can give him perfect rest and satisfaction. It is owing to an innate and noble dissatisfaction that he is ever aiming at something better and higher, and that the narrow range and brief scope of human life cannot content him, cannot furnish him with all the opportunity he desires in order to acquire and to achieve.

2. It is attributable to the very nature of earthly things, which, because they are finite, are incapable of satisfying such a nature as that described. They may and do answer a high purpose when their true import is discernedwhen they are recognized as symbolical and significant of what is greater than themselves. But no material good, no terrestrial distinctions, can serve as “profit” of labor. If so regarded, their vanity must sooner or later be apparent. There is a divinely ordained disproportion between the spirit of man and the scenes and occupations and emoluments of earth.

APPLICATION.

1. There is in human life a continuity only discerned by the reflecting and the pious. The obvious and striking fact is the disconnection of the generations. But as evolution reveals a physical continuity, philosophy finds an intellectual and moral continuity in our race.

2. The purpose of God is unfolded to successive generations of men. The modern study of the philosophy of history has brought this fact prominently and effectively before the attention of the scholarly and thoughtful. We see this continuity and progress in the order of revelation; but all history is, in a sacred sense, a revelation of the Eternal and Unchanging.

3. It is well that what we do we should do deliberately and seriously, not for our own good merely, but for mankind, and in the truest sense for God. This will lend “profit” to the unprofitable.

4. This state is not all. Life explains school; summer explains spring; and so eternity shall explain the disappointments, perplexities, and anomalies of time.T.

Est 1:5-7

The cycles of nature.

This is not to be taken as the language of one who makes complaints of nature, wishing that the great forces of the world were ordered otherwise than they actually are. It is the language of one who observes nature, and is baffled by its mysteries; who asks what all means, and why everything is as it is. Even at that distant time it was recognized that the processes of nature are cyclic. The stars accomplish their revolutions, and the seasons return in their appointed order. There is unity in diversity, and changes succeed one another with remarkable regularity. These observations seem to have suggested to the writer of Ecclesiastes the inquiryIs man’s life and destiny in this respect similar to the order of nature? Is our human experience as cyclic as are the processes of the material universe? Is there no real advance for man? and is he destined to pass through changes which in the end will only leave him where he was?

I. NATURE PRESENTS A SPECTACLE OF CONSTANT CHANGE AND RESTLESSNESS. The three examples given in these passages are such as must strike every attentive observer of this earth and the phenomena accessible to the view of its inhabitants. The sun runs his daily course through the heavens, to return on the next morning to fulfill the same circuit. The wind veers about from one quarter to another, and quits one direction only in a few hours, or a few days, or at most a few weeks, to resume it. The rivers flow on in an unceasing current, and find their way into the sea, which (as is now known) yields in evaporation its tribute to the clouds, whence the water-springs are in due time replenished. Modern science has vastly enlarged our view of similar processes throughout all of the universe which is accessible to our observation. “Nothing continueth in one stay.” There is in the world nothing immovable and unchangeable. It is believed that not an atom is at rest.

II. NATURE SEEMS TO EFFECT NO PROGRESS BY ALL THE CHANGES EXHIBITED. Not only is there a want, an absence, of stability, of rest; there is no apparent advance and improvement. Things move from their places only to return to them; their motion is rather in a circle than in a straight line. It was this cyclic tendency in natural processes which arrested the attention and perplexed the inquiring mind of the wise man. And modern science does not in this matter effect a radical change in our beliefs. Evolutionists teach us teat rhythm is the ultimate law of the universe. Evolution is followed by involution, or dissipation. A planet or a system evolves until it reaches its climax, and thenceforward its course is reversed, until it is resolved into the elements of which it was primevally composed. In the presence of such speculations the intellect reels, dizzy and powerless.

III. REFLECTION MAY, HOWEVER, SUGGEST TO US THAT THERE IS UNITY IN DIVERSITY, STABILITY IN CHANGE; THAT THERE IS A DIVINE PURPOSE IN NATURE. If there be evidence of reason in the universe, if nature is the expression of mind, the vehicle by which the Creator-Spirit communicates with the created spirits he has fashioned in his own likeness, then there is at least the suggestion of what is deeper and more significant than the cycles of phenomena. There is rest for the intelligence in such a conviction as that of the theist, who rises above the utterances to the Being who utters forth his mind and will in the world which he has made, and which he rules by laws that are the expression of his own reason. He looks behind and above the mechanical cycles of nature, and discovers the Divine mind, into whose purposes he can only very partially penetrate, but in whose presence and control he finds repose.

IV. ANALOGY POINTS OUT THAT IN AND BENEATH THE MUTABILITY OF THE HUMAN LOT AND LIFE THERE IS DIVINE PURPOSE OF INSTRUCTION AND BLESSING. If, as it seems, it occurred to the mind of the wise man that, as in nature, so in human existence, all things are cyclic and unprogressive, such an inference was not unnatural. Yet it is not a conclusion in which the reasonable mind can rest. The fuller revelation with which we have been favored enlightens us with respect to the intentions of Eternal Wisdom and Love. Our Savior has founded upon earth a kingdom which cannot be moved. And the figures which he himself has employed to set forth its progress are an assurance that it is not bounded by time or space; that it shall grow until its dimensions and beneficence exceed all human expectations, and satisfy the heart of the Divine Redeemer himself. Each faithful Christian, however feeble and however lowly, may work in his Master’s cause with the assurance that his service shall be not only acceptable, but effective. Better shall be the end than the beginning. The seed shall give rise to a tree of whose fruit all nations shall taste, and beneath whose shadow humanity itself shall find both shelter and repose.T.

Est 1:8

The insatiability of sense.

Man is on one side akin to the brutes, whilst he is on the other side akin to God. Sense he shares with the inferior animals; but the intellect and conscience by which he may use his senses in the acquisition of knowledge, and his physical powers in the fulfillment of a moral ideal, these are peculiar to himself. On this account it is impossible for man to be satisfied with mere sensibility; if he makes the attempt, he fails. To say this is not to disparage sensea great and wonderful gift of God. It is simply to put the senses in their proper place, as the auxiliaries and ministers of reason. Through the exercise of sense man may, by Divine aid, rise to great spiritual possessions, achievements, and enjoyments.

I. AN INFINITE VARIETY OF OBJECTS APPEAL TO THE SENSES OF SIGHT AND HEARING. These are chosen as the two noblest of the sensesthose by whose means we learn most of nature, and most of the thoughts and purposes of our fellow-men and of our God. Around, beneath, and above us are objects to be seen, sounds and voices to be heard. The variety is as marvelous as the multiplicity.

II. WONDERFUL IS THE ADAPTATION OF THE SENSES TO RECEIVE THE VARIED IMPRESSIONS PRODUCED BY NATURE. The susceptibility of the nerves of the eye to the undulations of ether, of the ear to atmospheric vibrations, has only been fully explained in recent times. There is no more marvelous instance of design than the mutual adaptations of the voice, the atmosphere, and the auditory nerve; of the molecular structure of colored body, the ether, and the retinal structure of the optic nerve. And these are only some of the arrangements between nature and sense which meet us at every turn and at every moment of our conscious existence.

III. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE THAT THE MERE EXERCISE OF SENSE SHOULD AFFORD A FULL SATISFACTION TO THE NATURE OF MAN. It is not to be supposed that any reasonable being should seek his gratification merely in the enjoyment of the impressions upon the senses. But even curiosity fails to find satisfaction, and those who crave such satisfaction make it manifest that their craving is in vain. The restlessness of the sight-seer is proverbial. When the impressions of sense are used as the material for high intellectual and spiritual ends, the case is otherwise. But it remains true as in the days of Koheleth, “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”

IV. IT WOULD BE AN ERROR TO REGARD THIS FACT AS A PROOF OF THE INHERENT BADNESS OF THE SENSES. Such an inference has sometimes been drawn by enthusiastic minds; and mystics have inculcated abstinence from the exercise of the senses as essential in order to intellectual and spiritual illumination. The error here lies in overlooking the distinction between making ourselves the slaves of our senses, and using the senses as our helpers and servants.

V. BUT IT IS JUST TO REGARD THIS FACT AS AN INDICATION THAT MEN SHOULD SEEK THEIR SATISFACTION IN WHAT IS HIGHER THAN SENSE. When the eyes are opened to the works of God, when we look upon the form of the Son of God, when we hear the Divine Word speaking in conscience and speaking in Christ, our senses then become, directly or indirectly, the instrumentality by means of which our higher nature is called into exercise and finds abundant scope. Our reason may thus find rest in truth; our sympathies may thus respond to the revealed love of the Eternal Father known by his blessed Son; our whole heart may rise into fellowship with him from whom all our faculties and capacities are derived, and in whom alone his spiritual children can find a perfect satisfaction and an unshaken repose.T.

Est 1:9, Est 1:10

Novelty.

If, in the ancient days in which this book was written, men were already experiencing the weariness which comes from their familiarity with the scenes of earth and the incidents of life, how much more must this be the case at the present time! It is, indeed, ever characteristic of the favorites of fortune, that they “run through” the possibilities of excitement and of pleasure before their capacity for enjoyment is exhausted, and cry for new forms of amusement and distraction. It is remarkable how soon such persons are reduced to the painful conviction that there is nothing new under the sun.

I. THE LOVE AND QUEST OF NOVELTY ARE NATURAL TO MAN. When we examine human nature, we find there a deep-seated interest in change. What is called “relativity,” the passage from one experience to another, is indeed an essential condition of mental life. And transition from one mode of excitement to another is a constituent of a pleasurable life. Thus, in the case of the intellectual man, the aim is to know and to study ever new things; whilst in the case of the man of energy and activity, the impulse is to view new scenes, to undertake new enterprises. It is this principle in our nature which accounts for the efforts men put forth, and for the sacrifices to which men willingly submit.

II. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF REAL NOVELTY IN THE NATURAL WORLD AND IN HUMAN AFFAIRS. A little reflection will convince us that continuous novelty is unattainable. The laws of nature remain the same, and their sameness produces effects which with familiarity produce the effect of monotony. The conditions of human life do not materially vary from year to year, from age to age. And human nature possesses certain constant factors, in virtue of which men’s employments and pleasures, hopes, sufferings, and fears remain substantially as they were in former times. The chief exception to this rule arises from the fact that what is old to one generation is for a while new to its successor. But it must not be forgotten that the individual, if favor-ably circumstanced, soon exhausts the variety of human experience. The voluptuary offers a reward to him who can invent a new pleasure. The hero weeps for want of a new world to conquer. The child of fortune experiences in the satisfaction of his wants, and even his caprices, the ennui which is a proof that he has followed the round of occupations and pleasures until all have been exhausted. Thus the most favored are in some cases the least happy, and the most ready to join in the complaint, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!”

III. IT IS THE SPIRITUAL REALM WHICH IS ESPECIALLY CHARACTERIZED BY NEWNESS. If it is impossible that the Book of Ecclesiastes should be written over again in the Christian ages, the reason is that the fuller and sublime revelations made by the Son of God incarnate have enriched human thought and life beyond all calculation. There is no comparison between the comparative poverty of knowledge and of life, even under the Mosaic economy in ancient times, and “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” None can exhaust the treasures of knowledge and wisdom, the possibilities of consecrated service and spiritual progress, distinctive of the Christian dispensation. Christianity is emphatically a religion of newness. It is itself the new covenant; its choicest gift to man is the new heart; it summons the disciples of the Redeemer to newness of life; it puts in their mouth a new song; whilst it opens up in the future the glorious prospect of new heavens and a new earth. God comes in the Person of his Son to this sin-stricken humanity, and his assurance and promise is this: “Behold, I make all things new.” And in fulfillment of this assurance, the Church of Christ rejoices in the experience expressed in the declaration, “Old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new.”T.

Est 1:12-18

The vanity of human wisdom.

Solomon was one of the great, magnificent, and famous kings of the East, and was eminent both for possessions and abilities. The splendor of his court and capital may have impressed the popular mind more profoundly than anything else attaching to him. But his wisdom was his most distinctive and honorable peculiarity. At the beginning of his reign he had sought this from God as his supreme gift, and the gift had been bestowed upon him and continued to him. Its evidences were striking and universally acknowledged. As a king, a judge, an administrator, a writer, a religious teacher, Solomon was pre-eminently wise. It must be admitted that he did not always make the best use of the marvelous talents entrusted to him. But he was well able to speak from his own experience of the gift of wisdom; and none was ever better able to speak of its vanity.

I. THE POSSESSION AND EXERCISE OF WISDOM.

1. This implies natural ability, as a foundation; and, if this be absent, eminence is impossible.

2. It implies also good opportunities. There are doubtless many endowed with native powers, to whom are denied the means of calling forth and training those powers, which accordingly lie dormant throughout the whole of life.

3. It implies the diligent cultivation of natural powers, and the diligent use of precious opportunities.

4. It implies prolonged experience”years that bring the philosophic mind.”

II. THE LIMITATION OF HUMAN WISDOM. To the view of the uncultivated and inexperienced, the knowledge of the accomplished student seems boundless, and the wisdom of the sage almost Divine. But the wise man knows himself too well to be thus deluded. The wisest man is aware that there are

(1) problems he cannot solve;

(2) errors he cannot correct;

(3) evils he cannot remedy.

On every side he is reminded how limited are his speculative and his practical powers. He is often all but helpless in the presence of questions that baffle his ingenuity, of difficulties that defy his endeavors and his patience.

III. THE DISAPPOINTMENT AND DISTRESS OF WISDOM.

1. One erroneous inference from the considerations adduced must be carefully guarded against, viz. the inference that folly is better than wisdom. The wise man may not always come to a just conclusion as to belief and practice, but the fool will usually he misled by his folly.

2. The wise man is gradually disillusioned regarding himself. He may start in life with the persuasion of his power and commanding superiority; but his confidence is perhaps by slow degrees undermined, and he may end by forming a habit of self-distrust.

3. At the same time, the wise man becomes painfully conscious that he does not deserve the reputation which he enjoys among his fellow-men.

4. But, above all, he feels that his wisdom is folly in the presence of the all-wise God, to whose omniscience all things are clear, and from whose judgment there is no appeal.

5. Hence the wise man acquires the most valuable lesson of modesty and humilityqualities which give a crowning grace to true wisdom. The wise man assuredly would not exchange with the fool, but he would fain be wiser than he is; and he cherishes the conviction that whatever light illumines him is but a ray from the central and eternal Sun.T.

HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON

Est 1:2, Est 1:3

Human life and human labor.

What is the worth of our human life? This is an old and ever-recurring question; the answer to it depends far less on what surrounds us than on what is within us, far less upon our circumstances than upon our spirit. But it must be acknowledged

I. THAT THE WORTH OF OUR LIFE DEPENDS LARGELY UPON ITS ACTIVITIES. We have to askHow are we related to our fellows? What is the number and what the nature of the objects that minister to our comforts? What opportunities are there for leisure, for repose, for recreation? But the largest of all questions is this: What is the character of our activities? Are these congenial or uninviting, burdensome or moderate, tedious or interesting, fruitful or barren, passing or permanent in their effects?

II. THAT HUMAN ACTIVITY HAS ITS DEPRESSING ASPECTS. SO depressing were they to “the Preacher,” that he pours forth his dejection of spirit in the strong exclamation of the text. The valuelessness of all human labor made life itself seem to him to be vain. Three things there are that dwarf it.

1. Its slightness. A few men accomplish that which is observable, remarkable, worthy of being chronicled and remembered, making its mark on the page of history or of poetry; but how few they are! The great majority of mankind spend all their strength in doing that which is of small account, which produces no calculable effect upon their times, of which no man thinks it worth while to sneak or sins

2. Its dependence on others. There are but very few indeed whose labor can be said to be original, independent, or creative. Almost every man is so working that if any of those who are co-operating with him were to withdraw their labor, his would be of no avail; his work would be quite unprofitable but for their countenance and support.

3. Its insecurity. This is the main thought of the text. What is the use of a man building up that which his neighbor may come and pull down; of gathering laboriously together that which the thief may take away; of expending toilful days and exhausting energies on something which may be taken from our grasp in the compass of an hour, at the bidding of one strong human will; of making long and weary preparation for later life, when the tie that binds us to the present sphere may be snapped in a moment? Insecurity, arising from one of a number of sourcesthe elemental forces of nature, the malice and treachery of men, despotism in government, the chances and changes of trade and commerce, failure of health and strength, sudden death, etc.marks all the products of human activity with its own stamp, and brings down their value, who shall estimate how much? The Preacher says to nothing. But let it be remembered

III. THAT HUMAN ACTIVITY HAS ITS REDEEMING QUALITIES. This is only one view of it. Another and a healthier view may be taken of the subject.

1. All honest and faithful labor is worthy in the sight of the wise man and of the Wise One (Pro 14:23).

2. All conscientious labor provides a sphere for the active service of God; by its honorable and faithful discharge, as in his sight, we can serve and please our Lord.

3. All such labor has a happy reflex influence on ourselves, strengthening us in body, in mind, in character.

4. All earnest work is really constructive of the kingdom of Christ. Although we see not its issues and cannot estimate its worth, we may be sure that “the day will declare it,” and that it will be found at last that every true stroke we struck did tell and count for truth and righteousness, for the cause of humanity and of Christ.C.

Est 1:4-7

The stability of nature.

The Preacher was struck with the strong contrast between the permanence of nature and the transiency of human life; and the thought oppressed and pained him. We may take his view of the subjectand our own. We look at the stability of nature

I. AS IT APPEALS TO OUR SENSES. To the outward eye things do continue as they were

“Changeless march the stars above,
Changeless morn succeeds to even,
And the everlasting hills,
Changeless, watch the changeless heaven.”

The hills, “rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun;” the “unchanging, everlasting sea;” the rivers that flow down the centuries as well as through the lands; the plains that stretch for long ages beneath the skies;these aspects of nature are impressive enough to the simplest imagination; they make this earth which is our home to be charged with deepest interest and clothed with truest grandeur. No man, who has an eye to see and a heart to feel, can fail to be affected by them.

II. AS IT APPEALS TO OUR REASON. The stability of all things about and above us:

1. Gives us time to study the nature and the causes of things, and enables one generation to hand down the results of its researches to another, so that we are constantly accumulating knowledge.

2. Gives us proof of the unity of God.

3. Assures us of the mighty power of the great Author of nature, who is seen to be strong to sustain and preserve and renew.

III. AS IT AFFECTS OUR LIFE. For what would happen if everything were inconstant and uncertain? What would be the effect on human labor and on human life if there were no dependence to be placed on the continuance, as they are, of land and sea, of earth and sky, of hill and plain? How does the security of all the great objects and systems of the world add incentive to our industry! how does it multiply our achievements! how does it enlarge and enrich our life! That we shall be able to complete what we have begun, and that we have a good hope of handing down our work to our successors,is not this a large factor, a powerful inspiration, among us?

IV. AS IT DWARFS OUR INDIVIDUAL CAREER. The Preacher seemed to feel this acutely. What a small, slight, evanescent thing is a human life when compared with the long ranges of time that the ancient earth and the more ancient heavens have known! A generation comes and goes, while a river hardly changes its course by a single curve; many generations pass, while the face of the rocks is not visibly affected by all the waves that beat upon its surface night and day; all the generations of men, from the time that a human face was first turned up to heaven, have been looked down upon by those silent stars! Why make so much of so transient a thing as a human life? Ay, but look at it

V. IN THE LIGHT OF THE SPIRITUAL AND THE ETERNAL.

1. The worth of spiritual life is not determined by its duration. The life of a human spiritif that be the life of purity, holiness, reverence, love, generosity, aspirationis of more account in the estimate of Divine wisdom, even though it be extended over a mere decade of years, than the existence which knows nothing of these nobilities, even though it should be extended over many thousands of years.

2. Moreover, holy human life on earth leads on and up to the life which is eternal. So that we, whose course upon the earth is so short, who are but of yesterday and with whom to-morrow may not be, do yet begin upon the earth a life which will abound in all that is beautiful and blessed, in all that is great and noble, when the “everlasting hills” have crumbled into dust.C.

Est 1:7, Est 1:8

Weariness and rest.

We have here

I. THE COMPLAINT OF THE UNSATISFIED. “All things are full of weariness” (Revised Version).

1. There are many obvious sources of satisfaction. Life has many pleasures, and many happy activities, and much coveted treasure. Human affection, congenial employment, the pursuit of knowledge, “the joys of contest,” the excitements of the field of sport, the attainment of ambition, etc.

2. All of them together fail to satisfy the heart. The eye is act satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing, nor the tongue with tasting, nor the hand with handling, nor the mind with investigating and discovering. All the streams of temporal and worldly pleasure run into the sea of the human soul, but they do not fill it. The heart, on whatsoever it feeds, is still a-hungered, is still athirst. It may seem surprising that when so much that was craved has been possessed and enjoyed, that when so many things have ministered to the mind, there should still be heart-ache, unrest, spiritual disquietude, the painful questionWho will show us any good? Is life worth having? The profundity, the commonness and constancy of this complaint, is a very baffling and perplexing problem. We surely ought to be satisfied, but we are not. The unillumined mind cannot explain it, the uninspired tongue “cannot utter it.” What is the solution?

II. ITS EXPLANATION. Its solution is not far to seek; it is found in the truth so finely uttered by Augustine, “O God, thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart findeth no rest until it resteth in thee.” The human spirit, created in God’s image, constituted to possess his own spiritual likeness, formed for truth and righteousness, intended to spend its noble and ever-unfolding powers in the high service of the Divine,is it likely that such a one as this, that can be so much, that can know so much, that can love the best and highest, that can aspire to the loftiest and purest well-being, can be satisfied with the love that is human, with the knowledge that is earthly, with the treasure that is material and transient? The marvel is, and the pity is, that man, with such powers within him and with such a destiny before him, can sometimes sink so low as to be filled and satisfied with the husks of earth, unfilled with the bread of heaven.

III. ITS REMEDY. To us, to whom Jesus Christ has spoken, there is a plain and open way of escape from this profound disquietude. We hear the Master say, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

(1) In the reconciliation to God, our Divine Father, which we have in Jesus Christ;

(2) in the happy love of our souls to that Divine Friend and Savior;

(3) in the blessed service of our rightful, faithful, considerate Lord;

(4) in the not unavailing service we render to those whom he loved and for whom he died;

(5) in the glorious hope of immortal life beyond the grave, we do “find rest unto our souls.”C.

Est 1:9, Est 1:10

The changing and the abiding.

We are not to take the Preacher’s words in too absolute a sense. There is that which has been but which is not now. We are sometimes powerfully affected by

I. THE CHANGING. Of those things which bear the marks of time, we may mention:

1. The face of nature.

2. The handiwork of man. We look on prostrate palaces, fallen temples, buried cities, disused and decaying harbors, etc.

3. Historical characters. We have been familiar with the faces and forms of men that have played a great part in their country’s history or created an epoch in philosophy, or poetry, or science; but where are they now?

4. Human science. Whether medical or surgical, whether geographical, geological, philosophical, theological, or of any other order, human science is changing continually. The top-stone of yesterday is the stepping-stone of today.

5. The Character of philanthropic work. This was once represented by almsgiving, but to-day we feel that almsgiving is as much of an evil as a good, and that we want to do that for men which will remove for ever all “charity” on the one side and all dependence on the other. But look at

II. THE ABIDING. Many things remain and will remain; among these are:

1. The main features of human life. Labor, sorrow, care, struggle, death; love, pleasure, success, honor.

2. Typical human characters. We still have with us the false, the licentious, the cruel, the servile, the ambitious, etc.; and we still have the meek, the grateful, the generous, the pure-hearted, the devout, etc.

3. The spiritual element. Men have not done, and they never will have done, with the mysterious, the supernatural, the Divine. They still askWhence came we? By whose power are we sustained? To whom are we responsible? Whither do we go? How can we know and serve and please God?

4. The truth of Jesus Christ. Heaven and earth may pass away, but his words “will not pass away.” They are with us still, and they will remain, amid all wreckage, to enlighten our ignorance, to cheer our sorrow, to accompany our loneliness, to conquer our sin, to light up our departure, to bless and to enrich us, ourselves, with the blessings and the treasures that are not of earth but of heaven.C.

Est 1:11

Oblivion and its consolations.

We have here:

I. A NATURAL HUMAN ASPIRATION. We do not like to think that the time is coming when we shall be wholly forgotten; we should like to live on in the memory of men, especially in the memory of the wise and good. We shrink from the idea of being entirely forgotten; we do not care to think that the hour will come when the mention of our name will not awaken the slightest interest in any human circle. There is something exceedingly attractive in the thought of fame, and repelling in that of oblivion. There is that within us which responds to the fine line of Horace, in which he tells us that he has built for himself a monument more enduring than brass; and to the aspiration of our own Milton, that he might prove to have written something which “the world would not willingly let die.”

II. ITS INEVITABLE DISAPPOINTMENT.

1. It is indeed true that “the memory of the just is blessed,” and that they who have lived well, loved faithfully, wrought nobly, suffered meekly, striven bravely, will be remembered and honored after death; they may be long, even very long, remembered and revered.

2. There are just a few men whose names and histories will go down the long stream of time, of whom the very last generation will speak and learn.

3. But the vast majority of men will soon be forgotten. Their names may be inscribed on memorial-stones, but in a very few years none will care to read them; the eye that lights upon them will glance from them with indifference; there will be “no remembrance” of them. The world will take its way; will do its work and find its pleasure, regardless altogether of the fact that these men once trod its surface and now lie beneath it.

III. THE TRUE CONSOLATION. This is certainly not found in the commonness of our lot. It is no consolation to me that my neighbor is as ill off as myself; that ought to be an aggravation of my trouble. It is, in fact, twofold.

1. We may be always living in the deathless influence our faithful lives exerted and handed down. For good influences do never die; they are scattered and lost sight of, but they are not extinguished; they live on in human hearts and lives from generation to generation.

2. We shall be loved and honored otherwhere. What if we be forgotten here upon the earth? Are there not other parts of the kingdom of God? And is there not one where God will have found for us a sphere, and in the minds and hearts of those who will be our friends and fellow-laborers there we shall hold our place, honoring and honored, loving and beloved?C.

Est 1:18

Knowledge and sorrow.

This is one of those utterances which contain much truth and leave much to be supplied. “In much wisdom is much grief,” but there is much beside grief to be found in it. So we look at

I. THE TRUTH WHICH IT CONTAINS. Of the wisdom or the knowledge which brings sadness to the heart we have to reckon the following.

1. Our deeper insight into ourselves. As we go on we find ourselves capable of worse things than we once supposed we wereselfish aims, evil thoughts, unhallowed passions, etc. Neither David nor Peter supposed himself capable of doing the deed to which he fell.

2. Childhood’s corrected estimate of the good. We begin by thinking all good men and women perfect; then, as experience enlarges, we have reluctantly and sorrowfully to acknowledge to ourselves that there are flaws even in the life and character of the best. And disillusion is a very painful process.

3. Maturity’s acquaintance with evil. We may go some way into life before we know one-half of the evil which is in the world? Indeed, it is the wisdom and the duty of manyof even a large proportion of the racenot to know much that might be revealed. But as a widening knowledge unveils the magnitude and heinousness of moral evil, there is sorrow indeed to the pure and sympathetic soul. The more we know of the sins and the sorrows of our raceof its cruelties on the one hand and its sufferings on the other, of its enormities and its privations, of its toils and troubles, of its degradation and its death in lifethe more we are distressed in spirit; “in much wisdom is much grief.”

II. ITS LARGE QUALIFICATIONS. There is much truth belonging to the subject which lies outside this statement, qualifying though not contradicting it.

1. There is much pleasure in the act of acquisition. The study of one of the sciences, the reading of history, the careful observation of nature and mastery of its secrets, the investigation of the nature of man, etc.,there is a pure and invigorating delight in all this.

2. Knowledge is power; and it is power to acquire that which will surround us with comfort, with freedom, with friendship, with intellectual enlargement.

3. The knowledge which is heavenly wisdom is, in itself, a source of elevation and of deep spiritual thankfulness and happiness.

4. The knowledge of God, as he is known to us in Jesus Christ, is the one unfailing source of unfading joy.C.

HOMILIES BY J. WILLCOCK

Est 1:1-11

The summary of a life’s experience.

“Solomon and Job,” says Pascal, “had most perfect knowledge of human wretchedness, and have given us the most complete description of it: the one was the most prosperous, the other the most unfortunate, of men; the one knew by experience the vanity of pleasure, the other the reality of sorrow.” In such diverse ways does God lead men to the same conclusionthat in human life, apart from him, there is no true satisfaction or lasting happiness, that the immortal spirit cannot find rest in things seen and temporal. The words, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity: what profit hath man of all his labor wherein he laboreth under the sun?” (Revised Version), are the key-note of the whole bookthe theme which the author maintains by arguments and illustrations drawn from a most varied experience. If Solomon be not the speaker, if we have in Ecclesiastes the composition of a later writer, no more appropriate personage could have been found than the ancient Jewish king to set forth the teaching which the book contains. For he had tasted all the good things human life has to give. On him God had bestowed wisdom and knowledge, riches, wealth, honor, and length of days. All these he had enjoyed to the full, and therefore speaks, or is made to speak, as one from whom nothing had been kept that his soul desired, and who found that nothing results from the mere satisfaction of appetites and desires but satiety and loathing and disappointment. We may contrast with this retrospect of life that given us by One whose aim it was to fulfill the Law of God and secure the well-being of his fellow-men; and we may thus discover the secret of Solomon’s failure to win happiness or to reach any lasting result. At the close of his life the Redeemer of mankind summed up the history of his career in the words addressed to God, “I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do” (Joh 17:4). It may seem to some a dreary task to follow the course of Solomon’s morbid thoughts, but it cannot fail to be profitable, if we undertake the task in the earnest desire to discover the causes of his melancholy and disappointment, and learn from the study how to guide our own lives more successfully, and to enter into the peace and contentment of spirit which, after all his efforts, he failed to make his own. In the first eleven verses of this chapter we have revealed to us the despair and weariness which fell upon the soul of him whose splendor and wisdom raised him above all the men of his time, and made him the wonder of all. succeeding ages. Life seemed to him the emptiest and poorest thing possible”a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” He might have used the words of the modern philosopher Amiel, “To appear and to vanish,there is the biography of all individuals, whatever may be the length of the cycle of existence which they describe; and the drama of the universe is nothing more. All life is the shadow of a smoke-wreath, a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyphic traced for an instant in the sand and effaced a moment afterwards by a breath of wind, an air-bubble expanding and vanishing on the surface of the great river of beingan appearance, a vanity, a nothing. But this nothing is, however, the symbol of universal being, and this passing bubble is the epitome of the history of the world.” It seemed to him that life yielded no permanent results, that it was insufferably monotonous, and that it was destined to end in utter oblivion. The futility of effort, the monotony of life, and the oblivion that engulfs it at last are the topics of this opening passage of the book. Let us take them up one after the other.

I. THAT LIFE YIELDS NO PERMANENT RESETS. (Verses 1-3.) We have before us, then, the deliberate judgment of one who had full experience of all that men busy themselves with”the labor wherein they labor under the sun”the pursuit of riches, the enjoyment of power, the satisfaction of appetites and desires, and so on, and his conclusion is that there is no profit in it all. And his sentence is confirmed by the words of Christ, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” In the case of Solomon, therefore, we have a record of permanent significance and value. We cannot deprive his somber utterances of their weight by saying that he spoke simply as a sated voluptuary, and that others might with more skill or discretion extract from life what he failed to find in it. For, as we shall see, he did not confine himself to mere pursuit of pleasure, but sought satisfaction in intellectual employments and in the accomplishment of great tasks, for which the power and wealth at his disposal were drawn upon to the utmost. His melancholy is not a form of mental disease, but the result of the exhaustion of his energies and powers in the attempt to find satisfaction for the ‘soul’s cravings. And in melancholy of this kind philosophers have found a proof of the dignity of human nature. “Man’s unhappiness,” says one of them, “comes of his greatness: it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the finite He requires, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more and no less: God’s infinite universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rises Try him with half of a universe, of an omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a blackspot in our sunshine; it is even the shadow of ourselves” (Carlyle). The very consciousness of the unprofitableness of life, of failure to attain to perfect satisfaction in the possession of earthly benefits, painful as it is, should convince us of the value of the higher and better inheritance, which may be ours, and in which alone we can find rest; and we should take it as a Divine warning to seek after those things that are eternal and unchangeable. Our dissatisfaction and our sorrows are like those of the exile who pines for the pleasant land from which by a hard fate he is for a time dissevered; like the grief of a king who has been deposed. And it is to those whose hunger and thirst cannot be satisfied by things of earth, who find, like Solomon, that there is “no profit in a man’s labor wherein he laboreth under the Sun,” that God issues the gracious invitation, “Lo, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” The idea of the unprofitableness of human labor expressed by Solomon is calculated, if carried too far, to put an end to all healthy and strenuous effort to use the powers and gifts God has bestowed upon us, and to lead to indifference and despair. If no adequate result can be secured, if all that remains after prolonged exertion is only a sense of weariness and disappointment, why should we labor at all? But such thoughts are dishonoring to God and degrading to ourselves. He has not sent us into the world to spend our labor in vain, to be overcome with the consciousness of our poverty and weakness. There are ways in which we can glorify him and serve our generation; and he has promised to bless our endeavors, and supply that wherein we come short. Every sincere and unselfish effort we make to help the weak, to relieve the suffering, to teach the ignorant, to diminish the misery that meets us on every hand, and to advance the happiness of our fellows, is made fruitful by his blessing. Something positive and of enduring value may be secured in this way, even “treasure laid up in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal? We may so use the goods, the talents, now committed to our charge, as to create for ourselves friends, who will receive us into everlasting habitations when the days of our stewardship are over, and this visible, tangible world fades away from us.

II. The second reflection of the royal Preacher is that HUMAN LIFE IS INSUFFERABLY MONOTONOUS; that under all outward appearances of variety and change there is a dreary sameness (verses 4-10). Generation succeeds generation, but the stage is the same on which they play their parts, and one performance is very like another. The incessant motion of the sun, traveling from east to west; the shifting of the wind from one point to another, and then back again; the speedy current of the rivers to join the ocean, which yet is not filled by them, but returns them in various ways to water the earth, and to feed the springs, “whence the rivers come;” the commonplace events of human life, are all referred to as examples of endless and monotonous variation. The law of mutability, without progress, seems to the speaker to prevail in heaven and in earthto rule in the material world, in human society, and in the life of the individual. The lordship over creation, bestowed upon man, appeared to him a vain fancy. Man himself was but a stranger, sojourning here for but a very short time, coming like a wandering bird from the outer darkness into the light and warmth of a festive hall, and soon flitting out back again into the darkness. And, to one in this somber mood, it is not wonderful that all natural phenomena should wear the aspect of instability and change. To the pious mind of the psalmist the sun suggested thoughts of God’s glory and power; the majesty of the creature gave him a more exalted idea of the greatness of the Creator, and he expatiated upon the splendor of that light that rules the day. “The heavens were his tabernacle;” morning by morning he was as “a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race.” Our Savior saw in the same phenomenon a proof of God’s impartial and bountiful love to the children of men: “He maketh his sun to rise upon the evil and the good.” But to the melancholy and brooding mind of our author nothing more was suggested by it than monotonous reiteration, a dreary routine of rising and setting. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.” “He issues forth, clay after day, from the east, mounts up the vault of heaven until he has reached the meridian, and then he descends at once towards the western horizon. He never stops in his course at midday, as though he had attained the end for which he issued forth with the dawn; he never sinks beneath the horizon to enjoy repose. Even throughout the night he is still hastening onward, that, at the appointed hour, he may again reach his eastern starting-place. The wind, great though its changes may be, seems never to have accomplished the purpose for which it puts forth its power. It never subsides into a state of lasting quiescence; it never even finds a station which it can permanently occupy. It, veereth about continually, ‘yet it ever bloweth again according to its circuits.’ The streams flow onward to the ocean; but the time never comes when the sea, filled to overflowing, refuses to receive their waters. The thirst of the sea is never quenched; the waters of the rivers are lost; and yet, with unavailing constancy, they still pour their contributions into its bosom” (Tyler). And so with regard to all the other things on which the eye rests, or of which the ear hearsweariness clothes everything; an unutterable monotony amid their changes and variations. Human life, too, all through, is characterized by the same unrest and ceaseless, fruitless labor. Sometimes a new discovery seems to be made; the monotony seems to be broken, and fresh and great results are anticipated by those who are ignorant of the world’s past history. But the initiated, those whose experience has made them wise, or whose knowledge has made them learned, recognize the new thing as something that was known in times long ago; they can tell how barren it was of results then, how little, therefore, can be expected from it now. There is scarcely anything more discouraging, especially to the young, than this kind of moralizing. We feel, perhaps, that we can carry out some scheme that will be of benefit to the society about us, and are met with lamentable accounts of how similar schemes were once tried and failed disastrously. We feel moved to attack the evils that we meet in the world, and are assured that they are too great and our own strength too puny for us to accomplish anything worth while. And in the mean time our fervor grows cold, our courage oozes away, and we really lose the power for good we might have had. Now, this teaching of Solomon is not meant for the young and hopeful. Indeed, those who collected together the books of the Old Testament were rather doubtful about including Ecclesiastes among the others, and is ran a narrow chance of being omitted from the sacred canon. But it has its place in the Word of God; and those who have known anything of the doubts and speculations contained in it will find it profitable to trace the course of thought that runs through it, until they find the solid and positive teaching which the Preacher at lasts gives. The distressing fact remains, and must be encountered, that to those who have had long experience of the world, and whose horizon is bounded by it, who see only the things that are done “under the sun,” in the midst of ever-recurring changes, there seems to be little or no progress, and that which appears to be new is but a repetition of the old. But they should remember that this world is meant as a place of probation for usa school in which we are to learn great lessons; and that all the changing circumstances of life serve, and are meant to serve, to develop our nature and character. If it were to be our abiding-place, many improvements in it might be suggested. It is not by any means the best of possible worlds; but for purposes of education, discipline, and testing, it is perfectly adapted. “Rest yet remaineth for the people of God;” it is not here, but in a world to come. This truth is admirably stated by the poet Spenser, who perhaps unconsciously reproduces the melancholy thoughts of Solomon, and answers them. He speaks of Mutability seeking to be honored above all the heavenly powers, as being the chief ruler in the universe, and as indeed governing all things. In a synod of the gods, she is silenced by Nature, who combats her claims, and speaks of a time to come when her present apparent power will come to an end-

“But time shall come that all shall changed bee,
And from thenceforth none no more change shall see.”

And then the poet adds

“When I bethinke me on that speech whyleare [former]
Of Mutability, and well it way,
Me seemes, that though she all unworthy were
Of the Heav’ns Rule; yet, very sooth to say,
In all things else she bears the greatest sway:
Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle [unsure],
And love of things so vain to cast away;
Whose flow’ring pride, so fading and so fickle,
Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle.
“Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd,
Of that same time when no more Change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things, firmely stayd
Upon the pillars of Eternity,
That is contrayr to Mutability;
For all that moveth doth in Change delight:
But thence-forth all shall rest eternally
With him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:
O! that great Sabbaoth God, grant me that Sabbaoth’s sight!”

III. LIFE DESTINED TO END IN UTTER OBLIVION. To all these considerations of the resultlessness of life, of changefulness and monotony, is added that of the oblivion that sooner or later overtakes man and all his works (verse 11). “There is no remembrance of the former generations; neither shall there be any remembrance of the latter generations that are to come, among those that shall come after” (Revised Version). One generation supersedes another; the new come up with fresh interests and schemes of their own, and hustle the old off the stage, and are themselves in their turn forced to give place to those who come up after them. Nations disappear from the earth’s surface and are forgotten. The memorials of former civilizations lie buried in the sand, or are defaced and destroyed to make room for something else. On every page of creation we find the sentence written, that there is nothing here that lasts. Almost no means can be devised to carry down to succeeding generations even the names of the greatest conquerors, of men who in their time seemed to have the strength of gods, and to have changed the history of the world. The earth has many secrets in her keeping, and is sometimes forced to yield up a few of them. “The ploughshare strikes against the foundations of buildings which once echoed to human mirth, skeletons of men to whom life once was dear; urns and coins that remind the antiquary of a magnificent empire now long passed away.” And so the process goes on. Everything passes. A few years ago and we were not; a hundred years hence, and there may be none who ever heard our names. And a day will come when

“The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

Abundant material, then, had the Preacher, the son of David, for somber meditation; abundant material for contemplation does he suggest to us. And if we cannot get much further on in speculation than he did, if since his time very little new light has been cast upon the problems which he discusses, we may still refuse to be depressed by melancholy like his. Granted that all is vanity, that restlessness and monotony mark everything in the world, and that its glories soon pass away and are forgotten; still it is not our home. It may dissolve and leave us no poorer. The tie that binds together soul and body may be loosened, and the place that knows us now may soon know us no more. Our confidence is in him, who has promised to take us to himself, that where he is we may be also. “God is our Refuge and Strength… therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed.” In contrast with the Preacher’s desponding, despairing words about the fruitlessness of life, its monotony and its brevity, we may set the hopeful, triumphant utterance of Christ’s apostle: “The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.”J.W.

Est 1:12-18

Speculative study of the world.

Solomon has made serious allegations concerning human life, and he now proceeds to substantiate them. He has declared that it yields no permanent results, that it is tedious beyond expression, and that it is soon overtaken by oblivion. “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity!” The monotony of things in the natural worldthe permanence of the earth in contrast with the changes in human life, the mechanical routine of sunrise and sunset, the ceaseless agitation of the atmosphere, the constant course of rivers to the sea, and so onhad not been the sole ground for his conclusions. He had considered also “all the works that are done under the sun,” the whole range of human action, and found in them evidence justifying his allegations. Both in natural phenomena and in human efforts and attainments he found that all was vanity and vexation of spirit. He had, he tells us (Est 1:12), all the resources of a great monarch at his commandriches, authority, capacity, and leisure; and he applied himself,he gave his heart to discover, by the aid of wisdom, the nature of earthly pursuits, and found that they were fruitless. He concentrated all his mental energy upon the course of investigation, and continued in it until the conclusion was forced upon him that “in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” So different is the estimate of wisdom and knowledge formed by the Jewish king from that held by other great philosophers and sages, that it is worth while to inquire into the cause of the difference. The explanation is to be found in Est 1:15, “That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.” It was a practical end that Solomon had in viewto remedy evils and to supply deficiencies. He did not engage in the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge for the sake of the pleasure yielded by intellectual activity. In the case of ordinary philosophers and scientists the aim is a different one. “A truth, once known, falls into comparative insignificance. It is now prized, less on its own account than as opening up new ways to new activity, new suspense, new hopes, new discoveries, new self-gratulationit is not knowledge, it is not truth, that the votary of science principally seeks; he seeks the exercise of his faculties and feelings. Absolute certainty and absolute completion would be the paralysis of any study; and the last worst calamity that could befall man, as he is at present constituted, would be that full and final possession of speculative truth which he now vainly anticipates as the consummation of his intellectual happiness. And what is true of science is true, indeed, of all human activity. It is ever the contest that pleases us, and not the victory. Thus it is in play; thus it is in hunting; thus it is in the search of truth; thus it is in life. The past does not interest, the present does not satisfy; the future alone is the object which engages us. ‘It is not the goal, but the course, that makes us happy,’ says Richter” (Hamilton, ‘Metaphysics’). But in the case before us we find that the pleasure afforded by intellectual activity is not regarded by the Preacher as an end sufficient in itself to engage his energies. It is a practical end he has in view; and when he finds that earthly pursuits cannot alter destinies, cannot change the conditions under which we live, cannot set right that which is wrong, or supply that which is wanting for human happiness, he loathes them altogether. The very wisdom and knowledge which he had acquired in his investigations seem to him useless lumber. He wanted to find in life an adequate aim and end, something in which man could find repose. He found it not. “The light which the wisdom he had learned cast on human destiny only exhibited to him the illusions of life, but did not show him one perfect object on which he might rest as a final aim of existence. And therefore he says that ‘he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,’ since he only thus perceives more and more illusions, whilst nothing is the result, and nihilism is only sorrow of heart”. The Preacher then says about the pursuit of wisdom, that though it is implanted by God in the heart of man (Est 1:13), it is

(1) a severe and laborious task, and

(2) the results it yields are grief and sorrow.

I. In the first place, then, HE DESCRIBES THE PURSUIT OF WISDOM AS A SEVERE AND LABORIOUS TASK. He looks back upon the course of inquiry he had followed, and declares that it has been a rugged, thorny road. “This sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.” And it is quite in harmony with the spirit of the book that the name of God, which occurs here for the first time, should be coupled with the thought of his laying heavy burdens upon men, since it was by him that this profitless search had been appointed. He remembers all the labors of the way by which he had comethe weariness of brain, the laborious days, the sleepless nights, the frustrated hopes, the disappointments he had experienced; and he counts the pursuit of wisdom but another of the vanities of life. The common run of men, who have no high aims, no desires after a wisdom more than that needed for procuring a livelihood, who are undisturbed by the great problems of life, are spared this painful discipline. It is those who rise above their fellows, that are called to spend their strength and resources, to deny themselves pleasures, and to separate themselves from much of that in which mankind delight and find solace, only to find keener sorrows than those known to their fellows. They do indeed hear and obey the voice of God, but it calls them to suffering and to self-sacrifice. In these days, when the sciences open up before men vast fields for research, there must be many who can verify from their own experience what Solomon says about the laboriousness of the methods used. The infinite patience needed, the observation and cataloguing of multitudinous facts, the inventing of fresh mechanical appliances for facilitating research, the varied experiments, the careful examination of evidence, and the construction and testing of new theories and hypotheses, are the “sore travail” here spoken of.

II. In the second place, THE WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE SO LABORIOUSLY GAINED ONLY MEAN INCREASE OF GRIEG AND SORROW. (Est 1:18.) There is abundant evidence of the truth of this statement in the experience of those who have made great attainments in intellectual wisdom. For progress in knowledge only convinces man of the little he knows, as compared with the vast universe of being that lies undiscovered. He is convinced of the weakness of his powers, the shortness of the time at his disposal, and the infinite extent of the field, which he desires, but can never hope to take possession of. This thought is expressed in the well-known words of Sir Isaac Newton: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then with a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.” With increase of intellectual knowledge, with enlarged acquaintance with the thoughts of men, and the various theories of the universe that have been held, and the various solutions of difficulties that have been given, there often comes, too, unwillingess or inability to rest content with any theory or any solution. Doubts, which frequently settle down into definite agnosticism, beset the man who is given to great intellectual activity. And then, too, the fact remains that we cannot by sheer reasoning come to any definite conclusions as to any of the great questions which most concern our happiness. No one can by searching find out Godreach definite knowledge concerning him, his existence, nature, and character; or be assured of the fact of there being an overruling Providence, of the efficacy of prayer, of a life beyond the grave, or of the immortality of the soul. Probable or plausible opinions may be formed, but certainty comes only by revelation and faith. Hence it is that Milton describes some of the fallen angels as wandering hopelessly through these labyrinths of thought and conjecture, and finding in so doing intellectual occupation, but neither solace nor rest.

“Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and late;
Fix’d fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy.”

And it has been said that one of the attractions which this Book of Ecclesiastes has for the present age is in its skeptical questioning, and restless, fluctuating uncertainty. The age can adopt as its own its somber declarations. “Science beasts vaingloriously of her progress, yet mocks us with her grand discovery of progress through pain, telling of small advantages for the few purchased by enormous waste of life, by internecine conflict and competition, and by a deadly struggle with Nature herself, ‘red in tooth and claw with ravin,’ greedy to feed on the offspring of her own redundant fertility. The revelations of geology and astronomy deepen our depression. The littleness of our lives and the insignificance of our concerns become more conspicuous in comparison with the long and slow procession of the aeons which have gone before, and with the vast ocean of being around us, driven and tossed by enormous, complicated, and unresting forces. A new significance is thus given to the words, ‘In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow'” (Tyler). In his celebrated engraving of ‘Melaucolia,’ Albert Direr has with wonderful skill depicted this mood of intellectual depression. He represents a winged figure, that of a woman seated by the seashore and looking intently into the distance, with bent brows and proud, pensive demeanor. Her thoughts are absorbed in somber meditation, and her wings are folded. A closed book is in her lap. Near her stands a dial-plate, and above it a bell, that strikes the hours as they pass. The sun is rapidly nearing the horizon-line, and darkness will soon enshroud the earth. In her right hand she holds a compass and a circle, emblematic of that infinity of time and space upon which she is meditating. Around her are scattered the various implements of art, and the numerous appliances of science. They have served her purpose, and she now casts them aside, and listlessly ponders on the vanity of all human calculations. Above her is an hour-glass, in which the sands are running low, emblematic of the shortness of the time yet left for fresh schemes and efforts. In like manner the Preacher found that on the moral side increase of knowledge meant increase of sorrow. Knowledge of the true ideal only made him the more conscious of the distance we are from it, and of the hopelessness of our efforts to reach it. The further the research is carried, the more abundant is the evidence discoverable of our moral nature being in a condition of disorder. We find that conscience too often reigns without governing, that natural appetites and desires refuse to submit to her rule, that often motives and feelings which she distinctly condemns, such as pride, envy, selfishness, and cruelty, direct and animate our conduct. All schools of philosophy have recognized the fact of moral disorder in our nature. It is, indeed, unfortunately too evident to be denied or explained away. Aristotle says, “We are more naturally disposed towards those things which are wrong, and more easily carried away to excess than to propriety of conduct.” And Hume, “We naturally desire what is forbidden, and often take a pleasure in performing actions merely because they are unlawful. The notion of duty when opposite to the passions is not always able to overcome them; and when it fails of that effect, is apt rather to increase and irritate them, by producing an opposition in our motives and principles.” But it is not necessary to multiply Testimony to a fact so generally acknowledged. How this moral disorder originated in human nature is a problem which philosophy is unable to solve, just as it is lacking in ability to correct it. It can discern the symptoms and character of the disease, and describe the course it takes, but cannot cure it. And so the existence of disturbing and lawless forces in our moral nature, the power of evil habit, the social inequalities and disorders which result from the perversity of the individuals of whom society is made up, and the varying codes of morals which exist in the world, are all calculated to distress and perplex him who seeks to make that straight which is crooked, and to supplement that which is defective. Increase of knowledge brings increase of sorrow.J.W.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Ecc 1:1. The words of the Preacher Or, orator. Mr. Desvoeux has shewn with great learning, that Solomon in this book appears nearly in the character of an eminent sophist among the Greeks, according to the primitive signification of that word, which implied philosophy and rhetoric joined together. The method of these ancient sages, as far as we can judge of it from what remained among their degenerate successors, was, to treat any subject which was reckoned worthy their learned dissertations in such a manner as to please the ear and improve the mind; which Tully calls the most perfect philosophy. The book of Ecclesiastes certainly deserves that character, if any in antiquity does. We must not conceive that Solomon was like the common and ordinary preachers among the Hebrews; yet it is certain, that he spake much in public for the instruction of the people; There came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon:All the earth sought the face of Solomon, to hear his wisdom: See 1Ki 4:31; 1Ki 4:34; 1Ki 10:24. From whence it is plain, that our author made public discourses on several subjects, and that people were in a manner called together by his fame from all nations round about to hear his wise performances. As no other son of David, who was king of Israel, was famous for his wisdom, or could claim the title of preacher or orator except Solomon, this edition evidently denotes the real author of the book: The style of which, says Bishop Lowth, is evidently singular; the diction particularly obscure; nor does the poetic character much abound in the composition and structure; which perhaps may properly be attributed to the nature of the argument. The Jews are displeased to have it reckoned among the poetic books; and if their authority availed much in matters of this kind, we should perhaps in this particular give in somewhat to their opinion. See his 24th Prelection.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

ECCLESIASTES
____________
TITLE:
WORDS OF THE PREACHER, SON OF DAVID, KING IN JERUSALEM
FIRST DISCOURSE

Of the vanity of the practical and the theoretical wisdom of men

Ecclesiastes 1, 2

A. The theoretical wisdom of men, directed to a knowledge of the things of this world, is vanity.

2Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. 3What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? 4One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. 5The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. 6The wind goeth towards the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. 7All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full, unto the place 8from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. 10Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of 11old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall 12come after. I the preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. 14I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. 15That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. 16I 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. 17And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. 18For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

[Ecc 1:4.. See the extended discussion on this and kindred words, p. 44 T. L.]

[Ecc 1:5.: Primary sense, irradiation, scattering, like , and , to sowscatters its raysspargit lucem. Part. beaming, glowing. See Metrical version. Compare Virgil, frequent, aurora spargebat lumine terras. Zckler would give it here the sense of running, going swift. It is better to preserve the primary sense of panting It suits better the hidden metaphor, on which see note, p. 38. T. L.]

[Ecc 1:8.. Rendered things in E. G. So the Vulgate, cunct res. Best rendering is the more common and primary one of words: all words weary in expressing the vanity. Zckler objects to this as making a tautology with , following. The argument is the other way; such seeming tautologies or verbal parallelisms are rather regarded by the Hebrews as an excellency of diction.T. L.]

[Ecc 1:10.. See extended note, p. 44.T. L.]

[Ecc 1:14.. There is no need of resorting to the Chaldaic for this word; neither has it any connection with . It comes easily from the very common Hebrew , primary sense, to feed (transitively or intransitively), pasture (not a verb of eating, like ), then to provide, take care of, then to have the mind upon any thing as an object of care or anxiety. The order of ideas is exactly like that in the in Arabic or Greek . The form, as also that of Ecc 1:17, is purely Hebrew. We have the masculine form, Psa 139:2; Psa 139:17, applied to man, and used in a good sense, , my thought. Thou knowest all my thoughtnot in the sense of more speculative thinking, but all my cares. And so in that still more tender passage, Ecc 1:17, where it is applied to God anthropopathically , how precious are thy thoughts, thy cares, or carings, for me. Compare 1Pe 5:7, He careth for you. In the connection with it, most of the modern commentators rendor , winda caring or striving for the wind. It is, however, by no means certain that the older rendering, spirit, was not the right onea striving (a vain striving or vexation) of the spirit. See a similar connection of (procisely=) with , the heart, Ecc 2:22. In that place it is not easy to distinguish , anxiety of his heart, from in this.T. L.]

[Ecc 1:17., abstract terms in , on which some rely as proving a later language, and consequently, a later date to the book. They are, however, like others of the kind that occur in Koheleth, purely Hebrew in their derivation, whilst they have an abstract form, because the idea required here, though unusual elsewhere, demanded it. If there were but few literary compositions in the English language, it would be just as relational to object to one because it had several examples of words ending in ism, though precisely adapted to the meaning intended; and this because such a termination was not found in other books, having little or nothing of a speculative cast. These words, , differ, as madness or frenzy, and fatuity.T. L.]

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Title: Ecc 1:1.Words of the preacher, Son of David, King in Jerusalem.For the exposition of the name comp. the Introd. 1. That this designation here takes the place of the historically known name, , has been justly acknowledged as an indication that a poetic fiction lies before us. All the other works of Solomon bear his usual name at their head; the Proverbs, whose title is the Proverbs of Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel; the Song of Solomon, Psalms 72 :and Psalms 127. As indeed is natural, that he who will claim authorship uses no other name than that under which he is already known. Enigma and concealment would be quite out of place here. Now if Solomon is here called Koheleth, the author clearly indicates that it has only ideal value when he is quoted as author of the book, that he appears only as the representative of wisdom. The name, which is clearly an impersonal one, shows that the person to whom it is attached belongs only to poetry and not to reality (Hengstenberg).Moreover, in the peculiar designation, King in Jerusalem, instead of King over Israel (comp. Ecc 1:12), we may perceive a trace of later post-Solomonic origin. On the contrary, to find in this expression a hint that the author does not dwell in Jerusalem, but somewhere in the country (according to Ewald, in Galilee), is unreasonable and too far-fetched. See 4, Obs. 2.

2. The whole first discourse, which we, with Ewald, Vaiii., Keil, etc., extend to the end of chap. 2, treats of the principal theme, of the vanity of all earthly things in general; it is therefore of an introductory and fundamental character (comp. Introd. 2). In harmony with Keil, we again divide them into two nearly equal parts, the first of which (Ecc 1:2-18) presents the vanity of the theoretical, and the second (Ecc 2:1-26) the vanity of the practical wisdom of men; or, of which, number one shows that the strivings of human wisdom after knowledge, and number two that the same efforts aiming at enjoyment and active control of reality, attain no genuine success. This division seems more simple and comprehensive than that of Ewald and Vaihinger, who lay down three main divisions, 1) Ecc 1:2; Ecc 1:11; Ecclesiastes 2) Ecc 1:12; Ecc 2:23; Ecclesiastes 3) Ecc 2:24-26, according to Ewald, and 1) Ecc 1:2-14; Ecclesiastes 2) Ecc 1:12; Ecc 2:19; Ecclesiastes 3) Ecc 2:20-26, according to Vaihinger, giving to the middle division a disproportioned length.The first half is occupied in proving the vanity and want of success of the theoretical striving of men after wisdom, and is again divided into three divisions. For it shows, 1) by the continually recurring circle of nature and history, permitting no real progress, that the objects of human knowledge are subjected to the law of vanity (Ecc 1:2-11); and 2) then, that to this vanity of the objective reality, there corresponds a complete futility of effort at its comprehension on the part of the human subject, so far that even the wisest of all men must be convinced by experience of the emptiness of this effort (Ecc 1:12-18). Each of these divisions includes two strophes of three verses each, together with an introductory half strophe or proposition, so that the scheme of the whole section perfected is this: I. Division: The vanity of human knowledge in an objective point of view (Ecc 1:2-11). Proposition or general preliminary remark (half strophe); Ecc 1:2-3. First strophe: Ecc 1:4-7.Second strophe: Ecc 1:8-11. II. Division: The vanity of human knowledge in a subjective point of view (Ecc 1:12-18). Proposition: Ecc 1:12.First strophe, Ecc 1:13-15). Second strophe, Ecc 1:16-18.We follow in this strophical division the plan of Vaihinger (also that of Keil and Hahn), which differs materially from that of Ewald. But the latter may therein be right, that from Ecc 1:9 the discourse approaches prose style, and only here and there, as in Ecc 1:15; Ecc 1:18, returns to loftier poetic diction. Vaihinger also acknowledges this, in so far as he considers the two rythmically constructed apothegms, Ecc 1:15; Ecc 1:18, as characteristic closing formulas of the two last strophes of the section (comp. Introd. 2, p. 106).

3. The general preliminary observation, or, if preferred, the theme of the first discourse; Ecc 1:2-3.Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. This exclamation, containing the fundamental thought of the whole book, returns again at the close, Ecc 12:7, almost in the same words, after a previous examination has everywhere proved its truth. Nothing is wanting there but the repetition of , which gives a specially solemn impression to the sentence here at the head of the whole. As to the expression vanity of vanities being a paraphrase of the superlative idea extremest vanity, comp. the observation on Son 1:1 (above, p. 1). For the punctuation comp. Psa 35:14, where the principal vowel is also pushed forward and lengthened to a tseri. breath, steam (comp. Chald. to become warm, to steam) is a very proper expression to mark the inconstancy, unsubstantially, and emptiness that characterize all earthly things.1 To confine this predicate of nothingness to the actions of men (Hahn) is the less allowable since farther on, in verses 9 and 14, human action is expressly spoken of as participating in the emptiness of worldly things; and there is previously given a much more comprehensive description of this vanity, which clearly shows that the author would understand in the all that he declares as vanity, all earthly nature and the whole circle of temporal things, (in contrast to the eternal). It is also inadmissible to accept the double as subject of the sentence, instead of taking the independent, animated exclamation rather as a presupposed predicate to , this pretended subject would then have in the following another predicate, whereby the whole expression would become awkward, and essentially lose in active force and emphasis, (against Rosenmueiler, Hahn).As cases similar to the contents of Ecc 1:2, comp. the passages in Psa 90:3-10; Psa 102:25-28; also Psa 39:6-7; and also what the patriarchs were obliged to experience and confess regarding the vanity of temporal life: Gen 4:2; Gen 5:29; Gen 9:7; Gen 9:9, etc. Ecc 1:3. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?(Ger., with which he fatigueth himself). Now for the first time the preacher more especially touches the vanity of human things, but means it in connection with the toil of men, as thereby declared unprofitable and unsuccessful (, difficulty, labor, exertion, comp. Ecc 2:22; Ecc 3:9; Ecc 5:14, etc.) not only his actions, but at the same time also his spiritual strivings and searchings, of which in the Sequel he principally treats; he consequently mainly means the substance of his interests and efforts, the subjective human in contrast to the objective reality of all earthly life, to which that in Ecc 1:2 referred. Ecc 1:2-3 hold therefore, substantially, the same relation to each other as the two subsequent paragraphs in Ecc 1:4-11, and Ecc 1:12-18. Synonymous with Gen 49:3; Pro 17:7; Job 20:22, etc., is found only in this book, and indicates that which is left, what remains to one; hence profit, advantage, success,2 acquisition, , 2Jn 1:8, not a superiority over others, which signification appears most fitting in Ecc 2:13.The in , Hahn considers, according to Isa 5:25, equal to notwithstanding, in spite of, which however is unnecessary, as the usual signification in or through affords a sufficiently good sense.For the expression under the sun, a characteristic and favorite form of the author, comp. Ecc 1:14; Ecc 2:11; Ecc 2:17; Ecc 2:20; Ecc 2:23; Ecc 3:16, etc. The synonymous expressions under the heaven, (Ecc 2:3; Ecc 3:1; Ecc 1:13😉 and upon the earth (Ecc 8:14; Ecc 8:16; Ecc 11:2), are found elsewhere in the Old Testament. The preference of Koheleth for the form under the sun, is doubtless explained by the fact that it instructively and clearly points to the contrast between the eternal regularity which the sun shows in its course, and the fluctuating, vacillating, changeable doings of men, which it illuminates with its ever equal light.(Elster).

4. First division, first strophe, verses 47. In an objective view, human knowledge shows itself futile, in considering the continual change of human generations on the earth, Ecc 1:4, and the steady course of the sun, the wind, and the water (Ecc 1:5-7).One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. to go away, abire, as Ecc 5:15; Job 10:21; Psa 39:13. For this sentence comp. Sir 14:19 : , , , , a capital comparison, which reminds us of Isa 64:5.But the earth abideth forever; (literal, and the earth stands eternally), ( as in Ps. 29:19; Lev 13:5, is of lasting existence, stands still). The copula expresses the simultaneousness of the two circumstances placed in contrast with each other: whilst the earth stands forever, human generations come and go incessantly. In the abiding of the earth, the poet doubtless thinks of its foundation on pillars over the water, to which Psa 24:2; Psa 104:5; Job 38:6, and other poetical passages allude. But whether, at the same time, the earth is considered the arena of the curse and sinful misery brought in by men (Gen 3:17-19), as a vale of sorrow, and a place of misfortune, so that the thought were: men effect nothing lasting on earth, new races of men must ever begin where the old ones ceased, must ever repeat the same Sisyphus labor as their fathers (Hengstenberg, Hahn): this is doubtful on account of the expression . This certainly indicates not an endless eternity in the strictest sense of the word, but only a future of unlimited length, (Hengstenberg); but it shows the intention to bring out, as a principal thought, the character of the continual and everlasting in contrast with the appearance of continual change, and points thus to the inability of human investigation and knowledge to hold any firm position in the midst of such change everlasting as the duration of the earth.

Ecc 1:5. The sun ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose. The first half of this verse, is an exact parallel of the first clause of Ecc 1:4, the second corresponds in substance to the thought in the second clause of that verse. For, as in the former, the earth, the scene of the coming and going of the generations of men, so in the latter the place of the sun (i.e., its subterranean, heavenly dwelling-place, from which it daily enters upon its new course, comp. Psa 19:6), is contrasted as abiding in the presence of continual change. As the human race, with every change of its individuals, makes no advance, as its history presents no real progress, so is the motion of the sun apparently a continual circuit, without arrival at any fixed goal, or lasting place of rest. Contrary to the accents, the Septuagint, Vulgate, Chaldaic, Luther, Elster, Hitzig, Hahn, etc., connect closely with the preceding; and hastens to its place, and there ariseth again. But belongs clearly to what follows, and also does not mean running, hastening, but (as in Habakkuk 2, 3) gasping after air, panting, longinga sense which strikingly delineates the movement of the sun, striving to reach the vault of heaven, although in it there lies a conception somewhat different from this: and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race, Psa 19:5. For Hengstenberg clearly brings into the text the joyous desire, the pretended image of the vigorous courage of the new generation. It rather points to the idea of the exhaustion of the sun on account of its ever restless motion, and this doubtless with the intention of directly showing the depressing influence produced by observing the ever recurring circuit of this body, and the discouragement in this endless uniformity, that presents itself to the comprehension of the human observer (comp. Elster on this passage).3 Ecc 1:6. It goeth to the South, and turneth to the North. (Literal of the Ger. text). The sun is naturally not the subject [Sept. Syriac, M. Geier, etc.), but the wind named in the second clause, for only of it can it be said, it turneth to the north. But south and north are here used with the wind, because the other cardinal points had been previously used with the sun, to prevent an unpleasant repetition. The author could scarcely have thought of anything like the law of the revolution of the winds (Wolfgang Menzel, in his Natural History conceived in the Christian spirit I. 270); for he had just asserted in Ecc 1:4, that the earth stands eternally still. The opinion of Hahn is also objectionable, that the poet was desirous of showing the continual change between warm and cold wind, and this change from warmth to cold was to depict the vicissitude of happiness and unhappiness in human life, as, in the preceding verse, that from night to day. Such an allegorizing of the passage is the less justifiable because the circuit of the waters described in Ecc 1:7 can only be considered a picture of the change from happiness to unhappiness by virtue of a forced and highly artificial interpretation. The more careful allegorical interpretation tried by Hengstenberg, according to which sun, wind, and water are all symbols of human existence moving in the circuit of vanity, is not indeed sufficiently justified by the context. The wind goeth ever whirling (Lit. Ger.). The twice repeated expresses continual repetition, the everlasting, and the ever-returning change of the wind; comp. the reduplication of ideas with the same intent in Gen 14:10; Deu 2:27; Deu 14:22; Mar 6:39. This double is subordinate to presenting the main idea, just as in Ecc 1:5 is to .And the wind returneth again according to his circuits.That is, the circuits which it has already made, it ever makes again, it ever repeats the courses that it has previously described; for that is, properly speaking, the , not circles (Sept. Vulg., Ewald, Knobel, etc). The translation on its circuits or circles (Ewald, Knobel, etc.) or also according to its circuits (Rosenmueller) is unnecessary; for that , with verbs of motion, especially , has the sense of to, until, (exactly synonymous, in such case, with ) is proved by such passages as Pro 26:11; Psa 19:7; Psa 48:11; Job 37:3, and also by the circumstance that, in the later Chaldaic style, is mostly synonymous with . [In the above passage Zckler translates zu seinen Wendungen.W.].

Ecc 1:7. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full, i.e., it does not overflow notwithstanding the immense masses of water that it constantly receives; it does not overwhelm and swallow up the land. In , the author doubtless refers to the ocean, not to the Dead Sea, as Hitzig arbitrarily supposes. The previous mention of the sun, the wind, and the four cardinal points, show conclusively that he deals with great cosmophysical ideas, and thus hardly thinks merely of the streams like the Jordan flowing into the Dead Sea, or indeed of the contracted relations of Palestine at all. Comp. also Aristophanes in his Clouds, v. 1294, et seq.:

( )

,

Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. Literal, thither are the rivers to go returning, thither they always take their course again. For this construction examine 1Sa 20:19; Hos 5:11, etc; as in the English, (they are going), the participle here expresses the continuous character of the action. For the construct state before the relative clause (which is, as it were, regarded as a single noun) comp. passages such as Gen 40:3; Lev 4:24; (Ewald, Manual. 322, c.).As it is not absolutely necessary that must express the going whither, but may also well express the going out, or the coming whence, as Ecc 1:6 shows, therefore, does not mean the ocean as the common collecting-place of all river-water (Elster, Vaihinger, etc.), but rather as the occasional source and origin of the individual rivers. The return of the water from the ocean the author certainly thinks effected in a way corresponding to the natural course of things, namely, that of exhalations, and clouds, and falling mists, and not by means of secret subterraneous canals and passages, as Luther, Rosenmueller, et al., pretend. See Gen 2:6; Job 36:27-28.Also Umbreit, Hitzig, and Hengstenberg on this passage.

5. First division, second strophe, Ecc 1:8-11. As the natural objects of human knowledge truly satisfy neither the eye nor the ear (Ecc 1:8), so there predominates in the history of mankind a restless flight of events, crowding and following each other in endless circuit, which necessarily destroy, in equal measure, both the interest in new acquirements, and the endeavor to remember the things that are past (Ecc 1:11).All things are full of labor, man cannot utter it.The words are understood by exegetists to mean either: all words are troublesome, weary (Sept., Ewald, Elster, Hitzig, Hengstenberg, Hahn, etc.), or: all things fatigue, are full of burden and trouble (Hieronymus, Luther, Rosenmueller, Vaihinger, etc.). The ruling signification in this book, as every where in the Old Testament of =, sermo, as well as the closely following remark, man cannot utter it ( ), seem to speak in favor of the former meaning. But the word , as meaning thing, is found also in Ecc 1:10; Ecc 6:12; Ecc 7:8; and it appears, in every view of the case, more appropriate that the quality of wearying, of producing discouragement and indifference, should be predicated of the things of the world, and the objects of human knowledge, than that the words relating to the naming and judging of these things, should be designated as feeble or exhausting. This first meaning would also produce a tautology of with , which one could scarcely attribute to an author who, on the whole, expresses himself with such choice and delicacy. Thus the sense of the line remains in every case that which is accepted oven by most of the defenders of the first conception; namely, to recount all objects of human knowledge and experience is fatiguing in the extreme, and is indeed impracticable`; no speech can perfectly give the impression which is produced on our mind by the thought of physical endlessness, and of the never changing operations and life of the forces of nature (comp. Elster on this passage). For the active sense of , which elsewhere, as in Deu 25:18, 2Sa 17:2, expresses the passive thought, faint, weary, but here is clearly exhaustive, making weary, examine the similar significations of , , in Isa 17:11; Jer 30:12; Mic 2:10; and also the Latin tristis in the sense of making sad, depressing; and the German betrbt in phrases like: es ist betrubt zu schen, etc.The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,No remarkable quality is here affirmed of the eye or the ear; it is only intended to delineate more closely the relation held to the expression, all things are wearying. If the eye should become satisfied, so that it would no longer see, then the narrating word must step in and be able in its turn also to master things. But the abundance of phenomena, which presses on eye, ear, and the remaining senses, is endless; there are always objects which the eye must see, does see, and brings to him who would gladly close his labors (Hitzig). For parallel passages comp. Pro 27:20. For , lit. away from hearing, i.e., so that it may hear no longer, comp. Gen 27:1; Exo 14:5; 1Sa 8:7; Isa 24:10, etc.

Ecc 1:9. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; or also; what has happened, that will again happen, that will occur anew. cannot be considered a question (LXX. Vulg. quid est quod fuit); for in this book is always equivalent to that which, or whatever; see Ecc 3:15; Ecc 6:10; Ecc 8:7; Ecc 10:14; and examine for the same Chaldaic style, Dan 2:25; Ezr 7:18.And that which is done, is that which shall be done.As the former refers to the objective course of natural laws and phenomena, so this parallel expression alludes to the subjective efforts and actions of men; and the progress to any thing really new is denied of both.And there is no new thing under the sun.Lit. there is not in existence any thing new, ( ). For the placing of this negation before , to indicate the total non-existence of any thing, comp. Jdg 13:4; Psa 143:2; 2Ki 4:2; also similar Hebrew terms in the New Testament Greek, Mat 24:22; Rom 3:20; Gal 2:16, etc.For this sentence comp. Seneca especially; Epist. Ecc 24: Nullius rei finis est, sed in orbem nexa sunt omnia. Omnia transeunt ut revertantur, nil novi video, nil novi facio; also Tacitus, Annal. III. Ecc 55: Rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis, ut quemadmodum temporum vices, ita morum versentur; and Marc. Aurel. Comment., ad se ipsum, VI. Ecc 31: , , . ; Ibid. VII. Ecclesiastes 1 : . ; Ibid. VII. Ecc 26: .

Ecc 1:10. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new ? it hath been already of old time which was before us.The first half of this verse is a hypothetical preliminary clause, introduced by to which is added the after clause without a copula, for the sake of greater emphasis; comp. similarly formed conditional sentences in Ecc 1:18., long ago, already long since (Sept. ; Vulg. jam), is one of the characteristic Aramaic4 particles of the book, allied to greatness, length, and the Arab. Kibar, great age; (comp. Introd. 4, Obs. 2). The word , added as a more special definition, indicates that the meaning of long ago is to be understood in the sense of time of external length; or also that it continues in endless spaces of lime;5 for the preposition , in the sense of within, comp. Gen 7:4; Ezr 10:8, and Elster on this passage.Instead of there stands at the close because is used impersonally, in the sense: there have been (comp. Gen 47:24; Exo 12:49); an enallage numeri, that could easily occur with a neuter plural like . Ewald takes the words as subject of the sentence, and translates them thus: what occurred before our eyes had already been long ago. But this position of the subject at the end of the sentence would be harsh and without motive; and for , which means according to Isa 41:26 simply before us, earlier than we, would necessarily stand if the translation before our eyes, in our presence, were the correct one.

Ecc 1:11. There is no remembrance of former things.Clearly an explanation of the thought of the preceding verse, which we need not (as Hitzig and Elster) connect with what precedes through the conception: that our considering old things as new is because of the continual extinction of the remembrance of former things. For the construct state before a following noun with a preposition, comp. similar cases, as Ezekiel 13, 2Sa 1:21. and signify every where the earlier and the later ones (Lev 26:45; Deu 19:14; Psa 79:8; Isa 61:4; also Ecc 4:16 of this book, consequently ancestry and posterity. The neuter idea, the earlier, would necessarily be expressed by the feminine (Isa 42:9; Isa 46:9; Isa 48:3).With those that shall come after. in future, later. Comp. for the substantive , Deu 13:9; 2Sa 2:26.

6. Second Division. Proposition and first strophe. Ecc 1:12-15. In a subjective view human knowledge proves futile and vain, in so far as all the desires and enterprises of men, to which it is directed, are empty and vain, and lead to nothing. I, the preacher, was King over Israel in Jerusalem.Observe the preterit, , I wasa clear indication that a later personage than the historical Solomon says this.6 For even in his most advanced age Solomon, who, according to 1Ki 11:40-43, was reigning king until his death, could not have spoken of his kingdom as something belonging solely to the past. For the remaining allusions in this verse to a period later than the Solomonic, see above on Ecc 1:1 (No. 1), and the Introduction, 4. And moreover the author, assuming the character of Solomon, indicates for his own person a condition in life which affords him a broad view, rich experience, and knowledge of men; comp. Sir 38:24 ff.

Ecc 1:13. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom.That is, I gave it entirely to that seeking, exerted myself zealously on that account; comp. , Isa. 41:42; , Psa 48:14; and , Job 11:13. To seek () and to search () are distinguished from one anotherthe former by being less thorough, and the latter by penetrating more deeply and searching after the hidden. is not wisely (Luther, comp. Vulgate, sapienter), but with wisdom; for wisdom was the instrument with which he made his investigations;7 (for the well-known old Hebrew sense, see the Introd. to the Solomonic books, Vol. XII. p. 3 of this work.)Concerning all things that are done under heaven.Thereby is clearly meant only the actions and lives of men, and not occurrences in the realm of nature, for which latter the verb would be very unfittingly chosen. And what has happened in itself is not so much meant as its character, worth, aim and success as an object of seeking and searching; therefore, to search concerning all things that are done ( ).This sore travail, etc.Human action itself is not designated here as , as sore travail or pain (Hitzig, Hahn), but the zealous searching, the critical endeavor of the wise observer of life, who every where meets only vanity and emptiness, and with all his theoretical and practical experimenting with life, reaches no lasting enjoyment and success (and thus with justice the most exegetists; see Elster on this passage).God hath given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.This unsuccessful and vain striving after wisdom, to which man feels himself impelled by a natural necessity, is imparted to him by God himself; it is a part of the salutary and disciplinary curse that God has laid on human nature -since the fall, a part of the whole system by which the Lord humbles fallen man, and therewith prepares the redemption (Hengstenberg).

Ecc 1:14. I. have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.(Lit., windy effort, i.e., an effort of the wind) (Sept. ) an effort without result, that effects no lasting good. Comp. Hos 12:2, which passage gives us at the same time the proper sense of the expression . For the formula there used parallel with , to consume wind, really means to follow after the wind, to be in quest of it, a diligent striving after it (comp. in passages like Pro 13:20; Pro 15:14; Isa 44:20). is consequently the bearing, the intension of one zealously aiming at, consequently striving, continuous direction of the will (thus also Ezra 5:7, 18), the same as , which in Ecc 1:17; Ecc 4:16 is also found connected with . It is therefore erroneous to derive it from =, to shatter, to break into pieces (thus the Vulg. afflictio spiritus, also Chald. Raschi et at).

Ecc 1:15. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.Clearly a proverbial sentence, which the author perhaps found ready made in the rich treasury of the proverbial wisdom of his people, and used here to strengthen what he had said in Ecc 1:14. The sense is, as the parallel passage, Ecc 7:13, shows, that human action and effort, in spite of all exertion, cannot alter that which has once been arranged and fixed by God. Man cannot alter what is (apparently) unjust in Gods arrangement of the world, nor make or regard its failures perfect; hemmed in within the narrow limits of the world as it is constituted, he is not able to perform the most important thing that he above all things should be able to do (Hitzig). This thought is not fatalistic (as Knobel. supposes); for, as numerous other passages of this book show (namely, Ecc 3:17; Ecc 7:20 ff.; Ecc 11:9; Ecc 12:14), the author knows very well that human sin is the cause of the incapacity here described in contrast with the unchangeable and divine order of the world, and considers this inability as one of self-guilt on the part of man.That which is wanting cannot be numbered, i.e., not completed, not be brought to its full number; comp. the Lat. ad numeros suos redigi=perfici, and also our German proverbs: Where there is nothing, nothing farther is to be counted; or, There the emperor has lost his right, etc.

7. Second Division, second strophe. Ecc 1:16-18. Practically experiencing wisdom, striving after positive knowledge, is, as the critically observing, thoroughly futile, reaching no lasting result, because its acquirement is inseparably connected with pain and discouragement.I communed with my own heart, saying, i.e., I entered inwardly into my own counsel; comp. the Lat. cogitare cum animo suo, and in the Hebrew similar phrases , Psa 15:2; , Gen 24:45; , 1Sa 1:13.Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom.The word (comp. Isa 28:29) intimates that he possessed great wisdom before; the word , that during his life he continually increased it. Comp. 1Ki 5:9-11.Than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem.The first is comparative, as in Gen 48:22; Psa 16:2. From the second before it appears that with the here mentioned predecessors of Koheleth real kings8 are meant (comp. also Ecc 2:7). The allusion here can scarcely be to the old Canaanitish princes (Adoni-zedek, Jos 10:1; or, indeed, Melchisedec, Gen 15:18), but to the crowned heads of Israel, who alone were competent to the realization of . This passage contains, again, therefore, a reference to the difference between the author of this work and Solomon, but still not one of that kind that we are justified in reproaching him (with Hitzig) of ignorance of history. He rather commits this offence against actual history with the same absence of suspicion and purpose which permitted him to adapt his work only loosely and distantly to the personal and temporal relations x and every where to dispense with the strict carrying out of the historical fiction in question. (Comp. Introd. 4).Yea, my heart had great experience of Wisdom and knowledge.Concerning as synonym of comp. Pro 1:2. To see, to behold wisdom and knowledge, is as much as acquiring it by experience, arriving at its possession and enjoyment. This beholding is attributed to the heart, because it is indeed the seat or instrument of aspiration after Wisdom , 9 see Ecc 1:13; Ecc 1:17.

Ecc 1:17. And I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and follythat is, I applied myself to learning not only the positive and normal contents of human knowledge, but also its counterpart, error and perversion in their various forms; according to the principle: contrariis contraria intelliguntur. = , Ecc 10:13; comp. the similar formation , Pro 1:20; Pro 9:1, etc., and Ewald, Manual, 165 c), and , want of sense and folly are also thus placed together in Ecc 2:12 only, that the latter word is written with more etymological exactness (comp. also Ecc 2:3; Ecc 2:13, etc.).I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For see Ecc 1:14; and comp. the striving of his heart, Ecc 2:22, as well as the same word in the Chaldee of the Book of Daniel (Ecc 4:16; Ecc 5:6; Ecc 5:10; Ecc 7:28), where it signifies thought. , a pleonasm, of which there are many in the book. Ecc 1:18. For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.Ger. Proverb: Much wisdom causeth headache; also Cicero, Tusc. III. Ecclesiastes 4 : videtur mihi cadere in sapientem gritudo, and what Elster remarks on this passage: Such an enlargement of the practical knowledge of human life destroys the natural ease and simplicity of the individual life, and by comparisons with others, awaking the consciousness of being variously affected in ones own existence through influences operating from without, produces a feeling of insignificance and feebleness of each individual life as such; and by exciting man to many aspirations and desires which remain unfulfilled, and therefore leave painful impressions behind. It is still more important to think of the manifold disillusions which a deeper insight of the moral arena in a stricter sense produces, because it not only teaches how confidence in the strength and worth of individuals is often unjustifiable, but also shows how in the great and sacred institutions of humanity, which have originally a purely ethical aim, this ethical object is frequently lost, and that those only exist in reality through a linking of interests that are entirely foreign to their real nature. is an antecedent: and if one gathers wisdom, if one makes much wisdom. Ewald, Elster, et al., consider (here as well as in Isa 29:14; Isa 38:5) an active participle from the stem reverting from Hiphil, into Kal, with instead of(Ewald, Manual, 127 b.; 169 a) while others find in it simply an impersonal future Hiphil, and compare it on account of the scriptio plena with Ecc 1:16.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

Human effort, confined to the conditions of life and the objects of knowledge of this earthly world, can attain no enduring wealth of happiness or success, either in a practical or theoretical relation. For every thing that is accomplished under the sun, that is, in this contracted sublunary world subjected to the curse of temporality, is, like the great heavenly light of our planet, or, like the mysterious course of the wind and the water, confined to a changeless circuit beyond which there is no progress. All efforts after the attainment of a higher and more durable happiness, which man by means of his own natural power may institute, fail at this stern barrier of the earthly and temporal. Be it the cheerful enjoyment of life, and the active cooperation with it, be it fulness of knowledge and wealth of treasures, of intellectual truth and insight, as long as man, standing simply in his own strength as a mere child of earth, commanding no other than earthly and natural powers, endeavors to place himself in possession of these treasures, will he be ever obliged to experience the utter vanity of his labors. Only in submission to the eternally Divine, which remains fixed and constant in all the vicissitudes of time, (Psa 102:25 ff.), does he obtain the power to overcome the imperfections and annoyances of temporal existence, or, at least, true consolation while suffering their pressure. Faith alone is the anchor of safety which is able to preserve the bark of life, tossed to and fro by the storms of time, from sinking into the awful depths of despair and inconsolable doubts regarding our temporal and eternal welfare.

Of these fundamental thoughts of the section before us, only those referring to the vanity of earthly life and its wisdom are specially treated. Of the religious solution of the conflict, which, according to numerous and prominent allusions in the subsequent pages, forms the deeper background for the grievous lamentations of the preacher, there penetrates, for the time, scarcely anything through his picture of the vanity of all earthly things. It is, substantially, only the sad contrast between human aspirations after wisdom, and the absolutely unsatisfying result in this world, to whose description the author directs his attention; that conflict between the ardent desire of life and its enjoyment, between thirst after knowledge and its failure, whose deep significance Fabri, in his workTime and Eternityhas as strikingly as beautifully delineated when, in p. 10 f., in direct connection with the lamenting commencement of this book he says: Who does not know, from his own thousand-fold experience, this wonderful feeling of a deep temporal grief that often, as an armed foe, overwhelms the spirit of man with a secret shudder in the midst of the loudest merriment? Who does not know the pressure and the pain of time, when we see it in steady flow hurrying quietly by us, nay, when we see ourselves, entirely helpless, carried away by its stream, and daily approaching nearer to the limits of life? Do we not then feel as the occupant of a frail boat, which, drawn into the current of a mighty stream, finds itself carried down with arrowy speed, and if not in its course dashed to pieces on the rocks, hastens with inevitable destiny to the cataract that is to bury it in that deep from which no one may ever rise and begin the course anew? That is the periculum vit, the danger of life, of which the wise men of old have spoken, and have recognized as the inevitable destiny of every thing born into this lower world. Thus time, with its restless and continuous going and coming, appeals to the direct feelings of every man as an oppressive destiny, as a travail, as Solomon says, (Ecc 1:13; Ecc 1:18), as a tragic conflict between what ought to be and what is.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

In the homiletical treatment of the section, the evangelical preacher should not be satisfied in merely presenting this sad conflict without its solution; he should rather connect with the lament concerning the vanity of earthly things, the consolation of the unchanging grace of the Eternal One; and thus regard the gloomy picture of the author in the light of divine revelation, to which the entire course and contents of the book encourage us. In this intent we might use the entire chapter as a text for a connected view whose theme might be as follows: That which is visible is temporal, that which is invisible is eternal (2Co 4:17); or alsoFor we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. (1Co 13:9-10); or: The flight of earthly things, its cause and its cure, (with reference to the 90th Psalm, and appropriate spiritual hymns). In case the text is divided, there should not be more than two parts. Then make Ecc 1:2-11 the text for the thought: There is nothing new under the sun; and from 1218 for the thought: In much wisdom there is much grief.

With a view to the practical treatment of the individual passages, examine the following homiletical hints and helps from ancient and modern exegetical writings.

Ecc 1:2. Luther:In the introduction he gives us the subject of the whole book, when he tells us that there is the greatest vanity in all human pursuits, to such a degree that men, neither content with the present, nor able to enjoy the future, turn even their best things into misery and vanity, all through their own fault, not that of the things themselves.

M. Geier:The more the vanity of the world is discovered, the more will the disgust of it increase in the true Christian; and on the contrary, a desire will arise for the heavenly and eternal.Hengstenberg:The right solution of the problem is this: Between the assertionAnd behold, all was very good, and that other: All is vanity, lies the fact of the fall. With this latter a whole new order of things has appeared. The creation, which was good in itself, was no longer fitting for degenerate man. All is vanity, is no accusation of God. It is rather, if we keep in view the nature of man, a praise of God. It is precisely in this doom of punishment, and in the adjustment of the economy of the Cross, that God shows Himself especially great and glorious.

Ecc 1:3. Luther:The creature is indeed subject to vanity, as Paul testifies, Romans 8, but nevertheless the things themselves are good. Otherwise he would have called the sun itself a vanity; but this he excepts, because he says, under the sun. It is not, therefore, of the works of God he treats, which are all good and true, and above the sun, but the works beneath the sun,what we do here in this earthly life.Starke:Since with decay the profit of all outward occupation vanishes, it is folly for men to be so absorbed with external things that they thereby forget the care of their own souls.

Ecc 1:4-7. Cramer:That the world has not existed from eternity, one sees in all its parts, because these are not fixed and constant the whole cannot, therefore, remain unchanged. But the constant order in creatures and their employments, proves that there is a God who sustains every thing.Starke:In nature every thing is governed by the laws of motion; how – much more should man direct his steps according to the rules of life prescribed to him by God (Gal 6:16; Psa 119:9; Psa 100:5).Wohlfarth:The existence of the world clearly depends upon the unchangeable order given to nature by God, and just because it follows these divine laws without deviation, is nature, yet to-day, as it was thousands of years ago, the inexhaustible dispenser of the blessings and joys of men. Let us herein acknowledge the wisdom, goodness, and might of the Eternal One, and adore him who once said: Let there be! and there was ! who called the sun of the day, as well as the night, into existence, who prescribed to the waters their course, and gave command to the winds. Let us comprehend that we can only then be happy and make others happy, when, as nature unconsciously, obeys natural laws, we obey with clear consciousness the commands of virtue and the laws of nature for the spirit world.

Ecc 1:8. Zeyss:The immortal spirit of man can find no real rest in temporal things, but only in God, the highest and eternal good, Mat 11:29.Hansen:External things do not satisfy. David in Psa 17:15 gives us clearly to understand that he recognizes the same truth; for he says: I will behold thy face in righteousness, and adds, I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. He hopes, therefore, in the contemplation of God, to obtain what he cannot have in the form of this world. And for this very reason Solomon calls all things vain that belong to this sensual life.Berleb. Bible:The avenues of the soul bear many thousand objects or things to the heart, with which man fatigues and distracts himself, as with a boundless mountain of sand. From these his mind forms numberless images, which he gazes at, and inwardly handles. From these come the manifold thoughts and the distracted spirit of poor man. Therefore, by apostacy from God, his Creator, he has gone out with his heart after many things, and now, instead of God, in whom he would eternally have had enough, he embraces so many thousand creatures in his desires, and cannot oven then be satisfied. For the immortal essence of the soul can by no means repose in the empty creature; it seeks ever farther, and will ever have more; it is a fire that burns without ceasing, and would gladly seize all things.

Ecc 1:9-11. Luther:If we understand these words, nothing new beneath the sun, of the things themselves, and of the works of God, it would not be true. For God is every day doing what is new; but we do nothing new, because the old Adam is in all. Our ancestors abused things, just as we abuse them. Alexander, Csar, had the same disposition; so had all Kaisars and Kings; so have we. As they could never be satisfied, so never can we; they were wicked; so are we.Cramer:No man has so great a cross that he finds none like himself; for we are not better than our fathers, 1Ki 19:5.Hengstenberg:There is nothing new under the sun; let that serve to sober down the fantasies which gather grapes from the thorns of the world, but not discourage the friends of the Kingdom of God, which has its real seat, not under the sun, but above the sun, and whose heavenly protector, by ever creating new things (Jer 31:22) gives material to a new song, Psa 40:4.

Ecc 1:13-15. Luther [to Ecc 1:14]:All painful anxiety and care in making provision, whether in public or private, through our own counsels, and our own wisdom, are condemned is this book. God disappoints the thoughts and plans that are not grounded on His word. And rightly too; for why should we prescribe and add to His wisdom? Let us learn, then, to submit to His counsels, and abstain from those cares and thoughts which God has not commanded.

Ecc 1:15. Human concerns cannot be so managed as that all things should be rightly done, and that there should not still remain many evils. The best way, then, is to walk in faith, which lets God reign, prays for the coming of His Kingdom, tolerating in the meantime, and patiently enduring, all evils, or committing them to Him who judgeth righteously.

Freiberg Bible:In spiritual as in corporeal things, God alone can make the crooked straight and smooth.Harman (to Ecc 1:13 f.Bible Reflections of a Christian, Vol. I., p. 103):All human wisdom labors, and has care and sorrow for its reward; the farther wisdom looks, the greater is the labyrinth in which it loses itself. It is with reason as to the eyes with a magnifying glass, when the most delicate skin becomes disgusting, the most luscious dish a mess of worms, and the finest work of art a mere botch. We see the impossibility of removing all inequalities of human society, and we see in it an overwhelming number of faults and failings; yes, the weakness of our senses and judgment leads us to find faults in beauties, because we examine all things only fragmentarily.

Ecc 1:16-18. Hansen (to Ecc 1:17):Many thousand actions are considered prudent and wise, which in reality are silly and foolish. It is an arduous task to correct ones error in respect to all this, and regard the world, and human life in the world, with just eyes.(To Ecc 1:18).Wisdom, as such, is no cause for uneasiness of mind; it is rather a cause for contentment. It sometimes happens, however, that peace of mind is disturbed by wisdom. The deeper our vision, the more clearly we perceive the imperfections among the children of men, and that usually produces unrest in the mind.Starke:But because knowledge easily puffeth up (1Co 8:1), wise and learned men have so much greater need to beg God to keep them in true humility.Every righteous teacher, yes, every true Christian, must resign himself to many evils which must meet him in the endeavor to acquire genuine wisdom.

[Olamio or Ionian Words in ScriptureEternities or World-TimesCyclical Ideas in Koheleth.The passage, Ecc 1:3, rendered, the earth abideth forever, is the one most commonly quoted as their key text by those who would not only give a limited sense to here, which it undoubtedly has, but would, thereby, weaken the force of this whole class of words in all other parts of the Bible, and especially when they are used in reference to a future state of being. On this account, the whole subject has seemed worthy of a fuller discussion than it has generally received in Commentaries, and this the passage to which such an exegetical examination can be most appropriately attached.

The best rendering of the word Ecc 1:3, is for the world-time, or for the world, as we have given it in the metrical version annexed. It may seem strange to ears not accustomed to it, but it is the true translation, not only here, but in many other places, where its proper significance is concealed under general or inadequate phrases. In Ecc 3:11 it has been once rendered by our translators, the world, which is correct enough in itself, but may mislead by raising in the readers mind the conception of a space world. For further remarks on that important passage see note, p. 67. The word cannot here (Ecc 1:3) mean for ever, in the sense of endless duration, though it may be used for such idea when the context clearly demands, as when it is employed to denote the continuance of the Divine existence, or of the Divine Kingdom, or any thing else connected with the proper Divine eternity as the word is now taken. It is, however, in that case, only the employment of necessarily finite language to express an infinite idea strictly transcending all language, unless poorly represented by a conceptionless, negative word, which, although logically correct, is far inferior in vividness and power to some vast though finite term, which, by its very greatness and immeasurability, raises in the mind the thought of something beyond, and ever still beyond, worlds without end. This effect is still farther increased by plurals and reduplications, such as the Hebrew , and , the Greek , and , the Latin secula, and secula seculorum, the old Saxon, or old English, of Wicliffe, to worldis of worldis (Heb 13:21), or our more modern phrase, for ever and ever, where ever (German ewig), was originally a noun denoting age, or vast period, just like the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew words corresponding to it. Another mode of impressing the idea of absolute eternity is by the use of language in the context, or general scenic representations, which bring up the thought of finality in the passage, giving it the aspect of something settled, never to be disturbed, having nothing beyond that can possibly change it, as in that most impressive close of Matthew 25. In Ecc 1:3 it evidently expresses the duration of the earth as coeval with the great order of things called the world, whether in the time or space sense, and vastly transcending the , generation, or life-time (the on, as we might call it in a still more limited sense) of man. There is a similar contrast, Psa 110:1, where generation and generation, or all generations, as it is rendered, refers to the human history, whilst, from world to world, , a seculo et usque in seculum von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit, refers to the Divine existence as measured, conceptually, by, work times, even as our brief individual life-time ii measured by years (Ps. 110:90), and our own peculiar world-time by dorim, or generations.

These words correspond in all the language referred to. They arise from a philological exigency, from the demand for some word to express that idea of time, or rather conception of time (since all language is primarily for the sense want), which goes beyond any known historical and astronomical measurements,some great period, cycle, or age, not having its measurement from without, but in itself, or, at least, seemingly independent of outward phenomenal measurement. It is something supposed to have its own chronology, separate from other chronologies. In a lower, or more limited, sense, an olam, on, age, world, or world-time, may be historical; that is, such indefinite periods may be regarded as coming, one after another, during the continuance of the same earth or kosmos; truly historical, yet divided from each other by some intrinsic character, rather than by mere years or centuries. Thus we say the old world, the new world, the ancient world, the modern world, the Greek world, the Roman world, &c. This would correspond to our use of the word ages, and that would make a good sense, Ecc 1:10, the worlds or ages () that have been before. They may also have a higher sense than the historical, regarded as the history of one earth or kosmos, continuing as it is without any great physical change. They may be cosmical ons, carrying the idea of a new dispensation, with a change in the space-kosmos with which they are connected, or some change in the human state or relation that is equally significant. It might be conceived as a decay, dissolution, and restoration,a renewal, rather, instead of an absolute creation de novo. Such an idea of new cosmical worlds, or ons, is favored in a certain aspect of it by some passages of Scripture which speak of a new (or rather renewed) heavens and earth, Psa 102:26; Isa 66:22. Or it might be more like an idea which was certainly very ancient, of the same worlds coming over and over again, with all things and all events repeated, just as they had taken place. This was an old Egyptian and Arabian view, probably arising from the observations of astronomical cycles (see Pareau de Notiliis Vil Futur ab antiquissimo Jobi Scrtptore, etc., pp. 65, 66, etc.). Something like it was taught by Pythagoras and Plato in their doctrine of the magnus annus, as also by the Stoics in their doctrine of the cyclical return of the world, and all things in it, through a process of rarefaction and condensation (with a final conflagration), from which came again that rare elementary state which is in the beginning of each cycle,a kind of thinking to which the modern nebular theories present a fair counterpart. These views of the. Platonists and Stoics [ were sheer speculations. The old notions, however, of the Egyptians and Arabians seem to have had a different character, and as there is nothing incredible in the thought of their being known to this old writer, whether Solomon or any one else, so is it also admissible, to say the least, that , some such view, in connection with others, perhaps, of a more indefinite kind, may have been included in the words of Koheleth, Ecc 1:9; Ecc 1:11. If i some such thought had suggested the language, or been anciently suggested by it, the dogma would by no means have bound our assent, as though it were an inspired Bible truth, since it is only used by this contemplative writer as an illustration of the general cyclical notion of returns in the world movement. This may be regarded almost in the light of an a priori idea, or one necessarily arising to every thoughtful mind in the contemplation of nature, whether we think of it as temporal or eternal. Just as the great nature is made up of lesser cycles (a thing obvious to sense), so, when viewed as a whole, and regarded simply as nature, without reference to its origin, it can only be conceived as a vast repeating cycle, having its birth, growth, increase, diminution, ortus, interitus, maxima, minima, ever going round and round, as the very law of its continued being. A straightforward movement in one direction forever, whether it be one of rarefaction, or condensation, of separation, or combination, must end in ruin, stagnation, death, or utter sameness, in some period far less than an absolute eternity, if we may make comparisons. To avoid this, nature, the great nature, as well as the smaller ones, must be thought of as having its , its turning or bending, as Plato holds, and may even be said to demonstrate, in the Phdo, 72, Ecc 73: For if the one course of things should not give place to the other, in generation, but, on the contrary, there was ever a straightforward development ( ) without any turning or circuit, it is certain that all things must finally get the same form ( ), and have the same state or affection ( ), and all things must cease becoming ( )that is, there would be an end of all generation; things would be brought to a stand. This would be universal death, he shows, whether an absolute immobility and stagnation, or an absolute rarefaction and incoherence, which would come to the same thing. Both terminations would be the death of nature, of all natures. Whether in the individual or the universal, it can only live by coming round and round again. This must be the law of all physical movement, whether we regard nature as eternal, or as having its great beginning, together with special beginnings, in a Divine Word. As a nature commenced, it must thus move in growth, maxima and minima, or it would not be a nature. Change, decay, death, revival, are the law of its life. Aristotle thus presents the general cyclical idea (Physica IV. 14) as grounded in human language expressive of the natural human thinking. After speaking of time as motion in a circle, he thus proceeds: , , , . On this account there arises the usual mode of speech. For they say that all human things are a circle (a wheel); and so of all other things that have a physical movement, both of generation and decaynamely, that they have a beginning and an end, or, as it were, a, period (a going round). This reminds us of the , course of nature (circulus natur), of Jam 3:6, and the the wheel of generations, of the Talmudists and Rabbinical writersalso of Platos splendid Myth in the Politicus (269 c) of the two great periods, in one of which the Divine superintendence carries nature forward in unbroken progress, and, in the other, it is left to itself, and, consequently, to ruin and decay. Compare also the citations made by Zckler, p. 40, from Seneca, Tacitus, and Marcus Aurelian.

There is, however, a difference between the Greek , in its classical usage, and the Shemitic . It consists in the fact that the latter is used for worldevery where in the Syriac and Chaldaic, and much more frequently in the Bible Hebrew than our translation, or any modern version, would seem to show. There is a glimpse of such a meaning sometimes in the classical , as in schylus Supp. Ecc 572: Zeus, king of the never ceasing (ever moving) world, as it may very appropriately be rendered, or of the never ceasing age or eternity. This world sense of the Hebrew, and of the Greek in the New Testament, does not however, denote the world in space, more properly represented by the word , but the world in time, or as a time existence. This is peculiarly a Shemitic conception, and yet it comes directly from our necessary thinking. The time of a thing enters into the idea of its true being as much as its extent or its energy in space; or, to express it more correctly, the movements in succession, of any true organism belong as much to its reality (that which makes it a res, or thing) as the matter or collected cotemporaneous activities to which we give the name. So, too, in our Saxon world (weorld), the primitive etymological conception, we think, would be found to be time rather than space, as appears even in the later usage which we find in such expressions as this world in distinction from the other world, or the world to come,besides the already referred to usage in Wiclifs translation, where it stands for in the Old Testament, and for in the New; as Psalm 104; 5:13 for , Kingdom of all worldis, 1Ti 1:17 for Kynge of worldis, which puts us in mind of, schylus .

The only place in the Old Testament where our English translators have rendered by the word world is Ecc 3:11 [see note on that passage, p. 67]. It has been objected to this by Stuart, Hitzig, and others, because it is the only place, and that, therefore, the rendering is to be regarded as contrary to the usage of the language. But to this it may be replied by turning the argument: It should not have been the only place. There are others in which world is the best rendering. Thus in the passages already cited, Psa 90:2, it is literally from world to world, instead of the vague term everlasting;10 Ps. c Ecc 945:13, kingdom of all worlds: Psalms 96; Psalms 31, 45; Jer 10:10, God of life, King of the world; Habakkuk 3 :S, goings of the world, Vulg itinera mundi; Deu 33:27,the arms of the worldthat support the world movement. [See further on this, Lange, Genesis, P. 140, Six days of creation, Ecc 27.] From such usages came the Rabbinical sense so frequently found, and not vice versa, as some would have us believe; only that the Rabbins afterward, not fully understanding the old Hebrew conception as denoted by the plural forms of , or wishing to enlarge it so as to make it a term of science, gave it also the space sense, and used it for (See BuxtorfLex. Chald. and Rab.). the great thought underlying all the passages just quoted is that of the world movement, as an immense time, exhibiting Gods great work, or plan, Ecc 3:14. So also in Ecc 1:3, may be rendered for the world, and, in fact, the context forces to that view: generations of men go and come, but the earth stands, for the world-time, as long as the world lasts, conveying the same idea that is given, Psa 72:5, throughout all generations, as long as the sun and more endure. It is a way some critics have, of refusing to see a sense in places where it occurs, and then asserting that it cannot occur in any specific instance, because it is not found elsewhere, they say, in the Old Testament. Thus regarded, we see how it comes to be so common in the earliest Hebrew after the canonical,not merely the earliest Rabbinical and Talmudical, but in Sirach, and other Jewish books, that much preceded them. This would never have been the case in the early Rabbinical writings, much less in these apocryphal books, had there not been some ground for it in the old Biblical Hebrew itself. And this may be said. generally, in regard to all other Rabbinisms, as they have been called, in Koheleth. They are rather Kohelethisms which appear in the earliest Rabbincial and Talmudical writers, because the old book, on account of its having more of a philosophical aspect than other ancient Scripture, possessed great charms for them, making it a favorite study, leading them to imitate its peculiar style, and to make much use of its rather forms and words. In the apocryphal books, so far as they were written originally in Hebrew, the use of for world, or world time, is beyond all reasonable doubt. It must have been so employed in Sir 36:17, where we have the Greek in the world sense, as also in Tob 13:6; Tob 13:10. In both cases the language is precisely similar to that Psa 145:13, 1Ti 1:17. The earliest Syriac preceding the New Testament used their emphatic form of the word [] in the same way, as appears from the Peschito version of the Old Testament, as well as that of the New, this same word being used in such passages as Psa 80:2; Psa 45:13, Ecc 3:11, and Heb 1:3; Heb 9:3, as a rendering of , , where the Greek has, beyond all doubt, the world sense, though in its time aspect. Again, there is no accounting for this idiom in. the New Testament [this use of so different from the classical] except by regarding it as a Hebraism, which is simply saying that the world sense, thus viewed, was an old and established sense of the Hebrew . There was nothing in any science, or thinking, in the Jewish age immediately preceding, to occasion any change or departure from the old meaning. There is neither authority nor weight in Winers remarks (Idioms of New Testament, 27, 3) on the plural forms of ,that they are used for worlds because the object denoted consists of several parts, e. g., , the whole world, the universe, with which he would compare the Rabbinical use of The Jews, he says, imagined several heavens, one above the other.That is true, but they never use to express such a conception. It is ever , the Heaven of Heavens, or the Heaven and Heaven of Heavens, or some similar language, from which came afterwards the third heaven of the Jews, and the seven heavens of the Talmud and of the Mohammedans. But this was ever in the space senseworlds above worldsnot the time sense, worlds after worlds, which was a conception peculiarly Shemitic, barely found, if at all, among other ancient peoples, and giving rise to those pluralities of and afterwards of , which can be accounted for in no other way; since the conception of absolute endlessness as etymological in or , would clearly have prevented it. It is this idea which so refutes the assertion of Stuart (Comment. Ecc 12:1) that time divided is not strictly predicable of a future state. He means that all duration before or after the present world, as we call it, must be regarded as one continuous blank, or unvaried extension of being. There are not only no days and years, such as measure our olam, but no , or world-times, in that greater chronology. This certainly is not the Scripture mode of conception, or such language as we find would never have arisen, or such pluralities as , , or their reduplications, ages of ages, worlds of worlds exactly like the space pluralities , heaven of heavens. Such is the Scripture conception, we say, and what right had stuart, following Hit-zig, to deny that it is a Scripture truth, or to affirm that it is only a mode of speaking more humano? And reason sanctions it. What a narrow idea that the great antepast, and the great future after this brief world or has passed away, are to be regarded as having no chronology of a higher kind, no other worlds, and worlds of worlds, succeeding each other in number and variety inconceivable ! Robinson seems to hold the view of Winer that when is used for worlds in the New Testament, it is to be regarded as a space conception, the upper and lower worlds, the heavens and the earth, as making up the universe; and he refers to Heb 1:2; Heb 9:3, passages which should have convinced him (pace tanti viri, do we venture to say it) that the time sense (worlds after worlds instead of worlds beyond or above worlds) is not only predominant but exclusive, as it is in 1Ti 1:17, , the King of the worlds, the King eternal. This would seem, too, to be Zcklers way of thinking, when he speaks of the rendering world (Ecc 3:11) as appearing first in the Talmudic literature, and carrying the sense of kosmos, macrocosmos. Neither in the Old Testament, nor in the New, has ever the sense of kosmos, or any space conception attached to it. That idea, as was said before, did come in afterwards among the Talmudists and early Rabbins, but it was only after they had got a smattering of science, and wished to make some of their old words look more philosophical, See BuxtorfS Lexicon on the word. They still, however, retained the time sense, or the world-time, in their favorite expressions, am world, and son , the world to corns, which are exact representations of the ancient usage, as it arose in that early day, when time worlds were so much more a source of wondering thought than worlds in space, the boasted conception of our modern knowledge.

It may he thought that this view of and as having plurals, and, therefore, not in themselves denoting absolute endlessness, or infinity of time, must weaken the force of certain passages in the New Testament, especially of that most solemn sentence, Mat 25:46. This, however, comes from a wrong view of what constitutes the real power of the impressive language there employed. The preacher, in contending with the Universalist, or Restorationist, would commit an error, and, it may be, suffer a failure in his argument, should he lay the whole stress of it on the etymological or historical significance of the words, , , and attempt to prove that, of themselves, they necessarily carry the meaning of endless duration. There is another method by which the conclusion is reached in a much more impressive and cavil-silencing manner. It is by insisting on that dread aspect of finality that appears not in single words merely, but in the power and vividness of the language taken as a whole. The parabolic images evidently represent a closing scene. It is the last great act in the drama of human existence, the human world, or on, we may say, if not the cosmical. It is the , Matth. 3:39, the end, the settlement, the reckoning of the world, or more strongly, Heb 9:26, , the settlement of the worlds, when God demands again the ages fled, Ecc 3:15 (see the Metrical Version, and the reasons for this translation). At all events, our race, the the Adamic race, the human , or world, is judged; whether that judgment occupy a solar day of twenty-four hours, or a much longer historic period. There comes at last the end. Sentence is pronounced. The condemned go away, the righteous, . Both states are expressed in language precisely parallel, and so presented that we cannot exegetically make any difference in the force and extent of the terms. , from its adjective form, may perhaps mean, an existence, a duration, measured by asons, or worlds (taken as the measuring unit), just as our present world, or oeon, is measured by years or centuries. But it would be more in accordance with the plainest etymological usage to give it simply the sense of olamic or iconic, or to regard it as denoting, like the Jewish (olam habba), the world to come. These shall go away into the punishment [the restraint, imprisonment] of the world to come, and these into the life of the world to come. That is all we can. etymologically or exegetically make of the word in this passage. And so is it ever in the old Syriac Version, where the one rendering is still more unmistakably clear: These shall go away to the pain of the olam, and these to the life of the olamthe world to come. Compare the same Syriac expressions in a great many other passages, such as Mat 19:16; Mar 10:17; Luk 18:18; Joh 3:15; Act 13:46; 1Ti 6:12, etc., in which is ever rendered or (more emphatic) that which belongs to the olam, in the singular.

They shall go awaythe one here, the other there. The two classes so long mingled are divided, no more, as it would seem, to be again together. The wheat is gathered into the garner, the tares are east into the fire. The harvest is over; there is no more to follow; at least, the language gives us no intimation of any thing beyond. The catastrophe has come; the drama is ended; the curtain drops. Shall it never rise again? Is this solemn close forever in the sense of irreversibility? Who is authorized to say that there will ever be an arrest of this judgment, or a new trial ever granted? Every thing in the awful scene so graphically depicted seems to favor the one thought of finality. Hash minds may indulge the thought of some change, some dispensation in still remoter worlds to come, but there is no warrant for it in any of the language employed. If there be allowed the thought of change, it may be inferred of the one state as well as of the other. The may have its interruption, its renewed probation, and exposure to evil; exegetically this may be as well sustained as the other. To rebut any such presumption, we have, too, our Saviours words, Joh 14:2; If it were not so, I would have told you. There would have been a similar ground for such language here as when he said, Let not your hearts be troubled; in my Fathers house are many mansions; there would have been the same reason for allaying fears of change on the one hand, or preventing despair on the other, had there not been the intention to impress that thought of finality which the whole dramatic representation so vividly conveys: If there were ages of change coming somewhere in the vast future, in the infinite flow of the , the ages of ages, when the should cease, or the be intermitted, I would have told you. He has not told us; and no man should have the audacity to raise the veil which He has so solemnly dropped before the vision both of sense and reason. Let it remain for a new revelation, when he chooses to make it. Till then it stands: They shall go away, the one into the life, the other into the imprisonment, of the world to come. There is no more; let no one add to it; let no one take away. Some have thought to find the metaphysical idea of timelessness in the Scriptural olamic words, and especially in the , , of the New Testament. That is a Platonic notion largely dwelt upon in the Timseus (37 c) where is represented as fixed, one of the things that stand [belonging to the class called rather than ] whilst flowing time, is its moving image, or the revolving mirror which seems to set in motion the landscape of eternity, though, in reality, all is changeless and still. But this timeless idea is no etymological sense of it is only the speculative notion of the philosopher which he represents by the word as supplying a supposed antithesis to , time. We have no right to say, however, that there is no ground for it in the reason. It appears, sometimes, in the common thinking, as when we speak of time as contrasted with eternity, or of a state before time was, or that shall be when time shall be no more. Such a style of speech has been favored by a wrong interpretation of the language, Rev 10:6, on , and a severing it from its immediate context. Still its prevalence shows that it is not altogether alien to the human thinking. It is felt that there is a solid reason for predicating timelessness of God, of the Divine mind, and the Divine ways, as lying above the plane of the human, even as the Heaven is high above the earth [Isa 55:9]. To Deity all effects must be present in their causes, and causes seen in their effects, and all phenomena, or things that do appear, must have their more real existence in the unseen seminal energies of which they are manifestations. They have their true being in the Logos or Word from whence they came. Inthis sense the Prophet most sublimely represents God as Psa 55:20, sedens antiquitatem, literally, sitting the everlasting antepast, and Isa 57:15, inhabiting eternity, both of which expressions would seem to aim at denoting, as far as language can denote it, a timeless state, as opposed to movement or succession. And so even in regard to the human soul, our own finite thoughts may sometimes faintly present to us the image of successionless spiritual being, or of-some approach to it. We can think of a condition of the spirit in which time, as movement, seems to disappear. It may be the conception of some beatific vision on the one hand, or of some horror of great darkness on the other, the one so enrapturing and absorbing, the other so dense and harrowing, that all division, or sense of such division, seems so wholly lost that existence, in this respect, may not improperly be said to be timeless. Again, there is the schoolmens notion of eternity as given by Boethius, iota simul et interminabilis vilse possessio, or as it is defined by that quaint old Hebraist and Lexicographer, RobertsonEternity the everlasting and ever present, without futurition or preterition, as in the timeless name , the I Am (Jahveh or Jehovah) , , But such a timeless idea is hardly for our present thinking, in this present state of change and transition. Such knowledge is too wonderful for us; it is high, we cannot attain unto it. The mere glimpse we sometimes get dazzles the vision, and casts us down to that mode of thinking, as necessarily involving succession, which God has made the law of our presentmental being. We cannot, therefore, believe that this timeless idea of is intended in those passages that are meant to impress us with the solemnities of our future existence. If it thus occurs any where in the New Testament, it would seem to be in such passages as 2Co 4:18, , the things that are seen are temporal, the things that are unseen are eternal. We do not think that Paul got this, or other passages like it (such as Heb 11:1; Heb 11:3; Rom 1:20) from Plato, or that they were suggested to him by any study of the Platonic writings; but certainly there is a wonderful resemblance between it and some things in the Timus, and the Republic. The the the unseen things, of Paul, do strongly suggest, and are suggested by the the the of Plato, as all denoting, not merely things absent from present vision, but that which is, in its very essence, unseen, supersensual, above all the senses, for which seeing is simply taken as the higher and general representative. So and suggest the same distinction that Plato makes in the Timseus between the and the the becoming, the flowing, the changing, and the onian, in the sense of reality and immutability. We are strongly drawn to think that Paul has something of the same contrast, though presented in a far higher and holier aspect than the mere philosophical contemplation. temporal would seem opposed to not in the sense of a short period (or periods) as contrasted with a long duration, or even an endless duration, but, rather, as time itself, or existence in time, as the antithesis of the timeless, that immutable, successionless being which even now we sometimes seem to see as in a mirror shadowly, (1Co 13:12), or enigmatically, but which then the soul may behold, face to face, as the most real of all realities. Except, however, in such lofty passages as that, where the inspired writer seems to see, and strives to utter, things or ineffable (2Co 12:4), it is best to be content with that other and more obvious sense, which is best adapted to our faculties in their present state, and which may, therefore, be rationally regarded as the sense intended for us by the divine author of the Scriptures. Even here, in 2Co 4:18, this lower sense, if any choose to call it so, satisfies every demand of our present thinking: the things that are seen, the changing transitory objects around us, belong to our present transitory beingthey are for a season.The things that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, belong to the great world to come, as an advanced period in the vast successions of time. In this sense they are olamic or onian. A purely timeless state, it may be said, is above our conceptions, at least for the human or finite existence,above our conceptual thinking even, though not altogether transcending, as an idea, our highest reasoning.

There are other passages in which, the sense would seem even more limited than in this verse of Ecclesiastes (Ecc 1:3), or rather, to be taken as a hyperbolical term for the indefinite or unmeasured, though of conceivably short duration. Compare Exo 21:16, where it, is said of a servant in certain cases and he shall serve him foreverthat is, in distinction from a set time. So also, Lev. 30:26. The same language is used of inheritances, and earthly possessions, as in Deu 29:28. As an example of the immense extremes which the context shows in the use of the word, compare the language employed but a short distance from this latter passage, Deu 32:40 I live forever; spoken of God in such a way as to mean nothing less than the absolute or endless eternity. But it is the subject to which it is applied that forces to this, not any etymological necessity in the word itself. And they shall reign forever and forever, Rev 22:5. Here is another example of an attempt to express the immeasurable, though in a different way, that is, by reduplications: in seeula seculorum, Syriac or, in one word, leolam-olemin, for-ever-ever-more, for ages of ages, worlds of worlds, eternities of eternities.wickliff, ther schulen regne in to worldis of worldis. It falls short, of course, in conception, as all language must, yet still it is conceptually aiming at the endless, or absolute eternity, and must be taken, therefore, as representative of it in idea. A negative term, in such case, like infinite,, or endless, might have been used; but though correct, logically, it would have had far less conceptual, or even ideal power.

This is said of the future. There is a similar language used of the past; as Eph 3:9, , a seculis from the olams, from the ages, the eternities, Wicliffe, hidde worldis, Tyndale, from the beginning of the world, the great world, including all worlds,or, taken without division, the an-tepast eternity, before the present , olam, or world, began.

There is another method in which an attempt is made to represent the absolute eternity. It is by a phrase shorter than those before mentioned, but more emphatic, and, in some respects, more impressive. It is by adding to or to the particle or the noun sometimes written Fuerst makes this word, as a noun, denoting eternity, from a supposed root , to which he gives the sense obducere, obvelare, to conceal, &c, making it, in this way, like the verb the primary Sense of which is hiddenness, obscurity, thus giving the noun the sense of the unbounded, the indefinite. There is no authority for this in the case of Tp. It might more plausibly be regarded as having the sense of number, like the Arabic ; but the best view is that of Gesenius, who makes it, both as noun and particle, from =Arabie which has the sense of transition. It is rather transition to, arrival and going beyonda passing beyond, still farther, on, and on. Thus it becomes a name for eternity, as in those remarkable expressions, Isa 9:5, poorly rendered everlasting Father, and inhabiting eternity, Isa. 67:15; with which compare Hab 3:6, 49:29, and 45:17 where we have the same word as noun and prepositionthe mountains of ad, the progenitors of adto the ages of adto the ages to which other ages are to be added, indefinitely. Hence the preposition sense making it significantly, as well as etymologically equivalent to the Latin ad et, the Greek in, Saxon at and to, in all of which there is this sense of arrival and transition. The idea becomes most vivid and impressive in this Hebrew phrase for ever and yet, for the age, the world, the eternity, and still on, on, on; or as the quaint old lexicographer before referred to expresses it, it imparteth this, As yet, and as yet, and ever as yet, forever, and forevermore, as yetas though there were, in this short word thus added to the full power of Handels Hallelujah Chorus, as it comes to us in the seemingly endless repetitions of that most sublime music. Unlike the others, the effect of this short addition to is felt, in its very brevity and abruptness, as something that gives the impression of endless iteration. It is like the mathematicians abbreviating term + &c, or the sign of infinity co, or the symbol by which he would denote the supposed last, term of an infinite series. These pluralities and reduplications, and other striking methods of representing the olamic ideas, are peculiar to the Shemitic languages, or they appear in our modern tongues only as derived from them through Bible translations, much changed, too, and weakened in the transfer. They are utterly at war with the thought of the great eternal past and future as blank undivided durations, according to the unwarranted dictum of Hitzio and Stuart, which would confine all history and all chronology to this brief on we call time. These peculiar terms, with their strange pluralities, would never have grown up in the language of a people who entertained such a blank conception. The fact, however, is just the other way. In these vast time ideas, and the manner of vividly representing them, the Shemitic mind went beyond the modern, although we boast, and with reason, of so far exceeding the early men in the vastness of our space conceptions. It is only lately that our science has had its attention called to the great time periods of the world, as transcending the ordinary historical. Under the influence of the new idea, we talk largely in our numerical estimates, though almost wholly hypothetical; but for real emotional power what are our long rows of decimals, our myriads, and millions, and billions, to the the ages of ages, the worldis of worldis, the olam of olams, the great world made up of countless worlds, not beyond each other, in space, but one after the other, in time?

There is still another aspect of the world idea, which seems to be presented, Ecc 3:11; Ecc 3:14. The thought of the world, or of a world, when the mind receives it complete, comes to it in a trinal form of contemplation, like the three dimensions in geometry, breadth, length, and height. It is the world in space and force, (or the world dynamically), the world in time, and the world in rank or range of being. To use some of the language employed by Cr. Lange, Genesis, 190, 191, it is the world as kosmos, the world as scon, to which we may add, the world as the kingdom of God. The application of this thought, especially the latter view of it, to Ecc 3:11; Ecc 3:14, gives those verses a force and significance which warrants great confidence in it as the true interpretation. On Ecc 1:11 of that chapter, see soma further remarks in the note adjoined. In Ecc 1:14 it is said, I know that all that God doeth, or whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever, says our translation, in perpetuum says the Vulgate, Ecc 70: (for the on), Luther, das bestehet immer. The Hebrew here may be rendered, as in Ecc 1:11, for the world, but it can hardly be regarded exclusively, or mainly, as either the world in space or the world in time. The mind is not satisfied with the rendering forever, or for eternity, if there is understood by it simply endless duration. Gods greater works, the heavenly bodies and their motions may have such a term applied to them, hyperbolically, as compared with the transient works of man, and this is the view which some excellent commentators take of the passage. There is a striking resemblance to it, well worthy of note, in Ciceros Treatise de Natura Deorum, where the lower tellurian irregularities are contrasted with the heavenly order and permanency as manifested in the planetary movements, or, to use some of Koheleths language, the flowing, changing world, beneath the sun, and the world supra solem, the eternal sphere, unchanging, or forever constant, in its one unvarying movement: Nulla igitur in ccso nee fortuna, nee temeritas, nee erratic nee va-rietas inest; contraqus, Omnis Ordo, Veritas, Rstio, Concordla; quseque his vacant, em-entila et falsa, plenaque erroris, ea circum terras, infra lunam, quse omnium ultima est, in lerrisqui versanur. There is, therefore, in the heavens neither chance, nor arbitrariness, nor erroneous movement, nor variableness, but, on the contrary, all is order, truth, reason, constancy (ratio in the sense of proportion, harmony); void of these, all is spurious, false, full of error, that lies beneath the moon, the lowest sphere, or that has its home here on earth [Argument of the Stoic Balbus, Cic. De. Nat. Deor., II. 22]. Beneath the mooncompare it with the frequent Solomonic expression above referred to, and the sublime language,. Job 25:2, faciens concordiam in sublimibus suiswho maketh peace in His high places. Thus regarded, the heavens in their larger and higher aspect, are representative of the calmness, immutability, and unfailing certainty of that divine Will which is ever one with the divine Reason. This is indeed a noble view of the passage, but we cannot think it the exclusively true one, not simply because it is said in other Scriptures (Psa 102:26, Isa 51:6), that the heavens themselves grow old and vanish away, but because it can hardly be made to suit with the expression either in its cosmical or time sense, or those other words whatsoever God has made. Some things God has made to be transient, and they can, in no sense, be said to be forever, or for eternity, unless we take it, according to the view of Zckler, in their connections with other things that are eternal, or in their bearing upon eternal destinies. But this would be true also of the works and movements of man, or things beneath the sun. The better view, therefore, and better satisfying the whole spirit of the passage, is that which regards as denoting the world, or world-time in Gods sightthe great ideal, as it appears to Him, including not merely space and time, but the great range of beingor, to avoid the use of what might seem affected philosophical language, the divine plan of being, to which the smallest and most transient things contribute as well as the greatest,in other words, the kingdom of God. To this nothing can be added; from it nothing can be taken away. In this sense, all that God doeth is for the olam, for the world, for the great whole of being, as distinguished from the human plans, the human doings, with their adapted yet transient seasons, as they are enumerated in the first part of the chaptera time for every thing, but every thing for the olam, or great world time, with its inconceivable range of being, transcending man; as man transcends the animal worlds below him. A somewhat similar view seems to have been entertained by that excellent old commentator Martin Geier. He refers it to the divine decreesGods ideal world, in fact, whose effects are determined in-their causes, as the causes are all contained in the effects. By Gods doing here he says, we are not to understand simply the things produced by him, creatures which God has made; for they do not all remain forever, &c, but it is to be understood, defacere Dei interno, i. e de decretis divinis, of the divine decrees (in mente divina) as they are forever in the divine mind, unchangeably, without addition or diminution, nam consilium Jehovah in seculum slat, congitationes cordis ejus in gene-rationem et generationem, Psa 33:11 : For the counsel of Jehovah stands, the thoughts of his heart unto all generations. See also the note on the astronomical objections to the Bible; Bibelwerk, Genesis, Eng. ed., pp. 183, 184.T.L.]

B. The practical wisdom of men, aiming at sensual enjoyment, and magnificent worldly enterprises, is vanity.

Footnotes:

[1][The idea denoted by this frequent word is transitoriness, swift passing away; rather than nothingness (Nichtigkeit). Things may be very transient. yet very importantlike the present human life, which St. James styles (exactly equivalent to the Hebrew ) a vapor that soon passeth away, James 3. The writer does not mean to call vanity, in the sense of nothingness or worthlessness, that which he says elsewhere God will surely call to judgement with all its most secret deeds.T. L.]

[2] [The word which, both in composition and significance, most nearly corresponds to Koheleths frequent , is the Greek , so much used by Paul, and poorly rendered covetousness. It rather means, having the more, having the advantage or superiority in anything, whether wealth, fame, or ambition.T. L.]

[It would really seem as though Sirach, though such a thorough Jew, as his book shows him to be, had known something of the poems of Homer. There is such a striking resemblance, both in particular words and in special points of the picture, between this passage and the lines, so frequently quoted from the speech of Glaucus, Iliad 5:146.

, ,

,

,

, .

The race of man is like the race of leaves:
Of leaves, one generation by the wind
Is scattered on the earth; another soon,
In springs luxuriant verdure, bursts to light.
So with our race; these flourish, those decay.

Lord Derbys Translation.T. L.].

[3] [There is a concealed metaphor in this passage all the more beautiful because of its inobtrusiveness. It is contained in the words and , beaming (radiating) glowing, panting.See Metrical Version. It is the figure of the race horse returning panting to his goal, whence he started

All panting, glowing, there again is he.

Such a mode of conceiving was at the origin of the classical figure: the horses of the sun panting up the eastern steep [comp. Psa 19:6]. See both figures combined, as they are here, Virg. n. xii. 113.

Postea vix summos spargebat lumine montes
Orta dies, cum primo alto se gurgite tollunt
Solis equi, lucemque elatis naribus efflant.

See also the Georgics, Lib. I. Ecc 250:

Aut redit a nobis aurora, diemque reducit,

Nosque ubi primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis.

To all thinking minds, the idea of the earth being a sphere, or a body, lying in space, with space all round it, above and belowor having, at least, an under as well as an upper sidemust have been very early. It was at once suggested by this constant phenomenon of sun-setting and sun-risinggoing down below on the West (his tabernacle or sleeping-tent, as the Psalmist compares it, Psa 19:5), and rising in the East as one who came from below, and ascended a steep, weary, yet gloriouslike a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber (Psa 19:6) or as a strong man (an athlete) to run a race. Compare the same image, though reversed, Iliad. vi. 506. It was the same sun, and he must have gone under (into his subterranean heavenly abode, as Zckler well calls it) and around again to his starting place. The heavens would be all round it, and, thus, as the Psalmist graphically paints, these under heavens would be his tabernacle, where he spends the night, as it appears to us. We detect the image in the early Hesiodean cosmogony, where it is said that (earth) gave birth to starry , corresponding to herself, , Hes. Theog. 127. It was almost obvious to sense, and the musing mind must have been very early familiar with the conception. It was not inconsistent with the other notion that appears in Scripture, of the earth as an extended plain. The latter was phenomenal, the former the product of reflection. Both were adapted to poetrythe one to the poetry of the eye, the other to that of the thought. Compare Job 26:7. He hangeth the earth upon nothing, or, rather, over emptiness.T. L.].

[4][There is no more reason for calling an Aramaic word here, than the feminine form, , Gen 35:16; Gen 48:7; 2Ki 5:19. It means a considerable but indefinite amount whether of space as in the examples in Gen 35:16 or of time as heresome distance off, or some time agolong ago. The same may be said of , Job 35:16; Job 36:31.T. L.]

[5][ is rather added as an amplification of the indefinite . It hath been alreadylong agoyes, in some of the olams (or worlds), cosmical or historical, that have gone before in the immense past. See remarks in note on the olamic words, p. 41, &c.T. L.]

[6][This is certainly a slender basis on which to build such an argument. The indefinite use of the Hebrew tenses will not allow it to have much force, and, moreover, it is perfectly consistent (even if rendered was) with the condition of an old man, an old king, who had seen the vanity of the world, and of royal estate, and wished to impress it on the mind of his reader, to speak it as something past and gone. I who was kingor, when I was kingin the full exercise of power and dignity. Besides, if there is an inconsistency, it would be full as great in one who assumes to personate Solomon. Such a one would be even more careful to guard against obvious anachronisms, as this would be, if thus regarded. See Wordsworth on the expression, and the argument drawn from it. The word Koheleth may be a scholium of the later compiler, to explain (though unnecessarily) what he deemed abrupt: I (Koheleth) was King; and so in other places like similar scholia in the Pentateuch.T. L.]

[7][ does not mean wisety in the sense of Knowingly, or skilfullyneither does it mean by, or, with wisdom, as an instrument, though that is nearer to it; but rather in the way of wisdom. that is philosophically, speculatively, theoretically, in distinction from experimentally or practically, as he did afterwards.T. L.]

[8][This is entirely gratuitous. It may refer to any men of note and wealth, together with David and Saul, or the writer may well have had in view old Princes in Jerusalem, away back to the days of Melchisedec.T. L.]

[9][The word , heart, is used in Hebrew (especially in the Proverbs and Solomonic writings) as much for the mind or intellect as for the feelingthe affections.T. L.]

[10][This language is generally used of God, or His Kingdom. There are, however, cases where it is employed hyperbolically of the settlement in the promised land as in Jer 7:7 : And I will cause you to dwell in this place, which I gave to your fathers, , from age to ageor from world to world, or forever, if we take, as we may, if we have faith for it, the higher spiritual sense of the eternal settlement, the eternal rest, of which the settlement in Canaan was the appointed type.T. L.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

Under a great variety of evidences, taken from the circumstances of human life, and everything around, the Preacher fully proves the total inability of all the outward circumstances of nature to constitute happiness.

Ecc 1:1

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

The book opens very properly with the name, or rather the office and connection of the Author, and the purport of his sermon. Where the mane of Solomon is, there is sure to be found wisdom. How much more with that of Jesus, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge? Col 2:3 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

The Verdict of Life

Ecc 1:2

The verdict of this book seems to be no hasty verdict, but a settled, deliberate conclusion. It is not due to a temporary fit of depression, or some passing adverse circumstance, but it seems the result of experience arrived at after mature thought. And there are plenty Today who have arrived at the same conclusion. All is vanity. Life is hard and cruel and disappointing, and not worth the living. They tell you it is a weary struggle in which most fail. That the disappointed men in life are not to be found only in night shelters and casual wards, but in the Houses of Parliament, in the salons of society, in the mansions of Park Lane.

I. Now, is this the true Verdict of Life? Is it all emptiness and vexation? If so, it seems strange that God should have put us here at all. Let us look and see the circumstances under which it was given. It is a very significant thing, that this conclusion of life is not the outcome of trouble. It is not the verdict of a man dogged by continuous misfortune, or persistent ill-health.

II. The truth is, he was a disappointed man, and there are two soils of disappointed men in life. There is the man who is disappointed because he does not get, and there is the man who is disappointed because he does get, and the latter is by far the worse of the two. The man who is disappointed because he has not got, may have still the fascination of his hopes before him. But the man who has got what he desires and is then disappointed, has pricked the bubble, and knows the meaning of emptiness and vexation of spirit And the last was the disappointment of Solomon. The selfish man is always a disappointed man. What an utter selfishness this book reveals. Take this second chapter, it is all I, I, I I made, I got, I did, I had, I sought, and this is the end of it all. If you want to know the best life has to give, live for others.

E. E. Cleal, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiv. p. 38.

Ecc 1:2

‘There is an old Eastern fable about a traveller in the Steppes who is attacked by a furious wild beast. To save himself the traveller gets into a dried-up well; but at the bottom of it he sees a dragon with its jaws wide open to devour him. The unhappy man dares not get out for fear of the wild beast, and dares not descend for fear of the dragon, so he catches hold of the branch of a wild plant growing in a crevice of the well. His arms soon grow tired, and he feels that he must soon perish, death waiting for him on either side. But he holds on still: and then he sees two mice, one black and one white, gnawing through the trunk of the wild plant, as they gradually and evenly make their way round it. The plant must soon give way, break off, and he must fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveller sees this, and knows that he will inevitably perish; but, while still hanging on, he looks around him, and, finding some drops of honey on the leaves of the wild plant, he stretches out his tongue and licks them.’ After quoting this fable (translated, by the way, from Rckert, into English verse by Archbishop Trench, in his Poems, p. 266 ), Tolstoy (in My Confession ) proceeds to apply it to modern life. He quotes the opening chapters of Ecclesiastes as an expression of this Epicurean escape from the terrible plight in which people find themselves as they awaken to the fact of existence. The issue ‘consists in recognizing the hopelessness of life, and yet taking advantage of every good in it, in avoiding the sight of the dragon and mice, and in seeking the honey as best we can, especially where there is most of it…. Such is the way in which most people, who belong to the circle in which I move, reconcile themselves to their fate, and make living possible. They know more of the good than the evil of life from the circumstances of their position, and their blunted moral perceptions enable them to forget that all their advantages are accidental…. The dullness of their imaginations enables these men to forget what destroyed the peace of Buddha, the inevitable sickness, old age, and death, which tomorrow if not Today must be the end of all their pleasures.’

Thomas Boston of Ettrick closes his Memoirs with these words: ‘And thus have I given some account of the days of my vanity. The world hath all along been a step-dame unto me; and wheresoever I would have attempted to nestle in it, there was a thorn of uneasiness laid for me. Man is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed from that quarter. All is vanity and vexation of spirit. I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord.’

Ecclesiastes and Proverbs display a larger compass of thought and of experience than seem to belong to a Jew or to a king.

Gibbon.

After the fifth century the world lived on these words: Vanity of vanities… one thing is needful. The Imitatio Christi is undoubtedly the most perfect and attractive expression of this great poetic system; but a modern mind cannot accept it save with considerable reserve. Mysticism overlooked that innate quality of human nature, curiosity, which makes men penetrate the secret of things, and become, as Leibnitz says, the mirror of the universe…. Ecclesiastes took the heavens to be a solid roof, and the sun a globe suspended some miles up in the air; history, that other world, had no existence for him. Ecclesiastes, I am willing to believe, had felt all that man’s heart could feel; but he had no suspicion of what man is allowed to know. The human mind in his day overpowered science; in our day it is science that overpowers the human mind.

Renan.

References. I. 2. E. W. Attwood, Sermons for Clergy and Laity, p. 428. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 20.

Ecc 1:2-3

The general drift of this book of Ecclesiastes is peculiar to itself. It gives us an estimate of life which, to a certain extent, reappears in our Lord’s teaching, but which is generally speaking in the background throughout the Old Testament. Our text is the keynote of the book. The word ‘vanity’ occurs thirty-seven times in it, and it means properly speaking a breath of wind; and thus it comes to mean something fictitious and unsubstantial. The vanity of life, and of that which encompasses it, has been brooded over by the human mind under the influence of very different moods of thought But it was neither subtle pride, nor weary disgust, nor a refined mysticism that prompted this language of Solomon. The preacher does not ignore the circumstances and duties of this life, while he insists that this life does not really satisfy. The true lesson of the text before us is that this earthly life cannot possibly satisfy a being like man if it be lived apart from God. The reason is threefold.

I. All that belongs to created life has on it the mark of failure. Man is conscious of this. The warp and weakness of his will, the tyranny of circumstance, the fatal inclination downwards, of which he is constantly conscious, tell a tale of some past catastrophe from which human life has suffered deeply. And nature, too, with its weird mysteries of waste and pain, speaks of some great failure.

II. Life and nature are finite. The human soul, itself finite, is made for the infinite. God has set eternity in the human heart, and man has a profound mistrust of his splendid destiny.

III. All that belongs to created life has on it the mark of approaching dissolution. This is a commonplace, but commonplaces are apt to be forgotten from their very truth and obviousness. Personality survives with its moral history intact, all else goes and is forgotten. What profit hath a man of all his labour? The answer is, no profit at all, if he is working only for himself; but most abundant profit if he is working for God and eternity. Christ has passed His pierced hands in blessing over human life in all its aspects. He has washed and invigorated not merely the souls, but the activities of men, in His own cleansing blood. When death is near we read this verse with new eyes, and realize that this is a world of shadows, that the real and abiding is beyond.

H. P. Liddon, Clerical Library, vol. II. p. 162.

References. I. 2-11. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 27. R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes; its Meaning and Lessons, p. 22. G. G. Bradley, Lectures on Ecclesiastes, p. 29.

The Eternity of God

Ecc 1:4

I. The Fleetingness of Human Life. There are many now who are depressed by this sense of the premanency and power of the material world; when the earth receives, and reduces to itself, the frame which was once instinct with thought and will, man seems to be dethroned from his preeminence and life to be trampled out. There are some who resent the thought of passing away and being forgotten; it has been their ambition to leave on the face of the earth some permanent mark which should keep their name alive. The pyramids of Egypt have served this purpose; and yet what irony there is in that very success. We have new standards of glory, new ideals of government; to us these monuments speak less of the magnificence of the monarchy in the Nile Valley than of the oppression by which it accomplished its purpose. There is, perhaps, a deeper pathos when the works men wrought survive their memory altogether; those who look at the ruined cities of Mashonaland, or even at our own Dyke at Newmarket, can only guess dimly who planned these things, and what purpose they serve. The oblivion that has overtaken such great workers and builders demonstrates the fleetingness of human life and effort, and this may come home to us even more forcibly when we see the abandonment of great works that were meant to be of permanent and abiding use, and to serve purposes with which we sympathize. Yet in their very desolation and decay these things have a message of hope; at first sight it might seem that as the Preacher felt, all is vanity; that even the noblest aims and deepest devotion of human life pass into nothingness. But we have had deeper insight vouchsafed us; we can gauge better what remains, as the ages pass; the material embodiment of human purpose, however high and noble, is superseded and decays; but the endeavour, conscious or unconscious, to do God’s work in the world has en undying worth. The things of sense are not, after all, that which really lasts; there is a glorious heritage of law and order, and welfare, and duty to God and man, to which each generation has been called in turn to make its contribution. That heritage remains while the jealousies and petty ambitions, like the fashions of yesterday, are done with.

II. God only is Eternal. For, indeed it is God, and God only, that is eternal, that stays abidingly through all the changes of this mortal life, through all the coming into being of the great system of which our earth is a portion. He is the source of all good of all earthly good in the physical surroundings which form man’s home; in the vigour of life and the faculties with which man is endowed; and above all, of all mortal and spiritual good, of those qualities and activities in which man can most closely ally himself to and most fully express the thoughts and character of God. To appreciate the good that God has given to and wrought through those who have passed away is to enter into the communion of saints, and to realize our union with those whom our eyes have never seen is the deepest and most abiding thing of life.

W. Cunningham, Church Family Newspaper, vol. lxxi. p. 536.

References. I. 4. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ecclesiastes, p. 297. J. Hamilton, Works, vol. vi. p. 484. J. Foster, Lectures (2nd Series), p. 117. I. 4-10. H. Macmillan, Bible Teaching in Nature, p. 312. I. 4-11. J. Bennett, The Wisdom of the King, p. 60.

The Discontent of the Times

Ecc 1:7-10

There is in our time a widespread spirit of discontent which prevails widely among the sober and industrious classes.

I. What are the sources of this discontent?

a. The wealth of all civilized countries has been immensely and rapidly increasing in recent years.

b. They have suddenly become possessed of enormous wealth.

c. There is a growing tendency to make wealth hereditary.

d. The popular estimate of wealth has become enormously exaggerated.

II. There is a wide feeling that the industrial classes are not gaining their fair share of this enormous and rapid accumulation of wealth. Man, when he gains one level, wants immediately to attain a higher; it is the prophecy of immortality in him.

III. It is love, and not mere greed which is at the bottom of very much of the existing discontent. A man feels that if he is equal before the contemplation of the law when he stands beside others, equal before God the Creator and God the Governor, he must have equal rights in the world; not to the property which others have acquired, but to the opportunities to acquire such property for himself, to give his household the advantage of it.

IV. It is generically the same force which took our ancestral pirates and painted savages and built them up into a Christian Commonwealth. It is just his unsatisfied aspiration which God has planted in its element in the human soul, and to which He presents the hidden riches of the earth, which a man must work for that he may gain them, but which he can gain if he will patiently and courageously work.

V. Wealth if it conies is to be used honestly, nobly, beneficently, but that wealth is not the chief good of human life; it is only an instrument of that which is better and higher, and ‘a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth’.

R. S. Storrs, British Weekly Pulpit, vol. III. p. 513.

References. I. 7. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 302. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons (2nd Series), p. 122.

Ecc 1:8 ; Ecc 2:10-11 , etc.

When I was a boy, I used to care about pretty stones. I got some Bristol diamonds at Bristol, and some dog-tooth spar in Derbyshire; my whole collection had cost perhaps three half-crowns, and was worth considerably less; and I knew nothing whatever, rightly, about any single stone in it could not even spell their names; but words cannot tell the joy they used to give me. Now, I have a collection of minerals worth, perhaps, from two to three thousand pounds; and I know more about some of them than most other people. But I am not a whit happier, either for my knowledge or possession, for other geologists dispute my theories, to my grievous indignation and discontentment; and I am miserable about all my best specimens, because there are better in the British Museum. No, I assure you, knowledge by itself will not make you happy.

Ruskin in Fors Clavigera. See also the discussion of this in Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, i. i-iii, and Ruskin’s further apostrophe in The Eagle’s Nest, 80.

Consciousness of happiness, above all, will not choose the intellect as a hiding-place for the treasure it holds most precious.

Maeterlinck.

Ecc 1:9

We marvel at the prodigality of Nature, but how marvellous, too, the economy! The old cycles are for ever renewed, and it is no paradox that he who would advance can never cling too close to the past. The thing that has been is the thing that will be again; if we realize that, we may avoid many of the disillusions, miseries, insanities, that for ever accompany the throes of new birth. Set your shoulder joyously to the world’s wheel; you may spare yourself some unhappiness if, beforehand, you slip the book of Ecclesiastes beneath your arm.

Havelock Ellis.

Compare Jowett’s Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, pp. 282, 283.

Ecc 1:9

Alas! this fame is the mockery of God, with which we are so familiar that cruel irony which is ever the same. The blas King of Israel and Judah said with truth ‘There is nothing new under the sun’. Perhaps the sun itself is but an old warmed-up piece of pleasantry, which, decked out with new rays, now glitters with such imposing splendour!

Heine.

If in a sense the whole beauty of art is an expression of the mood of Ecclesiastes, if the passion of the ways of the heart, and the light of the eyes, and the plenitude and magnificence of life beneath the sun, have most intimate and intense significance when discerned as in an interval of clear and sweet light between the lifting and the falling of darkness, it must be as the incentive to concentrated appreciation of opportunity that the fleetingness of life affects the thought of the painter. He is pledged to discern and express the beauty that can never fade into nothingness, to show life touching life with immortality. It is impossible for him, whose art is formal, for whom only formal beauty and impressiveness exist within the term of his art, to declaim the vanitas vanitatum of the Preacher to our minds, and yet preserve the appeal of beauty, that is his medium of reaching our sense.

R. E. D. Sketchley, Watts, p. 58.

References. 1. 9. E. A. Bray, Sermons, vol. ii. p. 61. A. Maclaren Expositions of Holy Scripture Ecclesiastes, p. 307.

Ecc 1:12

The possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction to an ambitious mind. This melancholy truth was felt and acknowledged by Severus. Fortune and merit had, from an humble station, elevated him to the first place among mankind. ‘He had been all things,’ as he said himself, ‘and all were of little value.’

Gibbon.

Ecc 1:12

See C. G. Rossetti’s poem, ‘A Testimony’; also her verses on ‘Vanity of Vanities,’ ‘Days of Vanity,’ ‘Cardinal Newman,’ and ‘The Heart Knoweth its own Bitterness’.

A word must be said about those exquisite gems of verse which are contained in the Greek Anthology… . The motto which is written on the pages as a whole is the same as that of the book of Ecclesiastes, ‘Vanity of vanities,’ and the dominant side of sadness deepens the farther we follow the poems into Roman times. Herodotus (v. 4) tells us of a Tracian tribe, whose custom it was to wail over the birth of a child, and to bury the dead with festive joy, as being released from their troubles. ‘Let us praise the Tracians,’ says a writer in the Anthology, ‘in that they mourn for their sons as they come forth from their mother’s womb into the sunlight, while those again they count blessed who have left life, snatched away by unseen Doom, the servant of the Fates.’ One who had looked upon the course of the world and the treacherous ways of fortune is forced to exclaim: ‘I hate the world for its mystery’.

S. H. Butcher.

Ecc 1:12-13

To grow old, learning and unlearning, is such the conclusion? Conclusion or no conclusion, such, alas! appears to be our inevitable lot, the fixed ordinance of the life we live. ‘Every new lesson,’ saith the Oriental proverb, ‘is another grey hair; and time will pluck out this also.’ And what saith the Preacher? ‘I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under the heavens; this sore travail hath God given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith.’ Perch pensa? Pensando s’invecchia , said the young unthinking Italian to the grave German sitting by him in the diligence, whose name was Goethe. Is it true?

Nevertheless, to say something, to talk to one’s fellow-creatures, to relieve oneself by a little exchange of ideas, is there no good, is there no harm, in that? Prove to the utmost the imperfection of our views, our thoughts, our conclusions; yet you will not have established the uselessness of writing.

References. I. 12. A. W. Momerie, Agnosticism, p. 190. I. 12-14. C. Kingsley, The Water of Life, p. 175. I. 12-18. J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor (1st Series), vol. x. p. 61. R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes, its Meaning and Lessons, p. 36, I. 13. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Ecclesiastes., p. 317.

Ecc 1:14

Nature has furnished man with a rich provision of force, activity, and toughness. But what most often comes to his help is his unconquerable levity. By this he becomes capable of renouncing particular things at each moment, if he can only grasp at something new in the next. Thus unconsciously we are constantly renewing our whole lives. We put one passion in place of another; business, inclinations, amusements, hobbies, we prove them all one after another, only to cry out that ‘all is vanity’. No one is shocked at this false, nay, blasphemous speech. Nay, every one thinks that in uttering it he has said something wise and unanswerable. Few indeed are those who are strong enough to anticipate such unbearable feelings, and, in order to escape from all partial renunciations, to perform one all-embracing act of renunciation. These are the men who convince themselves of the existence of the eternal, of the necessary, of the universal, and who seek to form conceptions which cannot fail them, yea, which are not disturbed, but rather confirmed, by the contemplation of that which passes away.

Goethe.

Seen All

Ecc 1:14

In a certain broad, rough, superficial sense this is possible. It is ineffably disappointing; it is spiritually and fruitfully, poetically and morally, most suggestive. It is easy to see what the man has been looking at; he has, so to say, been counting the wrong things, or has been counting them in a wrong spirit, or has been longing for the end. There is a contentment that is mean, soulless, and utterly pitiable; there is a discontent that is ineffable, inspired, quick with holy ambition; not a foolish discontent, pining and whining, but a discontent which says, God meant me to see more and to be more and to do more, and I want to succeed in executing the full purpose of God. That is the Christian life, that is Christian prophecy, Christian discipline and Christian perfectness.

I. A sad thing it is for a man to think he has seen all the landscape which lies before his window. He wants change of scene, and no wonder, for he has seen nothing; he wants change of air, and what wonder, if the air has brought him no music from the organ of the morning? There are some poets who have not yet seen the whole of their little back garden; there is hardly room in it for another geranium, but that little back garden is a three-volume romance, is the beginning of Paradise Regained, is a history of faithful industry and hopefulness, and is a pledge that the rest will be paid at God’s counter in God’s time.

II. ‘I have seen all the letters of the alphabet.’ Can you read? ‘No, but I have seen all the letters of the alphabet, and I know them one from another, and I can write every one of them in three different ways; I am absolutely perfect in the use of the alphabet.’ Hear how this poor soul chatters about his alphabet! He has counted the alphabet, he has seen all the letters that are written under the sun: the one thing he cannot do is to put the letters together, and turn them into syllables and words and sentences and poems and philosophies. Are we to take the criticism of such a man as an estimate of literature? He is as perfect in his alphabet as Aristotle was in his. Aristotle could not teach this man anything about the alphabet that the man does not know already: the only thing is the man cannot read, cannot use his own alphabet, cannot employ his own tools.

III. I have seen a man have so much money that he had not enough. Let him stand before the tollkeeper of this turnpike; the charge for passing the tollgate is sixpence: can he pay the money? He cannot; hear him, for he hath a speech: ‘Allow me to pass, or give me change for this note, value one thousand pounds; it is all the money I have at command’. He might as well hand a piece of blank paper to the tollkeeper, it is blank paper to that functionary; it is so much as to be too little, it fails on the negative side, the plus quantity becomes a minus quantity. Life is full of these contradictions and ironies and perplexities; we had better get down to the solid rock of common sense and know that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, and get to know that he who has one little loaf of bread is better off in the time of hunger than the man who has ten thousand acres which have not yet brought forth their harvest.

IV. There is no satisfaction in the finite. Why does not man find satisfaction in the finite? Because he himself is not finite in the same sense, he is finite in another and better sense, but man stands next to God in the great catalogue of names ‘In the beginning God created man in His own image and likeness, in the image and likeness of God created He him’. The seen is meant to be an emblem of the unseen; the things we see are hints of the things we cannot yet discern; we are living in a region of beginnings; by the very greatness of our nature we claim to be immortal, by the very passion of our desires we know that no good power can have given us so much with the intention of finally disappointing us.

Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p. 30.

References. I. 14. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 339. C. D. Bell, The Name Above Every Name, p. 124.

Ecc 1:17

See Mozley’s Parochial and Occasional Sermons (number xii.).

References. I. 18. S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, pp. 230, 243. II. 1-3. J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor (1st Series), vol. x. p. 165. II. 2. H. Melville, Penny Pulpit, No. 2532.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

Ecc 1

Or, the words of the great Orator, or Convener one who calls an assembly together. This Preacher was the son of David a man, therefore, with a great hereditary claim to attention; probably there will be music in his speech and pathos; he may have succeeded to his father’s harp as well as to his father’s throne. It is not often in the Bible that we are challenged to hear the words of a great man, viewed from an earthly standpoint. We are called upon to listen to prophets without ancestry, and to apostles whose genealogy was of yesterday, and whose occupation was said to be more or less servile; but in this case we are summoned to hear the words of Coheleth, the son of David, a crowned and enthroned teacher of morals. He is represented as “king in Jerusalem” a man of the highest social position. We cannot but wonder what he will say, seeing that he has only seen the upper side of life, and can have known nothing of what the poor understand by want, homelessness, and all the degradation of penury and an outcast condition. Kings must of necessity talk the language of coloured sentiment. They may be excellent poets, but it is impossible, seeing they are ignorant of the tragedy of life, for them to speak healing words to wounded human hearts. Still, when kings speak subjects should eagerly listen. When a king has written a book it ought to be perused by subjects with the keenest interest. Anything that lessens the distance between monarchs and peoples should be welcomed as a contribution towards mutual understanding and sympathy. Perhaps the man will appear from under the king’s robe of velvet and gold. Kings should always be encouraged to utter themselves volubly and candidly to their people, because the utterance itself is a discipline, and in speaking aloud we learn the measure and quality of our own voice. It may be quite a sophistry to imagine that silence on the part of kings is likely to produce impartiality. It may foster ignorance, it may aggravate prejudice; it certainly escapes all the conditions which accrue from open and frank conversation with all classes and conditions of men. In this verse we seem to come upon great spoil, for a king says he will speak to us, and a crowned head calls us together, that he may tell the results of his experiments in life. “Because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs.” We not only have the proverbs, but the proverbist; it is no anonymous writer that asks us to pause on the road of life, but a king, grand in all kingliness, who asks us to sit down and listen to his tale of personal experience. The opportunity is a grand one, and should be seized with avidity by all earnest students.

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity” ( Ecc 1:2 ).

“Vanity,” a light wind, a puff, a breath that passes away instantly. This is the king’s judgment! Already he begins to show that he is a man. He built his palace, but its foundations were laid in the fickle wind, and the palace itself was but a tinted dream! It is something to know the quality of the elements with which we have to deal, and the nature of the things that are round about us. A knowledge of the universal helps towards a knowledge of the particular. The climate determines the building. As men grow in the knowledge of life’s tragedy, the one thing they seem to see most clearly is life’s emptiness. Time itself ceases to have volume or duration, and to be but a flying wind. “Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand-breadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.” This is the voice of another teacher not wanting in social dignity and large spiritual experience. “Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.” Thus the word “vanity” is not limited to Ecclesiastes: it is found in the Psalms, and it is found also in the Epistles, and in some of its largest meanings it is found under a great variety of expressions from end to end of the sacred books. Here we have a judgment in brief. We long to enter into some detail, if not of argument yet of illustration, especially as this is one of the short sentences which a man might utter in his haste, and speak hastefully rather than critically and experimentally. Certainly our appetite is whetted by the boldness of the verdict, so much so that we cannot but wonder by what process such a conclusion has been reached. Perhaps the Preacher has been operating upon one side of life only, and has not taken in field enough for observation and judgment. Certainly if his testimony ended here it would be open to rational contention. We must ask the Preacher, therefore, to go somewhat into detail, that we may see upon what premises he has constructed so large a conclusion.

“What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after” ( Ecc 1:3-11 ).

This is the Preacher’s view of life as it is commonly seen, We are not to understand that the Preacher is stating things as they really are; he is rather giving a view of life as it appears in passing. Some of it is, no doubt, real enough; but whether the whole of it does not admit of elevation, and of a better use, is not the immediate question. That inquiry will come afterwards. What is life as generally viewed? How does it strike a man whose view is shut in by the horizon? Coheleth will relate his experience, and we shall see how far it corresponds with our own. He says that life is unprofitable in the sense of being unsatisfying. It comes to nothing. The eye and the ear want more and more. The eye takes in the whole sky at once, and could take in another and another hour by hour, at least so it seems; and the ear is like an open highway, all voices pass, no music lingers so as to exclude the next appeal. In addition to all this, whatever we have in the hand melts. Gold and silver dissolve, and nought of our proud wealth remains. Much wants more, and more brings with it care and pain; so the wheel swings endlessly, always going to bring something next time, but never bringing it. “What hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?” “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?”

Coheleth says that there is no continuance in life: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.” You no sooner know a man than he dies. You make your election in the human crowd, saying, My heart shall rest here; and whilst the flush of joy is on your cheek, the loved one is caught away, like the dew of the morning. People enough, and more than enough, crowds, throngs, whole generations, passing on as shadows pass, until death is greater than life upon the earth. The dead man’s house is always ready, and yet the earth looks as if it had never opened to receive one of its sons. It swallows up a city, and no mound tells where it slid down into the secret chambers. Coheleth saw men passing on thus, nothing remaining but the earth, and the earth getting ghastlier, because of its graves and echoes. “What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?”

Coheleth says that even nature itself became monotonous through its always being the same thing in the same way, as if incapable of originality and enterprise. The wind was veering, veering, veering, spending itself in running round and round, but never getting beyond a small circuit; if it was not in the north it was in the south, or wherever it was it could be found in a moment, for it “whirleth about continually.” So with the rivers. They could make no impression upon the sea: they galloped, and surged, and foamed, being swollen by a thousand streams from the hills; and yet the sea swallowed them up in its thirst, and waited for them day by day, with room enough and to spare for all their waters. The eye, the ear, the sea, there was no possibility of satisfying, prodigals and spendthrifts! And the sun was only a repetition, rising and going down evermore. If you have seen him one day you have seen him always; you can take his measure, and you can reckon up his rate of travel. All this soon becomes weariness; for a time it pleases mightily, but at the end of seven years it is just where it began, and will be there at the end of seven centuries. Coheleth got tired of it, and he complained. In other than a poetical sense, the sun stands still, and the moon stays, until the monotony becomes oppressive.

Coheleth further says that there is no real variety in life “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” Man longs for variety, and cannot secure it. The same things are done over and over again. Changes are merely accidental, not organic. A new book is little more than a new binding. We have new combinations and new appliances, but no new element or really new life. The locomotive is new as a machine; still it only gets to London or to Rome a few hours sooner than the old vehicles. It is a poor originality, or we have become so accustomed to it already that we call it slow if it loses one mile in sixty. Even the telegraph has dropped from being a miracle into being a commonplace. All things are getting to be regarded as stale and slow. New colours are only new mixtures. New fashions are only old ones modified. In short, there is nothing new under the sun. “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.” New things are promised in the apocalyptic day: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth…. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.” It will be found in the long run that the only possible newness is in character, in the motive of life and its supreme purpose. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.”

In the twelfth verse Coheleth defines his position: “I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.” This is a great point in such a case. If a beggar offered us some opinion upon the vanity of life we should pay but little heed to his criticisms, because we might charge him with disappointment, envy, malice, chagrin, and pettiness of spirit. It is, as we have said, something to have had a king who could make experiments for us on the largest possible scale. He plunged into the water, tasted different wells, and plucked fruit from high branches as well as low, and he gives in his account of the whole.

“And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith” ( Ecc 1:13 ).

This verse shows us that: he was no mere prodigal, but a student determined and zealous, climbing the high hills of wisdom and laying his measuring-line on the wide breadth of understanding. He wanted to know all things, and ended by knowing nothing as it really is. He found out the doctrine of the Unknowable long before our philosophers supposed themselves to have discovered it, and taught it with a plainer directness. Along with the doctrine of the Unknowable came the kindred doctrine of the Impossible:

“That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered” ( Ecc 1:15 ).

What God left out man cannot put in. He may clumsily imitate it, but his imitation at its best is rude and nearly useless. Man makes hands of wax, eyes of glass, limbs of wood, ghastly travesties of nature, and better imitations of death than of life! God leaves out genius, and men stuff their memories with the chaff of information; God leaves out poetry, and men jingle together such words as Love and Dove, Health and Wealth, Far and Star, and sell the cracked rhyme for music; God leaves out memory, and men buy almanacs and diaries. On one side is written Unknowable, on the other is written Impossible; and man swings between the two, like a pendulum, always in procession and making one tick exactly like another. Then Coheleth rushed from wisdom to folly and made a friend of madness, thinking that the earth was bigger at night-time than in the daylight; but lo! he struck his head against great beams and lamed himself upon the sharp rocks, and found himself in the morning within an inch of unfathomable abysses! As for conquering by wisdom, he found that the end of one horizon was the beginning of another, and that when he had scaled the hills the stars were as far off as ever, laughing at his impotence and coldly telling him that there was “no thoroughfare.” And in his “much wisdom” he found “much grief,” and as he increased knowledge he increased sorrow! Poor soul indeed, much vexed and harassed, plagued by his own ambition, having aspiration enough to get away from the valley, yet carrying with him all up the hill the want, the pain, the fear, which dig graves everywhere and make the highest places low. Yet it is important to observe that with all this experience Coheleth never disputes the value of real wisdom, but always exhorts men to seek understanding and secure it. “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.”

So much for the case as thus far presented by Coheleth. If this is all, the best medicine for many men is suicide. If life is a case of veering, veering, of getting up only to fall down again, of eating, drinking, sleeping, and whirling round a routine course of so-called duty, of laughter without joy, and mourning without hope, the nearest way is the best, for it is simply leaping out of nothing into nothing, out of the nothing of noise and fret into the nothing of unconsciousness and annihilation. “This way out!” from your misery, your chagrin, and pain, and shame, this way, by rope, or steel, or river, or poisoned cup, this way into absorption and oblivion! The omissions of this statement, regarded as a survey and report of the constitution and process of things, are most remarkable. So far as it goes the case is well stated, but as a representation of the whole idea of life, it is simply deficient in every element of spiritual truth. It is the world seen through a dense mist; it is a world supposed to be complete in itself; in short, it is not a world as we understand it who read events in the Scriptural sense. For example, all the primary religious elements and conditions are wanting. In this rude world of Coheleth’s there is no God, no altar, no revelation, no outward and upward way. It is a world of information, fact, monotonous repetition, laughter, madness, folly, and self-terminating wisdom. This, in many respects, is the key of the book. The Preacher sought to satisfy the infinite with the finite, and that is what all non-religious men are endeavouring to do. To prove the emptiness of this world is not to prove that there is no other world, but is rather to suggest the existence of some larger sphere of life and experience. Here, again, we come upon the necessity of making the old distinction between geography and astronomy. A man may seek a long time in this world before he finds the explanation of the daylight which makes it glad. The fact is that the daylight is not in the earth, but is shed upon it from higher places. So it is with the great problem of human life; its answer is not in itself, it is a revelation from above. It is easy to denounce this world by proving its emptiness, and gathering together in one great host its pains and disappointments. All that side of the case is perfectly right, and can lead to but a sorrowful conclusion: the fact to be remembered is that that view leaves out every religious element and condition, which is equal to a man proving that the earth is a scene of darkness simply because he only visits it in the gloom of midnight. Not until what we understand by the Christian religion rises upon human life do its great revelations shine upon it with all the splendour of assured hope. Where primary religious ideas are wanting, all that is helpful in a life of discipline, and all that is beautiful in moral sympathy, must be wanting also. The man who describes himself in this text, though a king, is little better than a lawless and self-indulgent child. He wants to see the rivers filling up the sea, instead of eternally falling through a sieve; he wants new toys. He becomes tired of things, and cries for something better. His world has no perspective; his world has no outlook. He does not know that there is an altar-stair leading up through the darkness to other and fairer worlds. The idea of this being a school never strikes him. We are now keeping strictly within the limits of this report in so saying; what may strike him afterwards will in due time appear. Meanwhile our attention is fixed upon this survey only. He is king, he is master, he is everybody; and herein the royalty of his position was a drawback. Had he struggled his way up to the throne, as his ancestor did, he would have learned many a lesson on the rough way; but he was a great man’s son, and he never spoke but in the imperative mood. A brief verb, and simple in conjugation, was Coheleth’s; it had but one mood, stern and sullen, and it came back upon him at last as an echo that meant nothing. Whether he will become anything better as we study his book remains to be seen; in the meantime his world is small and poor. As we see the earth not by its own light, but by the light of the sun, so we are to see life not by the few sparks which may be emitted by social friction, but by the light of the world that is to come. We are to look at “things not seen,” to “endure as seeing the invisible,” to walk “in the power of an endless life.” Jacob saw the ladder rising to the sky; Stephen saw “heaven opened;” Paul said, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” As we cannot see the earth without the sun, so we cannot truly see time without eternity, or the Here without the Hereafter. We think we can, and that is our chief mistake, a mistake out of which every other comes. The wise man will say: “This is not all; there is something beyond these shadows; there is life not yet discovered; I will no longer be a light unto myself; I will say unto the Lord, ‘Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel.'” When this is the state of mind in which the student pursues his studies, the whole scene changes, the clouds are rich with stars, and the wind is full of music.

Observe our power to make this a very little world if we please. Shut out God, deny eternity, close the Holy Book, make death the full-stop of life, and the “great globe itself” darkens into a charnel-house, and the transient beauties which pass over its surface make its dreariness only drearier. “Vanity of vanities,” saith the Convener; “Place of service and dawn of heaven,” saith the Christian.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XXV

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES

“Ecclesiastes” is derived from the Septuagint version which translates the Hebrew word, Koheleth, “Ekklesiastes.” Koheleth means “master of assemblies,” or one who addresses an assembly; “Ekklesiastes” means the preacher. So this book was named from this characteristic of its author, viz: master of assemblies, or the preacher.

The book of Ecclesiastes was undoubtedly written by Solomon and the proof that Solomon wrote it is that all Jewish and Christian tradition says that Solomon was the author. This was first disputed in the time of Luther. Since that time some critics have claimed that someone wrote it much later and attributed it to Solomon for the effect. But Solomon wrote it, which is shown by the following considerations:

1. The book purports to be the product of Solomon.

2. History compared with the book itself proves it. 1Ki 3:12 ; 1Ki 4:29-34 speaks of Solomon’s wisdom. The author claims to have the wisdom he has spoken of (Ecc 1:16 ). 1Ki 4:20-28 and 1Ki 10:23-27 tell of Solomon’s riches. Compare Ecc 2:1-11 .

3. Whoever reads this book and the Song of Solomon can see clearly that the author of one of these books is the author of the other also.

4. There is no historical evidence of any Jew living in the time assigned by the radical critics that fills the place.

5. There is nothing in the style to contradict the authorship of Solomon.

The objections to the commonly accepted date and authorship urged by the radical critics are:

1. The tense of the verb in Ecc 1:12 is past and therefore could not refer to Solomon because he reigned in Jerusalem until his death. The reply to this objection is that it is in the past tense because he is now about to give his past experience during his long reign as king in Jerusalem.

2. In the same verse is a reference to Jerusalem which indicates a divided kingdom and therefore must be later than Solomon’s time. The reply to this is that Jerusalem is here specified, as opposed to David who reigned both in Hebron and Jerusalem. “King of Israel in Jerusalem” implies that he reigned over Israel and Judah combined; whereas David, at Hebron, reigned only over Judah and not until he was settled in Jerusalem, over both Israel and Judah.

3. The words used in the book belong to a later date than the time of Solomon. The reply to this is that the roots of these words have all been found in Genesis and other Hebrew writings before the time of Solomon.

4. The condition of the people was incompatible with the time of Solomon, the reply to which is, “Not so.”

5. The difference in the style in this book and Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. But the difference in subject matter justifies the difference in style. Also it must be remembered that Proverbs and the Song were written while Solomon was young, and this book when he was old and wearied with life (Ecc 2:17 ).

So Solomon wrote this book when he was an old man, from the viewpoint of experience, old age, and penitence; it is a formal discourse, or sermon, the text of which is “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (Ecc 1:2 ) and the object of it was to search out what good thing the sons of men should do all the days of their life (Ecc 2:3 ). The whole book is given to this one thought.

Some of the various ideas of the author of this book are as follows: Some say that he was an Epicurean; others that he was a dyspeptic; yet others, that he was a skeptic, a Stoic, or an atheist; but to the closer student the plan of the book becomes plain.

The book, as a philosophical treatise, contains a discussion of every perplexing question of today. This book fairly represents the struggles of every schoolboy who thinks. Its teaching is that in this life there is but one true philosophy and shows that we are living in a world which is under a curse. Compare Rom 8:20 ff.

There is one caution as to its interpretation, viz: Withhold your verdict till the evidence is all in, because in it all theories are tried and the conclusion explains these results. In connection with this book, the book of Job and Psa 73 should be studied. The author adopts wisdom as the means to try out all the theories of life.

A complete outline of the book is as follows:

The Title (Ecc 1:1 )

The Prologue (Ecc 1:2-11 )

(1) His text (Ecc 1:2 )

(2) His introductory interrogatory (Ecc 1:3 )

(3) The passing of the generations (Ecc 1:4 )

(4) The material world (Ecc 1:5-7 )

(5) The monotony of it all (Ecc 1:8 )

(6) There is nothing new (Ecc 1:9-10 )

(7) There is no remembrance (Ecc 1:11 )

I. The Pursuit of Wisdom (Ecc 1:12-18 )

II. The Pursuit of Pleasure (Ecc 2:1-3 )

III. The Pursuit of Great Works (Ecc 2:4-25 )

1. Great works enumerated (Ecc 2:4-11 )

2. A comparison between wisdom and folly, or pleasure (Ecc 2:12-17 )

3. He hated his labor because he had to die and leave it to another (Ecc 2:18-23 ) therefore conclusion No. I (Ecc 2:24 a) but the God thought knocks it over (Ecc 2:24 b; Ecc 2:25 f)

IV. Elements that limit (Ecc 3:1-5:9 ) 1. Divine elements:

(1) Law of opportunes (Ecc 3:1-8 )

(2) Eternity in our hearts (Ecc 3:9-11 a)

(3) Finiteness of man’s nature limits him (Ecc 3:11 b) then conclusion No. 2 (Ecc 3:12 ) but the God thought knocks it over (Ecc 3:13 )

(4) The laws of God are infrangible (Ecc 3:14 f)

2. Human elements:

(1) Iniquity in the place of justice (Ecc 3:16 ) but modified by a divine element (Ecc 3:17 ) and the divine purpose, since man dies like beasts (Ecc 3:18-21 ) therefore, conclusion No. 3 (Ecc 3:22 )

(2) Oppression of the poor (Ecc 4:1 ) therefore the dead or unborn are better off (Ecc 4:2-3 )

(3) Labor and skill actuated only by rivalry with his neighbor (Ecc 4:4 ) therefore the fool folds his hands (Ecc 4:5 f) and then two examples (Ecc 4:7-12 ; and Ecclesiastes:13-16)

(4) Elements of weakness in human worship (Ecc 5:1-7 )

(5) Some further observations (Ecc 5:8-9 ) V. Riches tried (Ecc 5:10-6:12 ) and found insufficient, because,

1. They cannot satisfy (Ecc 5:10 )

2. Consumers of wealth increase with wealth (Ecc 5:11 a)

3. The owner can only, look at it (Ecc 5:11 b)

4. He cannot sleep as a laborer (Ecc 5:12 )

5. Riches may hurt the owner (Ecc 5:13 )

6. They may perish in an unlucky venture (Ecc 5:14 a)

7. The owner begets a son when he is bankrupt (Ecc 5:14 b)

8. In any event, he is stripped of all at death (Ecc 5:15 )

9. He leads a worried life (Ecc 5:16 f) therefore, conclusion No. 4, (Ecc 5:18-20 )

10. The care of a rich man who could not enjoy it (Ecc 6:1-12 ) because,

(1) He cannot eat it (Ecc 6:1-6 )

(2) All his labor is for his mouth (Ecc 6:7-9 )

(3) The greatest is but a man and cannot contend against God (Ecc 6:10-12 )

VI. The golden mean tried (Ecc 7:1-8:15 ) 1. Value of a good name (Ecc 7:1 ) 2. House of mourning better than the house of feasting (Ecc 7:2-4 )

3. Listen to the reproof of the wise, rather than the laughter of fools (Ecc 7:5-7 )

4. Do not yield to anger (Ecc 7:8 f)

5. Do not talk of the good old days as better than these (Ecc 7:10 )

6. Consider the advantage of wisdom over wealth Ecclesiastes (7:11f)

7. Don’t try to straighten all the crooked things (Ecc 7:13 )

8. If prosperous, be content (Ecc 7:14 a)

9. In adversity remember it, too, comes from God (Ecc 7:14 b)

10. Since it sometimes happens that the righteous die while the wicked live, be not righteous over much, nor too wise, nor too wicked, nor too foolish; hold somewhat to both (Ecc 7:15-18 ) this golden mean plan is great because there is not a righteous man in the earth that sinneth not (Ecc 7:19 f)

11. Don’t try to find out all that people say about you (Ecc 7:21 f)

12. The result is unsatisfactory (Ecc 7:23-8:15 ) it fails because,

(1) Things are too deep for the human mind (Ecc 7:23-25 )

(2) Woman is more bitter than death (Ecc 7:26-28 )

(3) Man one of a thousand though fallen (Ecc 7:29 )

(4) When applied to public affairs that say,

(a) Do not rebel (Ecc 8:1-2 )

(b) Do not resent oppression (Ecc 8:3 f)

(c) Leave the case to God’s restitution (Ecc 8:5-7 )

(d) The evil ruler will die; there is no furlough in that war (Ecc 8:8 )

(5) There are rulers who rule over men to their hurt (Ecc 8:9 f).

(6) The mills of the gods grind too slow for the correction of this evil (Ecc 8:11-13 )

(7) Though ultimately it is well with the righteous and evil with the wicked, yet here and now we do see wicked men get the crown of the righteous and vice versa (Ecc 8:14 ) therefore, conclusion No. 5, (Ecc 8:15 )

VII. The means used to solve the problem condemned (Ecc 8:16-10:20Ecc 8:16-10:20Ecc 8:16-10:20 ) because,

1. It is too wearisome (Ecc 8:16 )

2. Finite wisdom cannot fathom it (Ecc 8:17-9:1 )

3. Death comes alike to all (Ecc 9:2-6 ) therefore, conclusion No. 6, (Ecc 9:7-10 )

4. The race is not to the swift (Ecc 9:11-12 ) illustrated (Ecc 9:13-15 )

5. One fool can destroy much good (Ecc 9:16-10:4 )

6. Passive resistance to the ruler tends to promote fools (Ecc 10:5-15 )

7. The king may be a child (Ecc 10:16-20 )

VIII. If the means of solution be discarded, what then? (Ecc 11:1-12:14Ecc 11:1-12:14Ecc 11:1-12:14 ) 1. Cast thy bread upon the waters (Ecc 11:1 )

2. Give a portion to all (Ecc 11:2 )

3. Don’t watch the wind and the cloud (Ecc 11:3-5 )

4. Work all seasons (Ecc 11:6-8 )

5. Let the young in their joys remember the judgment (Ecc 11:9-10 )

6. Remember God in youth (Ecc 12:1 )

7. Lest death itself come (Ecc 12:2-8 )

8. The real good thing to do (Ecc 12:9-13 )

9. Why? The judgment is before us (Ecc 12:14 )

QUESTIONS

1. What is the meaning of the title of the book of Ecclesiastes?

2. Who wrote the book?

3. What the proof is there that Solomon wrote it?

4. What are the objections to the commonly accepted date and authorship urged by the radical critics and what is the reply to each, seriatim?

5. When did Solomon write this book?

6. From what point of view?

7. What is the character of the book?

8. What was his text?

9. What was his object?

10. What are some of the various ideas of the author of this book?

11. What can you say of the book as a philosophical treatise?

12. What caution is there as to its interpretation?

13. What scriptures should be studied in connection with this book?

14. What means did the author adopt?

15. Give a complete outline of the book?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Ecc 1:1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Ver. 1. The words. ] Golden words, weighty, and worthy of all acceptation; grave and gracious apophthegms, or rather oracles, meet to be well remembered. Solomon’s sapiential sermon of the sovereign good, and how to attain to it; Solomon’s soliloquy, as some style it; others, his sacred retractations; others, his ethics, or tractate de summo bono, a of the chiefest good, compiled and composed with such a picked frame of words, with such pithy strength of sentences, with such a thick series of demonstrative arguments, that the sharp wit of all the philosophers, compared with this divine discourse, seems to be utterly cold, and of small account; their elaborate treatises of happiness to be learned dotages, and laborious loss of time. b How many different opinions there were among them concerning the chief good in Solomon’s days is uncertain. Various of them he confuteth in this book, and that from his own experience, the best school dame. c But Varro, the most learned of the Romans, reckoneth up two hundred and eighty in his time; and no wonder, considering man’s natural blindness, not unlike that of the Syrians at Dothan, or that of the Sodomites at Lot’s door. d What is an eye without the optic spirit but a dead member? and what is all human wisdom without divine illumination but wickedness of folly, yea, foolishness of madness? as our preacher, not without good cause, calleth it. “A spirit there is in man,” saith Elihu – viz., the light of reason; and thus far the animal man goes, and there he makes a halt; Ecc 7:15 he cannot transcend his orb – but “the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” Job 32:8 God had given Solomon wisdom above any man; Abulensis saith above Adam in his innocence, which I believe not. He was – as Macarius was called – a man at twelve years old. e His father, had taught him; Pro 4:3-4 his mother had lessoned him; Pro 31:1 the prophet Nathan had had the breeding of him. But besides, as he was Jedidiah, loved of God, so he was , taught of God. And being now, when he penned this penitential sermon, grown an old man, he had experimented all this that he here affirmeth; so that he might better begin his speech to his scholars than once Augustus Caesar did to his soldiers, Audite senem iuvenes, quem iuvenem senes audierunt, Young men, hearken to me, an old man, whom old men hearkened unto when I was yet but young. “Have not I written for you excellent things in counsel and knowledge?” Pro 22:20 Or, have I not written three books for thee – so some read those words – proverbial, penitential, nuptial? See the note there.

“Nescis temerarie, nescis

Quem fugias, ideoque fugis.” – Ovid. Metam.

Surely, “if thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that speaketh unto thee,” Joh 4:10 thou wouldst “incline thine ear and hear,” Isa 55:3 thou wouldst listen as for life itself. Knowest thou not that I am a preacher, a prince, son of David, king in Jerusalem, and so do come multis nominibus tibi commendatissimus, much commended to thee in many respects? But “need I, as some others, epistles of commendation” 2Co 3:1 to my readers, or letters of commendation from them? Is it not sufficient to know that this book of mine, both for matter and words, is the very work of the Holy Ghost speaking in me, and writing by me? f For “prophecy comes not by the will of man, but holy men of God speak it as they are moved by the Holy Ghost.” 2Pe 1:21 And albeit this be proof good enough of my true, though late, repentance, whereof some have doubted, some denied it. g Yet take another.

Of the Preacher. ] Or, Of a preaching soul (for the Hebrew word koheleth, is of the feminine gender, and hath nephesh, soul, understood), or of a person reunited and reconciled to the church, h and in token of reconciliation to God, readmitted by him to this office in his Church; like as Christ sealed up his love to Peter, after his shameful fall, by bidding him “feed his lambs”; and to the rest of the apostles that had basely forsaken him, by saying to them, after his resurrection, “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” Joh 20:21-22 See the like mercy showed to St Paul. 1Ti 1:12 Howbeit, some learned men here observe, that it is no new thing in the Hebrew tongue to put feminine names upon men, as Ezra is called Sophereth, descriptrix, a she scribe, in the very same form as Solomon is here called Koheleth, a preacheress; and the gospel preachers, Mebaseroth , Psa 68:11 Isa 52:7 either to set forth the excellence and elegance of the business, or else to teach ministers to keep themselves pure as virgins; whence they are also called Wisdom’s maids; Pro 9:3 and Christ’s paranymphs; Joh 3:29 to “present the church as a chaste virgin to Christ.” 2Co 11:2

The son of David. ] So Christ also is said to be, Mat 1:1 as if David had been his immediate father. “The glory of children are their fathers,” Pro 17:6 to wit, if they be godly and pious. The Jews made great boasts that they were “the seed of Abraham”; Mat 3:9 Joh 8:33 and that wretch, Elymas the sorcerer, had surnamed himself Barjesus, Act 13:6 or the son of Jesus, as if he had been of nearest alliance to our Saviour, of whom “the whole family of heaven and earth is named.” Eph 3:15 What an honour is it now accounted to be of the posterity of Latimer, Bradford, Ridley, &c.! How much more of David, that man of renown, the father of our princely Preacher, who himself took also not scorn to teach and do the office of a preacher, Psa 32:9 ; Psa 34:11 though he were the governor of God’s people, Psa 78:71 and head of many heathen! Psa 18:43 The like may be said of Joseph of Arimathea, who of a counsellor of state became a Preacher of the gospel. So did Chrysostom, a noble Antiochian; Ambrose, lieutenant and consul of Milan; George, prince of Anhalt; Earl Martinengus; John a Lasco, a noble Polonian; and various others of like quality and condition. The Psalmist Psa 138:4-5 ; Psa 119:72 shows by prophesying, that they that have tasted the joys of a crown shall leave the throne and palace to sing with the saints, and to publish the excelling glory of God and godliness.

King in Jerusalem. ] And of Jerusalem. The Pope will allow the Duke of Milan to be king in Tuscany, but not King of Tuscany: i Solomon was both Pro 1:1 See Trapp on “ Pro 1:1 “ Hither came the Queen of Sheba from the utmost parts of the earth to hear him: here he wrote his excellent book, these “words of delight,” which he had learned from that one Shepherd, the Lord Christ, Ecc 12:10-11 and hath left them faithfully set down for the use of the Church; so honouring learning with his own labours, – as Sylverius said of Caesar. Here, lastly, it was that he sovereigned over God’s own peculiar, the people of his purchase, Israel, God’s firstborn, and in that respect “higher than the kings of the earth.” Psa 89:27 So that if Maximilian, the Emperor of Germany, could say, Rex hominum Hispanus, asinorum Gallus, regum ego j the Spaniard is king of men, the French is king of asses, and I am King of kings; how much better might Solomon have said so!

a Serranus.

b T . – Arist.

c Experientia optima magistra.

d Aug., De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii.

e Niceph.

f Regis epistolis acceptis, quo calamo scriptae sint, ridiculum est quaerere. – Greg.

g Bellarminus Solomonem inter reprobos numerat.

h Anima congregata, et cum ecclesia se colligens. – Cartwright.

i Spec. Europ.

j Joh. Manlius.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Ecclesiastes Chapter 1

Ecc 1:1-11 .

“The words of the Preacher (or Convener), son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; the whole [is] vanity. What profit hath man in all his toil wherewith he toileth under the sun?”

“Generation cometh and generation goeth, and the earth for ever abideth. And riseth the sun and setteth the sum, and to its place hasteth (lit. panteth) where it riseth. Going toward the south and turning round toward the north, turning continually goeth the wind, and in its turnings returneth the wind. All the rivers go to the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again. All things [are] fatiguing; one cannot express [them]: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. What hath been [is] what will be, and what hath been done, what will be done; and there is not all new under the sun. Is there a thing whereof one saith, See, this is new? It belonged to the ages that were before us. [There is] no remembrance of former things, nor shall there be remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall be after them” (vers. 1-11).

The introduction lays the thesis clearly before us; and this by a man not inspired only but suited personally to impress the homily beyond all that ever lived. Hence the importance of its emanating from king Solomon, and of the reader knowing on the highest authority that the words were his, and none other’s. Impossible to convey this more simply and affectingly than by the way the Holy Spirit has chosen to effect it. Such a communication, strange at first sight, solemn increasingly on reflection, tells from God its own tale; which man has been always slow to learn, ready to believe that his life consists in the abundance of the things he possesses. It is not guilt, as in Psa 32 , Psa 51 , which is here discussed, but the unhappiness of man whose heart rises not above the creature. The amplest means, the highest capacity, the most exalted rank the most active mind, the most cultivated taste, yea, and wisdom above all men, only give intensity to the dissatisfaction and the misery; and Solomon was the man both to experience it in his departure from God and to give us the profit of it, when grace gave him to review and communicate it all for everlasting admonition. It is the fruit of the fall and of sin: what else could it be? “Vanity of vanities,” and not here and there only but “the whole is vanity” or evanescence, including most of all man without God; not the faith that looks above the sun to the resources of grace and in the fear that keeps His commandments. Our own idiom, “taking pains,” answers in its measure to the toil of man “under the sun,” profitless for happiness (ver. 3). “The shadow” earnestly desired by the hireling, how unsubstantial! Job 7 . On the other hand, “he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever; and this is the more apparent when “the world passeth away and the lust thereof.” “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride (or vain glory) of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.” So clear and trenchant a revelation as this, however, awaited another day, when the Son of God was come and has given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true. Real repentance is but pessimism in unbelieving eyes.

The thesis is followed by four illustrations from the natural sphere (vers. 4-7), and by as many from the moral (vers. 8-11).

There is all the difference between the inanimate earth, and what has life upon the earth or in it. But what a gap between a sentient creature and that which but vegetates! still more between what has but a soul of life natural, and the human body into which Jehovah Elohim breathed the breath of life, and man, only man thereby, became a living soul; or, as this very book expresses it, “the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downwards” (Ecc 3:21 ). Yet “generation goeth, and generation cometh, and the earth for ever abideth.” What is there here to meet the void of man’s heart?

Let him look up then at the sun, that brightest orb of a man’s vision, which above all to his senses sheds light and heat; without which what would be the earth, and all its denizens, and most of all man? What of profit, or happiness, does he thence derive, as he looks from under it? “And the sun riseth, and setteth the sun, and hasteth to its place where it riseth.” Is this the spring of happiness that his spirit pines after? Orderly and unfailing movement is apparent in connection with the earth; but does this affect man’s sense of evanescence in all his being and environment save to aggravate it?

Well, but the wind, which is the same Hebrew word as that which expresses the highest part of sentient and even intelligent nature, the wind whose movements are in the strongest contrast with mundane motion, is there any relief to be found for his tired spirit there? “Going toward the south and turning round toward the north, turning continually goeth the wind, and in its turnings returneth the wind.” Nought is there here to console his anxious spirit.

There remain the rivers or mountain streams: can they refresh a mind diseased? “All the rivers go to the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whither rivers go, thither they go again.” Admirably for the earth and its atmosphere and every living creature; but not a drop of comfort. for him that was made in God’s image after His likeness; now that all creation is ruined and wretched through sin, all subjected to vanity, the whole of it groaning and travailing in pain together till now; and man its chief most of all feeling and lamenting, unless he renounce God and Satan sear him, and he be given up to the fatal dream of perfectibility through education and science and all the other devices of his unbroken will.

But these devices are just what the next four verses cover and expose in their futility to supply the needed value.

“All matters are fatiguing; one cannot express [them]: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing.” Here the Preacher turns to all the things of nearer experience and direct human interest, and declares that all the things or words, fatigue (or as some think, feebleness), are beyond one’s expression: not only so, but even for the senses of largest range and the easiest to please, the eye is not satisfied, nor the ear filled. The result is weariness and disappointment, not happiness. What a difference where one beholds the Son and believes on Him! For He is the Bread of life, and the believer feeding on Him hungers not nor ever thirsts more; and no wonder, seeing that the water He gives becomes in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. Fallen man becomes increasingly wretched, unless when under deadly opiates which end in the deeper misery of reaction.

Then is there not the enjoyment of novelty? “What hath been is what will be, and what hath been done, what will be done, and there is not all new under the sun.” Granting this is the moral province, seen especially in what has been done; but is there not a matter of which it may be said, See, this is new? Even this hath been in, or belonged to, the ages that were before us.

But is there no pleasure thence, from the last infirmity of noble minds, as men say? “No remembrance of former things [is there], nor will be remembrance of those to come with persons that will be afterwards.” Such is experience under the sun.

Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Ecc 1:1-2

1The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

Ecc 1:1 the Preacher There is no Definite Article here, although it does appear in Ecc 7:27; Ecc 12:8. This is a function more than a title. The best translation would be professor or teacher (BDB 875). See Introduction, Name of the Book, C and Authorship, F.

the son of David This verse and Ecc 1:12 imply that this is speaking of Solomon, but other references throughout the book do not fit Solomon. I believe that an unknown wisdom teacher(s) used Solomon’s wisdom, wealth, power, and position as a literary foil to critique life. See Introduction, Authorship, C.

Ecc 1:2 vanity of vanities This is a Hebrew superlative (cf. Ecc 1:2; Ecc 12:8). The word means vapor, breath, or mist (BDB 210 I, cf. Jas 4:14). Its emphasis is either (1) nothingness or (2) the transitoriness of human life. The context supports the latter (cf. H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 41).

This is a key term and recurrent phrase in this book (cf. Ecc 1:2; Ecc 1:14; Ecc 2:1; Ecc 2:11; Ecc 2:15; Ecc 2:17; Ecc 2:19; Ecc 2:21; Ecc 2:23; Ecc 2:26; Ecc 3:19; Ecc 4:4; Ecc 4:7-8; Ecc 4:16; Ecc 5:7; Ecc 5:10; Ecc 6:2; Ecc 6:4; Ecc 6:9; Ecc 6:11-12; Ecc 7:6; Ecc 7:15; Ecc 8:10; Ecc 8:14; Ecc 9:9; Ecc 11:8; Ecc 11:10; Ecc 12:8). The term is used sparingly in other wisdom books; Job , 5 times; Psalms , 9 times; and Proverbs , 3 times.

For different theories about how it views the strong statements in this book, see Introduction, Authorship, H. I prefer option #1. This theological presupposition will be the grid through which I interpret the book.

all is vanity Notice the root, vanity (BDB 210 I), is used five times in this one verse! The Handbook on Ecclesiastes by UBS, says the term should be understood as

1. incomprehensible

2. enigmatic

3. mysterious

4. impossible to understand

Therefore, it communicates the reality that life is full of unanswerable questions (p. 4). The person knowledgeable in wisdom will know this, but will continue to trust God and keep His commandments.

This refers to the uncertain and unpredictable activities of life. These are a result of fallen humanity trying to live life in his own strength, independent from God. This is the condition left by the Fall (cf. Genesis 3)!

The Hebrew term all (BDB 481), often translated everything, is a common word, but is used unusually often in Ecclesiastes (cf. Ecclesiastes 9 times in chapter 1; 17 times in chapter 2; 13 times in chapter 3, etc.). Qoheleth uses this inclusive language to express his theological emphasis on

1. God’s control and sovereignty

2. human ineffectiveness and transitoriness

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

The words. Rashi says that, when this expression occurs at the beginning of a book, it shows that the book is meant for reproof, and he gives evidence from Deu 1:1 (Compare Ecc 32:15). Amo 1:1 (Compare Ecc 4:1). Jer 1:1 (Compare Ecc 30:6). David, 2Sa 23:1 (Compare Ecc 1:6).

the Preacher. This comes from Luther’s version “Prediger”; but “Koheleth” does not include the idea of preaching. Some of its teaching is individual (Ecc 3:17); and succeeding appeals are in the second person.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Book of Ecclesiastes begins,

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem ( Ecc 1:1 ).

So that identifies the author as Solomon. The Hebrew word that is translated preacher is a word that can mean one of the assembly or a debater. And it is determined that the translation preacher is not necessarily a good translation of this Hebrew qoheleth, that it might be better translated the debater. “The words of the Debater, the son of David, the king of Jerusalem.” He refers to this, and in Ecclesiastes is the only time this Hebrew word is used, and it is in the feminine form. And it is used seven times here as Solomon is referring to himself. And really a debater or one who is searching, the searcher. The son of David, the king of Jerusalem. And the book of Ecclesiastes is indeed a search.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Searcher [or the Debater], vanity of vanities; all is vanity ( Ecc 1:2 ).

Now he starts out with the conclusion of his search. After searching through everything, this is his conclusion of life. Now it is important that we note that the book of Ecclesiastes is a book that deals with the natural man searching for meaning in life. The word Jehovah is not used in this book. He does refer to God, the Elohim. But not unto Jehovah God in the personal sense that a person can know God. But God as a worldly man speaks of God, just a force, a power, a title–the Elohim.

Those who truly know God in a personal way know God as Yahweh or as Jesus Christ. But this is that worldly, impersonal concept of God. As he is searching for the meaning of life, he searches through all kinds of natural experiences. But there is throughout the book the denial of the spiritual. It is putting man on the level of animals. It is looking at man as an animal. And it is trying to find the reason or the purpose for life on the animal plane and it must follow that life on the animal plane is totally empty. It is totally frustrating. Looking at life on the animal plane sees man as an animal possessing a consciousness and a body, but the spirit is not related to God. So man as an animal is aware and conscious of his body needs. And he is living to seek to satisfy his body needs. And a person who lives on the body level seeking to only satisfy his body needs, denying the spiritual aspect of his nature, is going to end up ultimately with this feeling of emptiness and frustration.

The word vanity literally means that which vanishes. It’s nothing. You go to get it and it vanishes. It’s not there. It’s an emptiness. The vexation of spirit is that frustration of the spirit. Now, man is a three-fold being, and one of the problems of our whole educational system today is the denial of the spiritual nature of man. Our whole humanistic evolutional, our whole humanistic educational system embracing the Evolutionary theory sees man as a highly-developed form of animal existence. So it sees man as a highly-developed animal living in a body, possessing a consciousness. And the denial of the spirit is the basic flaw in the educational system. For unless you see man as a three-fold being, unless you see man with his spiritual nature, then you are going to only have life on the human level, a life that is filled with emptiness and frustration.

So we have today men who make excellent livelihoods trying to help people deal with their frustrations. Because people feel that life is worthless. Life is not worthwhile. Life is empty. Life is meaningless. And they just feel despairing and discouraged and despondent. They go to someone who just talks to them about life. And they pay money to try to understand why it is that I feel like life is just not worth living and all, you know. Well, that’s because you haven’t come into the third dimension of life–life on the spiritual plane. There is where life takes meaning. It all comes back to the three-fold nature of man.

Living in a body I have certain body needs. God created the body. Marvelous instrument. Fantastically designed. With my little hypothalamus and my pituitary, the various glands that are excreting the different chemicals into my system that give me my different feelings, numbing my pains or telling me that I’m thirsty as it is monitoring my blood system. Telling me that I need oxygen and all of these functions that are going on in the body. Keeping the balance, the homeostasis. For the body balance is important. Important that I have enough sugar. It’s important that I have enough oxygen. It’s important that I have all of these things within the body, so this body balance. My body drives. My air drive. My thirst drive. My hunger drive. My bowel and bladder drive. My sex drive. All of these have been created by God, a part of the body in which I live.

But I also have a consciousness. And in the area of my consciousness, there are also needs, drives. I have a need for security. I have a need for love. I have a need to be needed. These sociological drives. Now that’s about as far as your psychologist and sociologist take you. But what they are denying in the denial of the spiritual nature of man, they’re denying the fact that there is deep down inside of me, in my spirit, in this part of my nature, a drive that also exists and this drive in my spirit is for God. “My spirit thirsts after Thee, O God,” David said. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God” ( Psa 42:1 ).

There is within man that desire to know God. That desire to have fellowship with God. There is within man a vacuum that only God can fill. And if you deny the spiritual nature of man, then man can never be satisfied because this deep-down spiritual thirst will always be haunting him, telling him there’s something more. There’s something more. There’s something more. And I feel this dissatisfaction with life. I have a thirst that I can’t define. I know it’s there. I know that life hasn’t yet brought me fulfillment. I know there’s got to be more than to life than what I’ve yet experienced. And I have this frustration and this is what Solomon went through. That’s what he is describing. “Emptiness, emptiness, all is empty and frustrating.” He’s talking and the phrase is used some nine times, “Life under the sun, it is a frustrating existence.”

Now according to the psychologist, frustration leads to inferiority complex, which is the rationale by which I explain to myself why I still feel unfulfilled and empty. Why is it that I’m not satisfied? Why is it that I’m not been able to achieve and attain that which I feel? There must be. And I say, “Well, if I only had a better education, then. If I only had more money. If I only were better looking. If I only had hair.” And I am explaining to myself why I haven’t been able to achieve this some intangible something that I know must be there in life, that somehow it’s passing me by and I can’t quite grasp. And so I feel this emptiness because I can’t quite get hold of it. And I am explaining to myself in the inferiority complex the shortcoming that causes me not to be able to grasp that which I know must be there.

Now, this in turn leads to escapes. I feel the emptiness. I feel this dissatisfaction. I feel that there must be more to life than what I’ve yet experienced. I can’t seem to find it, and so I’m going to escape. And I can escape overtly or invertly. In the inverted escapes I escape within myself. I start building walls around myself. I get to where I don’t want to open up to people. I start closing off myself from people. I don’t want them to know the truth about me that I know about myself. So I make this facade and I project this image and they see this out here but they don’t know the real me. I’m not going to let them get through to know the real me. And more and more I get within myself. More and more I begin to disassociate myself from people. In its final form, it’s manifested as a hermit, a man who just goes out and lives in the desert by himself so he doesn’t have to see people, talk to people. Nothing to do with people. That’s the extreme form of escapism in the inverted way.

Or if I go to overt escape mechanisms, I may go to compulsive eating behavior patterns. Start eating all the time and escaping. Or I might become a compulsive gambler. Or I might turn to drinking. Or I might turn to drugs. Or I might look to a variety of sex experiences. All escaping. Or Nomadism, start moving from job to job or from place to place. “Oh, if I were just in San Francisco, that’s where I’d be happy. Oh, if I just lived in Hawaii.” It’s interesting, more suicides in Hawaii than almost any place else, because you get over there and where can you go? You know, this is it. This is paradise. This is heaven on earth. But the problem is, you had to take yourself. And the same emptinesses that you feel here you’ll feel there. And you find out that Hawaii didn’t do it. It didn’t satisfy. It didn’t meet that deep cry that is within you. If it’s not here, it’s nowhere. Emptiness. Emptiness.

Now when a person gets into these escape patterns, it develops a guilt complex, because I know I shouldn’t be eating like this. Why do I eat like this? I hate myself looking so fat. Why do I eat these chocolates? You know, I can’t stop. But yet, I’m escaping and I get guilty. I start feeling guilty over the things that I’m doing. I know it’s not right. I know it’s not helping. I know it’s destroying me. I know it’s destroying my family or my relationships, but I can’t seem to quit. It has a hold on me. And so I’m feeling guilty. And the guilt complex then leads to a subconscious desire for punishment. It goes inward then and underground. And I can’t follow it at this point from the conscious level, but subconsciously I get a desire for punishment and I start a neurotic behavior pattern that will bring punishment to me.

And neurotic behavior patterns usually stem from a subconscious desire for punishment. I’m feeling guilty over what I’ve been doing. I want someone to punish me so that I can feel like I’m not guilty anymore. Now, when you were a child, your parents took care of your neurotic behavior patterns. And they took you in and spanked you, the healthiest thing in the world for you psychologically, because it made you feel free of your guilt. I’ve been punished. There’s something about the guilt that I desire punishment in order that I might be freed from that feeling of guilt. Once I’ve been punished, then I feel, “Oh, I’m innocent now.” I’m free from the guilt feelings because I’ve been punished. I’m free to go back to my frustration and start the cycle over again. To my inferiority complex. To my escape. To my guilt. To my punishment. To my frustration. And so life moves in a cycle, and Solomon will point out here in a little bit the cycles.

As we get in the first part of the chapter here, they’re just… life seems to move in cycles, and this, according to psychologists, is the cycle of life. And you think, “My God, is this all there is? Stop this crazy merry-go-round. I want off. I’m tired of it.” And that’s what Solomon came to. “Vanity, vanity; all is vanity.” And frustrating. And it all comes from the denial of the spiritual nature of man. It is living life on the human plane apart from God. For the gospel of Jesus Christ comes into this cycle. And the gospel of Jesus Christ comes to me. Now, when I’m in the neurotic behavior pattern it is so often that people say, “Hey, man, you better go see a shrink. You’re crazy. You’re doing nutty things. You better get some help.”

And so I go to a head shrink and he sits me on the couch and he gives me a series of tests and he seeks to determine what I’m feeling guilty about. And then he starts to talk to me. “Now, when you were a little boy, did your mother tell you that you shouldn’t tell lies? And did she teach you that it was wrong to cheat? Well, you see, these are a part of the old Puritan ethic. They’re part of the old Victorian system and everything is really relative. You’ve got to face the fact that there are certain situations in which it is perfectly proper to tell a lie. You shouldn’t feel guilty about this, you see.” And he tries to remove your guilt by telling you that it’s not wrong. It’s not guilty. Everybody’s doing it so you’ve just got to join the crowd and realize that the part of that old Puritan ethic by which you were trained is the thing that’s your hang-up today.

But Jesus Christ comes to me and says, “Hey man, you are guilty. That’s bad news. That’s wrong. But I love you. And I took your guilt and bore your guilt when I died on the cross. I took all of your sins, all of your guilt, and I paid the penalty for it. Now, if you’ll just believe in Me and trust in Me, I’ll forgive you.” Hey, that’s something no psychologist can do, is totally erase that guilt feeling. Take away this haunting feeling of guilt. But Jesus Christ and the gospel does. It’s the greatest thing in the world for removing the guilt complex. If that’s all the gospel did, it would be fantastic. But it does much more than that.

It comes back to the very beginning. Frustration, where it all started. And we hear Jesus on the last day of the great day of the feast as He is standing there on the Temple Mount crying to the crowds, “If any man thirsts, let him come unto Me, and drink. For he who drinks of the water that I give, out of his innermost being there will flow rivers of living water. And John said, ‘This spake He of the Spirit'” ( Joh 7:37-39 ). That third dimension of man that man in his educational processes today is seeking to deny, and by his denial has created all of this confusion in our society today.

All of the frustration that people experience results from the denial of the Spirit. And Jesus is saying, “You have a thirst for God in your spirit. Come to Me, come to Me and drink.” And so this frustration where the whole thing started, Jesus comes to me and not only does He fill my life, does He fill that spiritual void, but He keeps pouring in until it begins to pour out from me. And my life is no longer just a sponge, thirsty, seeking to grasp for the draw, but my life now begins to flow out with that love and that grace of God’s goodness that He has bestowed upon me. And now as David said, “My cup runneth over” ( Psa 23:5 ). My life is an overflowing cup. No longer going around with this cry and thirst and frustration within, but now the fulfillment and the fullness of God within my life as my life overflows God’s goodness and grace.

So you look at life on just the human level as Solomon is looking at it, you look at man like an animal as Solomon does, you deny the spiritual dimension of man, that which places him apart from animals and above the animal kingdom, and you’re opening Pandora’s box to all kinds of psychological ills. You’re opening to a life that can never be filled, a life of vanity and vexation of spirit. And so we are looking now through the eyes of Solomon at the world under the sun, apart from God. Man on the animal plane. And man at the highest on the animal plane is hopeless. It is not until you interject the spiritual plane and bring man into the divine plane that man can have any hope for a fulfilling, enriching, complete life.

So, verse Ecc 1:3 :

What profit hath a man ( Ecc 1:3 )

And I promise we won’t take so much time on the rest of the verses.

What profit hath a man in all of the labor which he taketh under the sun? ( Ecc 1:3 )

Looking at a man and all of the things he’s doing, all of the pursuits, all of the labor, what profit is there? And now he turns into the cycles of life. It seems that life just moves in cycles, monotonous cycles. You can’t escape it. You’re in the cycle and someday you’re just going to pass out of the cycle.

One generation passes away, another generation comes: but the earth abides for ever. The sun rises, the sun goes down, and it comes back around to the place where it rose from. The wind goes toward the south, turns about, comes to the north; it whirls about continually, the wind returns again in its circuits. All of the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labor; man cannot [understand it or] utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: there is no new thing under the sun ( Ecc 1:4-9 ).

Life just moves in cycles. History repeats itself and the cycles of life go on. The cycle of one generation following another. The sun or the earth actually in its orbit and spinning on its axis, and its relationship to the sun. The wind, the rivers, life just moves in monotonous cycles.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, Look, this is new? Hey, it’s already been from old time, which was before us ( Ecc 1:10 ).

There’s nothing really more discouraging than to think that you’ve got some new inspiration and revelation from God. “Oh, this is great. No one’s ever seen this before. Oh, what an understanding.” And then you pick up some old commentary written by one of the saints back in 1849 and he says the same thing that you just discovered. There’s nothing new. Life moves in cycles.

There is no remembrance of the former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of the things that shall come with those that shall come after ( Ecc 1:11 ).

Life just moves in cycles.

Now I the Preacher [the Debater] was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek out and to search out by wisdom concerning all of the things that were done under heaven: and this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. And I have seen all the works that are done under the sun ( Ecc 1:12-14 );

That’s one of your key phrases now. Life on the human plane, not on the divine, on the human plane under the sun.

and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered ( Ecc 1:14-15 ).

Now, this is life on the human plane. If it’s crooked, if a man’s life is crooked, it can’t be made straight. It is interesting that the Greek philosophers concluded that redemption of man was impossible. That once a man had gone wrong, gone bad, that there was no way of changing him. That which is crooked cannot be made straight.

It is also very interesting to read of Jesus Christ in Luke’s gospel, chapter 3, as He is proclaiming the new kingdom, or actually it is the words of the prophet proclaiming the things of the kingdom as Simeon or as John the Baptist was declaring concerning the ministry of Jesus that was to come, he said, “Every valley shall be filled, every mountain and every hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough made smooth.” The redemption through Jesus Christ, Luk 3:5 . But on the human level, no. On the divine level, you bet.

I communed with my own heart ( Ecc 1:16 ),

I wasn’t communing with God. I wasn’t seeking God. I was communing with my own heart. I was using now and exercising now earthly wisdom. He was in TM.

saying, Lo, I am come to a great estate, I have gotten more wisdom than all of they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yes, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is [frustrating or] vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow ( Ecc 1:16-18 ).

Now, it is very interesting to me today as we study the evolutionary processes of the philosophical systems of man, a history of philosophy is an interesting course to take, because as you follow the history of philosophy and see the development of the philosophical thought, we come finally to this present state of the philosophical thought expressed in existentialism. That there is no universal base of good or evil. Every man must experience truth for himself, but there is no universal truth. The philosophers have concluded with all of their study that in reality is only despair. And reality will lead you to despair. Thus, the philosophers, being brought to despair by their philosophy, declare that it is necessary for each man to take his own leap of faith into unreality in order to escape the despair that only exists in reality.

So you have to take a leap of faith hoping to have some kind of an experience that there is no way of rationalizing or explaining. That’s why TM is so popular today. It’s the leap of faith into a non-reasoned religious experience. That’s why your eastern religions are so popular today and gaining popularity, because they are a leap of faith into non-reason religious experience which philosophy has taught us is necessary because with much knowledge is much sorrow. They’ve come to the same conclusion that Solomon came to years ago. Years ago before the whole history of philosophy ever began, Solomon had gone through the whole system of thought that has brought philosophy through its whole history to this final conclusion that Solomon reached thousands, three thousand years ago: that in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Now as kids we used to understand a certain aspect of the futility of education. We used to write in our textbooks, “The more you study, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So what’s the use of studying?” But Solomon said, “Hey, with much understanding, increasing your knowledge is only going to increase your sorrow.”

“

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Ecc 1:1-11

Ecc 1:1-11

“The words of the Preacher the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath man in all his labor wherein he laboreth under the sun? One generation goeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to its place where it ariseth. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it turneth about continually in its course, and the wind returneth again to its circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place whither the rivers go, thither they go again. All things are full of weariness; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is the thing that shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there a thing, whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been done long ago, in the ages which were before us. There is no remembrance of the former generations; neither shall there be any remembrance of the latter generations that are to come, among those that shall come after.”

“Words of the Preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem” (Ecc 1:1). These words identify Solomon as the author of Ecclesiastes. This verse is supplemented by Ecc 1:12 in the words, “over Israel,” a word which includes all of the Chosen People; and this limits the identification to Solomon, because he is the only “son of David” that ever ruled over the entire Israel in Jerusalem. If anything else had been intended as the meaning here, the words would have read, “Over Judah in Jerusalem.” Many scholars, of course, deny that Solomon is the author here; but in the light of the obvious fact that not any of such `scholars’ even pretends to know who did write it, it is clear that none of them has any significant contribution to add to what is written here. We take it for what it says.

“Vanity of vanities … all is vanity” (Ecc 1:2). This is the theme of Ecclesiastes. Is it the truth? Certainly! Especially, if it is construed as an accurate and tragic evaluation of all human life as perpetually circumscribed and condemned under the Divine sentence that fell upon humanity following the debacle in Eden. Is there any future for humanity? Apart from the redemption in Christ Jesus, our race has no future whatever. Augustine referred to Ecclesiastes as, “Setting forth the vanity of this life, only that we may desire that life wherein, instead of vanity beneath the sun, there is truth (and eternal joy) under Him who made the sun”!

“What profit hath a man of all his labor … under the sun” (Ecc 1:3). As should have been expected of a man like Solomon, he was thinking only in terms of temporal, earthly, and materialistic `profit.’ He who was “Greater than Solomon” asked a much more important question, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul” (Mat 16:26, KJV)? There is a true evaluation here of the tragedy of all human life.

“One generation goeth … another cometh … the earth abideth forever” (Ecc 1:4). Solomon was wrong about the permanence of the earth. “No one must think of the earth as something permanent. That is the same foolish error of today’s frenzied “Environmentalists.” Heb 12:26-27,2Pe 3:8-10 stress the ultimate `removal’ of the earth itself. It is primarily this earth-centered concern of Solomon which the Book of Ecclesiastes is designed to correct.

“The sun … the wind … the rivers” (Ecc 1:4-7). The argument here is somewhat humorous. The sun just goes round and around and never goes anywhere; the wind can’t make up its mind; it blows one way today, and the opposite way tomorrow; and the rivers work at it all the time but never fill up the ocean. This, of course, is also exactly what is happening with the generations of men. In pitiful and endless succession, they rise and fade away. In view of the magnificent conclusion of Ecclesiastes in Ecc 12:13-14, we accept the extreme pessimism of these verses as the false viewpoint which Ecclesiastes was designed to refute. “What we have here is a glance at life within the mundane limits which are the same for all men.

“The eye is not satisfied with seeing” (Ecc 1:8). This is exactly the same as Solomon’s proverb (Pro 27:20). See our comment there.

“There is no new thing under the sun” (Ecc 1:9). This is the equivalent of the modern truism that history repeats itself. The reference here is not to such things as discoveries and inventions. The prophet Daniel foretold that, “knowledge would be increased,” in the time of the end (Dan 12:4). Despite this, the verse here is profoundly true. Emotionally, man is exactly the same as he always has been. The sins of America today are exactly the sins of ancient Babylon. Man rationalizes his sinful behavior and yields to seductive temptations in exactly the same patterns as always. In this sector, there is indeed “nothing new under the sun.” Man’s basic spiritual need is the same as that of Adam and Eve after they were cast out of the Garden of Eden.

Ecc 1:11 may be translated differently, as in the RSV. “There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after.”

One of the mysteries of Ecclesiastes regards the terrible pessimism that marks many of the isolated statements. Are these the actual belief of the writer, or is he merely presenting what he regards as a false view which he will forcefully deny and correct in his conclusion? To this writer, the second explanation is the proper one.

Regarding the negative declaration here that there is no profit whatever in this life, regardless of the concerns and labors of any person whomsoever, “Such pessimism is unacceptable to Christians who hold that Christ constitutes the meaning of all human history and who hold that labor done in His service is not meaningless.” Indeed, even he who gives so small a thing as a cup of cold water in the service of Jesus Christ, “Shall in no wise lose his reward” (Mat 10:42).

However, the author of Ecclesiastes was writing without any knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ; and, in that context, the picture given here of the pitiful uselessness and futility of human life on earth is profoundly and tragically accurate. To every non-Christian who might see these lines, read here the summary of your life as it will inevitably develop apart from service of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ecc 1:1 This verse identifies the author of Ecclesiastes as the Preacher, and son of David, king in Jerusalem. Views vary sharply concerning the actual author of Ecclesiastes, but there is little doubt that Solomon fits this description. The name Solomon never appears in the book. This does not mean, however, that he is thus discounted as the author. The Jewish tradition held to the Solomonic authorship as did most non-Jewish writers until Hugo Grotius argued against this possibility in 1644 A.D. Since that time modern critics have woven fanciful theories concerning possible authors. Even among conservative writers, there is an uncertainty as to whom the book should be ascribed. Recent tendencies, however, on the part of conservative scholars fashion a return to the more traditional view that Solomon wrote the book.

An overwhelming amount of evidence within Ecclesiastes sustains the contention for Solomonic authorship. The following list of internal evidence, consistent with Solomon and his day, is offered as worthy of serious consideration: (1) Verse one identified Solomon precisely; (2) The statement in Ecc 1:12 requires that the author be identified as a king in Jerusalem over Israel; (3) The extensive and elaborate experiments recorded in chapters one and two required wealth and opportunity available only to one of Solomons greatness; (4) References such as Ecc 1:16 necessitate an authoritative position and identifies Jerusalem as the base of activity; (5) Collaborating evidence from I Kings, Song of Solomon, Nehemiah, and I Chronicles complements the information of Ecc 2:1-9 and thus confirms our contention; (6) The inequities identified with the close of Solomons reign along with the social conditions created by his desire for self enjoyment are in harmony with the descriptions of Ecc 4:1-6 and Ecc 5:8; (7) The allusion in Ecc 4:13 to an old and foolish king (Solomon) and one who has come out of prison (Jeroboams return from his exile in Egypt) to replace the king, fits the closing days of Solomons reign explicitly; (8) A final reference noted is found in Ecc 12:9 where the author of Ecclesiastes has searched out and arranged many proverbs. This is in harmony with 1Ki 4:32 where it is recorded that Solomon spoke three thousand proverbs.

Solomon is undoubtedly the one to whom we are indebted for this marvelous book. Read also 2Sa 12:24 and 1Ki 1:39 to identify the Preacher of Ecc 1:1.

The words of the Preacher implies that a definite message is in the mind of the author and he intends to proclaim it to all who will hear. We are aware immediately that the Preacher is a proclaimer of truth. From the very first line in the book we note the purpose of his writing. The definite article the suggests a specific message. The content and direction of thought are not revealed at this time. It is the discovery of that message and its practical application to life that shall be the reward for the diligent student of Ecclesiastes.

The goal of the Preachers words is clearly stated in Ecc 12:10 : The Preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly. It is like a breath of fresh air to discover his intention so refreshingly isolated for all to see. There can be little doubt about his purpose. He wants to find delightful words, and write words of truth correctly. He clarified his purpose further by stating that a Preacher uses his words as goads to prod and drive toward a goal (Ecc 12:11). He wants the truth of his message to be secured in the minds of his readers as surely as well-driven nails hold fast the carpenters masterpiece. Although the lessons he teaches us may arise from his own experience, or out of the cultural situation of historic Israel as she struggled under her oft-times foolish king, the Preacher does not want us to miss the fact that it is God who gives us the book! He declares that the words are given by one Shepherd (Ecc 12:11). Once we see that, regardless of the myriad approaches to the interpretation of the book, we must admit that there is a single well-defined purpose for its writing. Solomon eliminates the possibility of debate over this issue when he writes: The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person (Ecc 12:13).

Any pathway taken to unlock the mystery of the book of Ecclesiastes has at least one inescapable criterion: it must lead to Solomons stated conclusion.

Solomon arrives at an exciting, positive conclusion. His thorough examination of all things, and his extensive experimentations with greatness, work, and pleasure, led him to the frustration of dead-end streets and blind alleys. His conclusion in reality is a fresh, new beginning. The entanglements of the world of vanity are behind him and a clear new horizon looms before him. He draws his reader to the inescapable doorway to the new life. A burst of heavenly sunlight drives all the meaningless experiments and observations of the past deeper into the ever darkening shadows of the outer periphery of little concern. His grip now is on his new found truth. He clings to it and to it alone. He has finally managed his priority list in such a way that life becomes worth living and filled with purpose and enjoyment. He has managed to bring into focus, in the center of his existence, the central truth alone worth knowing, and most importantly worth believing. He declares this single truth with a note of triumph: Fear God and keep His commandments (Ecc 12:13).

It is a long, difficult journey from Solomons opening statement that all is vanity, and his final conclusion to fear God, but at least the reader knows from the beginning the road Solomon intends to travel.

Ecc 1:2 The Preachers first declaration, All is vanity, is not one of despair but one which simply states the truth concerning the nature of his world and everything in it. The Lord has cursed the earth (Gen 5:29) as a result of Adams sin. Therefore, Paul writes, For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope. The fact that the earth and all that it contains has felt the curse of death, is in harmony with the message of the Bible. Study Gen 3:17-19; Psa 39:5-6; Gen 5:29; Heb 1:10-12 and Jas 1:10-11; Jas 4:13-17.

We often ascribe the idea of vainness of false pride to the term vanity, but this is not the meaning to be given the term as it is interwoven throughout the Preachers message. It is evident that it conveys the idea of a short life, as the proper noun Abel comes from the same Hebrew word that is here translated vanity. The Hebrew term hebel is used thirty-seven times in Ecclesiastes. Such extensive application of one idea, discussed in each chapter except the tenth, demands a thorough understanding of its use.

The term is rich in meaning and usage as it appears over and over again in the book. No one term could possibly convey the meaning of each situation. The New English Bible has replaced the word vanity with emptiness, while the Anchor Bible replaces vanity with vapor. Listed here are terms which serve as synonyms or corresponding ideas. They are: vanity, futile, empty, meaningless, fleeting, pointless, incomprehensible, breath, vapor, unfulfilling, striving after wind, short-lived, Abel, transitory, temporary, sublunary, under the sun, under heaven and upon the earth.

Many lessons in the book are based on the conclusion that All is vanity. It is vital, therefore, that one see the numerous possibilities contained in the word vanity. When all of life and its hopes are qualified by sublunary restrictions and limitations, when everything a man has to remember, enjoy today, and look forward to, is limited to and qualified by experience in this life only, then one begins to sense the impact of the term. The term vanity, therefore, is applicable to everything that falls beneath the curse of sin. When man sinned, he began the process of death. As noted in Gen 3:17-19, the process was passed on to mans world. Therefore, the All of Solomons declaration is comprehensive enough to include both man and his world. There is a genuine pity associated with this truth. As the Apostle Paul has said, If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most to be pitied (1Co 15:19). Or again, If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die (1Co 15:32).

At the beginning of the book, we are confronted with the most basic question man can possibly ask: Is this life, in its toil, pleasures, possessions, challenges, and ambitions all there is to living, or is there a Word from God to give hope to man in the midst of his activities? It is in the face of this question that the Preacher embarks on his quest.

It is with deep gratitude to God that we study Ecclesiastes with the wisdom of His final revelation. On numerous occasions Jesus pointed to the transitory nature of man and his world and always directed his hearers to a higher calling. It was indeed Solomon that Jesus had in mind, clothed in all his glory, when he drove home the lesson that . . . not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions (Luk 12:15). It is in the light of this truth that he challenges us, But seek for His kingdom, and these things shall be added to you. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to charity; make yourselves purses which do not wear out, and unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near, nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your hearts be also (Luk 12:31-34).

Solomons use of vanity does not convey the idea of fatalism because God is always present in the sense that He is the acknowledged Creator of this world (Ecc 12:1), and in His providence He controls the ultimate outcome of all events.

Ecc 1:3 This first question in the book gets to the heart of the Preachers pursuit. It is not a question directed toward a lazy person. He is a worker! He has dreams and ambitions. He envisions great wealth and power. It is the advantage or profit that he is concerned with. This same proposition is close to Jesus heart as he, too, raises the question, but is quick to offer an incentive to make our work worthwhile. He says, For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and will then recompense every man according to his deeds (Mat 16:26-27).

The term advantage or profit is only used in Ecclesiastes. It does not appear in any other Old Testament book. It is used several times by Solomon (Ecc 1:3; Ecc 2:11; Ecc 3:9; Ecc 5:9; Ecc 5:16; Ecc 7:11). It means preeminence or gain. It may also mean to remain or be left. The meaning here is that of a collected materialistic gain. The Preachers contention is that man does not have an advantage or profit. He cannot hold on to anything. He toils, labors, plans, but it is like grasping the wind (Ecc 4:16; Ecc 5:15).

This first question of the book offers a key to the reader. It is obvious that man will be engaged in making his living by the sweat of his brow (Gen 3:19). Man and labor are not equal but they are inseparable. But what will be mans profit? This question must be held against the interpretation of the entire book. Even when there is a temporary profit (Ecc 5:9; Ecc 7:11) it is short lived and unfulfilling.

Modern man, too, grows weary of facing the labor of each day, realizing nothing more than the financial compensation at the end of the week. The monotonous grind of daily routine of the Preachers day resulted in the declaration, I completely despaired of all the fruit of my labor (Ecc 2:20).

What a vastly different question is What advantage does the Christian man have in all his labor? Cf. Col 1:29; Heb 13:21; Rev 14:13.

Solomons question and answer are qualified by the phrase under the sun. This restricts both his question and his answer. Just what restrictions the phrase places upon the inquiry and the place and meaning of the phrase in the book of Ecclesiastes now draws our attention.

The phrase under the sun implies a necessary restriction. What is to be included, and what is to be excluded? Since Solomon does not define the meaning for us, we are left to discover the meaning from the use of the idea in the context of the book. One cannot go outside Ecclesiastes for his answer as the phrase is no where else employed in the Bible.

Two other phrases used in the book apparently carry the same meaning. They are under heaven, and upon the earth. It is Solomons purpose, through the use of these restricting phrases, to make his observations and conclusions believable. On occasion he expresses the futility of life under the sun with such, words as, who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life (Ecc 6:12)? Yet, he never qualifies his toil upon the earth by contrasting it to any after life or hope of eternal blessing. It is as if he is saying, if on this earth we find our complete experience and reason for existing-if this life is all there is, then a live dog is better than a dead lion . . . for whoever is joined with the living, there is hope (Ecc 9:4. Life under the sun may not afford man the opportunity for enjoyment, but one must be alive in order to take advantage of such opportunity if it does come.

The restriction under the sun appears to be a self-imposed framework of interpreting the meaning of life as it is lived apart from the verbal revelation from God. Without the benefit of words from God, man is caught in a futile struggle to unravel and interpret the complexities of our transitory world. Thus, the phrase under the sun includes that which has to do with purely earthly things. The Preacher purposely closes off the influence of Heaven for the sake of his higher purpose: i.e. the vanity of all earthly things.

In a very real sense the sun can move about heaven mocking man, disappearing only to return again tomorrow, smiling upon the futile efforts of those who are so identified with sublunary affairs. Yet, for some, a new day dawns and as Malachi predicted, For you who fear My name the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings (Mal 4:2). The Preacher is not ready to take us to the new day but intends to fully demonstrate that upon the earth, under heaven, and beneath the earthly sun, man toils and dreams but for little profit!

Ecc 1:4 Both man and earth share in the gloomy, monotonous routine of activities. Both man and earth are transitory. The tragedy manifests itself when men, the highest of all Gods creatures and made from the earth, continually pass away while the earth remains. Solomon pictures the world as the stage upon which the tragic drama occurs. One generation enters as the former generation exits. The events that take place within each generation are described in Ecc 3:1-8. They encompass ones life from the time of birth to the time of death. The Preacher does not see beyond the tent which God pitched for the sun and earth. From his observations he concludes that the earth remains forever. When he has reviewed how man spends his short span of life, with its numerous activities involving the appointed time for everything, he raises the same question with which he opens his book: What profit is there to the worker from that in which he toils? (Ecc 3:9). Man doesnt seem to have any advantage, and the only advantage the earth has over man is in its duration. But even here, the word forever does not mean eternal. In Exo 21:6, instruction is given whereby a servant is to serve his master forever. It simply means a good long time. Old Testament evidence of the transitory nature of the earth is found in Psa 102:24-28.

Metaphorically, James implies that it is indeed the sun which destroys us. He says, speaking of man, because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with the burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and its flower falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth; so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways (Jas 1:10-11). It is in this same context that James reminds us that our life is but a vapor, and like the vapor will quickly vanish away.

Ecc 1:5-7 The lesson of mans transitory nature and the futility of earthly endeavor is the purpose of this section. To look for more than this is to cloud the issue and perhaps miss the impact of the book.

The sun, the wind, and the rivers disappear, but unlike man, they are there again tomorrow! In our modern day we see and hear mans protest that the earth outlasts him. Such plaintive cries as That lazy old sun aint got nothin to do, but roll around heaven all day, or, Old man river, he dont say nothin, he just keeps rolling, he just keeps rolling along, demonstrates mans frustration and resentment in the light of his own transitory existence. The sun stays within its own appointed limits but as it pants along it appears to actually mock as man works in endless endeavor to discover the profit of his labor. Likewise, the wind is confined to circular courses, and although it appears to pass on never to return, it inevitably finds its way back in its trek about the earth.

The streams, which once flowed freely and often furiously to the sea, may at times beg for water and appear to have lost their intended purpose, but in time they fill their banks and rush toward the sea again. Thus, they demonstrate, that unlike man they continue on forever!

Even though the sun, wind and streams continue on beyond the duration of any generation, they demonstrate the unwearied sameness of the procedure of the repetition of all things. Everything the sun shines upon is transitory by nature, even the sun itself. Man comes and goes, the sun comes and goes, the wind comes and goes, and the streams come and go.

Just as there is a sameness in the backdrop of nature, and a sameness in the props which appear upon the stage of life, so there is an identifying characteristic of sameness to be found in man. Since the fall, man and his world have at least one thing in common: they have been made subject to vanity (Rom 8:20). Solomon is sharing with us the conclusion of his initial observation. He remarks that man, like his world, is in ceaseless, monotonous, regular motion. Both are on a treadmill, it is just sad that man exits first.

Ecc 1:8 Two ideas are possible in translating verse eight. One suggests that all things are more wearisome than words can tell. The other suggests that it is wearisome to try and discover all things. The final thought in the verse is saying that man is unable to discover everything that should be seen or heard and thus the latter idea would be the most tenable. He does not intend to say that man cannot discover some truth or draw reasonable conclusions. Ecclesiastes is filled with numerous discoveries made under the sun. He is stating that when one pursues earthly knowledge, the eye cannot see it all nor the ear hear it all. But, even if he did, he would not discover the meaning of it all. He knows enough to at least reach this conclusion.

Ecc 1:9-11 These three verses constitute his final arguments in this section. He has declared that everything has fallen beneath the curse of impermanent futility. Rhetorically he has questioned if man has any profit at all in all his work. He has illustrated that not only man, but mans world are caught in a routine sameness that is characteristic of every generations experience. Man cannot tell everything, he cannot bear everything, and he cannot see everything. What he does perceive he concludes isnt new, but if man thinks it is, it is only because he does not remember what has gone before. History repeats itself. His further observation is that since human nature and nature itself never change, not only are his peers guilty of forgetting what has gone before, but those who are to come will not remember the things of today.

Solomon is really saying, He that has seen the present, has seen all things. Things are considered novel or new only because they have been forgotten. So intent is the Preacher on this point that he repeats himself in verses nine and ten.

Much of what Solomon writes throughout the book is based on this premise. For example, he speaks of how easily men are forgotten (Ecc 9:6-7; Ecc 9:15). He instructs us to enjoy today and not to fret over a tomorrow which none is able to see (Ecc 7:14; Ecc 9:7). He suggests that he sought to know wisdom, madness, and folly, and that each of these will be sought by the one who succeeds the king (Ecc 2:12). There is no lasting memory of either a wise man or a fool (Ecc 2:16). God knows that human nature is always the same and seeks to deal with man on that basis (Ecc 3:15; Ecc 6:10).

There is dispute as to whether the term things in verse eleven refers to former generations and later generations or former things and later things. The original terms could have either meaning. If one looks at the Preachers writings in Ecc 9:6-7 and Ecc 9:15, he will discover that generations do fail to remember that which happened long ago. However, the context seems to be weakened by this interpretation. His all of verse two and his earlier things and later things of this verse encompass all the activities of each generation. This appears to be more in harmony with the question he seeks to answer: What advantage does man have in all his work which he does under the sun? (Ecc 1:3).

His message is simple. If one keeps his eyes upon this world alone, then his labor is worth very little. He discovers that all his labor becomes entangled in the gray maze of monotonous, endless activities of not only his own life and generation, but of every generation that goes and comes. It all fades into a similar backdrop of routine acts of nature which he so vividly describes through the activities of the sun, wind and rivers.

His toil and effort on earth profit little. He discovers that he is caught in a purposeless web, a staircase to nowhere, the proverbial treadmill. His observations grow out of a life of one who has lived through the optimum of the excitement of youth as well as the experience of fulfilled dreams which he entertained in young manhood. Now, on the edge of departure from this world, with his eyes focused on earthly values alone, he wants to know what advantage, or profit, he can claim as his own in all his labor.

When man elects to face life and interpret its mystery apart from Gods help, he inevitably will come to the same conclusion. Solomon has established an inescapable principle that a wise man works in harmony with the will of God, and God alone. The first half of his book illustrates the premise set forth in chapter one verses one through eleven. Many have asked, What does the writer know of life? Almost as if Solomon anticipated the question, he takes up the challenge and turns to the task before him. He is now determined to demonstrate the wisdom of his conclusion.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The first verse of this chapter introduces us to the author of the Book. Taken in conjunction with verse Ecc 1:12, it leaves no room for doubt that he is Solomon. In stating his theme he employs phrases which recur through the whole of the Book: “vanity,” “what profit?” “under the sun.” The statement is a declaration of the emptiness of life when it is wholly conditioned in material things-“under the sun.”

In this first section we have a still more particular statement in general terms. The generations come and go while the earth abides. The sun rises and sets. The wind moves in a ceaseless circuit. Rivers run into the sea, only to be returned to the places from which they come. Man comes to the scene with desires which are never satisfied, and passes away into a land of forgetfulness. Some of the declarations are very remarkable for scientific accuracy, eves in the light of latter-day discoveries. The circuit of the wind to the south and back again to the north is of but recent discovery. The return of rivers to the mountains by evaporation is also of recent discovery. Yet the intention of this whole passage is to impress on the mind the fact of the constant grind of the mechanism of the universe in the midst of which man lives his brief day and passes out to forget and be forgotten. This is still the view of men of science who lose their vision of the spiritual realities which constitute the upper half of human life.

The discourse proceeded to state the grounds on which such conclusions have been reached. They are twofold. First, the actual experiences of the king; and, second, the widespread observation of other men and of matters in general. Commencing with his own experience, he states first the vanity of knowledge, of mirth, of wealth. As to knowledge, he had applied his heart to seek and search out all the works done under the sun, and had come to the conclusion that they were all vanity, and that knowledge of them was grief. Knowledge unillumined by spiritual consciousness is utterly unsatisfactory.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

the Testimony of an Unsatisfied Soul

Ecc 1:1-18

All is vanity! This cry finds an echo in human hearts of every age and clime. Clod meant man to be happy. These things, said our Lord, I have spoken to you, that your joy may be full. The fruit of the Spirit is joy. Yet the air is laden with complaint and bitterness. Men are asking constantly, Is life worth living? The present age is full of unrest and weariness, of war and strife, of unsatisfied yearnings and desires. The mistake is that men seek to solve the mystery of life and to find their happiness apart from God, who has made us for Himself.

This book was written and incorporated in the Bible to show that mans quest for happiness is vain, so long as it is apart from God. Solomon had unbounded opportunities for pursuing his quest. Youth, wealth, wisdom, royalty, human love were his, but when all were mixed in the golden cup of his life, he turned from the draught unsatisfied and sad. Listen to the sigh of the sated voluptuary: Vanity of vanities! Let us turn from these bitter experiences to 1Jn 2:15-17.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Ecc 1:1-2

The book of Ecclesiastes is a dramatic biography, in which Solomon not only records, but re-enacts, the successive scenes of his search after happiness, a descriptive memoir, in which he not only recites his past experience, but, in his improvising fervour, becomes his former self once more.

I. It need not then surprise us if we find in these chapters many strange questionings and startling opinions before we arrive at the final conclusion. Intermingled with much that is noble and holy, these “doubtful disquisitions” are not the dialogue of a believer and an infidel, but the soliloquy of a “divided heart,” the debate of a truant will with an upbraiding conscience.

II. In the search after happiness, his first resource was knowledge, then merry-making, then the solace of absolute power. But no sooner did he find his power supreme and unchallenged than he began to be visited with misgivings as to his successor. “Yea, I hated all the labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.”

III. Who is there that apart from God’s favour has ever tasted solid joy and satisfaction of spirit? All will be vanity to the heart which is vile, and all will be vexation to the spirit which the peace of God is not possessing.

J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture II.

Ecc 1:1-11

The search for the summum bonum, the quest of the chief good, is the theme of the book of Ecclesiastes. Naturally we look to find this theme, this problem, this “riddle of the painful earth,” distinctly stated in the opening verses of the book. It is stated, but not distinctly. For the book is a drama, not an essay or a treatise. Instead of introducing the drama with a brief narrative or a clear statement of the moral problem he is about to discuss, the Preacher opens with the characteristic utterances of the man who, wearied with many futile endeavours, gathers up his remaining strength for a last attempt to discover the chief good of life.

I. It is the old contrast-old as literature, old as man-between the ordered steadfastness of nature and the disorder and brevity of human life. As compared with the calm order and uniformity of nature, man’s life is a mere fantasy, passing for ever through a limited and tedious range of forms each of which is as unsubstantial as the fabric of a vision, many of which are as base as they are unreal, and all of which, for ever in a flux, elude the grasp of those who pursue them or disappoint those who hold them in their hands. The burden of all this unintelligible life lies heavily on the Preacher’s soul. The miseries and confusions of our lot baffle and oppress his thoughts. Above all, the contrast between nature and man, between its massive and stately permanence and the frailty and brevity of our existence, breeds in him the despairing mood of which we have the keynote in his cry, “Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

II. All depends on the heart we turn to nature. It was because his heart was heavy with the memory of many sins, because, too, the lofty Christian hopes were beyond his reach, that the “son of David” grew mournful or bitter as he looked at the strong ancient heavens and the stable, bountiful earth and thought of the weariness and brevity of human life. This, then, is the mood in which the Preacher commences his quest of the chief good. He is driven to it by the need of finding that in which he can rest. He could not endure to think that those who have “all things put under their feet” should lie at the mercy of accidents from which their realm is exempt; that they should be the mere fools of change, while that abideth unchanged for ever. And therefore he set out to discover the condition in which they might become partakers of the order, and stability, and peace of nature-the condition in which, raised above all tides and storms of change, they might sit calm and serene even though the strong ancient heavens and the solid earth should vanish away.

S. Cox, The Quest of the Chief Good, p. 113.

The allegorical interpretations of Ecclesiastes, of which there have been an enormous number, are all based upon a similar mistake. They all assume that the author ought to have written something else. This kind of criticism, however ingenious, is dishonest and irreverent-dishonest, for it is an attempt to obtain unfairly confirmation for our own opinions; irreverent, for if a book be worth reading at all, it is our business to try and learn the author’s views, and not to teach him ours.

I. Koheleth begins his soliloquy with the thought that we are not immortal. “What profit hath a man,” he asks, “of all his labour that he taketh under the sun?” The earth is possessed of perpetual youth, and she continually repeats herself; but how different it is with man. Generation after generation passes away, and returneth nevermore. We do not live even in the remembrance of our fellows. “But the earth abideth for ever.” This was what angered Koheleth: that man should perish when the world in which he lived was eternal.

II. Apart from immortality, all that he said may be repeated with equal correctness today. Whoever takes Koheleth’s view of human destiny should participate in Koheleth’s despair. What avails it to be a Homer or a Caesar today if tomorrow I am to be nothing but a heap of dust?

A. W. Momerie, Agnosticism, p. 176.

References: Ecc 1:1-11.-J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 409; J. H. Cooke, The Preacher’s Pilgrimage, p. 12. Ecc 1:2-G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 20; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 102. Ecc 1:2, Ecc 1:3.-H. P. Liddon, Old Testament Outlines, p. 162.

Ecc 1:2-11

I. This passage is the preamble to the book; it ushers us at once into its realms of dreariness. It is as if he said, “It is all a weary go-round. There are no novelties, no wonders, no discoveries. The present only repeats the past; the future will repeat them both.” From such vexing thoughts may we not escape by taking refuge in one permanence and one variety to which the royal Preacher does not here advert?-I mean the soul’s immortality and the renewed soul’s perpetual rejuvenescence, that attribute of mind which makes it the survivor of all changes, and that faculty of regenerate humanity which renders old things new and suffuses with perpetual freshness things the most familiar.

II. If the immortality of material forms is only that which they achieve through the immortality of the human soul, and if the true glorification of matter is its sanctifying influence on regenerate mind, we may learn two lessons from our argument. (1) There is no harm in a vivid susceptibility to those material appearances and influences with which God has replenished the universe. (2) But that susceptibility is good for nothing if it be not sanctifying. There is an idolatry of nature. There are some whose god is the visible creation, and not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture IV.

References: Ecc 1:2-11.-R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 22; T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 27; G. G. Bradley, Lectures on Ecclesiastes, p. 29.

Ecc 1:4

It is the manifest intention of the Divine Spirit, as shown in the sacred writings, that we should be taught to find emblems in the world we are placed in to enforce solemn instruction upon us.

I. The character of permanence in objects we behold may admonish us of the brevity of our mortal life. In a solitary or contemplative state of the mind the permanent objects give the impression as if they rejected and scorned all connection with our transitory existence; as if we were accounted but as shadows passing over them; as if they stood there but to tell us what a short day is allotted to us on earth. They strike the thoughtful beholder with a character of gloomy and sublime dissociation and estrangement from him.

II. The great general instruction from this is, How little hold, how little absolute occupancy, we have of this world! When all the scene is evidently fixed to remain, we are under the compulsion to go. We have nothing to do with it but as passing from it. Men may strive to cling, to seize a firm possession, to make good their establishment, resolve and vow that the world shall be theirs; but it disowns them, stands aloof: it will stay, but they must go.

III. But should not the final lesson be that the only essential good that can be gained from the world is that which can be carried away from it? Alas that mere sojourners should be mainly intent on obtaining that which they must leave, when their inquisitive glance over the scene should be after any good that may go with them-something that is infixed in the soil, the rocks, or the walls!

J. Foster, Lectures, 2nd series, p. 117.

Reference: Ecc 1:4.-J. Hamilton, Works, vol. vi., p. 484.

Ecc 1:4-10

I. It is universally acknowledged that the circle is the archetype of all forms, physically as well as mathematically. It is the most complete figure, the most stable under violence, the most economical of material; its proportions are the most perfect and harmonious: and therefore it admits of the utmost variety consistent with unity of effect. The universe has apparently been framed according to this type. Nature attains her ends not in a series of straight lines, but in a series of circles; not in the most direct, but in the most roundabout, way.

II. Passing from the physical world to the domain of man, we find there also innumerable traces of the law of circularity. “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.” Human life is like the wheel which Ezekiel saw in vision. Its aspects and relations, external and internal, are continually changing; one spoke of the wheel is always ascending while another is descending: one part is grating on the ground while another is aloft in the air. Action and reaction is the law of man’s life. A season of misfortune is usually followed by a season of success; and when circumstances are most prosperous, a time of reverses is not far off.

III. The first and most prominent doctrine which Christianity teaches is that retrogression is an element of progress. (1) “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” was its watchword when it first raised its voice amid the deserts and mountains of Judaea. Repentance is the germinal bud of living Christianity. (2) The afflictions and trials that bring the Christian low contribute in the end to raise him to a higher condition of heavenly-mindedness. (3) Death seems to the eye of sense the saddest and most mysterious of all retrogressions. The wheel is broken at the cistern; the circle of life completes itself, and returns to the non-existence from which it sprang. But the day of death is better than the day of birth, because death is a higher and nobler birth. The grave is an underground avenue to heaven, a triumphal arch through which spiritual heroes return from their fight to their reward, made conquerors, and more than conquerors, through Him that loved them.

H. Macmillan, Bible Teaching in Nature, p. 312.

References: Ecc 1:4-11.-J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 60. Ecc 1:6.-F. Schleiermacher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii.,p. 5. Ecc 1:7.-H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons, 2nd series, p. 122; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 302.

Ecc 1:12-14

I. Solomon found no rest in pleasure, riches, power, glory, wisdom itself. He had learnt nothing more, after all, than he might have known, and doubtless did know, when he was a child of seven years old; and that was simply to fear God and keep His commandments, for that was the whole duty of man. But though he did know it, he had lost the power of doing it; and he ended darkly and shamefully-a dotard worshipping idols of wood and stone among his heathen queens. And thus as in David the height of chivalry fell to the deepest baseness, so in Solomon the height of wisdom fell to the deepest folly.

II. Exceeding gifts from God, like Solomon’s, are not blessings; they are duties, and very solemn and heavy duties. They do not increase a man’s happiness; they only increase his responsibility-the awful account which he must give at last of the talents committed to his charge. They increase, too, his danger. They increase the chance of his having his head turned to pride and pleasure, and falling shamefully, and coming to a miserable end. As with David, so with Solomon. Man is nothing, and God is all in all. Let us pray for that great, that crowning, grace and virtue of moderation, what St. Paul calls sobriety and a sound mind. Let us long violently after nothing, or wish too eagerly to rise in life, and be sure that what the Apostle says of those who long to be rich is equally true of those who long to be famous or powerful, or in any way to rise over the heads of their fellow-men. They all fall, as the Apostle says, into foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition, and so pierce themselves through with many sorrows.

C. Kingsley, The Water of Life, p. 175.

Ecc 1:12-18

I. Solomon’s first resource was philosophy. He studied man’s position in this world. His appetite for knowledge was omnivorous; and whilst hungering for the harvest, he was thankful for crumbs. The result was satiety with satisfaction, or rather it was the sober certainty of “sorrow.” The very pursuit of knowledge is penal. The search after happiness is itself a sore punishment. Unless it include the knowledge of God, there is sorrow in much science; that is, the more a man knows unless he knows the Saviour, the sadder may we expect him to become.

II. It would indeed give melancholy force to the saying, “Much wisdom is much grief,” if much wisdom were fatal to the Christian faith, and if he who increased his general knowledge must forfeit his religious hopes. But whilst science is fatal to superstition, it is fortification to a Scriptural faith. The Bible is the bravest of books. Coming from God and conscious of nothing but God’s truth, it awaits the progress of knowledge with calm security. It is not light, but darkness, which the Bible deprecates; and if men of piety were also men of science, and if men of science would “search the Scriptures,” there would be more faith in the earth, and also more philosophy.

III. In the region of revealed truth, increasing knowledge will not always be increasing conviction unless that knowledge be progressively reduced to practice. If knowledge be merely speculative, in extending it a man may only “increase sorrow,” for it is with the heart that man believeth unto righteousness, and it is to the doers of His Father’s will that the Saviour promises an assuring knowledge of His own doctrine.

J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture V.

References: Ecc 1:12-18.-R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 36; J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 61. 1:12-2:11.-G. G. Bradley, Lectures on Ecclesiastes, p. 40.

Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26

I. As was natural in so wise a man, the Preacher turns first to wisdom. It is the wisdom that is born of wide and varied experience, not of abstract study. He acquaints himself with the facts of human life, with the circumstances, thoughts, feelings, hopes, and aims of all sorts and conditions of men. He will look with his own eyes and learn for himself what their lives are like, how they conceive of the human lot, and what, if any, are the mysteries which sadden and perplex them. This also he finds a heavy and disappointing task. The sense of vanity bred by his contemplation of the steadfast order of nature only grows more profound as he reflects on the numberless and manifold disorders which afflict humanity. Apart from the special wrongs and oppressions of the time, it is inevitable in all times that the thoughtful student of men and manners should become a sadder as he becomes a wiser man. To multiply knowledge, at least of this kind, is to multiply sorrow. We need only go through the world with open, observant eyes in order to learn that “in much wisdom is much sadness.”

II. But if we cannot reach the object of our quest in wisdom, we may perchance find it in pleasure. Wisdom failing to satisfy the large desires of his soul, the Preacher turns to mirth. Once more, as he forthwith announces, he is disappointed in the result. He pronounces mirth a brief madness; in itself, like wisdom, a good, it is not the chief good: to make it supreme is to rob it of its natural charm.

III. It is characteristic of the philosophic temper of our author that, after pronouncing wisdom and mirth vanities in which the true good is not to be found, he does not at once proceed to try a new experiment, but pauses to compare these two vanities and to reason out his preference of one over the other. His vanity is wisdom. It is because wisdom is a light and enables men to see that he accords it his preference. It is by the light of wisdom that he has learned the vanity of mirth, nay the insufficiency of wisdom itself. Therefore wisdom is better than mirth. Nevertheless it is not best, nor can it remove the dejection of a thoughtful heart. Somewhere there is, there must be, that which is better still.

S. Cox, The Quest of the Chief Good, p. 126.

Ecclesiastes 1:12-3:22

Koheleth now mentions the unusual advantages which he had possessed for enjoying life and making the best of it. His opportunities could not have been greater, he considers, had he been Solomon himself. He henceforth speaks therefore under the personated character of the wise son of David. He speaks as one who represented the wisdom and prosperity of his age.

I. “I have set myself,” he says, “to the task of investigating scientifically the value of all human pursuits.” This, he assures us, is no pleasant task. It is a sore travail that God has allotted to the sons of men, which they cannot altogether escape. Koheleth thought and thought till he was forced to the conclusion that all human pursuits were vanity and vexation of spirit, or, according to the literal Hebrew, were but vapour and striving after the wind. There was no solidity, nothing permanent, nothing enduring, about human possessions or achievements. For man was doomed to pass away into nothingness.

II. Having stated his position in these general terms, he now enters into the subject a little more in detail. He reminds himself how at one time he had tried to find his happiness in pleasure and amusement; but pleasure had palled upon him, and appeared good for nothing: and as for amusements, Koheleth thinks that life might, perhaps, be tolerable without them. Having discovered the unsatisfactoriness of pleasure, Koheleth proceeds to inquire if there is anything else that could take its place. What of wisdom? Can that make life a desirable possession? He proceeds to institute a comparison between wisdom and pleasure. Pleasure is but momentary; wisdom may last for a lifetime. Pleasure is but a shadow; wisdom is comparatively substantial and real. The lover of wisdom will follow her till he dies. Ay, there’s the rub-till he dies. One event happeneth to them all. What then is the good of wisdom? This, too, is vanity.

III. In the third chapter Koheleth points out how anything like success in life must depend upon our doing the right thing at the right time. Wisdom lies in opportuneness. Inopportuneness is the bane of life. What we have to do is to watch for our opportunity and embrace it.

IV. In Ecc 3:14, Koheleth seems to rise for a moment into a religious mood. But his religion is by no means of an exalted type. Times, seasons, and opportunities, he says, are of Divine appointment; and, like nature’s phases, they happen in recurring cycles. God doeth it that men should fear before Him. The existence of so much unrequited wisdom in the world might seem to suggest that there is no higher power. But there is. God will rule the righteous and the wicked, and reward them according to their works. There is a time for every purpose and for every work, and therefore for the purpose of retribution among the rest.

A. W. Momerie, Agnosticism, p. 190.

References: Ecc 1:13.-J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 14. Ecc 1:14.-Ibid., pp. 28, 38; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 339; W. G. Jordan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 136.

Ecc 1:17

There are two ways of arriving at the knowledge of the truth respecting the importance and benefit of holiness and goodness. These two ways are-one the experience of what is good, the other the experience of what is bad. These are the two kinds of moral experience we see in the world. I shall compare the two together, first, as to their own character, and, secondly, with respect to their weight in the way of example to others.

I. As to their own character. It is to be admitted that the moral impression which is gained by a course of sin is often a very acute and deep one. There is nothing in the whole circle of human feeling and conviction deeper and more intense than the insight into the emptiness and vanity of the world which men of the world have sometimes at the close of their career. But what, after all, does this wisdom, which is gained by the experience of an evil life, do for them? The great use of wisdom is to make men act aright. If it come after all action is over, it is useless; it is mere seeing for seeing’s sake, and knowing for knowing’s sake. Here, then, lies the difference between that knowledge which is got by an evil life and that knowledge which is got by a good one. In both cases there is a strong moral conviction gained; but in the case of moral conviction gained by an evil life the harm has been done: and the conviction comes not to prevent the evil, but only to acquaint you with it. To state briefly the difference between the convictions which the experience of good and the experience of worldly men produce, we may say in a word that it consists in faith. In the conviction which is gained by an evil life there is no faith. The possessor would not trust anything but his own experience, and accordingly his conviction is mere matter of experience when he gets it.

II. As regards the comparison of these two kinds of experience in the way of example to others, I cannot but think that the value of that experience at which men of pleasure and men of the world arrive at the close of their careers, and which they communicate to others, is very much overrated. However strong and acute it may be in itself, as regards its effect upon others it is feeble, and for this very good reason: that the man’s advice is one way, and his acts have been in another. There is one, and only one, appointed way of doing good; and that is by being good.

J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 170.

Reference: Ecc 1:17.- J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 85.

Ecc 1:18

The declaration of the text may be considered as the expression of a soul that seeks satisfaction in mere earthly knowledge.

I. Mere earthly knowledge is unsatisfactory in its nature. Take as an illustration of this the field of creation. The knowledge of facts and laws can employ man’s reason, but it cannot ultimately satisfy it, and still less can it soothe his soul or meet the longings of his spirit.

II. Mere earthly knowledge is painful in its contents. How melancholy is the history of man when written down! Take away our hope in God, and we could bear to study history only as we forget all the higher ends it might serve as a school of training for immortal souls, and as the steps of a Divine Architect through the broken scaffolding and scattered stonework upwards to a finished structure. The very glimpse of this is reviving; but to give up at once Architect and end, and see human lives scattered and strewn across weary ages, and human hearts torn and bleeding with no abiding result-this surely would fill a thoughtful mind with pain. The more of such history, the more of sorrow.

III. Mere earthly knowledge is hopeless in its issue. For an illustration of this we may take the field of abstract thought. Let a man seek the origin and end of things without God, and doubt grows as search deepens, for doubt is on the face of all things if it be in the heart of the inquirer. As he enlarges the circumference of knowledge he enlarges the encircling darkness, and even the knowledge yields no ray of true satisfaction.

IV. Mere earthly knowledge is discouraging in its personal results. We may consider here the moral nature of man. Earthly science can do very much to improve man’s external circumstances. It can occupy his reason; it can refine and gratify his taste. But there are greater wants that remain. If the man seek something to fill and warm his heart, all the wisdom of this world is only a cold phosphorescence. The tree of knowledge never becomes the tree of life.

V. Mere earthly knowledge has so brief a duration. Here we may contemplate life as a whole. If the thought of God be admitted, all real knowledge has the stamp of immortality; but if there be nothing of this, “in one day all man’s thoughts perish.” “The wise man dieth, and the fool also.” The sweeter truth is to the taste, the more bitter must be the thought of leaving the pursuit of it for ever.

J. Ker, Sermons, p. 44.

Melancholy arises:

I. From the thought that life is too short even for the most ardent labour to wrest from the bosom of nature or the ocean of the soul a thousandth part of their secrets. “Death comes,” we think. “Is all I have done for others and learnt for myself lost? Why may I not live to finish my work, to complete and round my knowledge? If death be all, then the increase of my knowledge is the increase of my sorrow.” The remedy and the answer lie in the teaching of Christ. He has brought, it is true, upon the world an increased dread of death, for He has deepened the sense of moral responsibility; but in deepening responsibility He has also brought upon the world an increased delight in life, because He has made life more earnest, active, and progressive. The remedy then, when the thought of death comes to shroud our little term of being with melancholy, is to take up with eagerness again the duties and responsibilities of life. We look to Christ, and the two sources of the melancholy of which we speak-the idea of our work perishing, the idea of a cessation of the growth of knowledge-vanish away. (1) He died, it is true, when half the natural sands of life were run; but we see that His labour has not died with Him. It has passed as a power and life into the world. (2) In Him we are ourselves immortal, and the work which we have started and left to others here we carry on ourselves in the larger world beyond. But if so, it will require added knowledge, and indeed in its progress it will necessarily store up knowledge. In Christ we know that we shall never cease to learn.

II. The second source of melancholy is retrospective thought. Christ calls us to a higher thought of life. “Let dead idols bury themselves,” He says; “come away from them, and follow Me; there are other ideals in front, better and larger than the past.” It is the one inspiring element of Christianity that it throws us in boundless hope upon the future, and forbids us to dwell in the poisonous shadows of the past. We are to wake up satisfied in the likeness of Christ, the ever-young humanity. Therefore, forgetting those things which are behind, let us press forward unto the mark of the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus.

III. A third cause of melancholy is the sadness of the world. What is its remedy? The true remedy is to penetrate steadily into the depths of the dreadful mystery; to comprehend what destiny, and evil, and death mean; to go down into hell, and know it, and conquer it. This is what Christ did in resolute action upon earth; and out of this meeting of sorrow and evil face to face, not by passing them by and ignoring them, sprang His conquest. Evil was overthrown, sorrow was changed into joy, death was swallowed up in victory, because He went down into hell.

S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, p. 243.

We may contradict this text as we please, but we do not in reality contradict it by asserting its opposite; we only complete it by asserting its other half. Both statements are half-truths. The whole truth of the thing is only found in the assertion of both. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth pleasure, and-increaseth sorrow. This is what Albert Drer saw and engraved in his subtle print of “Melencolia.” It would be especially true in the artist’s time of those who were attempting to penetrate into the secrets of the physical world. For the true methods of scientific investigation had not been found. We are freed from that grief, for we are consciously advancing, having found true methods; but the same profound pain besets us in the science of metaphysics and of theology, and for the same reason: the want of true methods.

I. The melancholy which arises from the vague answers which we can only suggest to many of our deepest questions is made greater by the clear answers which our questions receive in science. Distinctness in one sphere seems to suggest that distinctness might be reached in all if we had power. We have wings, then; but we have the misery of knowing that they are not strong enough.

II. What is the remedy for the sadness of increased uncertainty which growing knowledge has added to spiritual problems? The remedy is plainly stated in the New Testament. But let us see if we cannot approach the New Testament statement from the side of scientific practice, and so strengthen its force. The certainties of science are mixed up also with uncertainties. Towards these uncertainties what are the practice and attitude of men of science? It is that of men who possess a “faith which worketh by love.” They believe in truth, and their faith works through love of truth. The result has been the swiftest and the safest success. In other spheres then, and in a different meaning, this text is true: “This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith.” In every way this is a lesson which we would do well to learn. The root of our cowardice, of our hesitation, of our inactive melancholy, is our faithlessness. We are not asked at first to believe in certain doctrines or in the opinions of men. We are asked to believe in eternal right, in a Father of spirits whose will is good. This is not a faith in the commandments and doctrines of men. It is a faith in eternal love. It is not a blind credulity; it is a faith which the man has proved in adversity, and by which he has conquered.

S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, p. 250.

References: Ecc 1:18.-H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2661; J. Fordyce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 303. 1-C. Bridges, An Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 1. Ecc 2:1.-J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 14. Ecc 2:1-3.-J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 165.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

Analysis and Annotations

PART I. CHAPTERS 1-6

1. The Prologue and the Search Begun

CHAPTER 1

1. The introduction and prologue (Ecc 1:1-11)

2. The seeker; his method and the results (Ecc 1:12-18)

Ecc 1:1-11. In the general introduction we have already referred to the opening verses as giving the information who the author is and what is the object of his treatise. So sure is the critical school that Solomon is not the king mentioned that one says the fact that Solomon is not the author, but is introduced in a literary figure, has become such an axiom of the present day interpretation of the book, that no extended argument to prove it is necessary. Still another makes the following remarks as to the date of the book: I shall presume that we have in this book, a late, perhaps the very latest, portion of the Old Testament canon; and that the book was written, not in the palmy days of the empire of Solomon, but at a time when the Jewish people, once so full of aspirations to universal empire, always so intolerant of foreign supremacy, was lying beneath the yoke of Persian or Syrian or Egyptian kings; when the Holy Land had become a province, ruled by some Eastern satrap, and suffering from the rapacity and corruption inherent at all times in such government (Dean Bradley). Such presumptions spring from ignorance about the message of the book. We shall find in the text the above assertions refuted and a confirmation likewise of the Solomonic authorship.

Before following the Preacher in his great quest it should be noted that he is to be viewed as a man who himself belongs under the sun. Whether the word Koheleth is rendered preacher, debater, or assembler, or one of an Assembly, the whole tenor of the teaching proves it is wisdom from under the sun, natural wisdom, that is speaking. The wisest of men undertakes to observe and experiment with life under the sun, in order to find out for all men the outcome of all his searchings, and then rehearses all to an assembly of his fellows. He is not supposed to know any divinely-revealed wisdom, or to have heard of a righteousness of faith, or of divine mercy, or of forgiveness of sins. He is to make answer as a natural man to whom is given the resources and helps common to natural men, only he is wiser and richer than they, and so must bring the final answer for all. And also he is a Hebrew and knows of one living and true God. When he says thou, in advice or warning, it is not so much to some disciple or son he is speaking as to himself, or he is then assuming a high ground, far above the maddening crowd, but it is soon apparent how, in these most exalted frames of the pious and philosophic mind, he is still only a natural man, for he is found, soon after, in the depth of despair uttering his disgust and hate of life and exclaiming: The whole is vapor and a chasing of the wind. That thou is, after all a sign that he is talking to himself, telling what he and all men under the sun ought to do, but utterly fail to do.

Not only does he pronounce the verdict of vanity for all, but he resorts to the same passing mirthful enjoyment he commends to all; but he would do it all before God. He is indeed wiser and more serious than other men, only to become more perplexed and sorrowful than they.

On him hangs more heavily than on other men

… the burden of the mystery

… the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world.

He, if any, can say, I know there is nothing better for them. He is king and can lay the whole world under contribution to furnish the means for answer. What can the man do who cometh after the king?

He repeatedly says, I have seen all the works that are done, all the oppressions, and all the labor that I have labored at. And so he is to speak for the world, for the race, for man, for high, for low, wise and foolish, rich and poor, in hut and hall, living and dying. And he speaks as before God. He, of all men, feels a strange fear, seeing that somehow mans imperfect vain life under the sun is mysteriously related to and controlled by the unalterable purpose and work of God. W.J. Erdman, Ecclesiastes.)

The first note as to vanity is found in Ecc 1:4-11. There is a law of repetition, or circle-movement. It works in the sphere of nature as well as in human life. Generation follows generation; the sun has his circle; the winds too have their currents in which they blow from north to south and south to north; the waters also are subject to the same law. History repeats itself, for the thing that has been, is that which shall be and that which is done is that which shall be done. There is then, no new thing under the sun; nothing is new, all is repetition, a monotonous unchangeableness. Man is in the midst of it; he too is subject to this law. Everything then under the sun is restless, unstable (except the earth itself, which abideth forever: Ecc 1:4) hollow and empty, therefore all is vanity. Here is a picture of unrest, weariness, if not melancholy and despair.

Ecc 1:12-18. On the critical objection that Solomon is meant in Ecc 1:12 see the general introduction. The great king, filled with wisdom and learning, rich and prosperous as none ever was before him in Jerusalem, nor after him, gives his heart to search out everything that is done under heaven. When he says: I communed with mine own heart, he states the method of his search. He does it by meditation and not through revelation. He searches not in the light which comes from above, but that which comes from nature and by observation. He tells us a little more of himself. 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. Is this language not sufficient to establish beyond the shadow of the doubt that Solomon speaks? And if not Solomon, who was it who dared to write these words? And what are the given results by the great and wise king of Jerusalem? The result is twofold. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit–the pursuit of the wind, that is chasing air-bubbles. And another conclusion: For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow (Ecc 1:18). What a verdict from such a man as Solomon was. He had all things man can enjoy; all pleasures and honors; great possessions, chariots, horses, palaces and a large estate and he exclaims nothing but travail! Nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit! It all leaves me empty; it does not satisfy.

But he had given himself to wisdom. He possessed unusual wisdom. The king was what we would term today a great scientist. He excelled in wisdom all the children of the East country. Proverbial in his days was the wisdom of Egypt; yet his wisdom was greater. His fame was in all nations round about. Philosophy and poetry were his great achievements. And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes 1 Kings 4:299, etc.). He was a great botanist, an ornithologist and zoologist. He traced Gods wonders in nature, that which the natural man can so easily do. But what about all this wisdom? Did it satisfy his soul? We listen to his answer: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. The more knowledge the more sorrow. Alas! how trite it all is!

But is there something else which satisfies? Is there a higher wisdom and knowledge? There is, but in the book of the natural man it is unrevealed. That which satisfies, which is not vanity and vexation of spirit, is that which is above the sun, and not under it. From above the sun He came, who is the wisdom of God, the son of God. He has come and gone, but brought to the poor thirsting and hungry heart of man the true knowledge. He who died for our sins and is now back above the sun, is He in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge Col 2:1-23. That which alone can satisfy is Christ.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

the Preacher: Ecc 1:12, Ecc 7:27, Ecc 12:8-10, Neh 6:7, Psa 40:9, Isa 61:1, Jon 3:2, 2Pe 2:5

king: Ecc 1:12, 1Ki 11:42, 1Ki 11:43, 2Ch 9:30, 2Ch 10:17-19

Reciprocal: Ecc 12:10 – Preacher 1Ti 2:7 – a preacher

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

The Man under the Sun

Ecc 1:1-18

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

In order to introduce this study we can think of no better way than to go to our booklet on Ecclesiastes for a quotation.

1. Ecclesiastes stands by itself in its message to men who live “under the sun.” Many of its conclusions are voiced in other portions of Holy Writ, but no other part of the Bible deals exclusively with the things which concern the natural man.

Satan knows that Ecclesiastes demonstrates, to a conclusion, that all things “done under the sun” are “vanity and vexation of spirit.”

Satan himself would paint every world picture with pleasing outlines; he would magnify the glory of things terrestrial and minify the glory of things Heavenly.

It is, therefore, no marvel that every satanic energy is set toward discounting and denying the Book of God which lifts the mask from blinded eyes and displays the real value of the things “under the sun.”

Men, too, who know not the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of His resurrection and the vision of the things to come; men whose all is centered in, corruptible, earthly thing’s which shall be shaken and pass away,-such men are desirous to discount God’s testimony of things done “under the sun,” because those things are their all in all.

Thus Satan and men mock the Book that manifests the folly of men, and criticize the Book that is God’s critic of all they are and have and do.

2. Believers, sometimes, stumble in mind as they read Ecclesiastes, because they fail to grasp the intent of the Book. There are passages concerning life and death and the future state that startle the saint-passages, indeed, altogether foreign to those of other Scriptures.

It is necessary, therefore, to find the key that unlocks the mysteries of the message of Ecclesiastes. Solomon was God’s servant. He had a checkered experience. He first sought wisdom from the hand of God. This was given him, and with it he was given wealth. Solomon did not, however, profit by his. gifts.

God, long before, had said of Israel’s king: “He shall not multiply horses to himself.” But “Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.” “And they brought unto Solomon horses out of Egypt, and out of all lands.”

God had said of Israel’s king: “Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away.” “But King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; * * concerning which the Lord said * * ‘Ye shall not go in to them, * * for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.’ Solomon clave unto these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.”

God had said of Israel’s king: “Neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.” But Solomon made “silver to be in Jerusalem as stones.”

No wonder that “Solomon was not perfect with the Lord his God.” No wonder that “Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord.” No wonder that “The Lord was angry with Solomon,” and that in later years the kingdom was rent from him.

3. The Book of Ecclesiastes is Solomon’s review of the experiences and observations that came to him in the days of his departure from a covenant God. God inspired His servant to relate these experiences and observations; but God did in no sense inspire the experiences and observations. All of the statements of Ecclesiastes are man’s view of things, and not God’s. God only directs Solomon in what he shall write. “Holy men of God” wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit; but what they wrote was sometimes the words or the wisdom of men, and sometimes even the words of Satan. In all such cases, however, the context clearly designates the one who speaks. For instance: in Matthew we read: “If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” Satan speaks the words, but Matthew is inspired to record them. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon is inspired to write a vision of things “under the sun” just as the man of this world, living under the fear of a great creative God, sees and knows them.

God inspired Solomon to write much of his own observations during the time of his wanderings. And who could better write of the vanity of the things of this world, than the man who led the world in wisdom and in riches and in every opportunity to “try out” the things of the natural man.

I. THE THREE KEYS TO THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES (Ecc 1:17; Ecc 6:12)

God always places the keys to His Books where they may be easily found, and this Book will be readily understood when we apply the three keys which we are now presenting to you.

1. The first key. This is found in chapter Ecc 1:13, “I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under Heaven.” This plainly tells us that the revelations of this Book are such as are searched out by the wisest man who ever lived. Of course Solomon wrote under the direct inspiration of God.

However, God is giving us everything that human wisdom could discover. Mark you, these discoveries have to do exclusively with the things “under the sun.” Never once do we get any clear light as to the things above the sun.

We find this latter in the Book of Ephesians. There is nothing in Ecclesiastes about the victorious life; it merely discusses the natural man as he walks on earth.

2. The second and third keys. These are found in chapter Ecc 6:12, and we find here what is good for a man in this life: this will be discussed in future studies. The whole story is contained in these three keys.

(1) The things that are done “under the sun.”

(2) The things that are good; for a man “under the sun.”

(3) What shall be after a man “under the sun”?

II. THE TWO EXPRESSIONS WHICH ARE SUBSIDIARY KEYS

In addition to the threefold statements we have just considered; we, also, have two expressions. It will be well for you to take colored pencils so as to underscore these two expressions throughout the Book. You will be surprised.

1. The first expression is “under the sun.” This occurs 29 times. One feels as he reads this over and over that he would love to fly above things terrestrial, and into the realm of things supernal. Here are some of these expressions:

1.”Man’s labour which he taketh under the sun.”

2.”There is no new thing under the sun.”

3.”The works that are done under the sun.”

4.”There was no profit under the sun.”

5.”I have shewed myself wise under the sun.”

6.”A time to every purpose” under the sun.

7.”The oppressions that are done under the sun.”

8.”I saw vanity under the sun.”

9.”What shall be after a man under the sun.”

10.”The living which walk under the sun.”

In these expressions we begin to grasp the real intent of the Book of Ecclesiastes; for, elsewhere, God has plainly told us to set our affections on things above: that we should love not the world.

2. The second expression is “vanity of vanities.” This may be found 28 times. The words give the conclusion of everything done under the sun. Some one has suggested that the words mean, “soap bubble of soap bubbles.”

Everything under the sun is like a bubble that glitters under the rays of the sun, but breads and disappears when we seek to grasp it.

3. A third expression is the name of God,-“Elohim.” This name is in the very beginning of the Bible, and it speaks of the Creative God. None of the marvelous revelations of God, in the names which are elsewhere given to Him, are familiar to the man “under the sun.” Just the Creator. Many call Him Allah, the Great Spirit, the Supreme Grand Master, etc.

III. A CONCLUSION OF THINGS “UNDER THE SUN” (Ecc 1:4-8)

As Solomon looked with his wisdom upon the physical earth and the heavens, all he saw was endless monotony. Then he cried out, “There is no new thing under the sun.” Let us consider the things of which he speaks.

1. One generation passeth away, and another cometh. In Gen 5:1-32 we find something much like this: “he lived, and he died” repeated many times. It is the way of generations.

2. “There is no new thing under the sun.” “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down,” etc. It has ever been so since God created the sun, the moon, and the heavens. They have always been the same. There is nothing new about their movements.

3. “The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually.” Once more there is a ceaseless ever-going, ever-turning, and ever-returning wind, and so it will always be.

4. “The rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full”-a continual, monotonous motion. This is what Solomon saw “under the sun.”

IV. SOLOMON’S QUEST FOR WISDOM (Ecc 1:13; Ecc 1:16-17)

As we come to the 13th verse we behold Solomon in his personal quest, seeks to try out the things done “under the sun.” If anyone on earth ever had an opportunity to follow out his ambition, Solomon did.

1. The first thing Solomon tried was wisdom. Beyond a doubt, the very best thing which there is “under the sun” to the man of the flesh is wisdom. Of course, in Grace, there are many other things, but to a man who knows nothing of the Spirit, wisdom ranks highest.

Solomon said he had more wisdom than all they who were before him in Jerusalem. Solomon is universally considered the wisest man of all ages. He was, indeed, a sage. He outstripped not only his own contemporaries, but all those who followed him. This wisdom which he had was a gift from God.

However, he concluded wisdom’s search with the statement: “This also is vexation of spirit.” He added, “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”

It is true to this hour that the wise find much of grief because of the things they know. There is, however, something that is far beyond the wisdom of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Worldly wisdom crucified the Lord of Glory. The world in its wisdom knew not God. We need to seek the wisdom which is from above. For that wisdom, God has said we should ask Him.

V. SOLOMON TRIED THE PLEASURES OF THIS WORLD (Ecc 2:1)

“I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure; and, behold, this also is vanity.” Ecc 2:2 reads, “I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?”

Solomon’s conclusions about pleasure, laughter, and mirth are, no doubt, true, The pleasures of this life never satisfy. “She that liveth in. pleasure is dead while she liveth.” Earth’s pleasure is a butterfly that lives but for a day. From the day of Adam’s sin down to this very hour the world has ever sought to invent some new form of pleasure; yet, those who seek after pleasure among men are always disappointed.

Solomon was correct when, in chapter 7, he said, “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting.” The pleasures of this world choked the seed, which “is the Word of God.” Even in the days of Moses there were many pleasures in Egypt, but when Moses came to years, he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God “than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.”

Let us beware lest we run after the goddess of pleasure. The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life can do no better than to lead us into the labyrinth of despair.

VI. SOLOMON GIVES HIMSELF TO WINE (Ecc 2:3)

Our Scripture reads this way: “I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men, which they should do under the Heaven all the days of their life.”

Solomon in seeking after wine recognized those things which he wrote about wine in the Proverbs: because, in his search for wine he guided himself with wisdom. Some one might answer and say, “I too will seek after wine,” but remember that very few men who seek after wine, gird themselves with wisdom.

In Pro 23:31 it is written, “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” In connection with this statement, the wise man added, “Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.”

Perhaps, that is the reason we hear so much of wine and women. Of course, the reference is to impure women. In Pro 20:1-30 Solomon tells us that “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”

We do not wonder that Solomon, after he had tried the wine cup, could put it with all the other things he had tried, saying: it is vanity and a vexation to the spirit.

VII. SOLOMON GIVES HIMSELF TO BEAUTIFYING HIS ENVIRONMENT (Ecc 2:4-9)

If we had passed along in front of the palaces and the gardens, and the pools which Solomon had; if we had beheld his silver and his gold, his peculiar treasures of kings and of provinces, his men. and women singers, we would have thought him, of all men, the most happy. He said:

“I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits; I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.” What a paradise was this! What more could heart have wished, or mind have conceived? He had houses surrounded by irrigated vineyards, gardens, and orchards. That was not all. We read: “I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house.”

And cattle must be secured to graze and to feed on his surrounding fields. So, he said, “also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me.” Nor was this all. Solomon sought to beautify his own palace. He brought rare and costly relics from afar. “I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces.”

Moreover Solomon was a man of poetical nature, a lover of song and of musical instruments. Therefore, with free hand, he provided for himself the best that the world of music could afford.

“I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts” (Ecc 2:8).

What more could heart have wished? Yet, houses, and well watered gardens, and paradises, and servants, and cattle, and wonderful riches, and relics of all lands, and musical instruments, and musicians were not enough for Solomon.

“And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy” (Ecc 2:10).

In our next study we will see what befell Solomon’s life.

AN ILLUSTRATION

We touch the world at so many points, how can we remain unspotted? Scientists tell us of an insect which, though you immerse it in water, yet never touches the water. Enveloped with the element, yet the element never penetrates to the insect itself. The reason of this wonder in nature is that it carries with it its own atmosphere. Enveloped first in this atmosphere it can bid the other element defiance and, though submerged in it, is untouched by it. If we cleave to God we shall carry about with us the secret atmosphere of communion, and then, though in the midst of sin, we shall remain without blemish, unspotted by the world.-Rev. W. L. Mackenzie.

“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” Nathaniel Hawthorne has given us a story entitled “Earth’s Holocaust.” It is the tale of some men and women who had become weary of their foibles and follies and who had decided to be rid of their foolishness and fripperies. They determined to make an end erf them by burning. A great mountain of useless and silly possessions was lighted. The flames and smoke of them rose to the sky. There were present a number of reprobates, sad of countenance, now that their business was gone. Satan himself came to comfort these. “Be not cast down, my peers,” he said, “there 13 one thing these wiseacres have forgotten.” “What is that?” they all shouted. “Why, the human heart; unless they hit upon some trick of purifying that foul thing it will soon be the same old world again.” A changed heart makes a changed person. We will change the world when we have changed persons. “The soul of every reform is the reform of the soul,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water

THE PROLOGUE (Ecc 1:1-11)

These verses show the general result of the whole search for good on earth, the record of which is to follow (Ecc 1:1-3); a symbolic illustration from nature of the monotony of human existence (Ecc 1:4-7); and a plain statement of the facts in the case (Ecc 1:8-11).

THE INTRODUCTION (Ecc 1:12-18)

These verses describe the seeker (Ecc 1:12); his method of search (Ecc 1:13), and the result in general (Ecc 1:14-15) and in particular (Ecc 1:16-18).

VARIOUS VANITIES (Ecc 2:2-26)

Chapter 2 lists vanities as: the lust of the flesh (Ecc 2:1-3); the lust of the eyes (Ecc 2:4-6); pride of life (Ecc 2:7-8); conclusion (Ecc 2:9-11). The vanity of wisdom (Ecc 2:12-17); the vanity of work (Ecc 2:18-23); conclusion (Ecc 2:24-26).

Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary

Ecc 1:1. The words of the Preacher Or, discourses. The Hebrew word , here used, may either signify the person who assembles the people, or the person that addresses them when assembled. We must not suppose that Solomon was like the common or ordinary preachers among the Hebrews; yet it is certain he spake much in public for the instruction of the people; for there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon: All the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his heart, 1Ki 4:31; 1Ki 4:34; 1Ki 10:24. From whence it is plain that he made public discourses on several subjects, and that people were, in a manner, called together from all nations round about to hear them. Dodd. He was not only a king, says Poole, but also a teacher of Gods people: who, having sinned grievously in the eyes of all the world, thought himself obliged to publish his repentance, and to give public warning to all, to avoid those rocks upon which he had split.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Ecc 1:2. Vanity of vanities. This is the Hebrew form of the superlative degree of comparison; as, the heaven of heavens, the song of songs, &c. He adds, vexation of spirit, because his researches found neither bottom nor end. Thus Paul, in the study of providence, exclaimed, , oh the depth! We cannot penetrate far into the expanse of heaven, yet we see enough to charm the eye, and delight the mind.

Ecc 1:6. The wind goeth toward the south. Captain Dampier, a circumnavigator, has written on winds, with a view to assist sailors in their course. The subject did not escape the notice of Solomon. The sun rules the seasons, and the variations of the winds affect their mildness, or their rigour. Periodical winds are inscrutably regulated by the Creator. The whirl of the earth occasions easterly winds for twenty eight degrees, on each side the equator; then the eddies return and fall on the north of France and England, in south-west gales and showers, which make our climate so happy. In Canada they have north-west gales, from the snow-capt mountains, which make their winters severe. Dampier notices the land breezes all along the west coast of South America. Other phenomena of breeze and gale, of calm and hurricane, are occasioned by the rarity and density of the atmosphere.

Ecc 1:13. I gave my heart to seek and search out wisdom. After being a student of nature for half a century, he was no nearer an end. He surpassed all others, Ecc 1:16, in moral and physical science, as is allowed by the sacred historian, 1Ki 4:30-34; yet the boundaries of infinity circumscribed at every point the daring stretches of his mind.

Ecc 1:18. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. An attentive examination of false systems tends to becloud the understanding, and to induce a spirit of scepticism which it is difficult wholly to avoid, but which injures the peace and joy of early piety. The youthful mind is not able to follow the learned abettor of a system in the discrepancy of argument; and so doubts and sorrows follow him often to his grave. The grand seat of modern atheism in Europe, lies in the heart, the evil heart of unbelief. The characters of the men we know. They are seducers of women, lovers of wine, ambitious without bounds, and blasphemers of piety. Oh my son, come not thou into their assembly.

REFLECTIONS.

Solomon had a most illustrious father, equally distinguished by piety, wisdom, and conquest. Solomon was born with a large share of intellectual powers, as appears from his choice of wisdom. He also spent his whole life in researches of sacred knowledge, and was painfully made to know his own heart by a transition from wisdom to folly, and by obscuring his religious glory with strange women at a pagan shrine. Fraught with all these treasures, treasures which cost him much, he comes forward to instruct posterity concerning the insufficiency of earthly bliss, and to guide them by early piety to the fear of God, and to all holy obedience. This wise prince, and father of moral philosophy, pregnant with his subject, five times repeats the words of his text. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity, and vexation of spirit. I have been taught by my sire, that the heavens and the earth shall wax old, and perish as a garment. Psa 102:25. So one generation passes away after another; the sun now shining in splendour hastes to hide behind the hill; the summer breezes wafting the fragrance of the south, recoil in the northern cold, nip the beauteous flowers, and cover the earth with snow. The majestic rivers lose their placid streams in the tumult of the troubled sea. Thus all nature is a routine of labour, vanity, and decay; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. This is the introduction to his book; the sentiments he strikingly exemplifies in his own life. Favoured with all the advantages of a king, he gave up a part of each day to literary pursuits, and eclipsed the east in wisdom. And what resources of happiness did it open in his soul? Why truly resources of vexation, grief, and sorrow. And have not the same sentiments been most tragically exemplified by the literati, who have figured away on the theatre of Europe for the last century? Born with gigantic powers of mind, they spent the whole of life in the acquisition of language and science; they acquired a superabundance of knowledge which operated as a chaos, from which their misguided heads and impure hearts could not deduce the plain principles of purity, happiness, and peace. They affected to grasp the world of science, while they remained completely ignorant of their own hearts. They obtruded themselves as preceptors of princes, and lawgivers to the people, while they knew not how to govern themselves. They despised marriage, the purest source of social bliss; they flattered the great, and imitated them in their crimes. They talked of the law of nature and of nations with passions unrestrained: for in fact, they acknowledged no law but the dogmas of their own school. Of virtue, they talk with a divine reverence; but the sequel proved it was merely to give circulation to their books, and the more effectually to corrupt the incautious public in principle and practice. Hence they were adored in literary fame; but on approaching them in the habits of domestic life, they were presently despised and hated. The sacred volume alone forms the grand barrier against the inundation of their principles. Against that book therefore they pointed all their artillery of satire and wit, for argument they had none; and against piety and holiness, somewhat disfigured by superstition, they discovered the enmity of their hearts. Thus they were impoverished by pride, restless by dissipation, abandoned of patrons, and secretly pursued by the avenging hand of heaven. Thus Rousseau, impelled by misery, forsook France, and sought in Switzerland the innocent joys of early life; but wept while he sat on a rock and saw the happiness of the peasants. Thus all knowledge which does not lead the soul to a resemblance of God, realizes the closing maxim of this chapter: He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Ecc 1:1. See Introduction.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

1:1 The words of the {a} Preacher, the son of David, king of Jerusalem.

(a) Solomon is here called a preacher, or one who assembles the people, because he teaches the true knowledge of God, and how men ought to pass their life in this transitory world.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

I. THE INTRODUCTORY AFFIRMATION 1:1-11

The first 11 verses of the book introduce the writer, the theme of the book, and a general defense of the assertion that Solomon made in the theme statement (Ecc 1:2).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

A. Title and Theme 1:1-2

The first two verses contain the title of the book and its theme.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

1. The title 1:1

The author identified himself by his titles (cf. Pro 1:1). These titles, as well as other references to the writer in the book (cf. Ecc 1:12; Ecc 1:16; Ecc 2:4-9), point to Solomon more than to any other person. [Note: See Kaiser, pp. 25-29, for a good defense of Solomonic authorship.] Later he claimed divine authority for this book (Ecc 12:1).

The term "Preacher" (Heb. qohelet, NIV "Teacher") refers to a wise sage who taught the Israelites God’s will. Along with the priests and prophets, the teachers were those through whom God communicated His Word to His people (cf. Ecc 12:9; Jer 18:18; Eze 7:26). Teaching typically appeals to the mind, and its main purpose is to impart information, whereas preaching typically appeals to the will, and its main purpose is to promote action. In Israel, the priests were primarily the teachers, and the prophets were primarily the preachers. In most modern church services-and this was true in Israel as well-speakers often seek to combine teaching and preaching. This is especially true in expository preaching.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

THE PROLOGUE

In Which The Problem Of The Book Is Indirectly Stated

Ecc 1:1-11

THE search for the summum bonum, the quest of the Chief Good, is the theme of the book Ecclesiastes. Naturally we look to find this theme, this problem, this “riddle of the painful earth,” distinctly stated in the opening verses of the Book. It is stated, but not distinctly. For the Book is an autobiographical poem, the journal of the Preachers inward life set forth in a dramatic form. “A man of ripe wisdom and mature experience, he takes us into his confidence. He unclasps the secret volume, and invites us to read it with him. He lays before us what he has been, what he has thought and done, what he has seen and felt and suffered; and then he asks us to listen to the judgment which he has deliberately formed on a review of the whole.” But that he may the more unreservedly lay bare his heart to us, he uses the poets privilege, and presents himself to us under a mask and wrapped in Solomons ample mantle. And a dramatic poet conveys his conceptions of human character and circumstance and action, not by direct picturesque descriptions, but, placing men before us “in their habit as they lived,” he makes them speak to us, and leaves us to infer their character and condition from their words.

In accordance with the rules of his art, the dramatic preacher brings himself on the stage of his poem, permits us to hear his most penetrating and characteristic utterances, confesses his own most secret and inward experiences, and thus enables us to conceive and to judge him. He is true to his artistic canons from the outset. His prologue, unlike that of the Book of Job, is cast in the dramatic form. Instead of giving us a clear statement of the moral problem he is about to discuss, he opens with the characteristic utterances of the man who, wearied with many futile endeavours, gathers up his remaining strength to recount the experiments he has tried and the conclusion he has reached. Like Browning, one of the most dramatic of modern poets, he plunges abruptly into his theme, and speaks to us from the first through “feigned lips.” Just as in reading the Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, or the Epistle of Karshish, the Arab Physician, or a score other of Browning’s poems, we have first to glance through it in order to collect the scattered hints which indicate the speaker and the time, and then laboriously to think ourselves back, by their help, into the time and conditions of the speaker, so also with this Hebrew poem. It opens abruptly with “words of the Preacher,” who is at once the author and the hero of the drama. “Who is he,” we ask, “and what?” “When did he live, and what place did he fill?” And at present we can only reply, He is the voice of one crying in the wilderness of Oriental antiquity, and saying, “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!” For what intent, then, does his voice break the long silence? Of what ethical mood is this pathetic note the expression? What prompts his despairing cry?

It is the old contrast -old as literature, old as man -between the ordered steadfastness of nature and the disorder and brevity of human life. The Preacher gazes on the universe above and around him. The ancient earth is firm and strong beneath his feet. The sun runs his race with joy, sinks exhausted into its ocean bed, but rises on the morrow, like a giant refreshed with old wine, to renew its course. The variable and inconstant wind, which bloweth where it listeth, blows from the same quarters, runs through the very circuit which was its haunt in the time of the world’s grey fathers. The streams ebb and flow, which go and come, run along time-worn beds and are fed from their ancient source. But man, “to one point constant never,” shifts from change to change. As compared with the calm uniformity of nature, his life is a mere phantasy, passing forever through a tedious and limited range of forms, each of which is as unsubstantial as the fabric of a vision, many of which are as base and sordid as they are unreal, and all of which forever in a flux, elude the grasp of those who pursue them, or disappoint those who hold them in their hands. “All is vanity; for man has no profit,” no adequate and enduring reward, “for all his labour;” literally, “no balance, no surplus, on the balance-sheet of life:” Less happy, because less stable, than the earth on which he dwells, he comes and goes, while the earth goes on forever (Ecc 1:2-4).

This painful contrast between the ordered stability of nature and the changeful and profitless disorder of human life is emphasized by a detailed reference to the large natural forces which rule the world, and which abide unchanged, although to us they seem the very types of change. The figure of verse 5 (Ecc 1:5) is, of course, that of the racer. the sun rises every morning to run its course, pursues it through the day, “pants,” as one well-nigh breathless, toward its goal, and sinks at night into its subterraneous bed in the sea; but, though exhausted and breathless at night, it rises on the morrow refreshed, and eager, like a strong, swift man, to renew its daily race. In verse 6 (Ecc 1:6) the wind is represented as having a regular law and circuit, though it now blows South, and now veers round to the North. The East and West are not mentioned, probably because they are tacitly referred to in the rising and setting sun of the previous verse: all the four quarters are included between the two. In verse 7 (Ecc 1:7) the streams are described as returning on their sources; but there is no allusion here, as we might suppose, to the tides, -and indeed tidal rivers are comparatively rare, -or to the rain which brings back the water evaporated from the surface of the streams and of the sea. The reference is, rather, to an ancient conception of the physical order of nature held by the Hebrew as by other races, according to which the ocean, fed by the streams, sent back a constant supply through subterraneous passages and channels, in which the salt was filtered out of it; through these they supposed the rivers to return to the place whence they came. The ruling sentiment of these verses is that, while all the natural elements and forces, even the most variable and inconstant, renew their strength and return upon their course, for frail man there is no return; permanence and uniformity characterize them, while transitoriness and instability mark him for their own. They seem to vanish and disappear; the sun sinks, the winds lull, the streams run dry; but they all come back again: for him there is no coming back; once gone, he is gone forever.

But it is vain to talk of these or other instances of the weary yet restless activity of the universe; “man cannot utter it.” For, besides these elemental illustrations, the world is crowded with illustrations of incessant change, which yet move within narrow bounds and do nothing to relieve its sameliness. So numerous are they, so innumerable, that the curious eye and inquisitive ear of man would be worn out before they had completed the tale of them: and if eye and ear could never be satisfied with hearing and seeing, how much less the slower tongue with speaking (Ecc 1:8)? All through the universe what hath been still is and will be; what was done is done still and always will be done; the sun still running the same race, the winds still blowing from the same points, the streams still flowing between the same banks and returning by the same channels. If any man suppose that he has discovered new phenomena, any natural fact which has not been repeating itself from the beginning, it is only because he is ignorant of that which has been from of old (Ecc 1:9-10). Yet, while in nature all things return on their course and abide forever, mans day is soon spent, his force soon exhausted. He does not return; nay, he is not so much as remembered by those who come after him. Just as we have forgotten those who were before us, so those who live after us will forget us (Ecc 1:11). The burden of all this unintelligible world lies heavily on the Preachers soul. He is weary of the worlds “everlasting sameness.” The miseries and confusions of the human lot baffle and oppress his thoughts. Above all, the contrast between Nature and Man, between its massive and stately permanence and the frailty and brevity of our existence, breeds in him the despairing mood of which we have the keynote in his cry, “vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”

Yet this is not the only, not the inevitable, mood of the mind as it ponders that great contrast. We have learned to look upon it with other, perhaps with wider, eyes. We say, How grand, how soothing, how hopeful is the spectacle of natures uniformity! How it lifts us above the fluctuations of inward thought, and gladdens us with a sense of stability and repose! As we see the ancient inviolable laws working out into the same gracious and beautiful results day after day and year by year, and reflect that “what has been will be,” we are redeemed from our bondage to vanity and corruption; we look up with composed and reverent trust to Him who is our God and Father, and onward to the stable and glorious immortality we are to spend with Him; we argue with Habakkuk (Hab 1:12), “Art not Thou from everlasting, O Lord our God, our Holy One? We shall not die,” but live.

But if we did not know the Ruler of the universe to be our God and Father; if our thoughts had still to “jump the life to come” or to leap at it with a mere guess; if we had to cross the gulf of death on no more solid bridge than a peradventure: if, in short, our life were infinitely more troubled and uncertain than it is, and the true good of life and its bright sustaining hope were still to seek, how would it be with us then? Then, like the Preacher, we might feel the steadfastness and uniformity of nature as an affront to our vanity and weakness. In place of drinking in hope and composure from the fair visage and unbroken order of the universe, we might deem its face to be darkened with a frown or its eye to be glancing on us with bitter irony. Instead of finding in its inevitable order and permanence a hopeful prophecy of our recovery into an unbroken order and an enduring peace, we might passionately demand why, on an abiding earth and under an unchanging heaven, we should die and be forgotten; why, more inconstant than the variable wind, more evanescent than the parching stream, one generation should go never to return, and another generation come to enjoy the gains of those who were before them, and to blot their memory from the earth.

This, indeed, has been the impassioned protest and outcry of every age. Literature is full of it. The contrast between the tranquil unchanging sky, with its myriads of pure lustrous stars, which are always there and always in a happy concert, and the frailty of man rushing blindly through his brief and perturbed course has lent its ground tones to the poetry of every race. We meet it everywhere. It is the oldest of old songs. In all the many languages of the divided earth we hear how the generations of men pass swiftly and stormfully across its bosom, “searching the serene heavens with the inquest of their beseeching looks,” but winning no response; asking always, and always in vain, “Why are we thus? why are we thus? frail as the moth, and of few days like the flower?” It is this contrast between the serenity and the stability of nature and the frailty and turbulence of man which afflicts Coheleth and drives him to conclusions of despair. Here is man, “so noble in reason, so infinite in faculty, in apprehension so like a god,” longing with an ardent intensity for the peace which results from the equipoise and happy occupation of his various powers; and yet his whole life is wasted in labours and tumults, in perplexity and strife; he goes to his grave with his cravings unsatisfied, his powers untrained, unharmonised, knowing no rest till he lies in the narrow bed from which is no uprising! What wonder if to such a one as he “this goodly frame, the earth, seems but a sterile promontory” stretching out a little space into the dark, infinite void; “this most excellent canopy, the air this brave oerhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,” nothing but “a foul, pestilential congregation of vapours”? What wonder if, for him, the very beauty of nature should turn into a repulsive hideousness, and its steadfast, unchanging order be held a satire on the disorder and vanity of his life?

Solomon, moreover, -and Solomon in his premature old age, sated and weary, is the mask under which the Preacher conceals his natural face, -had had a large experience of life, had tried its ambitions, its lusts, its pursuits and pleasures; he had tested every promise of good which it held forth, and found them all illusory; he had drunk of every stream, and found no pure living water with which he could slake his thirst. And men such as he, sated but not satisfied, jaded with voluptuous delights and without the peace of faith, commonly look out on the world with haggard eyes. They feed their despair on the natural order and purity which they feel to be a rebuke to the impurity of their own restless and perturbed hearts. Many of us have, no doubt, stood on Richmond Hill, and looked with softening eyes on the rich pastures dotted with cattle, and broken with clumps of trees through which shoot up village spires, while the full, placid Thames winds in many a curve through pasture and wood. It is not a grand or romantic scene; but on a quiet evening, in the long level rays of the setting sun, it is a scene to inspire content and thankful, peaceful thoughts. Wilberforce tells us that he once stood in the balcony of a villa looking down on this scene. Beside him stood the owner of the villa, a duke notorious for his profligacy in a profligate age; and as they looked across the stream, the duke cried out, “O that river! there it runs, on and on, and I am so weary of it!” And there you have the very mood of this Prologue; the mood for which the fair, smiling heavens and the gracious, bountiful earth carry no benediction of peace, because they are reflected from a heart all tossed into crossing and impure waves.

All things depend on the heart we bring to them. This very contrast between Nature and Man has no despair in it, breeds no dispeace or anger in the heart at leisure from itself and at peace with God. Tennyson, for instance, makes a merry musical brook sing to us on this very theme.

“I come from haunts of coot and hern,

I make a sudden sally

And sparkle out among the fern,

To bicker down a valley.”

“I chatter over stony ways

In little sharps and trebles,

I bubble into eddying bays,

I babble on the pebbles.”

“I chatter, chatter as I flow”

To join the brimming river:

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers:

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance

Among my skimming swallows:

I make the netted sunbeams dance

Against my sanded shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses:

I linger by my shingly bars:

I loiter round my cresses,

And out again I curve and flow

To join the brimming river:

“For men may come and men may go

But I go on forever.”

It is the very plaint of the Preacher set to sweet music. He murmurs, “One generation passeth, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever”; while the refrain of the Brook is, –

“For men may come and men may go,

But I go on forever.”

Yet we do not feel that the Song of the Brook should feed any mood of grief and despair. The tune that it sings to the sleeping woods all night is “a cheerful tune.” By some subtle process we are made to share its bright, tender hilarity, though we too are of the men that come and go. Into what a fume would the Hebrew Preacher have been thrown had any little “babbling brook” dared to sing this saucy song to him. He would have felt it as an insult, and have assumed that the merry, innocent creature was “crowing” over the swiftly passing generations of men. But, for the Christian Poet, the Brook sings a song whose blithe dulcet strain attunes the heart to the quiet harmonies of peace and goodwill.

Again I say all depends on the heart we turn to Nature. It was because his heart was heavy with the memory of many sins and many failures, because too the lofty Christian hopes were beyond his reach, that this “son of David” grew mournful and bitter in her presence.

This, then, is the mood in which the Preacher commences his quest of the Chief Good. He is driven to it by the need of finding that in which he can rest. As a rule. it is only on the most stringent compulsions that we any of us undertake this high Quest. Of their profound need of a Chief Good most men are but seldom and faintly conscious; but to the favoured few, who are to lead and mould the public thought, it comes with a force they cannot resist. It was thus with Coheleth. He could not endure to think that those who have “all things put under their feet” should lie at the mercy of accidents from which their realm is exempt; that they should be the mere fools of change, while that abides unchanged forever. And, therefore, he set out to discover the conditions on which they might become partakers of the order and stability and peace of nature; the conditions on which, raised above all the tides and storms of change, they might sit calm and serene even though the heavens should be folded as a scroll and the earth be shaken from its foundations. This, and only this, will he recognise as the Chief Good, the Good appropriate to the nature of man, because capable of satisfying all his cravings and supplying all his wants.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary