All is Vanity

Ecclesiastes / A Misunderstood Book

The Death of Ernest Hemingway

Some will remember the death of Ernest Papa Hemingway several years ago one of the most famous writers of American Literature in the 20th century. After he had gone to bed his wife had fallen asleep. He secretly arose from his bed, went down to the kitchen and, set up with great care his favorite hunting rifle, and with a trigger mechanism aimed it at himself and blew a hole through his head.

He was consistent with what he had said throughout his literary career. Hemingway had a very pessimistic view of life and said that the only edge that we had over death, because death comes to us all is to choose the time, the place, and the method of our own death wherever we can.

Some of the themes of Hemingway’s novels were littered with the modern existential American hero who was defiant in his stand against the life and cosmos that was completely devoid of any substance or meaning. One of the most famous novels of Hemingway was “The Sun Also Rises.”

Ecclesiastes 1:1–11 ESV

1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? 4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. 7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. 8 All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. 11 There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.

Ecclesiastes appears to be one of the most pessimistic books in the canon of scripture. Many would even question why it is included in our Bible. This is one of the most difficult literary forms in scripture for us to handle because of the message of despair and pessimism.

However, the book represents a form of literature that was common in the ancient world. There was one time of early literature called “literary pessimism.” The goal of such literature was to seek out the meaning of human suffering, grief, mourning, and pain. Asking the question, what is it all about? Appears to be written from a pagan perspective. However, on deeper investigation, it is more of a self-conscious type of Old Testament apologetic. (giving an intellectual defense for the truth)

Apologia is a reply, or answer to a certain Objection.

Introduction

Bill Murray plays the main character, weatherman Phil Connors, in the comedy Groundhog Day (1993). His character relives February second—Groundhog Day—over and over again in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where the main festival takes place.

Some obsessive viewers speculate Phil might have relived the same day for three decades. What does Phil do to cope with this monotonous prison? What does he do to try to find meaning when it seems like nothing he does really matters from one day to the next? He looks for happiness in different experiences. He tries all kinds of things in his quest for some semblance of meaning.

Phil turns to hedonistic pleasures and denies himself nothing. If it feels good, he does it! There’s one scene in the diner where he gorges himself on a table full of food, drinking coffee straight from the pot and smoking a cigarette. He punches out a guy who really annoys him.

He seduces women into bed with him. When that fails to satisfy, Phil turns to greed. He robs an armored car and uses the money to buy the car and the clothes he has always wanted. He tries to live out the life he could not before. Next, Phil turns to despair. Faced with the reality that he cannot escape from this curse, Phil takes his life multiple times, but he wakes up again every time right back in Punxsutawney.

Finally, Phil turns to knowledge. He tries to learn and better himself. He takes up piano, ice sculpting, French poetry, and more to become an educated, well-rounded man.

Phil does not wake up on February third until he finally reaches contentment in his current circumstance.

Only then is the curse lifted. The last time he relives February second he looks into the eyes of a woman he has fallen in love with, Rita, and he says, “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow; all I know is I’m happy right now.” That’s kind of the point of the book of Ecclesiastes. We are stuck in a monotonous prison where nothing we do really changes anything, and the only way to live a meaningful life in this meaningless existence is to find satisfaction and contentment in what God has given us.

There is a really interesting scene in the movie, early on in Phil’s experience, when he is trying to figure out what is going on. He sits at a bar in a bowling alley with two local guys who are drunk, and he asks them this question: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was the same, and nothing you did really mattered?”

One of the men stares into his beer mug and says, “Yep, that about sums it up for me.”

Consider this morning how life is more like Groundhog day than we would like to admit.

Think about the mundane ordinary aspects of your life that will start as soon as the alarm clock goes off tomorrow.

Your alarm will go off at 6:00 a.m., you will hit the snooze to sleep ten more minutes, and then you will stumble into the bathroom to brush your teeth and shower. You will get dressed, jump in your car, sit in traffic, and then finally get to work at your business classroom or factory.

You will work for a few hours and then take a break to eat lunch. Then you will get back to work for a few more hours, punch out, maybe hit the gym on the way home, and then eat dinner. You will sit on the couch and watch TV for a little bit, and then you will hop in bed. Guess what you will do on Tuesday?!

Introducing the Author

He comes almost but not quite to the point of calling himself Solomon. The other two books attributed to Solomon come right out and say “The Proverbs of Solomon,” and “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.

We see a double title given to the author of Ecclesiastes. The first title is “Preacher” in Hebrew it is translated as “Qohelet” or in in the Greek it is translated “Ekklesiastes.” We will later read in verse 16 that the author possesses a wisdom that surpasses all who were in Jerusalem at that time. The question that may be asked is whether we have one man recounting the work of another? Thus, the preacher recounting the search that Solomon experienced.

Qohelet is described as one who teaches to the public gathering material and wisdom.

When we add that after the first two chapters all the signs of royalty fade away, it seems fairly clear that we are meant to see the non-royal title as the writer’s own, and the royal one simply as a means of dramatizing the quest he demonstrates that the most gifted man conceivable, and one who could outstrip every king who ever occupied the throne of David, would still return empty handed from his quest for self-fulfillment.

So, here is what we do know. We have an author that is portrayed as a scholar whose vocation is teaching, research, editing and creative writing. The writing is about the wisest man in the ancient world who became greedy, lustful, power-hungry, idolatrous. He violated the kingly commands of Deuteronomy 17 and accumulated possessions as well as women for himself. He had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. The foreign woman that he married pulled his heart away from God to false gods. He did not deny himself anything that he wanted.

As a result he ruined the kingdom and God told Solomon that following his death his kingdom would be divided during his son’s reign.

The writer makes several observations dividing reality into two realms:

The Heavenly Perspective.

The Earthly Perspective.

How do you see your life? The writer explains that He has seen all under the sun. God is in heaven and you are on earth. We will read that he eventually asserts that he “came to realize.”

THE MOTTO

Ecclesiastes 1:2 ESV

2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

The closest you could get to zero or nothing is what vanity is, a vapor something that is a mere breath and barely recognizable as having any true meaning.

James 4:14 ESV

14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

The word “hevel or hevels means “as meaningless as possible.” The word is used more than 30 times in this book.

How should we view the first 11 verses of Ecclesiastes?

1. A Call for us to Consider the Implications of Living a Secular life.

Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion (Secularism)

Secularism: A belief system, attitude or style of life that denies or ignores the reality of God. Derived from a term that means “worldly,” secularism (and its articulate philosophical expression, secular humanism) focuses on the natural order of things as the only reality. Increasingly, however, secularism can be viewed as an attitude that even affects people who claim to believe in God and the supernatural. Much in modern culture pressures people to live in such a way that God is marginal and insignificant to their daily existence.

We see a reply to the unrealized pessimism of much of the ancient thought. Yet at the same time it does not support a superficial faith which does not take an adequate account of the fallenness of the world.

We see a call summoning faithful Israelite's to take seriously the “futility,” of life in this world. The Christian life should exclude all manners of secularism (living as though the existence of God has no practical usefulness for life in this world and an unrealistic optimism expecting faith the somehow, cancel out the true reality of seeing life as it truly is.

The Ostrich Effect

Sticking your head in the sand and failing to see the things of this world as they truly are.

The garden of Eden, which God created for Adam and Eve, was “very good” (Gen 1:31)—a fruitful and meaningful place to live. But when Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they were expelled from the garden, and a guard was placed at the gateway on the east side (Gen 3:24). Ecclesiastes drives home the point that life in this fallen world east of Eden is futile and meaningless.

A parallel from Paul in the New Testament illumines this backdrop. While Ecclesiastes is never directly quoted in the New Testament, Romans 8:20 seems to be an allusion. Paul uses the same word (mataiotes) that the Septuagint uses in Ecclesiastes 1:2 when he talks about the curse God imposed on creation because of human sin. Romans 8:20–21 says,

For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it—in the hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of corruption into the glorious freedom of God’s children. (emphasis added)

When man rebelled against God’s design (Gen 3), a frustrating curse was brought into the world. Now nothing works right, and we live in a broken world where we suffer the consequences of going our own way. Disease, death, poverty, evil, injustice, and more characterize our current existence. Therefore, according to Paul, the fallen creation is futile and in bondage, screaming for rescue

Faith: Faith is always in contrast to “sight” and does not provide us with a shortcut fully to understanding the ways of God. It does however call us to a life of faith and joy.

“God holds the key to the unknown - but he will not give it to you. Since you do not have the key you must trust Him to open the doors.” Summarizing Ecclesiastes, J. S. Wright (Ecclesiastes, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 5 [Zondervan, 1992])

*Whatever you try to build your life on other than Jesus is ultimately Meaningless

God created the world good with a design for everything. God created the world as a perfect home for His creation i.e. his children, humanity, and gave good gifts of food, drink, relationships, and sex. God designed all of these things to be used as He intended them to be used to bring God glory, not to be used as a means to and end in themselves.

They were designed to cause our hearts to worship our Creator. So when we eat, drink, or enjoy sex with our spouse, such activities are intended to bring praise and gratitude to God for His good gifts.

Instead, however, we have rebelled against God’s good and perfect design choosing to use His gifts in ways that He did not intend. We turned them into ends rather than means. We have sought to find our satisfaction in created things rather than the Creator God, and that brought a curse on the world. Now we experience death and brokenness. The things that were created to bring him glory do not work the way they were intended.

Food has become gluttony, drink has become drunkenness, and sex has becomes adultery.

2. A Call to consider the dividends of life on planet earth.

What does a man gain for all of the toil (effort) that he labors under the sun?

The Hebrew word translated for gain means profit or advantage. We recall similar language used in Genesis 3, where God said that labor would be painful.

The words “under the sun is perhaps the most important phrase in verse 3. It means the Solomon is looking at the question of meaning from an earthly perspective. If this world is all there is - if there is no God, no afterlife, and no final judgment - then everything else is meaningless. The question does not lead us down the road of an atheist perspective, but, rather the uncertainty about what lies beyond this life, its experiences and observations. Solomon expects a negative response to his question about profit under the sun.

If this life is all there is, then what is the point of our existence since all of our activity does not bring us any net gain.

The fatalistic life of the ultimate Pessimist will bring a person to utter and complete despair. We live in a culture today that experiences depression and anxiety at an alarming rate.

No Fear Fad

Remember the “No Fear” shirt fad that was going around school 20 or 25 years ago. Teenagers thought they were so cool because they rocked a “No Fear” T-shirt up and down the hallways of their schools. One shirt had written on it, “He who dies with the most toys still dies. No Fear!” If you had one of these shirts you thought you were the bomb. com.

The goofy reality of this statement is the notion that the person who dies with the most toys wins a life. The writers point here is similar to the “No Fear” shirt. You do not get to take the fruits of your labor and activity beyond the grave if this life is all there is. Then there cannot be any real profit to your activity.

Jesus asks a similar question in Mark 8:36

Mark 8:36 ESV

36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

“There is no profit in earthly gain apart from God.”

How much you make, how much you learn, and how popular or cool you are is meaningless because life without God in it is futile and meaningless.

Exalting Jesus in Ecclesiastes (Everything Is Meaningless Because All of Our Activity Is Pointless (Ecclesiastes 1:3–11)

Keller explains that we ask the question, What’s in it for me? in the small things, but we do not seem to ask it over the whole of our life. If I told you to show up in the parking lot tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m., you would ask “Why?” If I said, “Just show up,” then you would reply, “What’s in it for me? Why should I come? What will I be doing?”

And yet, we do not ask those questions of our lives. What’s the overall profit to what I am doing (Keller, “Problem of Meaning”)?

“What does a man gain?”

This is a legitimate question for the writer to ask. The overarching sentiment in culture today when asked to do something that is not motivated by self is, “Whats in it for me.” The idea of doing anything that does not bring me pleasure or glory is viewed as a meaningless pursuit.

If the earthly realm is subject to vanity, there is no hope of finding ultimate gain or satisfaction from its resources alone. Labor (‘āmāl) may denote physical toil (Ps. 127:1) “unless the Lord builds the house those who build it labor in vain.” Or mental anguish (Ps. 25:18) “Consier my affliction and trouble and forgive all my sin.”

In Ecclesiastes the emphasis is generally on the actual labor of human endeavours (especially in 2:10f., 18–23), but the mental-emotional aspects of human labour must also be borne in mind here

If all of our efforts and view of life goes not further than, “under the sun,” then all our pursuits will have an undertone of misery.

Positive Labor

We do have pictures in scripture of positive “labor.”

We read in Ecc. 3:13 “also that everyone should eat, and drink, and take pleasure in all his toil, this is god’s gift to man.” and in Ecc. 5:18 18 Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot.

3. A Call for us to Consider How Nature Illuminates the Human Condition.

Reflecting on the contrast between the constancy of the earth and human transience fosters the intellectual stance that the speaker wants his audience to adopt. The contemplation of nature illuminates the human condition.

The word ‘ôlām (‘forever, eternal, everlasting’) is an important keyword. Regularly associated with God (e.g. 3:14), it contrasts with the limited time span of humans. The natural cycles explored here are considered permanent and continuous, but also ever changing and dynamic, with the translation ever the same aiming to reflect the dynamic beauty of nature’s regularity—the ‘laws of nature’.

“A GENERATION GOES, AND A GENERATION COMES.”

One day, even Patrick Mahomes will be forgotten in the hourglass of time.

The Coming and Going of Generations

Throughout human history people have been concerned with how people will remember them when they are gone. Will the generations to come know of anything significant that they have done with their lives. The reality is that the majority of people on planet earth 100 years from now will be forgotten to be remembered no more.

Everyone likes to think that they will be remembered, however, the reality is that those who see themselves as the Lord of their own universe will one day suddenly dissolve into the dust of the earth.

Job 1:21-22. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Everyone hopes to make the world a better place to leave for their children. However the preacher points out the ceaseless making and unmaking that goes on in human history: the wave after wave of generations with their rise and fall, their coming men who are soon forgotten men; all this against the impassive background of the earth, which sees each generation out and goes on for ever.

Diana and I were gifted a DNA Ancestry.com test. I found out that I am 31% Scottish and 35% England and Northwestern Europe. I did not family tree part of the test and was only able to trace as far back as my Great Grandparents and their families. Several years ago I asked my dad to write down a history of all the things they have in their house that have been passed down from generation to generation.

Generations will continue to pass away, however, as long as Christ delays in returning planet earth will still remain in it’s orbit.

The writer gives us three examples from nature where human experience mirrors the natural cycles. (1:5-8)

3 Cycles of Nature

1) The Sun rises and sets every day.

2) The wind blows to the south and eventually reaches the North.

3) The streams run to the sea but the sea does not overfill because it cycles back around over, and over, again.

The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell captures well the realities of the world people find themselves in as described by the preacher of Ecclesiastes.

“We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night and the emptiness; sometimes a voice answers out of the darkness. But it is a voice of one drowning; and in a moment the silence returns. The world seems to me quite dreadful; the unhappiness of most people is very great, and I often wonder how they all endure it.”

“To know people well is to know their tragedy: it is usually the central thing about which their lives are built. And I suppose if they did not live most of the time in the things of the moment, they would not be able to go on.” (Russell, Autobiography, 1,994)

THE HUMAN CONDITION

By themselves, verses 9 and 10 (What has been is what will be …) could mean just this. But their setting is in a book which will treat moral choices as genuine by using such words as ‘righteous’ and ‘wicked’, and by pointing to a coming judgment, that would be meaningless if we were caught in a process that gave us no alternatives.

What we are shown is the weariness of doing much and getting nowhere; and while this is very different from the fatalism we have been looking at, it is also far from the sense of pilgrimage which dominates the Old Testament.

Is this a sign of fading conviction?

Gerhard von Rad reckoned that with this author ‘the Wisdom literature lost its last contact with Israel’s old way of thinking in terms of saving history and, quite consistently, fell back on the cyclical way of thinking common to the East, … only … in an utterly secular form’.

That is a fair comment, if ‘the cyclical way of thinking’ means simply a preoccupation with the round of the seasons and the rhythms of life.

But it is easy to forget that if the preacher is taking the stance of the worldly man to show what it involves, this is the very outlook he must expound upon. And if he is doing so to expose it and create a hunger for something better, as the final chapters will show, he should not be identified with it except by virtue of his fellow-feeling and depth of insight.

Theological Soundings

The poem clearly raises the issue of how we view history and of where we locate our identity or meaning in this life.

Scripture and the Christian tradition rightly recognize, with this poem, that a cyclical view of history is hope-less, and also alert us to the fact that we cannot root our identity in others and their remembrance of us. We cannot root our identity in what we do, i.e. our job, hobbies, money status etc. This world and all that is in it are most definitely passing away, minute by minute, sunset by sunset, generation by generation.

However the one thing that stands forever is the word of the Lord. Isaiah 40:8

Isaiah 40:8 ESV

8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

1 Peter 1:25 ESV

25 but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.

CONCLUSION

All human life and human systems are ultimately useless without God, because death comes to us all. God wants to deliver people from their futile ways.

Whether Life or Death

Immanuel Kant declared that no one had the right to talk about immortality until he worked so hard at being mortal that he longed for the immortal. Is not this the message of the apostle Paul? After a long and devoted career as an ambassador for Christ, he was arrested and thrown into prison. Not knowing what the future held for him, that is, on his captors’ terms, he had the one hope that Christ would be honored in his body, whether by life or death.

1). Human life is futile

The brevity of life is made throughout scripture. As James reminds us in James 4:14 that we do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Death is the destiny of us all. Ecc. 9:5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Your thoughts, and your attitudes, your endeavors are all futile are useless without God in them.

2). Sin is futile because it achieves nothing.

Even faithfulness to God may seem futile to some. Jeremiah 13:10 expresses the heart of such people. “This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their hearts and have gone after other gods......

3). God wants to deliver people from their futile ways.

1 Peter 1:18 ESV

18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold,