Ecclesiastes 1 - rewrite

Quote found in book

Vanity of vanities!” “All things are full of weariness.” Are you starting to agree with the Preacher’s philosophy of life? Do you think there is anything to gain for all your hard work, or has his litany of failure convinced you that life is nothing but toil and trouble?

Here it is crucially important to understand the Preacher’s purpose. There is a reason why he wants us to feel the full weight of the weariness and futility of life under the sun. “The function of Ecclesiastes,” writes Derek Kidner, “is to bring us to the point where we begin to fear that such a comment (all is vanity) is the only honest one. So it is, if everything is dying. We face the appalling inference that nothing has meaning, nothing matters under the sun.”9

This is not the whole story, however. Remember that this is only the way things are if we look at them “under the sun.” This phrase, which occurs here in verse 3 and again in verse 9, as well as dozens of other places in Ecclesiastes, is one of the keys to understanding the book. It partly expresses the extent of our problem. Where do we experience life’s futility and frustration? Everywhere in the world—wherever the sun shines.

Yet this phrase also leaves open the possibility of a different perspective. When he says “under the sun,” the Preacher “rules out all higher values and spiritual realities and employs only the resources and gifts that this world offers. The use of this phrase is equivalent to drawing a horizontal line between earthly and heavenly realities.”10 To see things “under the sun,” then, is to look at them from ground level. It is to take an earthly point of view, leaving God out of it for the moment.

ECCLESIASTES

Why Everything Matters

Philip Graham Ryken

R. Kent Hughes, General Editor