Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26

The Empty, Ambitious Life

Review where we’ve been so far

slide from week 1

Last week

Where we want to go this week

The ‘grievous task’

‘ra’

“Leonard Woolf, the British publisher and political theorist who helped begin the Bloomsbury Group (also the husband of Virginia Woolf), had this to say about his life and work:

I see clearly that I have achieved practically nothing. The world today and the history of the human anthill during the past five to seven years would be exactly the same as it is if I had played Ping-Pong instead of sitting on committees and writing books and memoranda. I have therefore to make a rather ignominious confession that I must have, in a long life, ground through between 150,000 and 200,000 hours of perfectly useless work. 6

These are the words of someone who wrote more than twenty books on literature, politics and economics.”

Ryken, Philip Graham. Ecclesiastes (Preaching the Word) (pp. 38-39). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

Under the sun

Is there anything fulfilling?

Ecclesiastes 2:24–26

24) There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God.

25) For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?

26) For to a person who is good in His sight He has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner He has given the task of gathering and collecting so that he may give to one who is good in God’s sight. This too is vanity and striving after wind.

Grievous (H7451)

Bad, Evil

This is an unhappy, discouraging, depressing undertaking. But ‘ra’ goes beyond emotional or unfortunate, it is moral and ethical. It is bad, evil. Sooner or later those things that we thought were more exciting, satisfying and meaningful in life become ‘grievous’. In other words, we were chasing after the wind.

It is significant that this ‘ra’ business that man is given to do has been ‘given by God’ for men to ‘be afflicted with’.

Ecclesiastes 1:13

And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with.

Ecclesiastes 2:17

So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 2:23

Because all his days his task is painful and grievous; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 4:8

There was a certain man without a dependent, having neither a son nor a brother, yet there was no end to all his labor. Indeed, his eyes were not satisfied with riches and he never asked, “And for whom am I laboring and depriving myself of pleasure?” This too is vanity and it is a grievous task.

Ecclesiastes 5:13

There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches being hoarded by their owner to his hurt.

Ecclesiastes 5:16

This also is a grievous evil—exactly as a man is born, thus will he die. So what is the advantage to him who toils for the wind?