Ecclesiastes
A king-philosopher searches for what lasts under the sun, finds that everything slips away like breath, and learns to receive life as a gift from God.
Overview
Ecclesiastes is the testimony of “the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem” (1:1), who set out to find what a person gains from all his labour. He tried wisdom, pleasure, great building works, wealth and hard work. He found each one to be hevel: the Hebrew word translated “vanity,” which literally means a breath or vapour. The book opens and closes with the same verdict: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (1:2; 12:8).
Between those words the Preacher observes a world of repeating cycles, injustice that goes unpunished, and a death that comes to wise and fool alike. Yet he returns again and again to a simpler good: to eat, drink and enjoy one’s work as “from the hand of God” (2:24). The famous poem “For everything there is a season” (3:1) belongs here. An epilogue in another voice sums up: “Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man” (12:13).
Author and date
The book never names Solomon. Its speaker calls himself Qohelet, “the Preacher,” and says he “was king over Israel in Jerusalem” (1:12).
Traditional view
Jewish and Christian tradition identify the Preacher with Solomon, the only son of David to rule over all Israel from Jerusalem. A Jewish midrash (a traditional commentary) assigns the Song of Songs to his youth, Proverbs to his middle years and Ecclesiastes to his old age. The Talmud credits Hezekiah and his colleagues with writing the book down.
Academic view
Most scholars, including a number of conservative interpreters, read the royal voice as a role the author takes on in chapters 1–2 and then sets aside. They date the book to the late Persian or early Hellenistic (Greek) period because of its Hebrew, which is close to the Hebrew of the later rabbis and contains words borrowed from Persian.
Both views recognise a second voice in the closing verses that speaks about the Preacher in the third person (12:9), as a teacher who “set in order many proverbs.”
Audience and setting
Ecclesiastes addresses readers who know the wisdom tradition of Proverbs and have noticed that life does not always follow its patterns. Its setting is Jerusalem and the world “under the sun,” a phrase it uses more than twenty-five times for life as it can be observed. In Jewish practice it is read at the Feast of Tabernacles.
Genre, and how to read it
Ecclesiastes is reflective prose and poetry, often in the first person, and it records a search. The Preacher states conclusions, then doubts and qualifies them, so sayings that seem to contradict each other stand side by side. Readers differ on how to hear him: as a pessimist whom the epilogue corrects, as a realist who teaches joy in the face of death, or as a guide who deliberately strips away false hopes.
Read it with its refrains in mind. “Vanity” marks what cannot be held on to; “under the sun” marks the limits of human sight; and the repeated call to enjoy food, drink, work and love marks what can still be received. The command to “eat your bread with joy” (9:7) is as much the book’s message as its lament.
Three refrains
The book opens and closes with the same verdict, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity
(1:2; 12:8), and three refrains run between. Hevel, “vanity”, a breath or vapour, comes 38 times; under the sun
29 times. And seven times the Preacher stops to say that the best a person can do is eat, drink and enjoy his work, as God’s gift.
- 2:24–26
There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink
- 3:12–13
every man should eat and drink, and enjoy good in all his labor, is the gift of God
- 3:22
there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his works
- 5:18–20
to eat and to drink, and to enjoy good in all his labor
- 8:15
Then I commended mirth
- 9:7–10
eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart
- 11:7–10
Rejoice, young man, in your youth
“Vanity” and “under the sun” are counted in the site’s Hebrew; 1:2 has hevel five times and 12:8 three. Under heaven
stands in for “under the sun” three times, all near the start. The seven calls to enjoy life are a reading of the book, not a phrase it repeats word for word: most pair eating and drinking with enjoying one’s work, and the last turns to the reader, Rejoice, young man, in your youth
.
Outline
- 1:1–1:11 All is breath — The Preacher’s motto, and the endless cycles of nature
- 1:12–2:26 The king’s experiment — Wisdom, pleasure, building and toil, all tested
- 3:1–3:22 A time for everything — Seasons set by God, and one end for all
- 4:1–6:12 Oppression, toil and wealth — Two are better than one, rash vows, riches that do not satisfy
- 7:1–8:17 The limits of wisdom — Sayings on what is “better” and God’s work beyond finding out
- 9:1–11:6 Live while you can — One fate for all, bread eaten with joy, bread cast on the waters
- 11:7–12:8 Youth and old age — Remember your Creator before the days darken
- 12:9–12:14 Epilogue — A second voice sums up
Key themes
- Breath
- Hevel, “vanity,” appears throughout the book: everything under the sun is fleeting and cannot be grasped (1:2).
- Death
- The wise and the fool, the human and the animal, all go to the same end, and the Preacher refuses to look away from it.
- Joy as a gift
- Seven times the book commends enjoying ordinary life, and it calls that enjoyment “from the hand of God” (2:24).
- God’s hidden work
- God “has also set eternity in their hearts,” yet no one can find out the whole of his work (3:11).
- Fear God
- The epilogue draws the search to a close with reverence and obedience, since God “will bring every work into judgment” (12:14).
At a glance
Most mentioned: David
Main places: Jerusalem