Why is Ecclesiastes in the Bible?
If we want to know what is happening these days or have trouble understanding why a powerful Creator allows evil on the earth or struggle to resolve life’s other inconsistencies, then Ecclesiastes is the book for you.
We should study Ecclesiastes because it is
—so honest that the great American novelist Herman Melville once called it “the truest of all books.” More than anything else in the Bible, Ecclesiastes captures the futility and frustration of a fallen world. It is honest about the drudgery of work, the injustice of government, the dissatisfaction of foolish pleasure, and the mind-numbing tedium of everyday life— Think of Ecclesiastes as the only book of the Bible written on a Monday morning. Reading it helps us to be honest with God about the problems of life—even those of us who trust in the goodness of God. One scholar describes Ecclesiastes as “a kind of back door” that allows believers to have the sad and skeptical thoughts that we usually do not allow to enter the front door of our faith.
We should also study Ecclesiastes to learn what will happen if we
The writer of this book had more money, enjoyed more pleasure, and possessed more human wisdom than anyone else in the world, yet everything still ended in frustration. The same will happen if we live for ourselves rather than God. “Why make your own mistakes,” the writer is saying, “when you can learn from an expert like me instead?”
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**We should study Ecclesiastes because it
It addresses the questions that people always have: What is the meaning of life? Why am I so unhappy? Does God care? Why is there so much suffering and injustice in the world? Is life worth living? The writer wants to ask these kinds of intellectual and practical questions. “Wisdom is his base camp,” writes Derek Kidner, “but he is an explorer. His concern is with the boundaries of life, and especially with the questions that most of us would hesitate to push too far.” Nor is he satisfied with the kind of easy answers that children sometimes get in Sunday school. Part of his spiritual struggle is with the answers he has always been given. He was like the student who always says, “Yes, but …”
Here is another reason to study Ecclesiastes: it will help us
For all of its sad disappointments and skeptical doubts, this book teaches many great truths about God. It presents him as the Mighty Creator and Sovereign Lord, the transcendent and all-powerful ruler of the universe. Reading Ecclesiastes, therefore, will help us grow in the knowledge of God.
At the same time, this book teaches us how to live for God and not just for
It provides some of the basic principles needed to build a God-centered worldview, like the goodness of creation and our absolute dependence on the Creator. Based on these principles, Ecclesiastes gives many specific instructions about everyday issues like money, sex, and power. It also has many things to say about death, which may be the most practical issue of all.
In short, there are many good reasons to study Ecclesiastes. This is especially true for anyone still deciding what to believe and what not to believe. It is a book for skeptics and agnostics, for people on a quest to know the meaning of life, and for people who are open to God but unsure whether they can trust the Bible. If Ecclesiastes serves as a back door for believers who sometimes have their doubts, it also serves as the gateway for some people to enter a personal relationship with Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life, which is why, for some people, it turns out to be one of the most important books they ever read.
Ecclesiastes 1:1 ESV
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
After wandering away from God and falling into tragic sin, Solomon repented of his sinful ways and returned to the right and proper fear of God. Ecclesiastes is his memoir—an autobiographical account of what he learned from his futile attempt to live without God. In effect, the book is his final testament, written perhaps to steer his son Rehoboam in the right spiritual direction.
Who better than King Solomon to illustrate the futility of life without God? The man had everything that anyone could ever want. But the world is not enough. If it could not satisfy the richest, wisest king in the world, it will never satisfy anyone.
Ecclesiastes 1:2 ESV
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
Vanity, taken literally, the Hebrew word hevel refers to a breath or vapor, like a puff of smoke rising from a fire or the cloud of steam that comes from hot breath on a frosty morning. Life is like that. It is elusive, ephemeral, and enigmatic. Life is so insubstantial that when we try to get our hands on it, it slips right through our fingers.
Life is also transitory. It disappears as suddenly as it comes. Now you see it, now you don’t! We are here today and gone tomorrow. Thus the Bible often compares our mortal existence to a vapor.
Psalm 39:5 ESV
Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah
According to the psalmist, we are “mere breath” our days will “vanish like a breath”
Psalm 78:33 ESV
So he made their days vanish like a breath, and their years in terror.
Job 7:7 ESV
“Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.
James 4:14 ESV
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 Apostle James said something similar when he described life as “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes”. So too when the Preacher says “vanity of vanities,” he is partly making a comment on the transience of life. Breathe in; now breathe out. Life will pass by just that quickly.
Some versions translate this word literally and use a word like “vapor” or “smoke” for the Hebrew word hevel. For example, here is Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 1:2:
Ecclesiastes 1:2 MSG
Smoke, nothing but smoke. [That’s what the Quester says.] There’s nothing to anything—it’s all smoke.
“Smoke, nothing but smoke. There’s nothing to anything—it’s all smoke” (message). When we look at the way this word is used throughout the book, however, it takes on broader significance.
HEVEL
The word hevel comes to express the absurdity and futility of life in a fallen world. Thus in the New International Version, the Preacher says, “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” But perhaps the old King James Version and newer translations like the English Standard Version say it the best way that we can say it in English: “vanity of vanities.” To use the word “vanity” like this is to say that our brief lives are marked by empty futility, which is what Qoheleth says all the way through his book.
Ecclesiastes 1:2 ESV
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
Notice the vast scope of the claim that he makes: “all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2). There is not one single aspect of human existence that is not frustrated by futility. It is all empty, pointless, useless, and absurd. To prove this point, the Preacher will take everything that people ordinarily use to give meaning or to find satisfaction in life and then show how empty it really is. In doing this, he will speak from experience, because he had tried it all—money, pleasure, knowledge, and power.
Ecclesiastes 1:18 ESV
For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
Some people try to find meaning in what they can know and learn about life, but when the Preacher tried to pursue knowledge he discovered that “in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). Some people think they will be satisfied with all of the pleasures that money can buy.
Ecclesiastes 2:11 ESV
Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.
The Preacher was rich enough to conduct a thorough experiment with this as well, but in the end he learned that “all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). He immersed himself in his work, trying to do something significant with his life or to make a name for himself, but this also proved to be a vexation to his soul; he had nothing to show for all of his heavy labor.
Sooner or later we all have the same experience. We try to find the meaning of life but come up empty. We indulge in certain pleasures, only to end up more dissatisfied than ever. Or we are unhappy because we feel that we will never do anything important or be anybody special. Then there is the biggest vanity of all, the emptiest of all futilities—death, in all of its dreadful finality. Death is the vanity of all vanities.
What makes everything even worse for the Preacher is that somehow God is at the bottom of it. He never gives up his faith in the power and sovereignty of God. But rather than making him feel better, the truth of God’s existence often seems to make things worse. Whatever frustrations he has with the world are also frustrations with the God who made it. So what hope does he have that life will ever make sense? Anyone who has ever felt that life was not worth living—that nothing ever turns out the way one wants or hopes and that not even God can make a difference—knows exactly what the Preacher was talking about.
While it is true that the Preacher takes a sober view of life, never flinching from any of its complexities and confusions, it is equally true that he has solid hope in the goodness of God as well as lasting joy in the beauty of his many gifts. This is exactly why he has shown us the futility of everything earthly: it is so we will put our hope in the everlasting God.
Ecclesiastes 1:3 ESV
What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
The Preacher hints at his evangelistic purpose by using an important phrase almost thirty times over the course of his argument: “under the sun.” As he describes the absurdity and futility of work and wisdom and pleasure and everything else, he repeatedly says that this is what things are like “under the sun” (e.g., Ecclesiastes 1:3).
In other words, this is what life is like when we view it from a merely human perspective, when we limit our gaze to this solar system, without ever lifting our eyes to see the beauty and glory of God in Heaven. If that is all we see, then life will leave us empty and unhappy. But when we look to God with reverence and awe, we are able to see the meaning of life, and the beauty of its pleasures, and the eternal significance of everything we do, including the little things of everyday life. Only then can we discover why everything matters.
But in order to know and enjoy God properly, we first have to see the emptiness of life without him, becoming thoroughly disillusioned with everything the world has to offer. To this end, Ecclesiastes gives us a true assessment of what life is like apart from the grace of God. This makes it a hopeful book, not a depressing one; ultimately its worldview is positive, not negative. Like a good pastor, Qoheleth shows us the absolute vanity of life without God, so that we finally stop expecting earthly things to give us lasting satisfaction and learn to live for God rather than for ourselves.
The great English preacher John Wesley once preached his way through this great book of the Bible. In his personal journal he described what it was like to begin that sermon series. “Began expounding the Book of Ecclesiastes,” he wrote. “Never before had I so clear a sight either of its meaning or beauties. Neither did I imagine, that the several parts of it were in so exquisite a manner connected together, all tending to prove the grand truth, that there is no happiness out of God. What Wesley discovered was a life-changing truth, which we can pray that Ecclesiastes will also teach us: we will never find any true meaning or lasting happiness unless and until we find it in God.
Romans 8:20 ESV
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope.
If we learn this lesson well, it will draw us closer to Jesus, the Son of God. The Bible says that because of our sin, creation itself “was subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20). When the Bible says “futility,” it uses the standard Greek translation for the word we encounter in Ecclesiastes—the Hebrew word for vapor or vanity (hevel). This is why life is always so frustrating and sometimes seems so meaningless: it is all because of sin.
Galatians 3:13 ESV
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—
But Jesus suffered the curse of sin in all its futility when he died on the cross (see Galatians 3:13). Now, by the power of his resurrection from the grave, the emptiness of life under the sun will be undone:
Romans 8:21 ESV
that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
“the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). Thus Ecclesiastes helps us see our need for the gospel of Jesus, which is the most important reason of all to study it.