Day 90.

“Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!” What do people get for all their hard work under the sun?  Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes.” Ecclesiastes 1:2-4 NLT
That last line implying the earth remains, but man does not. This is the verdict of life: A weary struggle in which most fail.

My favourite book in the old testament is the book of Ecclesiastes. (meaning ‘The Preacher.’) It is the sphinx of Hebrew literature, the joker of the Old Testament pack. When I first discovered it, I immediately identified the same struggle I had engaged in as I searched for meaning. The key word in this book is “meaningless” (NIV and NLT.) The NASB has futility, the KJV and RSV Vanity. They all are saying essentially the same thing. The actual Hebrew word is identical with the name Abel or Hebel which means primarily a “breath,” or “vapour,” and as such becomes the type of all that is fleeting and perishable. It occurs 39 times in this short discourse. It literally means what is left when a soap bubble bursts. In the Wisdom of Solomon, apparently written as a corrective complement to Ecclesiastes, we have a series of comparisons, the “dust,” the “thin froth,” the “smoke,” but there the idea of ‘vanity’ is limited to the “hope of the ungodly.” Here, it applies to us all – even the King himself.

Noticing key words is an important indicator to understanding an author’s intent. The term ‘under the sun’ is found 24x’s and defines the author’s outlook. ‘Evil” occurs 31’s, ‘labor’ 23 times, ‘fool’ 32 times, and God 40 times. Surprisingly, Joy, enjoying, rejoice and joyful occur 12 times and ‘enjoy life’ 7 times. Jewish people read Ecclesiastes aloud each year when they assembled for the Feast of Tabernacles, which was a joyful event.

This problem of meaninglessness is life viewed apart from God. It becomes an insoluble problem; all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Exclude God from the world and skepticism and materialism must be the inevitable result. Ecclesiastes is about a man with everything: wealth, happiness, health, prestige, position, and power. It was written by a man who had decided he could not ignore the reality any longer and confronted the absurdity of life. The chief design of this book is to test things in order to prove how inadequate they are to satisfy the deepest and the truest longings of the human heart. Its problem is – can the world, apart from God, meet people’s needs? The answer is vanity or meaninglessness. Life is the place and time where we make our decisions for eternity, eternity has no clock, decisions belong to time and the time is now! If you are one of those that like to read the last chapter of a book before you finish, then notice Solomon’s conclusion in Eccl 12:13-14. 481