Ecclesiastes can be viewed in a couple of ways. The first, which some believe is the appropriate way of understanding Solomon’s sentiment, is that it is depressing and offers no hope for mankind. On the other hand, there are those, myself included, who believe that what Solomon actually does is direct man’s attention to the fact that a life without God results in vanity, meaninglessness, or only momentarily impactful outcomes.

Solomon says that everything is vanity. What does he mean by vanity. The best way I’ve heard it explained is to think of it like a warm breath on a cold morning. You see it momentarily, then it is gone. Solomon says that everything in life is like that, at least in a life without God in it. This life he identies as one “under the sun.” Solomon is not saying that men and women have no meaning in life. Far from it. Several times throughout the book, Solomon directs our attention to God as the one who gives meaning to all things, even things that we would consider as mundane. For instance, he writes,

“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.” (2:24)

That being said, Solomon’s purpose for writing has been accurately described by Christopher Cone in his book, Life Beyond the Sun,

“without eternal perspective, life is meaningless … His thesis is twofold: (1) the hopelessness and emptiness of life without God (under the sun), and (2) the meaninglessness of even the most ordinary acts (eating, drinking, labor, etc.) when one enjoys the proper perspective of and relationship to God.” (p.2)

Unfortunately, most men and women do not know of their intrinsic value in the eyes of God and go on living lives of quiet desperation clinging to an under the sun worldview. In an article in Psychology Today, September 14, 2022 entitled, “Today’s Epidemic of Hopelessness,” Chalres Johnston identified three issues in modern society: 1.) more people feel hopeless and cynical, 2.) society around the world has experienced a “regression,”

“Over the last 30 years, we have witnessed regression with regard to the maturity of understanding and decision-making needed for time ahead – and not just in the U.S., but around the globe.”

and 3.) digital life and social media replace genine significance with “pseudo-significance.”

Solomon’s adventures in all things human are meant to demonstrate that without God, nothing has any lasting value. In Ecclesiastes 1:3, he begins his instruction by presenting his search for meaning in life “under the sun.” That phrase Solomon employs 30 times in 9 of the 12 chapters. By it he means a worldview governed by our natural finite minds, bound as they are by time, place, and extremely limited knowledge. Several times throughout his instruction, Solomon takes direct aim at that limited, under the sun worldview, none more poignant than in Ecclesiastes 3:11,

“He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.”

The impact of Solomon’s statement here is beyond measure; all men and women have an innate sense that there is something beyond this life, but are limited by our creatureliness. We can’t see. and can’t know what happens in the next moment, much less after this life. God has designed us in that way to cause us to contemplate the fact that one day we will die. What comes next? That is the question.

More to come. God bless.