The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem:
“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” What does man gain from all his labor in which he labors under the sun? One generation goes, and another generation comes; but the earth remains forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises. The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north. It turns around continually as it goes, and the wind returns again to its courses. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness beyond uttering. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which shall be; and that which has been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there a thing of which it may be said, “Behold, this is new?” It has been long ago, in the ages which were before us. There is no memory of the former; neither shall there be any memory of the latter that are to come, among those that shall come after.
I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under the sky. It is a heavy burden that God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. That which is crooked can’t be made straight; and that which is lacking can’t be counted. I said to myself, “Behold, I have obtained for myself great wisdom above all who were before me in Jerusalem. Yes, my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also was a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much grief; and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18 Solomon is here called a preacher, or one that…
Solomon is here called a preacher, or one that assembleth the people, because he teacheth the true knowledge of God, and how men ought to pass their life in this transitory world.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–18 Ecc 1:1 The words of the Preacher, the son…
Ecc 1:1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Ver. 1. The words.] Golden words, weighty, and worthy of all acceptation; grave and gracious apophthegms, or rather oracles, meet to be well remembered. Solomon’s sapiential sermon of the sovereign good, and how to attain to it; Solomon’s soliloquy, as some style it; others, his sacred retractations; others, his ethics, or tractate de summo bono, {a} of the chiefest good, compiled and composed with such a picked frame of words, with such pithy strength of sentences, with such a thick series of demonstrative arguments, that the sharp wit of all the philosophers, compared with this divine discourse, seems to be utterly cold, and of small account; their elaborate treatises of happiness to be learned dotages, and laborious loss of time. {b} How many different opinions there were among them concerning the chief good in Solomon’s days is uncertain. Various of them he confuteth in this book, and that from his own experience, the best school dame. {c} But Varro, the most learned of the Romans, reckoneth up two hundred and eighty in his time; and no wonder, considering man’s natural blindness, not unlike that of the Syrians at Dothan, or that of the Sodomites at Lot’s door. {d} What is an eye without the optic spirit but a dead member? and what is all human wisdom without divine illumination but wickedness of folly, yea, foolishness of madness? as our preacher, not without good cause, calleth it. "A spirit there is in man," saith Elihu - viz., the light of reason; and thus far the animal man goes, and there he makes a halt; {Ecc 7:15} he cannot transcend his orb - but "the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." {Job 32:8} God had given Solomon wisdom above any man; Abulensis saith above Adam in his innocence, which I believe not. He was παιδαριογερων - as Macarius was called - a man at twelve years old. {e} His father, had taught him; {Pro 4:3-4} his mother had lessoned him; {Pro 31:1} the prophet Nathan had had the breeding of him. But besides, as he was Jedidiah, loved of God, so he was θεοδιδακτος, taught of God. And being now, when he penned this penitential sermon, grown an old man, he had experimented all this that he here affirmeth; so that he might better begin his speech to his scholars than once Augustus Caesar did to his soldiers, Audite senem iuvenes, quem iuvenem senes audierunt, Young men, hearken to me, an old man, whom old men hearkened unto when I was yet but young. "Have not I written for you excellent things in counsel and knowledge?" {Pro 22:20} Or, have I not written three books for thee - so some read those words - proverbial, penitential, nuptial? See the note there.
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“Nescis temerarie, nescis
Quem fugias, ideoque fugis.” - Ovid. Metam.
Surely, "if thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that speaketh unto thee," {Joh 4:10} thou wouldst "incline thine ear and hear," {Isa 55:3} thou wouldst listen as for life itself. Knowest thou not that I am a preacher, a prince, son of David, king in Jerusalem, and so do come multis nominibus tibi commendatissimus, much commended to thee in many respects? But "need I, as some others, epistles of commendation" {2Co 3:1} to my readers, or letters of commendation from them? Is it not sufficient to know that this book of mine, both for matter and words, is the very work of the Holy Ghost speaking in me, and writing by me? {f} For "prophecy comes not by the will of man, but holy men of God speak it as they are moved by the Holy Ghost." {2Pe 1:21} And albeit this be proof good enough of my true, though late, repentance, whereof some have doubted, some denied it. {g} Yet take another.
Of the Preacher.] Or, Of a preaching soul (for the Hebrew word koheleth, is of the feminine gender, and hath nephesh, soul, understood), or of a person reunited and reconciled to the church, {h} and in token of reconciliation to God, readmitted by him to this office in his Church; like as Christ sealed up his love to Peter, after his shameful fall, by bidding him "feed his lambs"; and to the rest of the apostles that had basely forsaken him, by saying to them, after his resurrection, "Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. Receive ye the Holy Ghost." {Joh 20:21-22} See the like mercy showed to St Paul. {1Ti 1:12} Howbeit, some learned men here observe, that it is no new thing in the Hebrew tongue to put feminine names upon men, as Ezra is called Sophereth, descriptrix, a she scribe, in the very same form as Solomon is here called Koheleth, a preacheress; and the gospel preachers, Mebaseroth, {Psa 68:11 Isa 52:7} either to set forth the excellence and elegance of the business, or else to teach ministers to keep themselves pure as virgins; whence they are also called Wisdom’s maids; {Pro 9:3} and Christ’s paranymphs; {Joh 3:29} to "present the church as a chaste virgin to Christ." {2Co 11:2}
The son of David.] So Christ also is said to be, {Mat 1:1} as if David had been his immediate father. "The glory of children are their fathers," {Pro 17:6} to wit, if they be godly and pious. The Jews made great boasts that they were "the seed of Abraham"; {Mat 3:9 Joh 8:33} and that wretch, Elymas the sorcerer, had surnamed himself Barjesus, {Act 13:6} or the son of Jesus, as if he had been of nearest alliance to our Saviour, of whom "the whole family of heaven and earth is named." {Eph 3:15} What an honour is it now accounted to be of the posterity of Latimer, Bradford, Ridley, &c.! How much more of David, that man of renown, the father of our princely Preacher, who himself took also not scorn to teach and do the office of a preacher, {Psa 32:9; Psa 34:11} though he were the governor of God’s people, {Psa 78:71} and head of many heathen! {Psa 18:43} The like may be said of Joseph of Arimathea, who of a counsellor of state became a Preacher of the gospel. So did Chrysostom, a noble Antiochian; Ambrose, lieutenant and consul of Milan; George, prince of Anhalt; Earl Martinengus; John a Lasco, a noble Polonian; and various others of like quality and condition. The Psalmist {Psa 138:4-5; Psa 119:72} shows by prophesying, that they that have tasted the joys of a crown shall leave the throne and palace to sing with the saints, and to publish the excelling glory of God and godliness.
King in Jerusalem.] And of Jerusalem. The Pope will allow the Duke of Milan to be king in Tuscany, but not King of Tuscany: {i} Solomon was both {Pro 1:1} {See Trapp on "Pro 1:1"} Hither came the Queen of Sheba from the utmost parts of the earth to hear him: here he wrote his excellent book, these "words of delight," which he had learned from that one Shepherd, the Lord Christ, {Ecc 12:10-11} and hath left them faithfully set down for the use of the Church; so honouring learning with his own labours, - as Sylverius said of Caesar. Here, lastly, it was that he sovereigned over God’s own peculiar, the people of his purchase, Israel, God’s firstborn, and in that respect "higher than the kings of the earth." {Psa 89:27} So that if Maximilian, the Emperor of Germany, could say, Rex hominum Hispanus, asinorum Gallus, regum ego {j} the Spaniard is king of men, the French is king of asses, and I am King of kings; how much better might Solomon have said so!
{a} Serranus.
{b} Tο του χρονου παραναλωμα. - Arist.
{c} Experientia optima magistra.
{d} Aug., De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii.
{e} Niceph.
{f} Regis epistolis acceptis, quo calamo scriptae sint, ridiculum est quaerere. - Greg.
{g} Bellarminus Solomonem inter reprobos numerat.
{h} Anima congregata, et cum ecclesia se colligens. - Cartwright.
{i} Spec. Europ.
{j} Joh. Manlius.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–18 The Preacher; who was not only a king, but…
The Preacher; who was not only a king, but also a teacher of God's people, which he did both by words, upon some solemn occasions, and by writings; who having sinned grievously and scandalously in the eyes of all the world, justly thought himself obliged to preach or publish his true repentance for all his folly and wickedness, and to give public warning and wholesome counsels to all persons to avoid those rocks upon which he had split. The Hebrew properly signifies either gathering or gathered; and so it signifies either,
1. A preacher, as it is commonly rendered, whose office it is to gather in souls unto God or his church. Or,
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2. A penitent or convert, or one gathered or brought back by true repentance to God, and to his church, from which he had so wickedly revolted. King of Jerusalem: this is added partly as a description of the person or author of this book, Solomon, who was the only man that was both
son of David, properly so called, and king of Jerusalem; and partly as an aggravation of his sin, because he was the son of David, a wise and godly father, who had given him both excellent counsel, and, for his general course, a good example: and for the evil example which he gave him in the matter of Uriah, that also, considered with his hearty and effectual repentance for it, and the dreadful punishments of it upon his person and family, was a fair warning and most powerful instruction to him to learn by his father's example, and because he was a king, not by birth, for he was not David's eldest son, but by the special favour and designation of that God whom he had now so ill requited, and that in Jerusalem, a holy city, the place of God's special presence, and of his worship, where he had daily opportunities to know and obligations to practise better things, which place he had defiled by his horrid sins, and thereby made it, and all God's people, and the true religion, and the name of the blessed God, odious and contemptible amongst all the nations round about him.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 9, 12 Here is, I. An account of the penman of…
Here is, I. An account of the penman of this book; it was Solomon, for no other son of David was king of Jerusalem; but he conceals his name Solomon, peaceable, because by his sin he had brought trouble upon himself and his kingdom, had broken his peace with God and lost the peace of his conscience, and therefore was no more worthy of that name. Call me not Solomon, call me Marah, for, behold, for peace I had great bitterness. But he calls himself,
1. The preacher, which intimates his present character. He is Koheleth, which comes from a word which signifies to gather; but it is of a feminine termination, by which perhaps Solomon intends to upbraid himself with his effeminacy, which contributed more than any thing to his apostasy; for it was to please his wives that he set up idols, Neh 13:26. Or the word soul must be understood, and so Koheleth is,
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(1.) A penitent soul, or one gathered, one that had rambled and gone astray like a lost sheep, but was now reduced, gathered in from his wanderings, gathered home to his duty, and come at length to himself. The spirit that was dissipated after a thousand vanities is now collected and made to centre in God. Divine grace can make great sinners great converts, and renew even those to repentance who, after they had known the way of righteousness, turned aside from it, and heal their backslidings, though it is a difficult case. It is only the penitent soul that God will accept, the heart that is broken, not the head that is bowed down like a bulrush only for a day, David's repentance, not Ahab's. And it is only the gathered soul that is the penitent soul, that comes back from its by-paths, that no longer scatters its way to the strangers (Jer 3:13), but is united to fear God's name. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak, and therefore we have here the words of the penitent, and those published. If eminent professors of religion fall into gross sin, they are concerned, for the honour of God and the repairing of the damage they have done to his kingdom, openly to testify their repentance, that the antidote may be administered as extensively as the poison.
(2.) A preaching soul, or one gathering. Being himself gathered to the congregation of saints, out of which he had by his sin thrown himself, and being reconciled to the church, he endeavours to gather others to it that had gone astray like him, and perhaps were led astray by his example. He that has done any thing to seduce his brother ought to do all he can to restore him. Perhaps Solomon called together a congregation of his people, as he had done at the dedication of the temple (Kg1 8:2), so now at the rededicating of himself. In that assembly he presided as the people's mouth to God in prayer (Ecc 1:12); in this as God's mouth to them in preaching. God by his Spirit made him a preacher, in token of his being reconciled to him; a commission is a tacit pardon. Christ sufficiently testifies his forgiving Peter by committing his lambs and sheep to his trust. Observe, Penitents should be preachers; those that have taken warning themselves to turn and live should give warning to others not to go on and die. When thou art converted strengthen thy brethren. Preachers must be preaching souls, for that only is likely to reach to the heart that comes from the heart. Paul served God with his spirit in the gospel of his Son, Rom 1:9.
2. The son of David. His taking this title intimates, (1.) That he looked upon it as a great honour to be the son of so good a man, and valued himself very much upon it. (2.) That he also looked upon it as a great aggravation of his sin that he had such a father, who had given him a good education and put up many a good prayer for him; it cuts him to the heart to think that he should be a blemish and disgrace to the name and family of such a one as David. It aggravated the sin of Jehoiakim that he was the son of Josiah, Jer 22:15-17. (3.) That his being the son of David encouraged him to repent and hope for mercy, for David had fallen into sin, by which he should have been warned not to sin, but was not; but David repented, and therein he took example from him and found mercy as he did. Yet this was not all; he was that son of David concerning whom God had said that though he would chasten his transgression with the rod, yet he would not break his covenant with him, Psa 89:34. Christ, the great preacher, was the Son of David.
3. King of Jerusalem. This he mentions, (1.) As that which was a very great aggravation of his sin. He was a king. God had done much for him, in raising him to the throne, and yet he had so ill requited him; his dignity made the bad example and influence of his sin the more dangerous, and many would follow his pernicious ways; especially as he was king of Jerusalem, the holy city, where God's temple was, and of his own building too, where the priests, the Lord's ministers, were, and his prophets who had taught him better things. (2.) As that which might give some advantage to what he wrote, for where the word of a king is there is power. He thought it no disparagement to him, as a king, to be a preacher; but the people would regard him the more as a preacher because he was a king. If men of honour would lay out themselves to do good, what a great deal of good might they do! Solomon looked as great in the pulpit, preaching the vanity of the world, as in his throne of ivory, judging.
The Chaldee-paraphrase (which, in this book, makes very large additions to the text, or comments upon it, all along) gives this account of Solomon's writing this book, That by the spirit of prophecy he foresaw the revolt of the ten tribes from his son, and, in process of time, the destruction of Jerusalem and the house of the sanctuary, and the captivity of the people, in the foresight of which he said, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity; and to that he applies many passages in this book.
II. The general scope and design of the book. What is it that this royal preacher has to say? That which he aims at is, for the making of us truly religious, to take down our esteem of and expectation from the things of this world. In order to this, he shows,
1. That they are all vanity, Ecc 1:2. This is the proposition he lays down and undertakes to prove: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. It was no new text; his father David had more than once spoken to the same purport. The truth itself here asserted is, that all is vanity, all besides God and considered as abstract from him, the all of this world, all worldly employments and enjoyments, the all that is in the world (Jo1 2:16), all that which is agreeable to our senses and to our fancies in this present state, which gains pleasure to ourselves or reputation with others. It is all vanity, not only in the abuse of it, when it is perverted by the sin of man, but even in the use of it. Man, considered with reference to these things, is vanity (Psa 39:5, Psa 39:6), and, if there were not another life after this, were made in vain (Psa 89:47); and those things, considered in reference to man (whatever they are in themselves), are vanity. They are impertinent to the soul, foreign, and add nothing to it; they do not answer the end, nor yield any true satisfaction; they are uncertain in their continuance, are fading, and perishing, and passing away, and will certainly deceive and disappoint those that put a confidence in them. Let us not therefore love vanity (Psa 4:2), nor lift up our souls to it (Psa 24:4), for we shall but weary ourselves for it, Heb 2:13. It is expressed here very emphatically; not only, All is vain, but in the abstract, All is vanity; as if vanity were the proprium quarto modo - property in the fourth mode, of the things of this world, that which enters into the nature of them. The are not only vanity, but vanity of vanities, the vainest vanity, vanity in the highest degree, nothing but vanity, such a vanity as is the cause of a great deal of vanity. And this is redoubled, because the thing is certain and past dispute, it is vanity of vanities. This intimates that the wise man had his own heart fully convinced of and much affected with this truth, and that he was very desirous that others should be convinced of it and affected with it, as he was, but that he found the generality of men very loth to believe it and consider it (Job 33:14); it intimates likewise that we cannot comprehend and express the vanity of this world. But who is it that speaks thus slightly of the world? Is it one that will stand to what he says? Yes, he puts his name to it - saith the preacher. Is it one that was a competent judge? Yes, as much as ever any man was. Many speak contemptuously of the world because they are hermits, and know it not, or beggars, and have it not; but Solomon knew it. He had dived into nature's depths (Kg1 4:33), and he had it, more of it perhaps than ever any man had, his head filled with its notions and his belly with its hidden treasures (Psa 17:14), and he passes this judgment on it. But did he speak as one having authority? Yes, not only that of a king, but that of a prophet, a preacher; he spoke in God's name, and was divinely inspired to say it. But did he not say it in his haste, or in a passion, upon occasion of some particular disappointment? No; he said it deliberately, said it and proved it, laid it down as a fundamental principle, on which he grounded the necessity of being religious. And, as some think, one main thing he designed was to show that the everlasting throne and kingdom which God had by Nathan promised to David and his seed must be of another world; for all things in this world are subject to vanity, and therefore have not in them sufficient to answer the extent of that promise. If Solomon find all to be vanity, then the kingdom of the Messiah must come, in which we shall inherit substance.
2. That they are insufficient to make us happy. And for this he appeals to men's consciences: What profit has a man of all the pains he takes? Ecc 1:3. Observe here, (1.) The business of this world described. It is labour; the word signifies both care and toil. It is work that wearies men. There is a constant fatigue in worldly business. It is labour under the sun; that is a phrase peculiar to this book, where we meet with it twenty-eight times. There is a world above the sun, a world which needs not the sun, for the glory of God is its light, where there is work without labour and with great profit, the work of angels; but he speaks of the work under the sun, the pains of which are great and the gains little. It is under the sun, under the influence of the sun, by its light and in its heat; as we have the benefit of the light of the day, so we have sometimes the burden and heat of the day (Mat 20:12), and therefore in the sweat of our face we eat bread. In the dark and cold grave the weary are at rest. (2.) The benefit of that business enquired into: What profit has a man of all that labour? Solomon says (Pro 14:23), In all labour there is profit; and yet here he denies that there is any profit. As to our present condition in the world, it is true that by labour we get that which we call profit; we eat the labour of our hands; but as the wealth of the world is commonly called substance, and yet it is that which is not (Pro 22:5), so it is called profit, but the question is whether it be really so or no. And here he determines that it is not, that it is not a real benefit, that it is not a remaining benefit. In short, the wealth and pleasure of this world, if we had ever so much of them, are not sufficient to make us happy, nor will they be a portion for us. [1.] As to the body, and the life that now is, What profit has a man of all his labour? A man's life consists not in an abundance, Luk 12:15. As goods are increased care about them is increased, and those are increased that eat of them, and a little thing will embitter all the comfort of them; and then what profit has a man of all his labour? Early up, and never the nearer. [2.] As to the soul, and the life that is to come, we may much more truly say, What profit has a man of all his labour? All he gets by it will not supply the wants of the soul, nor satisfy its desires, will not atone for the sin of the soul, nor cure its diseases, nor contervail the loss of it; what profit will they be of to the soul in death, in judgment, or in the everlasting state? The fruit of our labour in heavenly things is meat that endures to eternal life, but the fruit of our labour for the world is only meat that perishes.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 The words of the preacher,.... Or the preacher's sermon.…
The words of the preacher,.... Or the preacher's sermon. The whole book is one continued discourse, and an excellent one it is; consisting not of mere words, but of solid matter; of things of the greatest importance, clothed with words apt and acceptable, which the preacher sought out, Ecc 12:10. The Targum is,
"the words of the prophecy, which the preacher, who is Solomon, prophesied.''
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According to which this book is prophetic; and so it interprets it, and owns it to be Solomon's. The word "Koheleth", rendered "preacher", is by some taken to be a proper name of Solomon; who, besides the name of Solomon, his parents gave him, and Jedidiah, as the Lord called him, had the name of Koheleth; nay, the Jews say (i), he had seven names, and to these three add four more, Agur, Jake, Ithiel, and Lemuel; the word by many is left untranslated (k); but it seems rather to be an appellative, and is by some rendered "gathered", or the "soul gathered" (l). Solomon had apostatized from the church and people of God, and had followed idols; but now was brought back by repentance, and was gathered into the fold, from whence he had strayed as a lost sheep; and therefore chooses to call himself by this name, when he preached his recantation sermon, as this book may be said to be. Others rather render it, "the gatherer" (m); and was so called, as the Jewish writers say (n), either because he gathered and got much wisdom, as it is certain he did; or because he gathered much people from all parts, to hear his wisdom, Kg1 4:34; in which he was a type of Christ, Gen 49:10; or this discourse of his was delivered in a large congregation, got together for that purpose; as he gathered and assembled together the heads and chief of the people, at the dedication of the temple, Kg1 8:1; so he might call them together to hear the retraction he made of his sins and errors, and repentance for them: and this might justly entitle him to the character of a "preacher", as we render it, an office of great honour, as well as of great importance to the souls of men; which Solomon, though a king, did not disdain to appear in; as David his father before him, and Noah before him, the father, king, and governor of the new world, Psa 34:11. The word used is in the feminine gender, as ministers of the Gospel are sometimes expressed by a word of the like kind; and are called maidens, Psa 68:11; to denote their virgin purity, and uncorruptness in doctrine and conversation: and here some respect may be had to Wisdom, or Christ, frequently spoken of by Solomon, as a woman, and who now spoke by him; which is a much better reason for the use of the word than his effeminacy, which his sin or his old age had brought him to. The word "soul" may be supplied, as by some, and be rendered, "the preaching soul" (o); since, no doubt, he performed his work as such with all his heart and soul. He further describes himself by his descent,
the son of David; which he mentions either as an honour to him, that he was the son of so great, so wise, so holy, and good a man; or as an aggravation of his fall, that being the descendant of such a person, and having had so religious an education, and so good an example before him, and yet should sin so foully as he had done; and it might also encourage him, that he had interest in the sure mercies of David, and in the promises made to him, that when his children sinned, they should be chastised, yet his lovingkindness and covenant should not depart from them.
King of Jerusalem; not of Jerusalem only, but of all Israel, for as yet no division was made; see Ecc 1:12. In Jerusalem, the city of Wisdom, as Jarchi observes, where many wise and good men dwelt, as well as it was the metropolis of the nation; and, which was more, it was the city where the temple stood, and where the worship of God was performed, and his priests ministered, and his people served him; and yet he, their king, that should have set them a better example, fell into idolatry!
(i) Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 2. 3. Midrash Kohelet, fol. 60. 3. (k) "Koheleth", Broughton, Pagninus, Montanus, Cocceius. Rambachius. (l) , "anima congregata", Cocceius, (m) "Collector", Arabic version; "congregator, q. d. sapientia congregatrix", Amama, Rambachius; "the gathering soul, either recollecting itself, or by admonitions gathering others", Lightfoot, vol. 2. p. 76. (n) Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 2. 3. & Jarchi, Aben Ezra, & Baruch in loc. Pesikta Rabbati apud Yalkut, ut supra. (in Kohelet, l. 1.) (o) "Concionatrix anima", Vatablus, Piscator.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 The title of the book, ver. 1. The general…
The title of the book, ver. 1. The general doctrine, All is vanity, ver. 2, 3. Proved from the shortness of life, and the perpetual changes of all the creatures, ver. 4-7. From the unsatisfying toil of men, and the return of the same things over again, ver. 8-11. The vanity of knowledge, ver. 12-18.
The preacher - Who was not only a king, but also a teacher of God's people: who having sinned grievously in the eyes of all the world, thought himself obliged to publish his repentance, and to give publick warning to all, to avoid those rocks upon which he had split.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–18 -Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3027.
ECCLESIASTES OR, THE PREACHER
-Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3027.
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-Year from the Flood of Noah, according to the common Hebrew text, 1371.
-Year before the birth of Christ, 973.
-Year before the vulgar era of Christ's nativity, 977.
-N. B. The time when this book was written is very uncertain: the above chronology is agreeable to that contained in the present authorized version.
CHAPTER I
The prophet shows that all human courses are vain, 1-4.
The creatures are continually changing, 5-8.
There is nothing new under the sun, 9-11.
Who the prophet was, his estate and his studies, 12-18.
NOTES ON CHAP. I
Verse 1. The words of the Preacher] Literally, "The words of Choheleth, son of David, king of Jerusalem." But the Targum explains it thus: "The words of the prophecy, which Choheleth prophesied; the same is Solomon, son of David the king, who was in Jerusalem. For when Solomon, king of Israel, saw by the spirit of prophecy that the kingdom of Rehoboam his son was about to be divided with Jeroboam, the son of Nebat; and the house of the sanctuary was about to be destroyed, and the people of Israel sent into captivity; he said in his word -Vanity of vanities is all that I have laboured, and David my father; they are altogether vanity."
The word קהלת Koheleth is a feminine noun, from the root קהל kahal, to collect, gather together, assemble; and means, she who assembles or collects a congregation; translated by the Septuagint, εκκλησιαστης, a public speaker, a speaker in an assembly; and hence translated by us a preacher. In my old MS. Bible it is explained thus: a talker to the peple; or togyder cleping.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18 Ecc 1:1. The words of the Preacher — Or,…
Ecc 1:1. The words of the Preacher — Or, discourses. The Hebrew word קהלת, here used, may either signify the person who assembles the people, or the person that addresses them when assembled. “We must not suppose that Solomon was like the common or ordinary preachers among the Hebrews; yet it is certain he spake much in public for the instruction of the people; for there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon: All the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his heart, 1Ki 4:31; 1Ki 4:34; 1Ki 10:24. From whence it is plain that he made public discourses on several subjects, and that people were, in a manner, called together from all nations round about to hear them.” — Dodd. “He was not only a king,” says Poole, “but also a teacher of God’s people: who, having sinned grievously in the eyes of all the world, thought himself obliged to publish his repentance, and to give public warning to all, to avoid those rocks upon which he had split.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 Preacher - literally, Convener. No one English word represents…
Preacher - literally, Convener. No one English word represents the Hebrew קהלת qôheleth adequately. Though capable, according to Hebrew usage, of being applied to men in office, it is strictly a feminine participle, and describes a person in the act of calling together an assembly of people as if with the intention of addressing them. The word thus understood refers us to the action of Wisdom personified Pro 1:20; Pro 8:8. In Proverbs and here, Solomon seems to support two characters, speaking sometimes in the third person as Wisdom instructing the assembled people, at other times in the first person. So our Lord speaks of Himself (compare Luk 11:49 with Mat 23:34) as Wisdom, and as desiring Luk 13:34 to gather the people together for instruction; It is unfortunate that the word “Preacher” does not bring this personification before English minds, but a different idea.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 Jerusalem. This clearly designates Solomon. See ver. 12., and…
Jerusalem. This clearly designates Solomon. See ver. 12., and chap. xii. 8.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1
ECCLESIASTES
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TITLE:
WORDS OF THE PREACHER, SON OF DAVID, KING IN JERUSALEM
FIRST DISCOURSE
Of the vanity of the practical and the theoretical wisdom of men
Ecclesiastes 1, 2
A. The theoretical wisdom of men, directed to a knowledge of the things of this world, is vanity.
2Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. 3What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? 4One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. 5The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. 6The wind goeth towards the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. 7All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full, unto the place 8from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. 10Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of 11old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall 12come after. I the preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. 14I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. 15That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. 16I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. 17And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. 18For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
[Ecc_1:4.—לְעוֹלָם. See the extended discussion on this and kindred words, p. 44 T. L.]
[Ecc_1:5.—זָרַח: Primary sense, irradiation, scattering, like זרח, and זרע, to sow—scatters its rays—spargit lucem. Part. beaming, glowing. See Metrical version. Compare Virgil, frequent, aurora spargebat lumine terras. שֹׁאֵף Zöckler would give it here the sense of running, going swift. It is better to preserve the primary sense of panting It suits better the hidden metaphor, on which see note, p. 38. T. L.]
[Ecc_1:8.—הַדְּבָרִים. Rendered things in E. G. So the Vulgate, cunctæ res. Best rendering is the more common and primary one of words: all words weary in expressing the vanity. Zöckler objects to this as making a tautology with לְדַבֵּר, following. The argument is the other way; such seeming tautologies or verbal parallelisms are rather regarded by the Hebrews as an excellency of diction.—T. L.]
[Ecc_1:10.—לְעֹלָמִים. See extended note, p. 44.—T. L.]
[Ecc_1:14.—רְעוּת. There is no need of resorting to the Chaldaic for this word; neither has it any connection with רָצַה. It comes easily from the very common Hebrew רָעָה, primary sense, to feed (transitively or intransitively), pasture (not a verb of eating, like אכל), then to provide, take care of, then to have the mind upon any thing as an object of care or anxiety. The order of ideas is exactly like that in the in Arabic ׁל or Greek νέμω. The form, as also that of רַעְיוֹן Ecc_1:17, is purely Hebrew. We have the masculine form, Psa_139:2; Psa_139:17, applied to man, and used in a good sense, רֵעִי, my thought. “Thou knowest all my thought”—not in the sense of more speculative thinking, but all my cares. And so in that still more tender passage, Ecc_1:17, where it is applied to God anthropopathically מַה־יָּקְרוּ רֵעֶיךָ, “how precious are thy thoughts,” thy cares, or carings, for me. Compare 1Pe_5:7, “He careth for you.” In the connection with it, most of the modern commentators rendor רוח, wind—a caring or striving for the wind. It is, however, by no means certain that the older rendering, spirit, was not the right one—a striving (a vain striving or vexation) of the spirit. See a similar connection of רַעְיוֹן (procisely=רְעוּת) with לב, the heart, Ecc_2:22. In that place it is not easy to distinguish רַעְיוֹן לִבּוֹ, anxiety of his heart, from רְעוּת רוּחַ in this.—T. L.]
[Ecc_1:17.—שִׂכְלוּת—הֹלֵלוּת, abstract terms in וּת, on which some rely as proving a later language, and consequently, a later date to the book. They are, however, like others of the kind that occur in Koheleth, purely Hebrew in their derivation, whilst they have an abstract form, because the idea required here, though unusual elsewhere, demanded it. If there were but few literary compositions in the English language, it would be just as relational to object to one because it had several examples of words ending in ism, though precisely adapted to the meaning intended; and this because such a termination was not found in other books, having little or nothing of a speculative cast. These words, הֹללֵוּת וְשִׂכְלוּת, differ, as madness or frenzy, and fatuity.—T. L.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Title: Ecc_1:1.Words of the preacher, Son of David, King in Jerusalem.—For the exposition of the name קהֶֹלֶת comp. the Introd. § 1. That this designation here takes the place of the historically known name, שְׁלֹמֹה, has been justly acknowledged as an indication that a poetic fiction lies before us. “All the other works of Solomon bear his usual name at their head; the Proverbs, whose title is the Proverbs of Solomon, Son of David, King of Israel; the Song of Solomon, Psalms 72 :and Psalms 127. As indeed is natural, that he who will claim authorship uses no other name than that under which he is already known. Enigma and concealment would be quite out of place here. Now if Solomon is here called Koheleth, the author clearly indicates that it has only ideal value when he is quoted as author of the book, that he appears only as the representative of wisdom. The name, which is clearly an impersonal one, shows that the person to whom it is attached belongs only to poetry and not to reality” (Hengstenberg).—Moreover, in the peculiar designation, “King in Jerusalem,” instead of “King over Israel” (comp. Ecc_1:12), we may perceive a trace of later post-Solomonic origin. On the contrary, to find in this expression a hint that the author does not dwell in Jerusalem, but somewhere in the country (according to Ewald, in Galilee), is unreasonable and too far-fetched. See § 4, Obs. 2.
2. The whole first discourse, which we, with Ewald, Vaiii., Keil, etc., extend to the end of chap. 2, treats of the principal theme, of the vanity of all earthly things in general; it is therefore of an introductory and fundamental character (comp. Introd. § 2). In harmony with Keil, we again divide them into two nearly equal parts, the first of which (Ecc_1:2-18) presents the vanity of the theoretical, and the second (Ecc_2:1-26) the vanity of the practical wisdom of men; or, of which, number one shows that the strivings of human wisdom after knowledge, and number two that the same efforts aiming at enjoyment and active control of reality, attain no genuine success. This division seems more simple and comprehensive than that of Ewald and Vaihinger, who lay down three main divisions, 1) Ecc_1:2; Ecc_1:11; Ecclesiastes 2) Ecc_1:12; Ecc_2:23; Ecclesiastes 3) Ecc_2:24-26, according to Ewald, and 1) Ecc_1:2-14; Ecclesiastes 2) Ecc_1:12; Ecc_2:19; Ecclesiastes 3) Ecc_2:20-26, according to Vaihinger, giving to the middle division a disproportioned length.—The first half is occupied in proving the vanity and want of success of the theoretical striving of men after wisdom, and is again divided into three divisions. For it shows, 1) by the continually recurring circle of nature and history, permitting no real progress, that the objects of human knowledge are subjected to the law of vanity (Ecc_1:2-11); and 2) then, that to this vanity of the objective reality, there corresponds a complete futility of effort at its comprehension on the part of the human subject, so far that even the wisest of all men must be convinced by experience of the emptiness of this effort (Ecc_1:12-18). Each of these divisions includes two strophes of three verses each, together with an introductory half strophe or proposition, so that the scheme of the whole section perfected is this: I. Division: The vanity of human knowledge in an objective point of view (Ecc_1:2-11). Proposition or general preliminary remark (half strophe); Ecc_1:2-3. First strophe: Ecc_1:4-7.—Second strophe: Ecc_1:8-11. II. Division: The vanity of human knowledge in a subjective point of view (Ecc_1:12-18). Proposition: Ecc_1:12.—First strophe, Ecc_1:13-15). Second strophe, Ecc_1:16-18.—We follow in this strophical division the plan of Vaihinger (also that of Keil and Hahn), which differs materially from that of Ewald. But the latter may therein be right, that from Ecc_1:9 the discourse approaches prose style, and only here and there, as in Ecc_1:15; Ecc_1:18, returns to loftier poetic diction. Vaihinger also acknowledges this, in so far as he considers the two rythmically constructed apothegms, Ecc_1:15; Ecc_1:18, as characteristic closing formulas of the two last strophes of the section (comp. Introd. § 2, p. 106).
3. The general preliminary observation, or, if preferred, the theme of the first discourse; Ecc_1:2-3.—Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. This exclamation, containing the fundamental thought of the whole book, returns again at the close, Ecc_12:7, almost in the same words, after a previous examination has everywhere proved its truth. Nothing is wanting there but the repetition of הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים, which gives a specially solemn impression to the sentence here at the head of the whole. As to the expression “vanity of vanities” being a paraphrase of the superlative idea “extremest vanity,” comp. the observation on שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים Son_1:1 (above, p. 1). For the punctuation הֲבֵל comp. אֲבֵל Psa_35:14, where the principal vowel is also pushed forward and lengthened to a tseri. הֶבֶל “breath, steam” (comp. Chald. הֲבַל to become warm, to steam) is a very proper expression to mark the inconstancy, unsubstantially, and emptiness that characterize all earthly things.1 To confine this predicate of nothingness to the actions of men (Hahn) is the less allowable since farther on, in verses 9 and 14, human action is expressly spoken of as participating in the emptiness of worldly things; and there is previously given a much more comprehensive description of this vanity, which clearly shows that the author would understand in the “all” that he declares as vanity, all earthly nature and the whole circle of temporal things, (in contrast to the eternal). It is also inadmissible to accept the double הבל הבלים as subject of the sentence, instead of taking the independent, animated exclamation rather as a presupposed predicate to הַכֹּל, this pretended subject הַכֹּל would then have in the following הֶבֶל another predicate, whereby the whole expression would become awkward, and essentially lose in active force and emphasis, (against Rosenmueiler, Hahn).—As cases similar to the contents of Ecc_1:2, comp. the passages in Psa_90:3-10; Psa_102:25-28; also Psa_39:6-7; and also what the patriarchs were obliged to experience and confess regarding the vanity of temporal life: Gen_4:2; Gen_5:29; Gen_9:7; Gen_9:9, etc. Ecc_1:3. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?—(Ger., with which he fatigueth himself). Now for the first time the preacher more especially touches the vanity of human things, but means it in connection with the toil of men, as thereby declared unprofitable and unsuccessful (עָמָל, difficulty, labor, exertion, comp. Ecc_2:22; Ecc_3:9; Ecc_5:14, etc.) not only his actions, but at the same time also his spiritual strivings and searchings, of which in the Sequel he principally treats; he consequently mainly means the substance of his interests and efforts, the subjective human in contrast to the objective reality of all earthly life, to which that הַכֹּל in Ecc_1:2 referred. Ecc_1:2-3 hold therefore, substantially, the same relation to each other as the two subsequent paragraphs in Ecc_1:4-11, and Ecc_1:12-18. יִתְרוֹן Synonymous with וֶתֶר Gen_49:3; Pro_17:7; Job_20:22, etc., is found only in this book, and indicates that which is left, what remains to one; hence profit, advantage, success,2 acquisition, ὅ τις εἰργάσατο, 2Jn_1:8, not a superiority over others, which signification appears most fitting in Ecc_2:13.—The בְּ in בְּכָל־עֲמָלוֹ, Hahn considers, according to Isa_5:25, equal to “notwithstanding, in spite of,” which however is unnecessary, as the usual signification “in” or “through” affords a sufficiently good sense.—For the expression “under the sun,” a characteristic and favorite form of the author, comp. Ecc_1:14; Ecc_2:11; Ecc_2:17; Ecc_2:20; Ecc_2:23; Ecc_3:16, etc. The synonymous expressions “under the heaven,” (Ecc_2:3; Ecc_3:1; Ecc_1:13;) and “upon the earth” (Ecc_8:14; Ecc_8:16; Ecc_11:2), are found elsewhere in the Old Testament. The preference of Koheleth for the form “under the sun,” is doubtless explained by the fact that it instructively and clearly points to the contrast “between the eternal regularity which the sun shows in its course, and the fluctuating, vacillating, changeable doings of men, which it illuminates with its ever equal light.”—(Elster).
4. First division, first strophe, verses 4–7. In an objective view, human knowledge shows itself futile, in considering the continual change of human generations on the earth, Ecc_1:4, and the steady course of the sun, the wind, and the water (Ecc_1:5-7).—One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. הָלַךְ to go away, abire, as Ecc_5:15; Job_10:21; Psa_39:13. For this sentence comp. Sir_14:19 : ὥς φύλλον θάλλον ἐπὶ δένδρου δάσεος τὰ μὲν κατα βάλλει, ἄλλα δὲ φύει, οὔτως γενὲα σαρκὸς καὶ αἵματος, ἡ μὲν τελευτᾶ, ἑτέρα δὲ γεννᾶται—a capital comparison, which reminds us of Isa_64:5.—But the earth abideth forever; (literal, “and the earth stands eternally”), (עָמַד as in Ps. 29:19; Lev_13:5, is of lasting existence, stands still). The copula expresses the simultaneousness of the two circumstances placed in contrast with each other: whilst the earth stands forever, human generations come and go incessantly. In the abiding of the earth, the poet doubtless thinks of its foundation on pillars over the water, to which Psa_24:2; Psa_104:5; Job_38:6, and other poetical passages allude. But whether, at the same time, the earth is considered the arena of the curse and sinful misery brought in by men (Gen_3:17-19), as a vale of sorrow, and a place of misfortune, so that the thought were: men effect nothing lasting on earth, new races of men must ever begin where the old ones ceased, must ever repeat the same Sisyphus labor as their fathers (Hengstenberg, Hahn): this is doubtful on account of the expression לְעוֹלָם. This certainly indicates not an endless eternity in the strictest sense of the word, but only “a future of unlimited length,” (Hengstenberg); but it shows the intention to bring out, as a principal thought, the character of the continual and everlasting in contrast with the appearance of continual change, and points thus to the inability of human investigation and knowledge to hold any firm position in the midst of such change everlasting as the duration of the earth.
Ecc_1:5. The sun ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose. The first half of this verse, is an exact parallel of the first clause of Ecc_1:4, the second corresponds in substance to the thought in the second clause of that verse. For, as in the former, the earth, the scene of the coming and going of the generations of men, so in the latter the “place” of the sun (i.e., its subterranean, heavenly dwelling-place, from which it daily enters upon its new course, comp. Psa_19:6), is contrasted as abiding in the presence of continual change. As the human race, with every change of its individuals, makes no advance, as its history presents no real progress, so is the motion of the sun apparently a continual circuit, without arrival at any fixed goal, or lasting place of rest. Contrary to the accents, the Septuagint, Vulgate, Chaldaic, Luther, Elster, Hitzig, Hahn, etc., connect וְאֶל־מְקוֹמוֹ שֹׁאֵף closely with the preceding; “and hastens to its place, and there ariseth again. But שאף belongs clearly to what follows, and also does not mean running, hastening, but (as הֵפִיחַ in Habakkuk 2, 3) gasping after air, panting, longing”—a sense which strikingly delineates the movement of the sun, striving to reach the vault of heaven, although in it there lies a conception somewhat different from this: “and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race,” Psa_19:5. For Hengstenberg clearly brings into the text the joyous desire, the pretended image of “the vigorous courage of the new generation.” It rather points to the idea of the exhaustion of the sun on account of its ever restless motion, and this doubtless with the intention of directly showing the depressing influence produced by observing the ever recurring circuit of this body, and the discouragement in this endless uniformity, that presents itself to the comprehension of the human observer (comp. Elster on this passage).3 Ecc_1:6. It goeth to the South, and turneth to the North. (Literal of the Ger. text). The sun is naturally not the subject [Sept. Syriac, M. Geier, etc.), but the wind named in the second clause, for only of it can it be said, “it turneth to the north.” But south and north are here used with the wind, because the other cardinal points had been previously used with the sun, to prevent an unpleasant repetition. The author could scarcely have thought of anything like the law of the revolution of the winds (Wolfgang Menzel, in his Natural History conceived in the Christian spirit I. 270); for he had just asserted in Ecc_1:4, that the earth stands eternally still. The opinion of Hahn is also objectionable, that the poet was desirous of showing the continual change between warm and cold wind, and this change from warmth to cold was to depict the vicissitude of happiness and unhappiness in human life, as, in the preceding verse, that from night to day. Such an allegorizing of the passage is the less justifiable because the circuit of the waters described in Ecc_1:7 can only be considered a picture of the change from happiness to unhappiness by virtue of a forced and highly artificial interpretation. The more careful allegorical interpretation tried by Hengstenberg, according to which sun, wind, and water are all symbols of human existence moving in the circuit of vanity, is not indeed sufficiently justified by the context. The wind goeth ever whirling (Lit. Ger.). The twice repeated סוֹבֵב expresses continual repetition, the everlasting, and the ever-returning change of the wind; comp. the reduplication of ideas with the same intent in Gen_14:10; Deu_2:27; Deu_14:22; Mar_6:39. This double סוֹבֵב is subordinate to הוֹלֵךְ presenting the main idea, just as שּׁוֹאֵף in Ecc_1:5 is to זֹרֵחַ.—And the wind returneth again according to his circuits.—That is, the circuits which it has already made, it ever makes again, it ever repeats the courses that it has previously described; for that is, properly speaking, the סְבִיבוֹת, not circles (Sept. Vulg., Ewald, Knobel, etc). The translation “on its circuits or circles” (Ewald, Knobel, etc.) or also “according to its circuits” (Rosenmueller) is unnecessary; for that עַל, with verbs of motion, especially שׁוּב, has the sense of to, until, (exactly synonymous, in such case, with עַד) is proved by such passages as Pro_26:11; Psa_19:7; Psa_48:11; Job_37:3, and also by the circumstance that, in the later Chaldaic style, עַל is mostly synonymous with אֶל. [In the above passage Zöckler translates zu seinen Wendungen.—W.].
Ecc_1:7. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full, i.e., it does not overflow notwithstanding the immense masses of water that it constantly receives; it does not overwhelm and swallow up the land. In הַיָם, the author doubtless refers to the ocean, not to the Dead Sea, as Hitzig arbitrarily supposes. The previous mention of the sun, the wind, and the four cardinal points, show conclusively that he deals with great cosmophysical ideas, and thus hardly thinks merely of the streams like the Jordan flowing into the Dead Sea, or indeed of the contracted relations of Palestine at all. Comp. also Aristophanes in his “Clouds,” v. 1294, et seq.:
αὕτη μὲν (ἡ θάλαττα) οὐδὲν γίγνεται
ἐπιῤῥεόντων τῶν ποταμῶν πλείων, σὺ δὲ
ζητεῖς ποιῆσαι ταργύριον πλεῖον τὸ σόν
Unto the place from whence the rivers come, “thither they return again. Literal, thither are the rivers to go returning,” thither they always take their course again. For this construction examine 1Sa_20:19; Hos_5:11, etc; as in the English, (they are going), the participle here expresses the continuous character of the action. For the construct state before the relative clause (which is, as it were, regarded as a single noun) comp. passages such as Gen_40:3; Lev_4:24; (Ewald, Manual. § 322, c.).—As it is not absolutely necessary that הלךְ must express the “going whither,” but may also well express the going out, or the coming whence, as Ecc_1:6 shows, therefore, מְקוֹם שֶׁהַנְּחָלִים הֹלְכִים does not mean the ocean as the common collecting-place of all river-water (Elster, Vaihinger, etc.), but rather as the occasional source and origin of the individual rivers. The return of the water from the ocean the author certainly thinks effected in a way corresponding to the natural course of things, namely, that of exhalations, and clouds, and falling mists, and not by means of secret subterraneous canals and passages, as Luther, Rosenmueller, et al., pretend. See Gen_2:6; Job_36:27-28.—Also Umbreit, Hitzig, and Hengstenberg on this passage.
5. First division, second strophe, Ecc_1:8-11. As the natural objects of human knowledge truly satisfy neither the eye nor the ear (Ecc_1:8), so there predominates in the history of mankind a restless flight of events, crowding and following each other in endless circuit, which necessarily destroy, in equal measure, both the interest in new acquirements, and the endeavor to remember the things that are past (Ecc_1:11).—All things are full of labor, man cannot utter it.—The words כֹּל־הַדְּבָרִים יְגֵעִים are understood by exegetists to mean either: “all words are troublesome, weary” (Sept., Ewald, Elster, Hitzig, Hengstenberg, Hahn, etc.), or: “all things fatigue, are full of burden and trouble” (Hieronymus, Luther, Rosenmueller, Vaihinger, etc.). The ruling signification in this book, as every where in the Old Testament of דבר =λόγος, sermo, as well as the closely following remark, “man cannot utter it” (יוּכַל לְדַבֵּר), seem to speak in favor of the former meaning. But the word דבר, as meaning thing, is found also in Ecc_1:10; Ecc_6:12; Ecc_7:8; and it appears, in every view of the case, more appropriate that the quality of wearying, of producing discouragement and indifference, should be predicated of the things of the world, and the objects of human knowledge, than that the words relating to the naming and judging of these things, should be designated as feeble or exhausting. This first meaning would also produce a tautology of הַדְּבָרִים with לְדַבֵּר, which one could scarcely attribute to an author who, on the whole, expresses himself with such choice and delicacy. Thus the sense of the line remains in every case that which is accepted oven by most of the defenders of the first conception; namely, to recount all objects of human knowledge and experience is fatiguing in the extreme, and is indeed impracticable`; no speech can perfectly give the impression which is produced on our mind by the thought of physical endlessness, and of the never changing operations and life of the forces of nature (comp. Elster on this passage). For the active sense of יָגֵעַ, which elsewhere, as in Deu_25:18, 2Sa_17:2, expresses the passive thought, “faint,” “weary,” but here is clearly exhaustive, making weary, examine the similar significations of נִמְרָץ ,נַחְלָה ,אָנוּשׁ in Isa_17:11; Jer_30:12; Mic_2:10; and also the Latin tristis in the sense of making sad, depressing; and the German “betrübt” in phrases like: “es ist betrubt zu schen,” etc.—The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,—No remarkable quality is here affirmed of the eye or the ear; it is only intended to delineate more closely the relation held to the expression, “all things are wearying.” “If the eye should become satisfied, so that it would no longer see, then the narrating word must step in and be able in its turn also to master things. But the abundance of phenomena, which presses on eye, ear, and the remaining senses, is endless; there are always objects which the eye must see, does see, and brings to him who would gladly close his labors” (Hitzig). For parallel passages comp. Pro_27:20. For מִשְׁמֹעַ, lit. “away from hearing,” i.e., so that it may hear no longer, comp. Gen_27:1; Exo_14:5; 1Sa_8:7; Isa_24:10, etc.
Ecc_1:9. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; or also; “what has happened, that will again happen, that will occur anew.” מַה שֶׁהָיָה cannot be considered a question (LXX. τί τὸ γεγονός Vulg. quid est quod fuit); for in this book מַה־שֶּׁ is always equivalent to “that which,” or “whatever;” see Ecc_3:15; Ecc_6:10; Ecc_8:7; Ecc_10:14; and examine for the same Chaldaic style, Dan_2:25; Ezr_7:18.—And that which is done, is that which shall be done.—As the former refers to the objective course of natural laws and phenomena, so this parallel expression alludes to the subjective efforts and actions of men; and the progress to any thing really new is denied of both.—And there is no new thing under the sun.—Lit. there is not in existence any thing new, (וְאֵין כָּל־חָרָשׁ). For the placing of this negation before כָּל, to indicate the total non-existence of any thing, comp. Jdg_13:4; Psa_143:2; 2Ki_4:2; also similar Hebrew terms in the New Testament Greek, Mat_24:22; Rom_3:20; Gal_2:16, etc.—For this sentence comp. Seneca especially; Epist. Ecc 24: Nullius rei finis est, sed in orbem nexa sunt omnia. Omnia transeunt ut revertantur, nil novi video, nil novi facio; also Tacitus, Annal. III. Ecc 55: Rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis, ut quemadmodum temporum vices, ita morum versentur; and Marc. Aurel. Comment., ad se ipsum, VI. Ecc 31: ̀ὁ τὰ νῦν ὁρῶν πάντα ἑώρακεν, ὅσα τὲ ἐξ άϊδιόυ ἐγένετο, και ὅσα εὶς τὸ ἁ̓πειρον ἔσται. πάντα γὰρ ὁμογενῆ καὶ ὁμοειδῆ; Ibid. VII. Ecclesiastes 1 : οὐδεν καινὸν. πάντα καὶ συνήθη καὶ ὀλιγχρόνια; Ibid. VII. Ecc 26: πᾶν τὸ γινόμενον οὕτως ἀεὶ ἐγενετο καὶ γενήσεται καὶ νῦν πανταχοῦ γίνεται.
Ecc_1:10. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new ? it hath been already of old time which was before us.—The first half of this verse is a hypothetical preliminary clause, introduced by יֵשׁ דָּבָר to which is added the after clause without a copula, for the sake of greater emphasis; comp. similarly formed conditional sentences in Ecc_1:18.—כְּבַר, long ago, already long since (Sept. ἥδη; Vulg. jam), is one of the characteristic Aramaic4 particles of the book, allied to כִּבְרָה “greatness, length,” and the Arab. Kibar, great age; (comp. Introd. § 4, Obs. 2). The word לְעלָֹמִים, added as a more special definition, indicates that the meaning of “long ago” is to be understood in the sense of time of external length; or also that it continues in endless spaces of lime;5 for the preposition לְ, in the sense of “within,” comp. Gen_7:4; Ezr_10:8, and Elster on this passage.—Instead of אֲשֶׁר הָיוּ there stands at the close אֲשֶׁר הָיָה מִלְּפָּנֵינוּ because הָיָה is used impersonally, in the sense: “there have been” (comp. Gen_47:24; Exo_12:49); an enallage numeri, that could easily occur with a neuter plural like עלָֹמִים. Ewald takes the words as subject of the sentence, and translates them thus: “what occurred before our eyes had already been long ago.” But this position of the subject at the end of the sentence would be harsh and without motive; and for מִלְּפָנֵינוּ, which means according to Isa_41:26 simply “before us, earlier than we,” would necessarily stand לְפָנֵינוּ if the translation “before our eyes, in our presence,” were the correct one.
Ecc_1:11. There is no remembrance of former things.—Clearly an explanation of the thought of the preceding verse, which we need not (as Hitzig and Elster) connect with what precedes through the conception: “that our considering old things as new is because of the continual extinction of the remembrance of former things.” For the construct state זִכְרוֹן before a following noun with a preposition, comp. similar cases, as Ezekiel 13, 2Sa_1:21.—רִאשֹׁנִיםַ and אַהֲרֹנִים signify every where the earlier and the later ones (Lev_26:45; Deu_19:14; Psa_79:8; Isa_61:4; also Ecc_4:16 of this book, consequently ancestry and posterity. The neuter idea, “the earlier,” would necessarily be expressed by the feminine רִאשֹׁנוֹת (Isa_42:9; Isa_46:9; Isa_48:3).—With those that shall come after.—לָאַחֲרֹנוֹת in future, later. Comp. for the substantive אַהֲרֹנָה, Deu_13:9; 2Sa_2:26.
6. Second Division. Proposition and first strophe. Ecc_1:12-15. In a subjective view human knowledge proves futile and vain, in so far as all the desires and enterprises of men, to which it is directed, are empty and vain, and lead to nothing. I, the preacher, was King over Israel in Jerusalem.—Observe the preterit, הָיִיתִי, I was—a clear indication that a later personage than the historical Solomon says this.6 For even in his most advanced age Solomon, who, according to 1Ki_11:40-43, was reigning king until his death, could not have spoken of his kingdom as something belonging solely to the past. For the remaining allusions in this verse to a period later than the Solomonic, see above on Ecc_1:1 (No. 1), and the Introduction, § 4. And moreover the author, assuming the character of Solomon, indicates for his own person a condition in life which affords him a broad view, rich experience, and knowledge of men; comp. Sir_38:24 ff.
Ecc_1:13. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom.—That is, I gave it entirely to that seeking, exerted myself zealously on that account; comp. שִׂים לֵב, Isa. 41:42; שִׁית לֵב, Psa_48:14; and הֵכִין לֵב, Job_11:13. “To seek” (דָּרַשׁ) and “to search” (תּוּר) are distinguished from one another—the former by being less thorough, and the latter by penetrating more deeply and searching after the hidden. בְּהָכְמָה is not “wisely” (Luther, comp. Vulgate, sapienter), but “with wisdom;” for wisdom was the instrument with which he made his investigations;7 (for the well-known old Hebrew sense, see the Introd. to the Solomonic books, Vol. XII. p. 3 of this work.)—Concerning all things that are done under heaven.—Thereby is clearly meant only the actions and lives of men, and not occurrences in the realm of nature, for which latter the verb נעשה would be very unfittingly chosen. And what has happened in itself is not so much meant as its character, worth, aim and success as an object of seeking and searching; therefore, to search concerning all things that are done (עַל כָּל וגו).—This sore travail, etc.—Human action itself is not designated here as עִנֲין רָע, as sore travail or pain (Hitzig, Hahn), but the zealous searching, the critical endeavor of the wise observer of life, who every where meets only vanity and emptiness, and with all his theoretical and practical experimenting with life, reaches no lasting enjoyment and success (and thus with justice the most exegetists; see Elster on this passage).—God hath given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.—This unsuccessful and vain striving after wisdom, to which man feels himself impelled by a natural necessity, is imparted to him by God himself; it is a part of the salutary and disciplinary curse that God has laid on human nature -since the fall, a “part of the whole system by which the Lord humbles fallen man, and therewith prepares the redemption” (Hengstenberg).
Ecc_1:14. I. have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.—(Lit., “windy effort,” i.e., “an effort of the wind”) (Sept. προαίρεσις πνεύματος) an effort without result, that effects no lasting good. Comp. Hos_12:2, which passage gives us at the same time the proper sense of the expression רְעוּת. For the formula רדף קדים there used parallel with רָעָה רוּחַ, “to consume wind,” really means to follow after the wind, to be in quest of it, a diligent striving after it (comp. רעה in passages like Pro_13:20; Pro_15:14; Isa_44:20). רְעוּת is consequently the bearing, the intension of one zealously aiming at, consequently striving, continuous direction of the will (thus also Ezra 5:7, 18), the same as רַעְיוֹן, which in Ecc_1:17; Ecc_4:16 is also found connected with רוּחַ. It is therefore erroneous to derive it from רעע=רצץ, to shatter, to break into pieces (thus the Vulg. “afflictio spiritus,” also Chald. Raschi et at).
Ecc_1:15. That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.—Clearly a proverbial sentence, which the author perhaps found ready made in the rich treasury of the proverbial wisdom of his people, and used here to strengthen what he had said in Ecc_1:14. The sense is, as the parallel passage, Ecc_7:13, shows, that human action and effort, in spite of all exertion, cannot alter that which has once been arranged and fixed by God. “Man cannot alter what is (apparently) unjust in God’s arrangement of the world, nor make or regard its failures perfect; hemmed in within the narrow limits of the world as it is constituted, he is not able to perform the most important thing that he above all things should be able to do” (Hitzig). This thought is not fatalistic (as Knobel. supposes); for, as numerous other passages of this book show (namely, Ecc_3:17; Ecc_7:20 ff.; Ecc_11:9; Ecc_12:14), the author knows very well that human sin is the cause of the incapacity here described in contrast with the unchangeable and divine order of the world, and considers this inability as one of self-guilt on the part of man.—“That which is wanting cannot be numbered,” i.e., not completed, not be brought to its full number; comp. the Lat. ad numeros suos redigi=perfici, and also our German proverbs: “Where there is nothing, nothing farther is to be counted;” or, “There the emperor has lost his right,” etc.
7. Second Division, second strophe. Ecc_1:16-18. Practically experiencing wisdom, striving after positive knowledge, is, as the critically observing, thoroughly futile, reaching no lasting result, because its acquirement is inseparably connected with pain and discouragement.—I communed with my own heart, saying, i.e., I entered inwardly into my own counsel; comp. the Lat. cogitare cum animo suo, and in the Hebrew similar phrases דִּבֵּר בְּלִבּוֹ, Psa_15:2; דּ אֶל־לִבּוֹ, Gen_24:45; עַל לִבּוֹ, 1Sa_1:13.—Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom.—The word הִגְדַּלְתִי (comp. Isa_28:29) intimates that he possessed great wisdom before; the word הוֹסַפְתִּי, that during his life he continually increased it. Comp. 1Ki_5:9-11.—Than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem.—The first עַל is comparative, as in Gen_48:22; Psa_16:2. From the second עַל before יְרוּשָׁלָיִם it appears that with the here mentioned predecessors of Koheleth real kings8 are meant (comp. also Ecc_2:7). The allusion here can scarcely be to the old Canaanitish princes (Adoni-zedek, Jos_10:1; or, indeed, Melchisedec, Gen_15:18), but to the crowned heads of Israel, who alone were competent to the realization of חכמה. This passage contains, again, therefore, a reference to the difference between the author of this work and Solomon, but still not one of that kind that we are justified in reproaching him (with Hitzig) of ignorance of history. He rather commits this offence against actual history with the same absence of suspicion and purpose which permitted him to adapt his work only loosely and distantly to the personal and temporal relations x and every where to dispense with the strict carrying out of the historical fiction in question. (Comp. Introd. § 4).—Yea, my heart had great experience of Wisdom and knowledge.—Concerning דַּעַת as synonym of חָכְמָה comp. Pro_1:2. “To see, to behold wisdom and knowledge,” is as much as acquiring it by experience, arriving at its possession and enjoyment. This beholding is attributed to the heart, because it is indeed the seat or instrument of aspiration after Wisdom , 9 see Ecc_1:13; Ecc_1:17.
Ecc_1:17. And I gave my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly—that is, I applied myself to learning not only the positive and normal contents of human knowledge, but also its counterpart, error and perversion in their various forms; according to the principle: contrariis contraria intelliguntur. הֹלֵלוּת = הוֹלֵלוּת, Ecc_10:13; comp. the similar formation חָכְמוּת, Pro_1:20; Pro_9:1, etc., and Ewald, Manual, § 165 c), and שִׂכְלוּת, want of sense and folly are also thus placed together in Ecc_2:12 only, that the latter word is written סִכְלוּת with more etymological exactness (comp. also Ecc_2:3; Ecc_2:13, etc.).—I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For רַעְיוֹן רוּחַ see Ecc_1:14; and comp. רַעְיוֹן לִבּו the striving of his heart, Ecc_2:22, as well as the same word in the Chaldee of the Book of Daniel (Ecc_4:16; Ecc_5:6; Ecc_5:10; Ecc_7:28), where it signifies thought. זֶה הוּא, a pleonasm, of which there are many in the book. Ecc_1:18. For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.—Ger. Proverb: “Much wisdom causeth headache;” also Cicero, Tusc. III. Ecclesiastes 4 : “videtur mihi cadere in sapientem ægritudo,” and what Elster remarks on this passage: “Such an enlargement of the practical knowledge of human life destroys the natural ease and simplicity of the individual life, and by comparisons with others, awaking the consciousness of being variously affected in one’s own existence through influences operating from without, produces a feeling of insignificance and feebleness of each individual life as such; and by exciting man to many aspirations and desires which remain unfulfilled, and therefore leave painful impressions behind. It is still more important to think of the manifold disillusions which a deeper insight of the moral arena in a stricter sense produces, because it not only teaches how confidence in the strength and worth of individuals is often unjustifiable, but also shows how in the great and sacred institutions of humanity, which have originally a purely ethical aim, this ethical object is frequently lost, and that those only exist in reality through a linking of interests that are entirely foreign to their real nature.”—וְיוֹסִיף is an antecedent: “and if one gathers wisdom, if one makes much wisdom.” Ewald, Elster, et al., consider יוֹסִיף (here as well as in Isa_29:14; Isa_38:5) an active participle from the stem reverting from Hiphil, into Kal, with י—instead of—(Ewald, Manual, §127 b.; 169 a) while others find in it simply an impersonal future Hiphil, and compare it on account of the scriptio plena with הוֹסַפְתִּי Ecc_1:16.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
Human effort, confined to the conditions of life and the objects of knowledge of this earthly world, can attain no enduring wealth of happiness or success, either in a practical or theoretical relation. For every thing that is accomplished under the sun, that is, in this contracted sublunary world subjected to the curse of temporality, is, like the great heavenly light of our planet, or, like the mysterious course of the wind and the water, confined to a changeless circuit beyond which there is no progress. All efforts after the attainment of a higher and more durable happiness, which man by means of his own natural power may institute, fail at this stern barrier of the earthly and temporal. Be it the cheerful enjoyment of life, and the active cooperation with it, be it fulness of knowledge and wealth of treasures, of intellectual truth and insight, as long as man, standing simply in his own strength as a mere child of earth, commanding no other than earthly and natural powers, endeavors to place himself in possession of these treasures, will he be ever obliged to experience the utter vanity of his labors. Only in submission to the eternally Divine, which remains fixed and constant in all the vicissitudes of time, (Psa_102:25 ff.), does he obtain the power to overcome the imperfections and annoyances of temporal existence, or, at least, true consolation while suffering their pressure. Faith alone is the anchor of safety which is able to preserve the bark of life, tossed to and fro by the storms of time, from sinking into the awful depths of despair and inconsolable doubts regarding our temporal and eternal welfare.
Of these fundamental thoughts of the section before us, only those referring to the vanity of earthly life and its wisdom are specially treated. Of the religious solution of the conflict, which, according to numerous and prominent allusions in the subsequent pages, forms the deeper background for the grievous lamentations of the preacher, there penetrates, for the time, scarcely anything through his picture of the vanity of all earthly things. It is, substantially, only the sad contrast between human aspirations after wisdom, and the absolutely unsatisfying result in this world, to whose description the author directs his attention; that conflict between the ardent desire of life and its enjoyment, between thirst after knowledge and its failure, whose deep significance Fabri, in his work—“Time and Eternity”—has as strikingly as beautifully delineated when, in p. 10 f., in direct connection with the lamenting commencement of this book he says: “Who does not know, from his own thousand-fold experience, this wonderful feeling of a deep temporal grief that often, as an armed foe, overwhelms the spirit of man with a secret shudder in the midst of the loudest merriment? Who does not know the pressure and the pain of time, when we see it in steady flow hurrying quietly by us, nay, when we see ourselves, entirely helpless, carried away by its stream, and daily approaching nearer to the limits of life? Do we not then feel as the occupant of a frail boat, which, drawn into the current of a mighty stream, finds itself carried down with arrowy speed, and if not in its course dashed to pieces on the rocks, hastens with inevitable destiny to the cataract that is to bury it in that deep from which no one may ever rise and begin the course anew?” That is the periculum vitæ, the danger of life, of which the wise men of old have spoken, and have recognized as the inevitable destiny of every thing born into this lower world. Thus time, with its restless and continuous going and coming, appeals to the direct feelings of every man as an oppressive destiny, as a travail, as Solomon says, (Ecc_1:13; Ecc_1:18), as a tragic conflict between what ought to be and what is.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
In the homiletical treatment of the section, the evangelical preacher should not be satisfied in merely presenting this sad conflict without its solution; he should rather connect with the lament concerning the vanity of earthly things, the consolation of the unchanging grace of the Eternal One; and thus regard the gloomy picture of the author in the light of divine revelation, to which the entire course and contents of the book encourage us. In this intent we might use the entire chapter as a text for a connected view whose theme might be as follows: That which is visible is temporal, that which is invisible is eternal (2Co_4:17); or also—“For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.” “But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.” (1Co_13:9-10); or: The flight of earthly things, its cause and its cure, (with reference to the 90th Psalm, and appropriate spiritual hymns). In case the text is divided, there should not be more than two parts. Then make Ecc_1:2-11 the text for the thought: “There is nothing new under the sun;” and from 12–18 for the thought: “In much wisdom there is much grief.”
With a view to the practical treatment of the individual passages, examine the following homiletical hints and helps from ancient and modern exegetical writings.
Ecc_1:2. Luther:—In the introduction he gives us the subject of the whole book, when he tells us that there is the greatest vanity in all human pursuits, to such a degree that men, neither content with the present, nor able to enjoy the future, turn even their best things into misery and vanity, all through their own fault, not that of the things themselves.
M. Geier:—The more the vanity of the world is discovered, the more will the disgust of it increase in the true Christian; and on the contrary, a desire will arise for the heavenly and eternal.—Hengstenberg:—The right solution of the problem is this: Between the assertion—“And behold, all was very good,” and that other: “All is vanity,” lies the fact of the fall. With this latter a whole new order of things has appeared. The creation, which was good in itself, was no longer fitting for degenerate man. “All is vanity,” is no accusation of God. It is rather, if we keep in view the nature of man, a praise of God. It is precisely in this doom of punishment, and in the adjustment of the economy of the Cross, that God shows Himself especially great and glorious.
Ecc_1:3. Luther:—The creature is indeed subject to vanity, as Paul testifies, Romans 8, but nevertheless the things themselves are good. Otherwise he would have called the sun itself a vanity; but this he excepts, because he says, under the sun. It is not, therefore, of the works of God he treats, which are all good and true, and above the sun, but the works beneath the sun,—what we do here in this earthly life.—Starke:—Since with decay the profit of all outward occupation vanishes, it is folly for men to be so absorbed with external things that they thereby forget the care of their own souls.
Ecc_1:4-7. Cramer:—That the world has not existed from eternity, one sees in all its parts, because these are not fixed and constant the whole cannot, therefore, remain unchanged. But the constant order in creatures and their employments, proves that there is a God who sustains every thing.—Starke:—In nature every thing is governed by the laws of motion; how - much more should man direct his steps according to the rules of life prescribed to him by God (Gal_6:16; Psa_119:9; Psa_100:5).—Wohlfarth:—The existence of the world clearly depends upon the unchangeable order given to nature by God, and just because it follows these divine laws without deviation, is nature, yet to-day, as it was thousands of years ago, the inexhaustible dispenser of the blessings and joys of men. Let us herein acknowledge the wisdom, goodness, and might of the Eternal One, and adore him who once said: “Let there be!” and there was ! who called the sun of the day, as well as the night, into existence, who prescribed to the waters their course, and gave command to the winds. Let us comprehend that we can only then be happy and make others happy, when, as nature unconsciously, obeys natural laws, we obey with clear consciousness the commands of virtue and the laws of nature for the spirit world.
Ecc_1:8. Zeyss:—The immortal spirit of man can find no real rest in temporal things, but only in God, the highest and eternal good, Mat_11:29.—Hansen:—External things do not satisfy. David in Psa_17:15 gives us clearly to understand that he recognizes the same truth; for he says: “I will behold thy face in righteousness,” and adds, “I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” He hopes, therefore, in the contemplation of God, to obtain what he cannot have in the form of this world. And for this very reason Solomon calls all things vain that belong to this sensual life.—Berleb. Bible:—“The avenues of the soul bear many thousand objects or things to the heart, with which man fatigues and distracts himself, as with a boundless mountain of sand. From these his mind forms numberless images, which he gazes at, and inwardly handles. From these come the manifold thoughts and the distracted spirit of poor man. Therefore, by apostacy from God, his Creator, he has gone out with his heart after many things, and now, instead of God, in whom he would eternally have had enough, he embraces so many thousand creatures in his desires, and cannot oven then be satisfied. For the immortal essence of the soul can by no means repose in the empty creature; it seeks ever farther, and will ever have more; it is a fire that burns without ceasing, and would gladly seize all things.”
Ecc_1:9-11. Luther:—If we understand these words, nothing new beneath the sun, of the things themselves, and of the works of God, it would not be true. For God is every day doing what is new; but we do nothing new, because the old Adam is in all. Our ancestors abused things, just as we abuse them. Alexander, Cæsar, had the same disposition; so had all Kaisars and Kings; so have we. As they could never be satisfied, so never can we; they were wicked; so are we.—Cramer:—No man has so great a cross that he finds none like himself; for we are not better than our fathers, 1Ki_19:5.—Hengstenberg:—“There is nothing new under the sun;” let that serve to sober down the fantasies which gather grapes from the thorns of the world, but not discourage the friends of the Kingdom of God, which has its real seat, not under the sun, but above the sun, and whose heavenly protector, by ever creating new things (Jer_31:22) gives material to a new song, Psa_40:4.
Ecc_1:13-15. Luther [to Ecc_1:14]:—All painful anxiety and care in making provision, whether in public or private, through our own counsels, and our own wisdom, are condemned is this book. God disappoints the thoughts and plans that are not grounded on His word. And rightly too; for why should we prescribe and add to His wisdom? Let us learn, then, to submit to His counsels, and abstain from those cares and thoughts which God has not commanded.
Ecc_1:15. Human concerns cannot be so managed as that all things should be rightly done, and that there should not still remain many evils. The best way, then, is to walk in faith, which lets God reign, prays for the coming of His Kingdom, tolerating in the meantime, and patiently enduring, all evils, or committing them to Him who judgeth righteously.
Freiberg Bible:—In spiritual as in corporeal things, God alone can make the crooked straight and smooth.—Harman (to Ecc_1:13 f.—Bible Reflections of a Christian, Vol. I., p. 103):—All human wisdom labors, and has care and sorrow for its reward; the farther wisdom looks, the greater is the labyrinth in which it loses itself. It is with reason as to the eyes with a magnifying glass, when the most delicate skin becomes disgusting, the most luscious dish a mess of worms, and the finest work of art a mere botch. We see the impossibility of removing all inequalities of human society, and we see in it an overwhelming number of faults and failings; yes, the weakness of our senses and judgment leads us to find faults in beauties, because we examine all things only fragmentarily.
Ecc_1:16-18. Hansen (to Ecc_1:17):—Many thousand actions are considered prudent and wise, which in reality are silly and foolish. It is an arduous task to correct one’s error in respect to all this, and regard the world, and human life in the world, with just eyes.—(To Ecc_1:18).—Wisdom, as such, is no cause for uneasiness of mind; it is rather a cause for contentment. It sometimes happens, however, that peace of mind is disturbed by wisdom. The deeper our vision, the more clearly we perceive the imperfections among the children of men, and that usually produces unrest in the mind.—Starke:—But because knowledge easily puffeth up (1Co_8:1), wise and learned men have so much greater need to beg God to keep them in true humility.—Every righteous teacher, yes, every true Christian, must resign himself to many evils which must meet him in the endeavor to acquire genuine wisdom.
[Olamio or Ionian Words in Scripture—Eternities or World-Times—Cyclical Ideas in Koheleth.—The passage, Ecc_1:3, rendered, “the earth abideth forever,” is the one most commonly quoted as their key text by those who would not only give a limited sense to עולם here, which it undoubtedly has, but would, thereby, weaken the force of this whole class of words in all other parts of the Bible, and especially when they are used in reference to a future state of being. On this account, the whole subject has seemed worthy of a fuller discussion than it has generally received in Commentaries, and this the passage to which such an exegetical examination can be most appropriately attached.
The best rendering of the word לְעוֹלָם Ecc_1:3, is “for the world-time,” or “for the world,” as we have given it in the metrical version annexed. It may seem strange to ears not accustomed to it, but it is the true translation, not only here, but in many other places, where its proper significance is concealed under general or inadequate phrases. In Ecc_3:11 it has been once rendered by our translators, “the world,” which is correct enough in itself, but may mislead by raising in the reader’s mind the conception of a space world. For further remarks on that important passage see note, p. 67. The word לְעוֹלָם cannot here (Ecc_1:3) mean for ever, in the sense of endless duration, though it may be used for such idea when the context clearly demands, as when it is employed to denote the continuance of the Divine existence, or of the Divine Kingdom, or any thing else connected with the proper Divine eternity as the word is now taken. It is, however, in that case, only the employment of necessarily finite language to express an infinite idea strictly transcending all language, unless poorly represented by a conceptionless, negative word, which, although logically correct, is far inferior in vividness and power to some vast though finite term, which, by its very greatness and immeasurability, raises in the mind the thought of something beyond, and ever still beyond, worlds without end. This effect is still farther increased by plurals and reduplications, such as the Hebrew עלמים, and עולם, the Greek ἀιῶνες, and αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων, the Latin secula, and secula seculorum, the old Saxon, or old English, of Wicliffe, to worldis of worldis (Heb_13:21), or our more modern phrase, for ever and ever, where ever (German ewig), was originally a noun denoting age, or vast period, just like the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew words corresponding to it. Another mode of impressing the idea of absolute eternity is by the use of language in the context, or general scenic representations, which bring up the thought of finality in the passage, giving it the aspect of something settled, never to be disturbed, having nothing beyond that can possibly change it, as in that most impressive close of Matthew 25. In Ecc_1:3 it evidently expresses the duration of the earth as coeval with the great order of things called the world, whether in the time or space sense, and vastly transcending the דּוֹר, generation, or life-time (the æon, as we might call it in a still more limited sense) of man. There is a similar contrast, Psa_110:1, where דור ודור “generation and generation,” or “all generations,” as it is rendered, refers to the human history, whilst, מעולם עד עולם from world to world, ἀπὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος καὶ ἕως τοῦ αἰῶνος, a seculo et usque in seculum von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit, refers to the Divine existence as measured, conceptually, by, work times, even as our brief individual life-time ii measured by years (Ps. 110:90), and our own peculiar world-time by dorim, or generations.
These words correspond in all the language referred to. They arise from a philological exigency, from the demand for some word to express that idea of time, or rather conception of time (since all language is primarily for the sense want), which goes beyond any known historical and astronomical measurements,—some great period, cycle, or age, not having its measurement from without, but in itself, or, at least, seemingly independent of outward phenomenal measurement. It is something supposed to have its own chronology, separate from other chronologies. In a lower, or more limited, sense, an olam, æon, age, world, or world-time, may be historical; that is, such indefinite periods may be regarded as coming, one after another, during the continuance of the same earth or kosmos; truly historical, yet divided from each other by some intrinsic character, rather than by mere years or centuries. Thus we say the old world, the new world, the ancient world, the modern world, the Greek world, the Roman world, &c. This would correspond to our use of the word ages, and that would make a good sense, Ecc_1:10, “the worlds or ages (עלמים) that have been before.” They may also have a higher sense than the historical, regarded as the history of one earth or kosmos, continuing as it is without any great physical change. They may be cosmical æons, carrying the idea of a new dispensation, with a change in the space-kosmos with which they are connected, or some change in the human state or relation that is equally significant. It might be conceived as a decay, dissolution, and restoration,—a renewal, rather, instead of an absolute creation de novo. Such an idea of new cosmical worlds, or æons, is favored in a certain aspect of it by some passages of Scripture which speak of a new (or rather renewed) heavens and earth, Psa_102:26; Isa_66:22. Or it might be more like an idea which was certainly very ancient, of the same worlds coming over and over again, with all things and all events repeated, just as they had taken place. This was an old Egyptian and Arabian view, probably arising from the observations of astronomical cycles (see Pareau de Notiliis Vilæ Futuræ ab antiquissimo Jobi Scrtptore, etc., pp. 65, 66, etc.). Something like it was taught by Pythagoras and Plato in their doctrine of the magnus annus, as also by the Stoics in their doctrine of the cyclical return of the world, and all things in it, through a process of rarefaction and condensation (with a final conflagration), from which came again that rare elementary state which is in the beginning of each cycle,—a kind of thinking to which the modern nebular theories present a fair counterpart. These views of the. Platonists and Stoics [ were sheer speculations. The old notions, however, of the Egyptians and Arabians seem to have had a different character, and as there is nothing incredible in the thought of their being known to this old writer, whether Solomon or any one else, so is it also admissible, to say the least, that , some such view, in connection with others, perhaps, of a more indefinite kind, may have been included in the words of Koheleth, Ecc_1:9; Ecc_1:11. If i some such thought had suggested the language, or been anciently suggested by it, the dogma would by no means have bound our assent, as though it were an inspired Bible truth, since it is only used by this contemplative writer as an illustration of the general cyclical notion of returns in the world movement. This may be regarded almost in the light of an a priori idea, or one necessarily arising to every thoughtful mind in the contemplation of nature, whether we think of it as temporal or eternal. Just as the great nature is made up of lesser cycles (a thing obvious to sense), so, when viewed as a whole, and regarded simply as nature, without reference to its origin, it can only be conceived as a vast repeating cycle, having its birth, growth, increase, diminution, ortus, interitus, maxima, minima, ever going round and round, as the very law of its continued being. A straightforward movement in one direction forever, whether it be one of rarefaction, or condensation, of separation, or combination, must end in ruin, stagnation, death, or utter sameness, in some period far less than an absolute eternity, if we may make comparisons. To avoid this, nature, the great nature, as well as the smaller ones, must be thought of as having its καμπή, its turning or bending, as Plato holds, and may even be said to demonstrate, in the Phœdo, 72, Ecc 73: “For if the one course of things should not give place to the other, in generation, but, on the contrary, there was ever a straightforward development (εὐθεῖα γένεσις) without any turning or circuit, it is certain that all things must finally get the same form (τὸ αὐτὸ σχῆμα), and have the same state or affection (τὸ ·ἀυτὸ πάθος), and all things must cease becoming” (παύσαι τὰ γιγνόμενα)—that is, there would be an end of all generation; things would be brought to a stand. This would be universal death, he shows, whether an absolute immobility and stagnation, or an absolute rarefaction and incoherence, which would come to the same thing. Both terminations would be the death of nature, of all natures. Whether in the individual or the universal, it can only live by coming round and round again. This must be the law of all physical movement, whether we regard nature as eternal, or as having its great beginning, together with special beginnings, in a Divine Word. As a nature commenced, it must thus move in growth, maxima and minima, or it would not be a nature. Change, decay, death, revival, are the law of its life. Aristotle thus presents the general cyclical idea (Physica IV. 14) as grounded in human language expressive of the natural human thinking. After speaking of time as motion in a circle, he thus proceeds: ·διὰ δὲ τοῦτο καὶτὸ εἰωθὸς λέγεσθαι συμβαίνει· φασὶ γὰρ κύκλον εἰναι τὰ ἀνθρώπινα πράγματα, καὶ τῶν ἀλλων τῶν κίνησιν ἐχόντων φυσικὴν, καὶ γένεσιν, καὶ φθοράν. ὅτί ταῦτα πάντα λαμβᾶνει τελευτὴν καὶ ἀρχὴν ὡσπερανεὶ κατά τινα περίοδον “On this account there arises the usual mode of speech. For they say that all human things are a circle (a wheel); and so of all other things that have a physical movement, both of generation and decay—namely, that they have a beginning and an end, or, as it were, a, period (a going round).” This reminds us of the τροχὸς γενέσεως, “course of nature” (circulus naturæ), of Jam_3:6, and the גַּלְגַל תּוֹלְדוֹת “the wheel of generations,” of the Talmudists and Rabbinical writers—also of Plato’s splendid Myth in the Politicus (269 c) of the two great periods, in one of which the Divine superintendence carries nature forward in unbroken progress, and, in the other, it is left to itself, and, consequently, to ruin and decay. Compare also the citations made by Zöckler, p. 40, from Seneca, Tacitus, and Marcus Aurelian.
There is, however, a difference between the Greek αἰών, in its classical usage, and the Shemitic עולם. It consists in the fact that the latter is used for world—every where in the Syriac and Chaldaic, and much more frequently in the Bible Hebrew than our translation, or any modern version, would seem to show. There is a glimpse of such a meaning sometimes in the classical αἰών, as in Æschylus Supp. Ecc 572: Ζευς αἰῶνος κρεων ἀπαύστου—“Zeus, king of the never ceasing (ever moving) world,” as it may very appropriately be rendered, or of the never ceasing age or eternity. This world sense of the Hebrew, and of the Greek in the New Testament, does not however, denote the world in space, more properly represented by the word κοσμος, but the world in time, or as a time existence. This is peculiarly a Shemitic conception, and yet it comes directly from our necessary thinking. The time of a thing enters into the idea of its true being as much as its extent or its energy in space; or, to express it more correctly, the movements in succession, of any true organism belong as much to its reality (that which makes it a res, or thing) as the matter or collected cotemporaneous activities to which we give the name. So, too, in our Saxon world (weorld), the primitive etymological conception, we think, would be found to be time rather than space, as appears even in the later usage which we find in such expressions as this world in distinction from the other world, or the world to come,—besides the already referred to usage in Wiclif’s translation, where it stands for עולם in the Old Testament, and for αἰών in the New; as Psalm 104; 5:13 for מלכות כל עלמים, Kingdom of all worldis, 1Ti_1:17 for βασιλεὺς τῶν αιώνωων Kynge of worldis, which puts us in mind of, ÆschylusΖεὺς αἰῶνος κρέων ἀπαύστου.
The only place in the Old Testament where our English translators have rendered עולםby the word world is Ecc_3:11 [see note on that passage, p. 67]. It has been objected to this by Stuart, Hitzig, and others, because it is the only place, and that, therefore, the rendering is to be regarded as contrary to the usage of the language. But to this it may be replied by turning the argument: It should not have been the only place. There are others in which world is the best rendering. Thus in the passages already cited, Psa_90:2, it is literally “from world to world,” instead of the vague term everlasting;10 Ps. c Ecc 945:13, “kingdom of all worlds:” Psalms 96; Psalms 31, 45; Jer_10:10, “God of life, King of the world;” Habakkuk 3 :S, הליכות עולם“ goings of the world,” Vulg itinera mundi; Deu_33:27,“the arms of the world”—that support the world movement. [See further on this, Lange, Genesis, P. 140, Six days of creation, Ecc 27.] From such usages came the Rabbinical sense so frequently found, and not vice versa, as some would have us believe; only that the Rabbins afterward, not fully understanding the old Hebrew conception as denoted by the plural forms of עולם, or wishing to enlarge it so as to make it a term of science, gave it also the space sense, and used it for κόσμος (See Buxtorf—Lex. Chald. and Rab.). the great thought underlying all the passages just quoted is that of the world movement, as an immense time, exhibiting God’s great work, or plan, Ecc_3:14. So also in Ecc_1:3, לעולם may be rendered for the world, and, in fact, the context forces to that view: generations of men go and come, but the earth stands, לעולם for the world-time, as long as the world lasts, conveying the same idea that is given, Psa_72:5, “throughout all generations, as long as the sun and more endure.” It is a way some critics have, of refusing to see a sense in places where it occurs, and then asserting that it cannot occur in any specific instance, because “it is not found elsewhere,” they say, in the Old Testament. Thus regarded, we see how it comes to be so common in the earliest Hebrew after the canonical,—not merely the earliest Rabbinical and Talmudical, but in Sirach, and other Jewish books, that much preceded them. This would never have been the case in the early Rabbinical writings, much less in these apocryphal books, had there not been some ground for it in the old Biblical Hebrew itself. And this may be said. generally, in regard to all other Rabbinisms, as they have been called, in Koheleth. They are rather Kohelethisms which appear in the earliest Rabbincial and Talmudical writers, because the old book, on account of its having more of a philosophical aspect than other ancient Scripture, possessed great charms for them, making it a favorite study, leading them to imitate its peculiar style, and to make much use of its rather forms and words. In the apocryphal books, so far as they were written originally in Hebrew, the use of עולם for world, or world time, is beyond all reasonable doubt. It must have been so employed in Sir_36:17, where we have the Greek αἰῶνας in the world sense, as also in Tob_13:6; Tob_13:10. In both cases the language is precisely similar to that Psa_145:13, 1Ti_1:17. The earliest Syriac preceding the New Testament used their emphatic form of the word [עלמא] in the same way, as appears from the Peschito version of the Old Testament, as well as that of the New, this same word being used in such passages as Psa_80:2; Psa_45:13, Ecc_3:11, and Heb_1:3; Heb_9:3, as a rendering of αἰών, αἰῶνες, where the Greek has, beyond all doubt, the world sense, though in its time aspect. Again, there is no accounting for this idiom in. the New Testament [this use of αἰών so different from the classical] except by regarding it as a Hebraism, which is simply saying that the world sense, thus viewed, was an old and established sense of the Hebrew עולם. There was nothing in any science, or thinking, in the Jewish age immediately preceding, to occasion any change or departure from the old meaning. There is neither authority nor weight in Winer’s remarks (Idioms of New Testament, § 27, 3) on the plural forms of αἰών,—that “they are used for worlds because the object denoted consists of several parts, e. g., οί αἰῶνες, the whole world, the universe,” with which he would compare the Rabbinical use of עלמים “The Jews,” he says, “imagined several heavens, one above the other.”That is true, but they never use עלמים to express such a conception. It is ever שׁמי שׁמים, the Heaven of Heavens, or the Heaven and Heaven of Heavens, or some similar language, from which came afterwards the third heaven of the Jews, and the seven heavens of the Talmud and of the Mohammedans. But this was ever in the space sense—worlds above worlds—not the time sense, worlds after worlds, which was a conception peculiarly Shemitic, barely found, if at all, among other ancient peoples, and giving rise to those pluralities of עולם and afterwards of αἰών, which can be accounted for in no other way; since the conception of absolute endlessness as etymological in עולםor αἰών, would clearly have prevented it. It is this idea which so refutes the assertion of Stuart (Comment. Ecc_12:1) that “time divided is not strictly predicable of a future state.” He means that all duration before or after the present world, as we call it, must be regarded as one continuous blank, or unvaried extension of being. There are not only no days and years, such as measure our olam, but no αἰῶνες, or world-times, in that greater chronology. This certainly is not the Scripture mode of conception, or such language as we find would never have arisen, or such pluralities as עלמים, αἰῶνες, or their reduplications, ages of ages, worlds of worlds exactly like the space pluralities שׁמי שׁמים, heaven of heavens. Such is the Scripture conception, we say, and what right had stuart, following Hit-zig, to deny that it is a Scripture truth, or to affirm that it is only a mode of speaking more humano? And reason sanctions it. What a narrow idea that the great antepast, and the great future after this brief world or עולם has passed away, are to be regarded as having no chronology of a higher kind, no other worlds, and worlds of worlds, succeeding each other in number and variety inconceivable ! Robinson seems to hold the view of Winer that when αἰῶνεςis used for worlds in the New Testament, it is to be regarded as a space conception, “ the upper and lower worlds, the heavens and the earth, as making up the universe;” and he refers to Heb_1:2; Heb_9:3, passages which should have convinced him (pace tanti viri, do we venture to say it) that the time sense (worlds after worlds instead of worlds beyond or above worlds) is not only predominant but exclusive, as it is in 1Ti_1:17, βασιλεὺς τῶν αἰώνων, the King of the worlds, the King eternal. This would seem, too, to be Zöckler’s way of thinking, when he speaks of the rendering world (Ecc_3:11) as appearing first in the Talmudic literature, and carrying the sense of kosmos, macrocosmos. Neither עולם in the Old Testament, nor αἰών in the New, has ever the sense of kosmos, or any space conception attached to it. That idea, as was said before, did come in afterwards among the Talmudists and early Rabbins, but it was only after they had got a smattering of science, and wished to make some of their old words look more philosophical, See Buxtorf’S Lexicon on the word. They still, however, retained the time sense, or the world-time, in their favorite expressions,עולם הזהam world, and son עולם הבא, the world to corns, which are exact representations of the ancient usage, as it arose in that early day, when time worlds were so much more a source of wondering thought than worlds in space, the boasted conception of our modern knowledge.
It may he thought that this view of עולם and αἰών as having plurals, and, therefore, not in themselves denoting absolute endlessness, or infinity of time, must weaken the force of certain passages in the New Testament, especially of that most solemn sentence, Mat_25:46. This, however, comes from a wrong view of what constitutes the real power of the impressive language there employed. The preacher, in contending with the Universalist, or Restorationist, would commit an error, and, it may be, suffer a failure in his argument, should he lay the whole stress of it on the etymological or historical significance of the words, αἰών, αἰωνίος, and attempt to prove that, of themselves, they necessarily carry the meaning of endless duration. There is another method by which the conclusion is reached in a much more impressive and cavil-silencing manner. It is by insisting on that dread aspect of finality that appears not in single words merely, but in the power and vividness of the language taken as a whole. The parabolic images evidently represent a closing scene. It is the last great act in the drama of human existence, the human world, or æon, we may say, if not the cosmical. It is the συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος, Matth. 3:39, the end, the settlement, the reckoning of the world, or more strongly, Heb_9:26, συντέλεια τῶν α̇ιώνων, “ the settlement of the worlds,” when “God demands again the ages fled,” Ecc_3:15 (see the Metrical Version, and the reasons for this translation). At all events, our race, the בני אדם the Adamic race, the human αὶών, or world, is judged; whether that judgment occupy a solar day of twenty-four hours, or a much longer historic period. There comes at last the end. Sentence is pronounced. The condemned go away, εἰς κόλασιν αἰώνιον—the righteous, εἰς ζωὴν α̇ιώνιον. Both states are expressed in language precisely parallel, and so presented that we cannot exegetically make any difference in the force and extent of the terms. Αἱώνιος, from its adjective form, may perhaps mean, an existence, a duration, measured by asons, or worlds (taken as the measuring unit), just as our present world, or oeon, is measured by years or centuries. But it would be more in accordance with the plainest etymological usage to give it simply the sense of olamic or iconic, or to regard it as denoting, like the Jewish עולם הבא (olam habba), the world to come. These shall go away into the punishment [the restraint, imprisonment] of the world to come, and these into the life of the world to come. That is all we can. etymologically or exegetically make of the word in this passage. And so is it ever in the old Syriac Version, where the one rendering is still more unmistakably clear: These shall go away לְתַשְׁנִיָקא דַלְעָלַם to the pain of the olam, and these לְחיֵא דַלְעָלַם to the life of the olam”—the world to come. Compare the same Syriac expressions in a great many other passages, such as Mat_19:16; Mar_10:17; Luk_18:18; Joh_3:15; Act_13:46; 1Ti_6:12, etc., in which αἰώνιος is ever rendered דַלְעָלַם or דַלְעָלְמָא (more emphatic) “that which belongs to the olam,” in the singular.
They shall go away—the one here, the other there. The two classes so long mingled are divided, no more, as it would seem, to be again together. The “wheat is gathered into the garner,” the “tares are east into the fire.” The harvest is over; there is no more to follow; at least, the language gives us no intimation of any thing beyond. The catastrophe has come; the drama is ended; the curtain drops. Shall it never rise again? Is this solemn close forever in the sense of irreversibility? Who is authorized to say that there will ever be an arrest of this judgment, or a new trial ever granted? Every thing in the awful scene so graphically depicted seems to favor the one thought of finality. Hash minds may indulge the thought of some change, some dispensation in still remoter “worlds to come,” but there is no warrant for it in any of the language employed. If there be allowed the thought of change, it may be inferred of the one state as well as of the other. The ζωὴ αἰώνιος may have its interruption, its renewed probation, and exposure to evil; exegetically this may be as well sustained as the other. To rebut any such presumption, we have, too, our Saviour’s words, Joh_14:2; “If it were not so, I would have told you.” There would have been a similar ground for such language here as when he said, “Let not your hearts be troubled; in my Father’s house are many mansions; “there would have been the same reason for allaying fears of change on the one hand, or preventing despair on the other, had there not been the intention to impress that thought of finality which the whole dramatic representation so vividly conveys: If there were ages of change coming somewhere in the vast future, in the infinite flow of the αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων, “the ages of ages,” when the ζωὴ should cease, or the κόλαασις be intermitted, “I would have told you.” He has not told us; and no man should have the audacity to raise the veil which He has so solemnly dropped before the vision both of sense and reason. Let it remain for a new revelation, when he chooses to make it. Till then it stands: They shall go away, the one into the life, the other into the imprisonment, of the world to come. There is no more; let no one add to it; let no one take away. Some have thought to find the metaphysical idea of timelessness in the Scriptural olamic words, and especially in the αἰών, αἰώνιος, of the New Testament. That is a Platonic notion largely dwelt upon in the Timseus (37 c) where αιών is represented as fixed, one of the “things that stand” [belonging to the class called τὰ ὄντα rather than τὰ γιγνόμενα] whilst χρόνος flowing time, is its “moving image,” or the revolving mirror which seems to set in motion the landscape of eternity, though, in reality, all is changeless and still. But this timeless idea is no etymological sense of αἰών it is only the speculative notion of the philosopher which he represents by the word as supplying a supposed antithesis to χρόνος, time. We have no right to say, however, that there is no ground for it in the reason. It appears, sometimes, in the common thinking, as when we speak of time as contrasted with eternity, or of a state before time was, or that shall be when “time shall be no more.” Such a style of speech has been favored by a wrong interpretation of the language, Rev_10:6, on ὅτι χρόνος οὐκ ἔσται ἔτι, and a severing it from its immediate context. Still its prevalence shows that it is not altogether alien to the human thinking. It is felt that there is a solid reason for predicating timelessness of God, of the Divine mind, and the Divine ways, as lying above the plane of the human, even “as the Heaven is high above the earth” [Isa_55:9]. To Deity all effects must be present in their causes, and causes seen in their effects, and all phenomena, or “things that do appear,” must have their more real existence in the unseen seminal energies of which they are manifestations. They have their true being in the Logos or Word from whence they came. Inthis sense the Prophet most sublimely represents God as יוֹשֵׁב קֶדֶם Psa_55:20, sedens antiquitatem, literally, sitting the everlasting antepast, and שֹׁכֵן עַד Isa_57:15, inhabiting eternity, both of which expressions would seem to aim at denoting, as far as language can denote it, a timeless state, as opposed to movement or succession. And so even in regard to the human soul, our own finite thoughts may sometimes faintly present to us the image of successionless spiritual being, or of-some approach to it. We can think of a condition of the spirit in which time, as movement, seems to disappear. It may be the conception of some “beatific vision” on the one hand, or of some “horror of great darkness” on the other, the one so enrapturing and absorbing, the other so dense and harrowing, that all division, or sense of such division, seems so wholly lost that existence, in this respect, may not improperly be said to be timeless. Again, there is the schoolmen’s notion of eternity as given by Boethius, iota simul et interminabilis vilse possessio, or as it is defined by that quaint old Hebraist and Lexicographer, Robertson—“Eternity the everlasting and ever present, without futurition or preterition,” as in the timeless name אהיה, יהיה the I Am (Jahveh or Jehovah) ὁ ὢν, καὶ ὁ ἤν, καὶ ὅ ἑρχόμενος But such a timeless idea is hardly for our present thinking, in this present state of change and transition. “Such knowledge is too wonderful for us; it is high, we cannot attain unto it.” The mere glimpse we sometimes get dazzles the vision, and casts us down to that mode of thinking, as necessarily involving succession, which God has made the law of our presentmental being. We cannot, therefore, believe that this timeless idea of αἰών is intended in those passages that are meant to impress us with the solemnities of our future existence. If it thus occurs any where in the New Testament, it would seem to be in such passages as 2Co_4:18, τὰ γὰρ βλεπόμενα πρόσκαιιρα, τὰ δὲ μὴ βλεπόμενα αἰώνια—“the things that are seen are temporal, the things that are unseen are eternal.” We do not think that Paul got this, or other passages like it (such as Heb_11:1; Heb_11:3; Rom_1:20) from Plato, or that they were suggested to him by any study of the Platonic writings; but certainly there is a wonderful resemblance between it and some things in the Timæus, and the Republic. The μὴ βλεπόμενα the ἀόρατα “the unseen things,” of Paul, do strongly suggest, and are suggested by the ἀειδη the ἀόρατα the νοητα of Plato, as all denoting, not merely things absent from present vision, but that which is, in its very essence, unseen, supersensual, above all the senses, for which seeing is simply taken as the higher and general representative. So πρόσκαιρα and αἰώνια suggest the same distinction that Plato makes in the Timseus between the γιγνόμενα and the αἰώνια the becoming, the flowing, the changing, and the æonian, in the sense of reality and immutability. We are strongly drawn to think that Paul has something of the same contrast, though presented in a far higher and holier aspect than the mere philosophical contemplation. Πρόσκαιρα temporal would seem opposed to αἰώνια not in the sense of a short period (or periods) as contrasted with a long duration, or even an endless duration, but, rather, as time itself, or existence in time, as the antithesis of the timeless, that immutable, successionless being which even now we sometimes seem to see as in a mirror shadowly, (1Co_13:12), or enigmatically, but which then the soul may behold, face to face, as the most real of all realities. Except, however, in such lofty passages as that, where the inspired writer seems to see, and strives to utter, things ἄῤῥητα or ineffable (2Co_12:4), it is best to be content with that other and more obvious sense, which is best adapted to our faculties in their present state, and which may, therefore, be rationally regarded as the sense intended for us by the divine author of the Scriptures. Even here, in 2Co_4:18, this lower sense, if any choose to call it so, satisfies every demand of our present thinking: the things that are seen, the changing transitory objects around us, belong to our present transitory being—they are πρόσκαιρα for a season.—The things that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,” belong to the great world to come, as an advanced period in the vast successions of time. In this sense they are olamic or æonian. A purely timeless state, it may be said, is above our conceptions, at least for the human or finite existence,—above our conceptual thinking even, though not altogether transcending, as an idea, our highest reasoning.
There are other passages in which, the sense עולם would seem even more limited than in this verse of Ecclesiastes (Ecc_1:3), or rather, to be taken as a hyperbolical term for the indefinite or unmeasured, though of conceivably short duration. Compare Exo_21:16, where it, is said of a servant in certain cases ויעבדוֹ לעולם “and he shall serve him forever”—that is, in distinction from a set time. So also, Lev. 30:26. The same language is used of inheritances, and earthly possessions, as in Deu_29:28. As an example of the immense extremes which the context shows in the use of the word, compare the language employed but a short distance from this latter passage, Deu_32:40 חי אני לעולם “I live forever;” spoken of God in such a way as to mean nothing less than the absolute or endless eternity. But it is the subject to which it is applied that forces to this, not any etymological necessity in the word itself. “And they shall reign forever and forever,” Rev_22:5. Here is another example of an attempt to express the immeasurable, though in a different way, that is, by reduplications: καὶ βασιλεύσουσιν εἰς τοὺς ΑΙΩΝΑΣ τῶν ΑΙΩΝΩΝ in seeula seculorum, לעולם עלִמים Syriac לְעָלְמֵא דְעָלְמֵא or, in one word, לְעָלַמְעָלְמִין leolam-olemin, for-ever-ever-more, for ages of ages, worlds of worlds, eternities of eternities.—wickliff, “ther schulen regne in to worldis of worldis.” It falls short, of course, in conception, as all language must, yet still it is conceptually aiming at the endless, or absolute eternity, and must be taken, therefore, as representative of it in idea. A negative term, in such case, like infinite,, or endless, might have been used; but though correct, logically, it would have had far less conceptual, or even ideal power.
This is said of the future. There is a similar language used of the past; as Eph_3:9, ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων, a seculis מן עולמים from the olams, from the ages, the eternities, Wicliffe, “hidde worldis,” Tyndale, “from the beginning of the world,” the great world, including all worlds,—or, taken without division, the an-tepast eternity, before the present αἰὼν, olam, or world, began.
There is another method in which an attempt is made to represent the absolute eternity. It is by a phrase shorter than those before mentioned, but more emphatic, and, in some respects, more impressive. It is by adding to עולם or to לעולם the particle עַד or the noun עַד sometimes written עֶד Fuerst makes this word, as a noun, denoting eternity, from a supposed root עד, to which he gives the sense obducere, obvelare, to conceal, &c, making it, in this way, like the verb עלם the primary Sense of which is hiddenness, obscurity, thus giving the noun עולם the sense of the unbounded, the indefinite. There is no authority for this in the case of Tp. It might more plausibly be regarded as having the sense of number, like the Arabic َבَّ; but the best view is that of Gesenius, who makes it, both as noun and particle, from עדה=Arabie ב ַ which has the sense of transition. It is rather transition to, arrival and going beyond—a passing beyond, still farther, on, and on. Thus it becomes a name for eternity, as in those remarkable expressions, Isa_9:5, אֲבי עַדpoorly rendered everlasting Father, and שֹׁכֵן עַד inhabiting eternity, Isa. 67:15; with which compare הַרְרֵי עַד Hab_3:6, הוֹרֵי עַד 49:29, and עַד עוֹלמֵי עַד 45:17 where we have the same word as noun and preposition—the mountains of ad, the progenitors of ad—to the ages of ad—to the ages to which other ages are to be added, indefinitely. Hence the preposition sense making it significantly, as well as etymologically equivalent to the Latin ad et, the Greek in, Saxon at and to, in all of which there is this sense of arrival and transition. The idea becomes most vivid and impressive in this Hebrew phrase לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד for ever and yet, for the age, the world, the eternity, and still on, on, on; or as the quaint old lexicographer before referred to expresses it, “it imparteth this, As yet, and as yet, and ever as yet, forever, and forevermore, as yet”—as though there were, in this short word thus added to עולם the full power of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, as it comes to us in the seemingly endless repetitions of that most sublime music. Unlike the others, the effect of this short addition to עולם is felt, in its very brevity and abruptness, as something that gives the impression of endless iteration. It is like the mathematician’s abbreviating term + &c, or the sign of infinity co, or the symbol by which he would denote the supposed last, term of an infinite series. These pluralities and reduplications, and other striking methods of representing the olamic ideas, are peculiar to the Shemitic languages, or they appear in our modern tongues only as derived from them through Bible translations, much changed, too, and weakened in the transfer. They are utterly at war with the thought of the great eternal past and future as blank undivided durations, according to the unwarranted dictum of Hitzio and Stuart, which would confine all history and all chronology to this brief æon we call time. These peculiar terms, with their strange pluralities, would never have grown up in the language of a people who entertained such a blank conception. The fact, however, is just the other way. In these vast time ideas, and the manner of vividly representing them, the Shemitic mind went beyond the modern, although we boast, and with reason, of so far exceeding the early men in the vastness of our space conceptions. It is only lately that our science has had its attention called to the great time periods of the world, as transcending the ordinary historical. Under the influence of the new idea, we talk largely in our numerical estimates, though almost wholly hypothetical; but for real emotional power what are our long rows of decimals, our myriads, and millions, and billions, to the αἰῶνες τῶν ἀιώνων the ages of ages, the worldis of worldis, the olam of olams, the great world made up of countless worlds, not beyond each other, in space, but one after the other, in time?
There is still another aspect of the world idea, which seems to be presented, Ecc_3:11; Ecc_3:14. The thought of the world, or of a world, when the mind receives it complete, comes to it in a trinal form of contemplation, like the three dimensions in geometry, breadth, length, and height. It is the world in space and force, (or the world dynamically), the world in time, and the world in rank or range of being. To use some of the language employed by Cr. Lange, Genesis, 190, 191, it is the “world as kosmos, the world as scon,” to which we may add, the world as the kingdom of God. The application of this thought, especially the latter view of it, to Ecc_3:11; Ecc_3:14, gives those verses a force and significance which warrants great confidence in it as the true interpretation. On Ecc_1:11 of that chapter, see soma further remarks in the note adjoined. In Ecc_1:14 it is said, “I know that all that God doeth,” or “whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever,” says our translation, in perpetuum says the Vulgate, Ecc 70: εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα (for the æon), Luther, das bestehet immer. The Hebrew לעולם here may be rendered, as in Ecc_1:11, for the world, but it can hardly be regarded exclusively, or mainly, as either the world in space or the world in time. The mind is not satisfied with the rendering forever, or for eternity, if there is understood by it simply endless duration. God’s greater works, the heavenly bodies and their motions may have such a term applied to them, hyperbolically, as compared with the transient works of man, and this is the view which some excellent commentators take of the passage. There is a striking resemblance to it, well worthy of note, in Cicero’s Treatise de Natura Deorum, where the lower tellurian irregularities are contrasted with the heavenly order and permanency as manifested in the planetary movements, or, to use some of Koheleth’s language, the flowing, changing world, תַּחַת הַשֶׁמֶש “beneath the sun,” and the world supra solem, the eternal sphere, unchanging, or forever constant, in its one unvarying movement: Nulla igitur in ccs’o nee fortuna, nee temeritas, nee erratic nee va-rietas inest; contraqus, Omnis Ordo, Veritas, Rstio, Concordla; quseque his vacant, em-entila et falsa, plenaque erroris, ea circum terras, infra lunam, quse omnium ultima est, in lerrisqui versanur. “There is, therefore, in the heavens neither chance, nor arbitrariness, nor erroneous movement, nor variableness, but, on the contrary, all is order, truth, reason, constancy (ratio in the sense of proportion, harmony); void of these, all is spurious, false, full of error, that lies beneath the moon, the lowest sphere, or that has its home here on earth” [Argument of the Stoic Balbus, Cic. De. Nat. Deor., II. 22].” “Beneath the moon”—compare it with the frequent Solomonic expression above referred to, and the sublime language,. Job_25:2, עֹעֶֹה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו faciens concordiam in sublimibus suis—“who maketh peace in His high places.” Thus regarded, the heavens in their larger and higher aspect, are representative of the calmness, immutability, and unfailing certainty of that divine Will which is ever one with the divine Reason. This is indeed a noble view of the passage, but we cannot think it the exclusively true one, not simply because it is said in other Scriptures (Psa_102:26, Isa_51:6), that “the heavens themselves grow old” and “vanish away,” but because it can hardly be made to suit with the expression לעולם either in its cosmical or time sense, or those other words כל אשר “whatsoever God has made.” Some things God has made to be transient, and they can, in no sense, be said to “be forever,” or “for eternity,” unless we take it, according to the view of Zöckler, in their connections with other things that are eternal, or in their bearing upon eternal destinies. But this would be true also of the works and movements of man, or things “beneath the sun.” The better view, therefore, and better satisfying the whole spirit of the passage, is that which regards עולם as denoting the world, or world-time in God’s sight—the great ideal, as it appears to Him, including not merely space and time, but the great range of being—or, to avoid the use of what might seem affected philosophical language, the divine plan of being, to which the smallest and most transient things contribute as well as the greatest,—in other words, the kingdom of God. To this “nothing can be added; from it nothing can be taken away.” In this sense, all that God doeth is לעולם for the olam, for the world, for the great whole of being, as distinguished from the human plans, the human doings, with their adapted yet transient seasons, as they are enumerated in the first part of the chapter—“a time for every thing,” but every thing for the olam, or great world time, with its inconceivable range of being, transcending man; as man transcends the animal worlds below him. A somewhat similar view seems to have been entertained by that excellent old commentator Martin Geier. He refers it to “the divine decrees”—God’s ideal world, in fact, whose effects are determined in-their causes, as the causes are all contained in the effects. “By God’s doing here” he says, “we are not to understand simply the things produced by him, creatures which God has made; for they do not all remain forever, &c, but it is to be understood, defacere Dei interno, i. e„ de decretis divinis, of the divine decrees (in mente divina) as they are forever in the divine mind, unchangeably, without addition or diminution, nam consilium Jehovah in seculum slat, congitationes cordis ejus in gene-rationem et generationem, Psa_33:11 : “For the counsel of Jehovah stands, the thoughts of his heart unto all generations.” See also the note on the astronomical objections to the Bible; Bibelwerk, Genesis, Eng. ed., pp. 183, 184.—T.L.]
B. The practical wisdom of men, aiming at sensual enjoyment, and magnificent worldly enterprises, is vanity.
Footnotes:
[1][The idea denoted by this frequent word is transitoriness, swift passing away; rather than nothingness (Nichtigkeit). Things may be very transient. yet very important—like the present human life, which St. James styles ἀτμίς (exactly equivalent to the Hebrew הֶבֶל) “a vapor that soon passeth away,” James 3. The writer does not mean to call vanity, in the sense of nothingness or worthlessness, that which he says elsewhere God will surely call to judgement with all its most secret deeds.—T. L.]
[2] [The word which, both in composition and significance, most nearly corresponds to Koheleth’s frequent יִתְרוֹן, is the Greek πλεονεξία, so much used by Paul, and poorly rendered covetousness. It rather means, having the more, having the advantage or superiority in anything, whether wealth, fame, or ambition.—T. L.]
[†It would really seem as though Sirach, though such a thorough Jew, as his book shows him to be, had known something of the poems of Homer. There is such a striking resemblance, both in particular words and in special points of the picture, between this passage and the lines, so frequently quoted from the speech of Glaucus, Iliad 5:146.
ὅιη περ φύλλων γενεή, τοιήδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν,
φύλλα τὰ μὲν τ’ ἅνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δὲ θ’ ὕλη
τηλεθόωσα φύει ἔαρος δ’ ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη,
ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ, ἠ μὲν φύει ἠ δ’ ἀπολήγει.
The race of man is like the race of leaves:
Of leaves, one generation by the wind
Is scattered on the earth; another soon,
In spring’s luxuriant verdure, bursts to light.
So with our race; these flourish, those decay.
Lord Derby’s Translation.—T. L.].
[3] [There is a concealed metaphor in this passage all the more beautiful because of its inobtrusiveness. It is contained in the words זרח and שאף, beaming (radiating) glowing, panting.—See Metrical Version. It is the figure of the race horse returning panting to his goal, whence he started—
All panting, glowing, there again is he.
Such a mode of conceiving was at the origin of the classical figure: the horses of the sun panting up the eastern steep [comp. Psa_19:6]. See both figures combined, as they are here, Virg. Æn. xii. 113.
Postea vix summos spargebat lumine montes
Orta dies, cum primo alto se gurgite tollunt
Solis equi, lucemque elatis naribus efflant.
See also the Georgics, Lib. I. Ecc 250:
Aut redit a nobis aurora, diemque reducit,
Nosque ubi primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis.
To all thinking minds, the idea of the earth being a sphere, or a body, lying in space, with space all round it, above and below—or having, at least, an under as well as an upper side—must have been very early. It was at once suggested by this constant phenomenon of sun-setting and sun-rising—going down below on the West (his tabernacle or sleeping-tent, as the Psalmist compares it, Psa_19:5), and rising in the East as one who came from below, and ascended “a steep, weary, yet glorious”—like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber (Psa_19:6) or as a strong man (an athlete) to run a race. Compare the same image, though reversed, Iliad. vi. 506. It was the same sun, and he must have gone under (into his “subterranean heavenly abode,” as Zöckler well calls it) and around again to his starting place. The heavens would be all round it, and, thus, as the Psalmist graphically paints, these under heavens would be his tabernacle, where he spends the night, as it appears to us. We detect the image in the early Hesiodean cosmogony, where it is said that “γαῖα (earth) gave birth to starry οὐρανὸς, corresponding to herself,” ΐσον ἑαυτῆ, Hes. Theog. 127. It was almost obvious to sense, and the musing mind must have been very early familiar with the conception. It was not inconsistent with the other notion that appears in Scripture, of the earth as an extended plain. The latter was phenomenal, the former the product of reflection. Both were adapted to poetry—the one to the poetry of the eye, the other to that of the thought. Compare Job_26:7. “He hangeth the earth upon nothing,” or, rather, “over emptiness.”—T. L.].
[4][There is no more reason for calling בִּבַר an Aramaic word here, than the feminine form, כִּבְרָה, Gen_35:16; Gen_48:7; 2Ki_5:19. It means a considerable but indefinite amount whether of space as in the examples in Gen_35:16 or of time as here—some distance off, or some time ago—long ago. The same may be said of מַכְבִיר, Job_35:16; Job_36:31.—T. L.]
[5][לעלמים is rather added as an amplification of the indefinite כּבר. It hath been already—long ago—yes, in some of the olams (or worlds), cosmical or historical, that have gone before in the immense past. See remarks in note on the olamic words, p. 41, &c.—T. L.]
[6][This is certainly a slender basis on which to build such an argument. The indefinite use of the Hebrew tenses will not allow it to have much force, and, moreover, it is perfectly consistent (even if rendered was) with the condition of an old man, an old king, who had seen the vanity of the world, and of royal estate, and wished to impress it on the mind of his reader, to speak it as something past and gone. I who was king—or, when I was king—in the full exercise of power and dignity. Besides, if there is an inconsistency, it would be full as great in one who assumes to personate Solomon. Such a one would be even more careful to guard against obvious anachronisms, as this would be, if thus regarded. See Wordsworth on the expression, and the argument drawn from it. The word Koheleth may be a scholium of the later compiler, to explain (though unnecessarily) what he deemed abrupt: I (Koheleth) was King; and so in other places like similar scholia in the Pentateuch.—T. L.]
[7][בְּחָכְמָה does not mean wisety in the sense of Knowingly, or skilfully—neither does it mean by, or, with wisdom, as an instrument, though that is nearer to it; but rather in the way of wisdom. that is philosophically, speculatively, theoretically, in distinction from experimentally or practically, as he did afterwards.—T. L.]
[8][This is entirely gratuitous. It may refer to any men of note and wealth, together with David and Saul, or the writer may well have had in view old Princes in Jerusalem, away back to the days of Melchisedec.—T. L.]
[9][The word לב, heart, is used in Hebrew (especially in the Proverbs and Solomonic writings) as much for the mind or intellect as for the feeling—the affections.—T. L.]
[10][This language is generally used of God, or His Kingdom. There are, however, cases where it is employed hyperbolically of the settlement in the promised land as in Jer_7:7 : “And I will cause you to dwell in this place, which I gave to your fathers, למן עולם ועד עולם, from age to age”—or from world to world, or forever, if we take, as we may, if we have faith for it, the higher spiritual sense of the eternal settlement, the eternal rest, of which the settlement in Canaan was the appointed type.—T. L.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–18 The theme proposed of the first part of his…
The theme proposed of the first part of his discourse.
Vanity of vanities--Hebraism for the most utter vanity. So "holy of holies" (Exo 26:33); "servant of servants" (Gen 9:25). The repetition increases the force.
Read full note →
all--Hebrew, "the all"; all without exception, namely, earthly things.
vanity--not in themselves, for God maketh nothing in vain (Ti1 4:4-5), but vain when put in the place of God and made the end, instead of the means (Psa 39:5-6; Psa 62:9; Mat 6:33); vain, also, because of the "vanity" to which they are "subjected" by the fall (Rom 8:20).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18 1. Words of the Preacher — The title of…
1. Words of the Preacher — The title of the book is already discussed in the Introduction. The writer here announced, whether a real or an assumed personage, challenges the highest reverence, as being fully competent to his proposed task. There is no nobler name in sacred literature.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–18 1. The words of the Preacher] For the title…
1. The words of the Preacher] For the title of the Book and the meaning of the word translated “Preacher” (better, Debater, or, perhaps, as the Hebrew noun has no article, Koheleth, as a proper name, carrying with it the meaning of Debater), see Introduction. The description “king in Jerusalem” is in apposition with “the Preacher” not with “David.” It is noticeable that the name of Solomon is not mentioned as it is in the titles of the other two books ascribed to him (Pro_1:1; Son_1:1).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–18 (1) The words.—The Book of Nehemiah begins similarly; so…
(1) The words.—The Book of Nehemiah begins similarly; so do the prophecies of Jeremiah and Amos, and of Agur and Lemuel (Proverbs 30, 31)
The Preacher.—Rather, convener (see Introduction). This word (Kohéleth) occurs in this book, Ecc_1:1-2; Ecc_1:12; Ecc_7:27, where, according to our present text, it is joined with a feminine, being elsewhere used with a masculine; and Ecc_12:8-10, having the article in the first of these passages, and there only, being elsewhere used as a proper name.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–18 The words of the Preacher, the son of David,…
THE TITLE.
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem; Septuagint, "King of Israel in Jerusalem" (comp. ver. 12). The word rendered "Preacher" is Koheleth, a feminine noun formed from a verb kalal, "to call" (see Introduction, and perhaps better rendered" Convener" or "Debater." It is found nowhere else but in this book, where it occurs three times in this chapter (vers. 1, 2, 12), three times in Ecc_12:8, Ecc_12:9, Ecc_12:10, and once in Ecc_7:27. In all but one instance (viz. Ecc_12:8) it is used without the article, as a proper name. Jerome, in his commentary, translates it, "Continuator," in his version "Ecclesiastes." It would seem to denote one who gathered around him a congregation in order to instruct them in Divine lore. The feminine form is explained in various ways. Either it is used abstractedly, as the designation of an office, which it seems not to be; or it is formed as some other words which are found with a feminine termination, though denoting the names of men, indicating, as Gesenius notes ( 3. 100.), a high degree of activity in the possessor of the particular quality signified by the stem; e.g. Alemeth, Azmaveth, (1Ch_8:36 1Ch_9:42) Pochereth, (Ezr_2:57) Sophereth; (Neh_7:57) or, as is most probable, the writer desired to identify Koheleth with Wisdom, though it must be observed that the personality of the author often appears, as in Ecc_1:16-18 Ecc_7:23, etc.; the role of Wisdom being for the nonce forgotten. The word "king" in the title is shown by the accentuation to be in apposition to "Koheleth" not to "David;" and there can be no doubt that the description is intended to denote Solomon, though his name is nowhere actually given, as it is in the two other works ascribed to him. (Pro_1:1; Son_1:1) Other intimations of the assumption of Solomon"s personality are found in Ecc_1:12, "I Koheleth was king," etc.; so in describing his consummate wisdom (Ecc_1:13, 16 2:15; comp., 1Ki_3:12 1Ki_5:12) and in his being the author of many proverbs (Ecc_12:9; comp. 1Ki_4:32) accomplishments which are not noted in the case of any other of David"s descendants. Also the picture of luxury and magnificence presented in Ec 2 suits no Jewish monarch but Solomon. The origin of the name applied to him may probably be traced to the historical fact mentioned in 1Ki_8:55, etc., where Solomon gathers all Israel together to the dedication of the temple, and utters the remarkable prayer which contained blessing and teaching and exhortation. As we have shown in the Introduction ( the assumption of the name is a mere literary device to give weight and importance to the treatise to which it appertains. The term, "King in Jerusalem," or, as in ver. 12, "King over Israel in Jerusalem," is unique, and occurs nowhere else in Scripture. David is said to have reigned in Jerusalem, when this seat of government is spoken of in contrast with that at Hebron, (2Sa_5:5) and the same expression is used of Solomon, Rehoboam, and others; (1Ki_11:42 1Ki_14:21 1Ki_15:2, 1Ki_15:10) and the phrase probably denotes a time when the government had become divided, and Israel had a different capital from Judah.
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Vers. 1, 12.
Koheleth, the Preacher.
I THE PREACHER"S NAME. Koheleth, signifying:
1. The Assembler, or Collector (Delitzsch, Bleek, Keil), not of sentences (Grotius), but of people. Hence:
2. The Preacher (Delitzsch, Wright), since the object for which he calls or convenes the assembly is to address it with words of wisdom. (Ecc_12:9)
3. The Debater (Plumptre), since "the Ecclesiastes was not one who called the ecclesia or assembly together, or addressed it in a tone of didactic authority; but rather an ordinary member of such assembly (the political unit of every Greek state) who took part in its discussions" (ibid.).
II THE PREACHER"S PERSON.
1. Solomon. In support of this, the traditional view, may be urged:
(1) That the work is, or seems to be, ascribed to him by the writer (ver. 1).
(2) That the experiences assigned to the Preacher, (Ecc_2:1-3) the works declared to have been wrought by him, (Ecc_2:4, Ecc_2:5) and the wisdom represented as possessed by him (ver. 17), are in perfect accord with what is known of the historical Solomon.
(3) That the composition of this book cannot be proved to have been beyond the ability of Solomon (1Ki_3:12 1Ki_10:3, 4 11:41; 2Ch_1:12 2Ch_9:22, 2Ch_9:23)
(4) That the writer obviously wished his words to be accepted as proceeding from Solomon.
(5) That if Solomon was not the author, then the author is unknown which is, to say the least, unfortunate.
2. A late writer, belonging to the Persian period (Delitzsch, Bleek, Keil, Plumptre, Hengstenberg, Wright, Cox). Arguments in support of this view are:
(1) The author expressly distinguishes himself from Solomon, (Ecc_12:9-14) which, however, assumes that the Preacher could not have spoken about himself in the third person.
(2) The Preacher writes of himself in the past tense (ver. 12), which Solomon would not have done, it is thought, though a late writer might have done so, putting his words into Solomon"s mouth. This argument loses part of its validity if "was "is taken as equivalent to "was and still am "(Professors Douglas and Given), or if Solomon wrote towards the end of his reign (Fausset).
(3) The Preacher talks of kings as having been before him in Jerusalem (ver. 16; Ecc_2:9) whereas anterior to Solomon only David reigned in Jerusalem. But a late writer could just as little as Solomon have used the expression cited, since it was Solomon whom the late writer intended to represent as speaking. Besides, as Jerusalem had been a royal city from the days of Melchizedek, it was open quite as much to Solomon to take into his mouth as to a post-exilic author to put into his mouth the words alluded to.
(4) The real Solomon could not have written as the Preacher represents; (Ecc_4:1 Ecc_5:8 Ecc_10:4, Ecc_10:7, Ecc_10:16, Ecc_10:20) which once more assumes that Solomon could only write of what he beheld in his own dominions, and not of what he may have learnt concerning other peoples with whom he had come into contact.
(5) The language bears the stamp of the post-exilic period, being full of Aramaisms or Chaldaisms (see Exposition). If this be undeniable, it is partly counterbalanced by the fact that Ecclesiastes contains Solomonic words occurring in Proverbs which may certainly have been derived by a late writer from a study of pre-existing Solomonic writings, but which may also be explained by common authorship and partly accounted for by supposing that Solomon adopted them from pre-existing Aramaic writings, "owing to the Aramaic influences which surrounded and pressed upon him, and owing to the influence which he desired to exert throughout his widely extended dominions, which embraced the whole of the Aramaic communities as far as the Euphrates" (Professor Douglas, in Keil).
(6) "The gloomy view of the world, and the philosophy of life which meet us in it, point us at once to the times after the exile" (Keil); but similar views and philosophies have more or less characterized all periods.
(7) The complaint about much book-making must have issued from a late age (Bleek). Probably the preponderance of argument will be held as lying on the side of the non-Solomonic authorship of the book; though from the considerations just advanced two things will appear first, that the Solomonic authorship is not destitute of foundation; and second, that the non-Solomonic authorship is not absolutely unassailable.
III THE PREACHER"S CHARACTER.
1. Not an atheist. Since besides making frequent (thirty-seven times) mention of the name of God, he expressly recognizes God as the true God, exalted above the world, (Ecc_5:8) the Object of man"s fear (Ecc_5:7 Ecc_12:13) and worship, (Ecc_5:1, Ecc_5:2) and the Disposer and Governor of all; (Ecc_7:13) acknowledges the existence in man of a spirit, (Ecc_12:7) and of such things as truth and error, right and wrong, holiness and sin; (Ecc_5:4 6 7:15, 16 9:2, 3) places the sum of duty as well as the secret of happiness in fearing God and keeping his commandments; (Ecc_12:13) and hints his belief in the coming of a day when God will bring the secrets of all into judgment. (Ecc_11:9)
2. Not a pantheist. The God he believes in is a personal Divinity, distinguished from the works he has made (Ecc_3:11) and the man he has created; (Ecc_12:1) who issues commandments, (Ecc_12:13) and can be worshipped by prayer, sacrifice, and; (Ecc_5:1-7) who should be feared, (Ecc_5:7) and who can accept the service of his intelligent creatures. (Ecc_9:7)
3. Not a pessimist. Though at times seeming to indulge in gloomy views of life, to imagine that all things on earth are going to the bad, that the sum of human happiness is more than counterbalanced by that of human misery, that life is not worth living, and that the best a wise man can do is to escape from it in the easiest and most comfortable way he can; yet that these were not his deliberate opinions may be gathered from the frequency with which he exhorts men to cultivate a cheerful mind, and to enjoy the good of all their labor which God giveth them under the sun, (Ecc_2:24-26 Ecc_3:12 Ecc_9:7 Ecc_11:9) and from the emphatic manner in which he repudiates morose conclusions concerning the degeneracy of the times. (Ecc_7:10)
1. Not a libertine. This notion (Plumptre) may appear to derive countenance from what the preacher says of himself; (Ecc_2:1-3) but his language hardly warrants the conclusion that the author of this book had in his lifetime been a person of dissolute morals and profligate manners. If he was, before he penned this work he must have seen the error of his way.
2. But a deeply thinking and religious man. When he looked upon the mystery of life he felt perplexed. He saw that, apart from God and religion, life was an emptiness and vanity. Yet was he not thereby driven to despair, or impelled to renounce life as an unmixed evil; but rather offered it as his opinion that man"s highest duty was to fear God and keep his commandments, to accept whatever good Providence might pour into his cup, bear with equanimity and submission whatever trials might be mingled in his lot, and prepare himself for the moment when he should pass into the unseen to render an account for the things done in the body. (2Co_5:10)
IV THE PREACHER"S AIM. Neither:
1. To expound the doctrines of pessimism to show "that the past has been like the present," and "the present like that which is to come," that "the present is bad," that "the past has not been better," and "that the future will not be preferable" (Renan). Nor:
2. To furnish an autobiographical confession (ideal, but based on personal experiences) of the progress of a Jewish youth from skepticism through sensuality to faith (Plumptre). But possibly:
3. To comfort Gods people, the Hebrew Church, under oppression that of Persian rule, e.g., supposing the book to be a late composition, by showing them the vanity of earthly things, and exhorting them "to seek elsewhere their happiness; to draw it from those inexhaustible eternal fountains, which even at that time were open to all who chose to come" (Hengstenberg). And certainly:
4. To exhibit the true secret of felicity in the midst of lifes vanities, which consisted, as above explained, in fearing God and keeping his commandments.
LESSONS.
1. The inspiration of a Scripture not dependent on a knowledge of its date or author.
2. The value of the Bible as a key to the problem of the universe.
3. The succession of Heaven-sent preachers that have appeared all down the centuries.
HOMILIES BY J. WILLCOCK Vers. 1-11.
The summary of a life"s experience.
Solomon and Job," says Pascal, "had most perfect knowledge of human wretchedness, and have given us the most complete description of it: the one was the most prosperous, the other the most unfortunate, of men; the one knew by experience the vanity of pleasure, the other the reality of sorrow." In such diverse ways does God lead men to the same conclusion that in human life, apart from him, there is no true satisfaction or lastinghappiness, that the immortal spirit cannot find rest in things seen and temporal. The words, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity: what profit hath man of all his labor wherein he laboreth under the sun?" (Revised Version), are the key-note of the whole book the theme which the author maintains by arguments and illustrations drawn from a most varied experience. If Solomon be not the speaker, if we have in Ecclesiastes the composition of a later writer, no more appropriate personage could have been found than the ancient Jewish king to set forth the teaching which the book contains. For he had tasted all the good things human life has to give. On him God had bestowed wisdom and knowledge, riches, wealth, honor, and length of days. All these he had enjoyed to the full, and therefore speaks, or is made to speak, as one from whom nothing had been kept that his soul desired, and who found that nothing results from the mere satisfaction of appetites and desires but satiety and loathing and disappointment. We may contrast with this retrospect of life that given us by One whose aim it was to fulfill the Law of God and secure the wellbeing of his fellow-men; and we may thus discover the secret of Solomon"s failure to win happiness or to reach any lasting result. At the close of his life the Redeemer of mankind summed up the history of his career in the words addressed to God, "I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do". (Joh_17:4) Itmay seem to some a dreary task to follow the course of Solomon"s morbid thoughts, but it cannot fail to be profitable, if we undertake the task in the earnest desire to discover the causes of his melancholy and disappointment, and learn from the study how to guide our own lives more successfully, and to enter into the peace and contentment of spirit which, after all his efforts, he failed to make his own. In the first eleven verses of this chapter we have revealed to us the despair and weariness which fell upon the soul of him whose splendor and wisdom raised him above all the men of his time, and made him the wonder of all. succeeding ages. Life seemed to him the emptiest and poorest thing possible vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." He might have used the words of the modern philosopher Amiel, "To appear and to vanish, there is the biography of all individuals, whatever may be the length of the cycle of existence which they describe; and the drama of the universe is nothing more. All life is the shadow of a smoke-wreath, a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyphic traced for an instant in the sand and effaced a moment afterwards by a breath of wind, an air-bubble expanding and vanishing on the surface of the great river of being an appearance, a vanity, a nothing. But this nothing is, however, the symbol of universal being, and this passing bubble is the epitome of the history of the world." It seemed to him that life yielded no permanent results, that it was insufferably monotonous, and that it was destined to end in utter oblivion. The futility of effort, the monotony of life, and the oblivion that engulfs it at last are the topics of this opening passage of the book. Let us take them up one after the other.
I THAT LIFE YIELDS NO PERMANENT RESETS. (Vers. 1-3.) We have before us, then, the deliberate judgment of one who had full experience of all that men busy themselves with labor wherein they labor under the sun the pursuit of riches, the enjoyment of power, the satisfaction of appetites and desires, and so on, and his conclusion is that there is no profit in it all. And his sentence is confirmed by the words of Christ, "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" In the case of Solomon, therefore, we have a record of permanent significance and value. We cannot deprive his somber utterances of their weight by saying that he spoke simply as a sated voluptuary, and that others might with more skill or discretion extract from life what he failed to find in it. For, as we shall see, he did not confine himself to mere pursuit of pleasure, but sought satisfaction in intellectual employments and in the accomplishment of great tasks, for which the power and wealth at his disposal were drawn upon to the utmost. His melancholy is not a form of mental disease, but the result of the exhaustion of his energies and powers in the attempt to find satisfaction for the "soul"s cravings. And in melancholy of this kind philosophers have found a proof of the dignity of human nature. "Man"s unhappiness," says one of them, "comes of his greatness: it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the finite He requires, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more and no less: God"s infinite universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rises Try him with half of a universe, of an omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a blackspot in our sunshine; it is even the shadow of ourselves" (Carlyle). The very consciousness of the unprofitableness of life, of failure to attain to perfect satisfaction in the possession of earthly benefits, painful as it is, should convince us of the value of the higher and better inheritance, which may be ours, and in which alone we can find rest; and we should take it as a Divine warning to seek after those things that are eternal and unchangeable. Our dissatisfaction and our sorrows are like those of the exile who pines for the pleasant land from which by a hard fate he is for a time dissevered; like the grief of a king who has been deposed. And it is to those whose hunger and thirst cannot be satisfied by things of earth, who find, like Solomon, that there is no profit in a man"s labor wherein he laboreth under the Sun," that God issues the gracious invitation, "Lo, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness." The idea of the unprofitableness of human labor expressed by Solomon is calculated, if carried too far, to put an end to all healthy and strenuous effort to use the powers and gifts God has bestowed upon us, and to lead to indifference and despair. If no adequate result can be secured, if all that remains after prolonged exertion is only a sense of weariness and disappointment, why should we labor at all? But such thoughts are dishonoring to God and degrading to ourselves. He has not sent us into the world to spend our labor in vain, to be overcome with the consciousness of our poverty and weakness. There are ways in which we can glorify him and serve our generation; and he has promised to bless our endeavors, and supply that wherein we come short. Every sincere and unselfish effort we make to help the weak, to relieve the suffering, to teach the ignorant, to diminish the misery that meets us on every hand, and to advance the happiness of our fellows, is made fruitful by his blessing. Something positive and of enduring value may be secured in this way, even "treasure laid up in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal? We may so use the goods, the talents, now committed to our charge, as to create for ourselves friends, who will receive us into everlasting habitations when the days of our stewardship are over, and this visible, tangible world fades away from us.
II The second reflection of the royal Preacher is that HUMAN LIFE IS INSUFFERABLY MONOTONOUS; that under all outward appearances of variety and change there is a dreary sameness (vers. 4-10). Generation succeeds generation, but the stage is the same on which they play their parts, and one performance is very like another. The incessant motion of the sun, traveling from east to west; the shifting of the wind from one point to another, and then back again; the speedy current of the rivers to join the ocean, which yet is not filled by them, but returns them in various ways to water the earth, and to feed the springs, "whence the rivers come;" the commonplace events of human life, are all referred to as examples of endless and monotonous variation. The law of mutability, without progress, seems to the speaker to prevail in heaven and in earth to rule in the material world, in human society, and in the life of the individual. The lordship over creation, bestowed upon man, appeared to him a vain fancy. Man himself was but a stranger, sojourning here for but a very short time, coming like a wandering bird from the outer darkness into the light and warmth of a festive hall, and soon flitting out back again into the darkness. And, to one in this somber mood, it is not wonderful that all natural phenomena should wear the aspect of instability and change. To the pious mind of the psalmist the sun suggested thoughts of God"s glory and power; the majesty of the creature gave him a more exalted idea of the greatness of the Creator, and he expatiated upon the splendor of that light that rules the day. "The heavens were his tabernacle;" morning by morning he was as "a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race." Our Savior saw in the same phenomenon a proof of God"s impartial and bountiful love to the children of men: "He maketh his sun to rise upon the evil and the good." But to the melancholy and brooding mind of our author nothing more was suggested by it than monotonous reiteration, a dreary routine of rising and setting. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose." "He issues forth, clay after day, from the east, mounts up the vault of heaven until he has reached the meridian, and then he descends at once towards the western horizon. He never stops in his course at midday, as though he had attained the end for which he issued forth with the dawn; he never sinks beneath the horizon to enjoy repose. Even throughout the night he is still hastening onward, that, at the appointed hour, he may again reach his eastern starting-place. The wind, great though its changes may be, seems never to have accomplished the purpose for which it puts forth its power. It never subsides into a state of lasting quiescence; it never even finds a station which it can permanently occupy. It, veereth about continually, "yet it ever bloweth again according to its circuits." The streams flow onward to the ocean; but the time never comes when the sea, filled to overflowing, refuses to receive their waters. The thirst of the sea is never quenched; the waters of the rivers are lost; and yet, with unavailing constancy, they still pour their contributions into its bosom" (Tyler). And so with regard to all the other things on which the eye rests, or of which the ear hears weariness clothes everything; an unutterable monotony amid their changes and variations. Human life, too, all through, is characterized by the same unrest and ceaseless, fruitless labor. Sometimes a new discovery seems to be made; the monotony seems to be broken, and fresh and great results are anticipated by those who are ignorant of the world"s past history. But the initiated, those whose experience has made them wise, or whose knowledge has made them learned, recognize the new thing as something that was known in times long ago; they can tell how barren it was of results then, how little, therefore, can be expected from it now. There is scarcely anything more discouraging, especially to the young, than this kind of moralizing. We feel, perhaps, that we can carry out some scheme that will be of benefit to the society about us, and are met with lamentable accounts of how similar schemes were once tried and failed disastrously. We feel moved to attack the evils that we meet in the world, and are assured that they are too great and our own strength too puny for us to accomplish anything worth while. And in the mean time our fervor grows cold, our courage oozes away, and we really lose the power for good we might have had. Now, this teaching of Solomon is not meant for the young and hopeful. Indeed, those who collected together the books of the Old Testament were rather doubtful about including Ecclesiastes among the others, and is ran a narrow chance of being omitted from the sacred canon. But it has its place in the Word of God; and those who have known anything of the doubts and speculations contained in it will find it profitable to trace the course of thought that runs through it, until they find the solid and positive teaching which the Preacher at lasts gives. The distressing fact remains, and must be encountered, that to those who have had long experience of the world, and whose horizon is bounded by it, who see only the things that are done "under the sun," in the midst of ever-recurring changes, there seems to be little or no progress, and that which appears to be new is but a repetition of the old. But they should remember that this world is meant as a place of probation for us a school in which we are to learn great lessons; and that all the changing circumstances of life serve, and are meant to serve, to develop our nature and character. If it were to be our abiding-place, many improvements in it might be suggested. It is not by any means the best of possible worlds; but for purposes of education, discipline, and testing, it is perfectly adapted. "Rest yet remaineth for the people of God;" it is not here, but in a world to come. This truth is admirably stated by the poet Spenser, who perhaps unconsciously reproduces the melancholy thoughts of Solomon, and answers them. He speaks of Mutability seeking to be honored above all the heavenly powers, as being the chief ruler in the universe, and as indeed governing all things. In a synod of the gods, she is silenced by Nature, who combats her claims, and speaks of a time to come when her present apparent power will come to an end
But time shall come that all shall changed bee, And from thenceforth none no more change shall see.
And then the poet adds
When I bethinke me on that speech whyleare former Of Mutability, and well it way, Me seemes, that though she all unworthy were Of the Heav"ns Rule; yet, very sooth to say, In all things else she bears the greatest sway: Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle unsure, And love of things so vain to cast away; Whose flow"ring pride, so fading and so fickle, Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle.
Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd, Of that same time when no more Change shall be, But stedfast rest of all things, firmely stayd Upon the pillars of Eternity, That is contrayr to Mutability; For all that moveth doth in Change delight: But thence-forth all shall rest eternally With him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight: O I that great Sabbaoth God, grant me that Sabbaoth"s sight!
III LIFE DESTINED TO END IN UTTER OBLIVION. To all these considerations of the resultlessness of life, of changefulness and monotony, is added that of the oblivion that sooner or later overtakes man and all his works (ver. 11). "There is no remembrance of the former generations; neither shall there be any remembrance of the latter generations that are to come, among those that shall come after" (Revised Version). One generation supersedes another; the new come up with fresh interests and schemes of their own, and hustle the old off the stage, and are themselves in their turn forced to give place to those who come up after them. Nations disappear from the earth"s surface and are forgotten. The memorials of former civilizations lie buried in the sand, or are defaced and destroyed to make room for something else. On every page of creation we find the sentence written, that there is nothing here that lasts. Almost no means can be devised to carry down to succeeding generations even the names of the greatest conquerors, of men who in their time seemed to have the strength of gods, and to have changed the history of the world. The earth has many secrets in her keeping, and is sometimes forced to yield up a few of them. "The ploughshare strikes against the foundations of buildings which once echoed to human mirth, skeletons of men to whom life once was dear; urns and coins that remind the antiquary of a magnificent empire now long passed away." And so the process goes on. Everything passes. A few years ago and we were not; a hundred years hence, and there may be none who ever heard our names. And a day will come when
The cloud-capp"d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
Abundant material, then, had the Preacher, the son of David, for somber meditation; abundant material for contemplation does he suggest to us. And if we cannot get much further on in speculation than he did, if since his time very little new light has been cast upon the problems which he discusses, we may still refuse to be depressed by melancholy like his. Granted that all is vanity, that restlessness and monotony mark everything in the world, and that its glories soon pass away and are forgotten; still it is not our home. It may dissolve and leave us no poorer. The tie that binds together soul and body may be loosened, and the place that knows us now may soon know us no more. Our confidence is in him, who has promised to take us to himself, that where he is we may be also. "God is our Refuge and Strength... therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed." In contrast with the Preacher"s desponding, despairing words about the fruitlessness of life, its monotony and its brevity, we may set the hopeful, triumphant utterance of Christ"s apostle: "The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing. J.W.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18 The words of the Preacher.
Ecc_1:1
The words of the Preacher.
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The great debate
This book has been called the sphinx of the Bible, a not unapt name, for the book is grave, majestic, mysterious. Whatever its meaning be, it contradicts itself in the most flagrant way, looked at from every standpoint bug one. The book is clearly the record of a debate either between two men--one of them smitten with unbelief and despair, the other filled with conviction and hope; or more probably between two men in some one man--two parts of the same soul. In this great debate three things are discussed.
I. The vanity of human wishes. The first speaker, in order that he may illustrate this to the full, takes Solomon in all his glory as a chief instance. Vanity of vanities, saith the debater; all is vanity! What are the sources that feed this pessimism? The speaker tells us--
1. His experience of life. He was king in Jerusalem, and he resolved to give life a fair trial, to see what it was good for the sons of men to do under the heavens all the days of their life.
(1)
First he tried wisdom. He set himself to seek and to find the truth that lies at the heart of things--to read the riddle of the world and discover the meaning of God. He studied men and women, all sorts and conditions of men, yet he found nothing.
(2) Foiled in that direction he went to the other extreme. He said in his heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure. A truce to thought! Shut out the mystery, forget all the problems of the world, let us eat and drink and be merry! But alas! he found that somehow he was spoilt for a life of brutal sensualism. He soon sickened of it. This also was vanity.
(3) Next he tried a combination of wisdom and plea-sure--a scholarly, philosophic, refined voluptuousness. He called in the aid of the various arts, architecture, painting, music, horticulture. He gratified every desire, yet wisely, daintily, carefully avoiding all the vulgarities and grossness that breed loathing and disgust. Yet it was all in vain.
2. But perhaps, we say, your experience was exceptionally unhappy, No, he answers, I have looked over the whole of life and find it everywhere the same. There is, for instance, he goes on, a season, a marked fixed time for everything and to every purpose under the heavens, and he enumerates some twenty-eight of these seasons, and the activities for which they are propitious. Looked at from one point of view it is very beautiful, no doubt, but under such a fatalism, in a world where everything is arranged beforehand, what room is there for man to will or act? Fate! Fate! everywhere fate and vanity.
3. Or come again, says this terrible Debater; we may differ as to philosophy, but let us look at the facts of everyday life! In Nature I see a terrible grim order, I see forces that go on their way full of silent contempt for man and his schemes and dreams. I hear a voice that says to him, Dont fuss and fret, little sir! eat and drink and die--for you can do nothing else. In the world of human nature, on the contrary, I see disorder of a very terrible kind. Here men find thorns on vines and thistles on fig-trees. As I looked I said to myself, he continues (Ecc_3:16): God shall judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time there--that is in the eternal world, for every purpose and for every work. But alas! is there such a place as there? Who knows? Looking then, he says, at the oppression that men endure under the sun, and seeing no hope of any comfort, seeing no prospect of deliverance anywhere, I praised the dead, they who are out of it all--after lifes fever they sleep well--more than the living; yea, better than both did I esteem him who hath not yet lived at all.
4. But surely, some one will say, this man generalizes too much. He paints with too black a brush. All are not oppressed and do not fail. There is such a thing as prosperity in the world, but this dyspeptic debater never seems to have heard of it. Yes, he has heard of it, and taken the measure of it too, and if one thing more than another serves to bring out the littleness and the vanity of his life it is, in his mind, that which men call its prosperity. Let us look, he says, at the successful man. Idleness is of course folly, but is not success also embittered by hatred and envy? Does it not separate a man from his fellows? He gains something, but does he gain anything so good as what he loses--brotherhood and love? Look again at the isolation of the man who loves money. He hath neither son nor brother, yet there is no end to his labours, neither are his eyes satisfied with riches. There he is alone with his money! Nothing in all the world is so precious, so essential to man as the love and confidence of another man. Success without comradeship is a poor thing--it is vanity; there is nothing in it, and the richest miser is literally miserable for want of that which he might have had for the asking--love. Look for the last time, he says, at the strange vicissitudes that befall even the highest of men. A king on the throne has many flatterers, but no friend. Plots are hatched, disaffection grows to a head, and he is deposed. His young kinsman whom he in his jealousy has kept in prison, is brought out with tumult of applause. All follow the new king! Yes, says this terrible pessimist, but only for a while. They will tire of him also,--They that come after shall not rejoice in him. He too will be deposed in favour of some other popular idol of the moment. Surely all is vanity and a striving after wind. So far the spokesman of despair.
II. But now in the fifth chapter another speaker--either without or within the man--takes up his parable and champions the cause of faith and hope. He does not, cannot indeed, solve all the difficulties, or meet all the objections that the other has propounded. Rather he gives utterance to the calm precepts of old experience; he re-affirms with conviction what the good have said in every age. Granting that life is full of mystery and has much that is sad in it, he lays emphasis on the clearness and the urgency of duty. In doing right alone each man shall find refuge from despair; he shall find God and be able to take refuge in God from all the pursuing, harassing mysteries of Gods government.
1. Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God. It may be the temple, or it may be the little rustic synagogue, but it is ever Beth-el, the house of God. Go to it reverently, prayerfully, expectantly, dutifully.
2. Again, study to be quiet. Until God vouchsafe thee a revelation, be thou patient and obedient, for to draw nigh to hear (that is to hear His orders--to obey) is better than to offer the sacrifice.
3. Finally, be sober-minded. Try to see life steadily, and see it whole. One swallow does not make a summer, nor one dead leaf a winter; nor do acts of oppression prove that the whole of human society is rotten. No doubt bad men exist and bad things are done. It is hard to catch a rogue--especially if he be a big rogue, but everywhere there is some sort of government, an organized justice, one official above another right up to the highest, and the highest of all on earth exists for the sake of protecting the lowest. The king is servant to the field. No doubt it is often very imperfectly administered, nevertheless law exists on earth, and in the main justice is done; and all earthly law and earthly justice are but dim troubled reflections of an eternal heavenly law and a divine justice that rule over all things, and by which in time every oppressed one will be righted, and every oppressor receive his reward. (J. M. Gibbon.)
The words of the Preacher
It is not often in the Bible that we are challenged to hear the words of a great man, viewed from an earthly standpoint. He is represented as king in Jerusalem--a man of the highest social position. We cannot but wonder what he will say, seeing that he has only seen the upper side of life, and can have known nothing of what the poor understand by want, homelessness, and all the degradation of penury and an outcast condition. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity (Ecc_1:2). Vanity,--a light wind, a puff, a breath that passes away instantly. Here we have a judgment in brief. We long to enter into some detail, if not of argument yet of illustration, especially as this is one of the short sentences which a man might speak hastefully rather than critically and experimentally. We must ask the Preacher, therefore, to go somewhat into detail, that we may see upon what premises he has constructed so large a conclusion. He says that life is unprofitable in the sense of being unsatisfying. It comes to nothing. The eye and the ear want more and more. The eye takes in the whole sky at once, and could take in another and another hour by hour,--at least so it seems; and the ear is like an open highway,--all voices pass, no music lingers so as to exclude, the next appeal. In addition to all this, whatever we have in the hand melts. Gold and silver dissolve, and nought of our proud wealth remains. Much wants more, and more brings with it care and pain; so the wheel swings endlessly, always going to bring something next time, but never bringing it. Coheleth says that there is no continuance in life: One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. You no sooner know a man than he dies. You make your election in the human crowd, saying, My heart shall rest here; and whilst the flush of joy is on your cheek, the loved one is caught away, like the dew of the morning. People enough, and more than enough,--crowds, throngs, whole generations, passing on as shadows pass, until death is greater than life upon the earth. Coheleth says that even nature itself became monotonous through its always being the same thing in the same way, as if incapable of originality and enterprise. The wind was veering, veering, veering,--spending itself in running round and round, but never getting beyond a small circuit; if it was not in the north it was in the south, or wherever it was it could be found in a moment, for it whirleth about continually. So with the rivers. They could make no impression upon the sea: they galloped, and surged, and foamed, being swollen by a thousand streams from the hills; and yet the sea swallowed them up in its thirst, and waited for them day by day, with room enough and to spare for all their waters. The eye, the ear, the sea, there was no possibility of satisfying,-prodigals and spendthrifts f And the sun was only a repetition, rising and going down evermore. Coheleth further says that there is no real variety in life. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be, etc. Man longs for variety, and cannot secure it. The same things are done over and over again. Changes are merely accidental, not organic. All things are getting to be regarded as stale and slow. New colours are only new mixtures. New fashions are only old ones modified. In short, there is nothing new under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. New things are promised in the apocalyptic day. (Rev_21:1). It will be found in the long run that the only possible newness is m character, in the motive of life and its supreme purpose (2Co_5:17). (J. Parker, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 12 In Which The Problem Of The Book Is Indirectly…
THE PROLOGUE
In Which The Problem Of The Book Is Indirectly Stated
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Ecc_1:1-11
THE search for the summum bonum, the quest of the Chief Good, is the theme of the book Ecclesiastes. Naturally we look to find this theme, this problem, this "riddle of the painful earth," distinctly stated in the opening verses of the Book. It is stated, but not distinctly. For the Book is an autobiographical poem, the journal of the Preachers inward life set forth in a dramatic form. "A man of ripe wisdom and mature experience, he takes us into his confidence. He unclasps the secret volume, and invites us to read it with him. He lays before us what he has been, what he has thought and done, what he has seen and felt and suffered; and then he asks us to listen to the judgment which he has deliberately formed on a review of the whole." But that he may the more unreservedly lay bare his heart to us, he uses the poets privilege, and presents himself to us under a mask and wrapped in Solomons ample mantle. And a dramatic poet conveys his conceptions of human character and circumstance and action, not by direct picturesque descriptions, but, placing men before us "in their habit as they lived," he makes them speak to us, and leaves us to infer their character and condition from their words.
In accordance with the rules of his art, the dramatic preacher brings himself on the stage of his poem, permits us to hear his most penetrating and characteristic utterances, confesses his own most secret and inward experiences, and thus enables us to conceive and to judge him. He is true to his artistic canons from the outset. His prologue, unlike that of the Book of Job, is cast in the dramatic form. Instead of giving us a clear statement of the moral problem he is about to discuss, he opens with the characteristic utterances of the man who, wearied with many futile endeavours, gathers up his remaining strength to recount the experiments he has tried and the conclusion he has reached. Like Browning, one of the most dramatic of modern poets, he plunges abruptly into his theme, and speaks to us from the first through "feigned lips." Just as in reading the Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, or the Epistle of Karshish, the Arab Physician, or a score other of Browning's poems, we have first to glance through it in order to collect the scattered hints which indicate the speaker and the time, and then laboriously to think ourselves back, by their help, into the time and conditions of the speaker, so also with this Hebrew poem. It opens abruptly with "words of the Preacher," who is at once the author and the hero of the drama. "Who is he," we ask, "and what?" "When did he live, and what place did he fill?" And at present we can only reply, He is the voice of one crying in the wilderness of Oriental antiquity, and saying, "Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!" For what intent, then, does his voice break the long silence? Of what ethical mood is this pathetic note the expression? What prompts his despairing cry?
It is the old contrast -old as literature, old as man -between the ordered steadfastness of nature and the disorder and brevity of human life. The Preacher gazes on the universe above and around him. The ancient earth is firm and strong beneath his feet. The sun runs his race with joy, sinks exhausted into its ocean bed, but rises on the morrow, like a giant refreshed with old wine, to renew its course. The variable and inconstant wind, which bloweth where it listeth, blows from the same quarters, runs through the very circuit which was its haunt in the time of the world's grey fathers. The streams ebb and flow, which go and come, run along time-worn beds and are fed from their ancient source. But man, "to one point constant never," shifts from change to change. As compared with the calm uniformity of nature, his life is a mere phantasy, passing forever through a tedious and limited range of forms, each of which is as unsubstantial as the fabric of a vision, many of which are as base and sordid as they are unreal, and all of which forever in a flux, elude the grasp of those who pursue them, or disappoint those who hold them in their hands. "All is vanity; for man has no profit," no adequate and enduring reward, "for all his labour;" literally, "no balance, no surplus, on the balance-sheet of life:" Less happy, because less stable, than the earth on which he dwells, he comes and goes, while the earth goes on forever (Ecc_1:2-4).
This painful contrast between the ordered stability of nature and the changeful and profitless disorder of human life is emphasized by a detailed reference to the large natural forces which rule the world, and which abide unchanged, although to us they seem the very types of change. The figure of verse 5 (Ecc_1:5) is, of course, that of the racer. the sun rises every morning to run its course, pursues it through the day, "pants," as one well-nigh breathless, toward its goal, and sinks at night into its subterraneous bed in the sea; but, though exhausted and breathless at night, it rises on the morrow refreshed, and eager, like a strong, swift man, to renew its daily race. In verse 6 (Ecc_1:6) the wind is represented as having a regular law and circuit, though it now blows South, and now veers round to the North. The East and West are not mentioned, probably because they are tacitly referred to in the rising and setting sun of the previous verse: all the four quarters are included between the two. In verse 7 (Ecc_1:7) the streams are described as returning on their sources; but there is no allusion here, as we might suppose, to the tides, -and indeed tidal rivers are comparatively rare, -or to the rain which brings back the water evaporated from the surface of the streams and of the sea. The reference is, rather, to an ancient conception of the physical order of nature held by the Hebrew as by other races, according to which the ocean, fed by the streams, sent back a constant supply through subterraneous passages and channels, in which the salt was filtered out of it; through these they supposed the rivers to return to the place whence they came. The ruling sentiment of these verses is that, while all the natural elements and forces, even the most variable and inconstant, renew their strength and return upon their course, for frail man there is no return; permanence and uniformity characterize them, while transitoriness and instability mark him for their own. They seem to vanish and disappear; the sun sinks, the winds lull, the streams run dry; but they all come back again: for him there is no coming back; once gone, he is gone forever.
But it is vain to talk of these or other instances of the weary yet restless activity of the universe; "man cannot utter it." For, besides these elemental illustrations, the world is crowded with illustrations of incessant change, which yet move within narrow bounds and do nothing to relieve its sameliness. So numerous are they, so innumerable, that the curious eye and inquisitive ear of man would be worn out before they had completed the tale of them: and if eye and ear could never be satisfied with hearing and seeing, how much less the slower tongue with speaking (Ecc_1:8)? All through the universe what hath been still is and will be; what was done is done still and always will be done; the sun still running the same race, the winds still blowing from the same points, the streams still flowing between the same banks and returning by the same channels. If any man suppose that he has discovered new phenomena, any natural fact which has not been repeating itself from the beginning, it is only because he is ignorant of that which has been from of old (Ecc_1:9-10). Yet, while in nature all things return on their course and abide forever, mans day is soon spent, his force soon exhausted. He does not return; nay, he is not so much as remembered by those who come after him. Just as we have forgotten those who were before us, so those who live after us will forget us (Ecc_1:11). The burden of all this unintelligible world lies heavily on the Preachers soul. He is weary of the worlds "everlasting sameness." The miseries and confusions of the human lot baffle and oppress his thoughts. Above all, the contrast between Nature and Man, between its massive and stately permanence and the frailty and brevity of our existence, breeds in him the despairing mood of which we have the keynote in his cry, "vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity!"
Yet this is not the only, not the inevitable, mood of the mind as it ponders that great contrast. We have learned to look upon it with other, perhaps with wider, eyes. We say, How grand, how soothing, how hopeful is the spectacle of natures uniformity! How it lifts us above the fluctuations of inward thought, and gladdens us with a sense of stability and repose! As we see the ancient inviolable laws working out into the same gracious and beautiful results day after day and year by year, and reflect that "what has been will be," we are redeemed from our bondage to vanity and corruption; we look up with composed and reverent trust to Him who is our God and Father, and onward to the stable and glorious immortality we are to spend with Him; we argue with Habakkuk (Hab_1:12), "Art not Thou from everlasting, O Lord our God, our Holy One? We shall not die," but live.
But if we did not know the Ruler of the universe to be our God and Father; if our thoughts had still to "jump the life to come" or to leap at it with a mere guess; if we had to cross the gulf of death on no more solid bridge than a peradventure: if, in short, our life were infinitely more troubled and uncertain than it is, and the true good of life and its bright sustaining hope were still to seek, how would it be with us then? Then, like the Preacher, we might feel the steadfastness and uniformity of nature as an affront to our vanity and weakness. In place of drinking in hope and composure from the fair visage and unbroken order of the universe, we might deem its face to be darkened with a frown or its eye to be glancing on us with bitter irony. Instead of finding in its inevitable order and permanence a hopeful prophecy of our recovery into an unbroken order and an enduring peace, we might passionately demand why, on an abiding earth and under an unchanging heaven, we should die and be forgotten; why, more inconstant than the variable wind, more evanescent than the parching stream, one generation should go never to return, and another generation come to enjoy the gains of those who were before them, and to blot their memory from the earth.
This, indeed, has been the impassioned protest and outcry of every age. Literature is full of it. The contrast between the tranquil unchanging sky, with its myriads of pure lustrous stars, which are always there and always in a happy concert, and the frailty of man rushing blindly through his brief and perturbed course has lent its ground tones to the poetry of every race. We meet it everywhere. It is the oldest of old songs. In all the many languages of the divided earth we hear how the generations of men pass swiftly and stormfully across its bosom, "searching the serene heavens with the inquest of their beseeching looks," but winning no response; asking always, and always in vain, "Why are we thus? why are we thus? frail as the moth, and of few days like the flower?" It is this contrast between the serenity and the stability of nature and the frailty and turbulence of man which afflicts Coheleth and drives him to conclusions of despair. Here is man, "so noble in reason, so infinite in faculty, in apprehension so like a god," longing with an ardent intensity for the peace which results from the equipoise and happy occupation of his various powers; and yet his whole life is wasted in labours and tumults, in perplexity and strife; he goes to his grave with his cravings unsatisfied, his powers untrained, unharmonised, knowing no rest till he lies in the narrow bed from which is no uprising! What wonder if to such a one as he "this goodly frame, the earth, seems but a sterile promontory" stretching out a little space into the dark, infinite void; "this most excellent canopy, the air this brave oerhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire," nothing but "a foul, pestilential congregation of vapours"? What wonder if, for him, the very beauty of nature should turn into a repulsive hideousness, and its steadfast, unchanging order be held a satire on the disorder and vanity of his life?
Solomon, moreover, -and Solomon in his premature old age, sated and weary, is the mask under which the Preacher conceals his natural face, -had had a large experience of life, had tried its ambitions, its lusts, its pursuits and pleasures; he had tested every promise of good which it held forth, and found them all illusory; he had drunk of every stream, and found no pure living water with which he could slake his thirst. And men such as he, sated but not satisfied, jaded with voluptuous delights and without the peace of faith, commonly look out on the world with haggard eyes. They feed their despair on the natural order and purity which they feel to be a rebuke to the impurity of their own restless and perturbed hearts. Many of us have, no doubt, stood on Richmond Hill, and looked with softening eyes on the rich pastures dotted with cattle, and broken with clumps of trees through which shoot up village spires, while the full, placid Thames winds in many a curve through pasture and wood. It is not a grand or romantic scene; but on a quiet evening, in the long level rays of the setting sun, it is a scene to inspire content and thankful, peaceful thoughts. Wilberforce tells us that he once stood in the balcony of a villa looking down on this scene. Beside him stood the owner of the villa, a duke notorious for his profligacy in a profligate age; and as they looked across the stream, the duke cried out, "O that river! there it runs, on and on, and I am so weary of it!" And there you have the very mood of this Prologue; the mood for which the fair, smiling heavens and the gracious, bountiful earth carry no benediction of peace, because they are reflected from a heart all tossed into crossing and impure waves.
All things depend on the heart we bring to them. This very contrast between Nature and Man has no despair in it, breeds no dispeace or anger in the heart at leisure from itself and at peace with God. Tennyson, for instance, makes a merry musical brook sing to us on this very theme.
"I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley."
"I chatter over stony ways
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles."
"I chatter, chatter as I flow"
To join the brimming river:
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever.
I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers:
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.
I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance
Among my skimming swallows:
I make the netted sunbeams dance
Against my sanded shallows.
I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses:
I linger by my shingly bars:
I loiter round my cresses,
And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river:
"For men may come and men may go
But I go on forever."
It is the very plaint of the Preacher set to sweet music. He murmurs, "One generation passeth, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever"; while the refrain of the Brook is, -
"For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever."
Yet we do not feel that the Song of the Brook should feed any mood of grief and despair. The tune that it sings to the sleeping woods all night is "a cheerful tune." By some subtle process we are made to share its bright, tender hilarity, though we too are of the men that come and go. Into what a fume would the Hebrew Preacher have been thrown had any little "babbling brook" dared to sing this saucy song to him. He would have felt it as an insult, and have assumed that the merry, innocent creature was "crowing" over the swiftly passing generations of men. But, for the Christian Poet, the Brook sings a song whose blithe dulcet strain attunes the heart to the quiet harmonies of peace and goodwill.
Again I say all depends on the heart we turn to Nature. It was because his heart was heavy with the memory of many sins and many failures, because too the lofty Christian hopes were beyond his reach, that this "son of David" grew mournful and bitter in her presence.
This, then, is the mood in which the Preacher commences his quest of the Chief Good. He is driven to it by the need of finding that in which he can rest. As a rule. it is only on the most stringent compulsions that we any of us undertake this high Quest. Of their profound need of a Chief Good most men are but seldom and faintly conscious; but to the favoured few, who are to lead and mould the public thought, it comes with a force they cannot resist. It was thus with Coheleth. He could not endure to think that those who have "all things put under their feet" should lie at the mercy of accidents from which their realm is exempt; that they should be the mere fools of change, while that abides unchanged forever. And, therefore, he set out to discover the conditions on which they might become partakers of the order and stability and peace of nature; the conditions on which, raised above all the tides and storms of change, they might sit calm and serene even though the heavens should be folded as a scroll and the earth be shaken from its foundations. This, and only this, will he recognise as the Chief Good, the Good appropriate to the nature of man, because capable of satisfying all his cravings and supplying all his wants.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1–2 Ecc_1:1. The Preacher.] The word properly signifies “The Assembler.”…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Ecc_1:1. The Preacher.] The word properly signifies “The Assembler.” Solomon collected the people together for the purpose of addressing them as a public speaker. A difficulty has been felt in applying this term to him, because in Hebrew this word has a feminine form; but we may regard Solomon as an impersonation of Wisdom, the word for which in Hebrew is also feminine.
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MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Ecc_1:1
THE NECESSARY QUALITIES OF THE TRUE PREACHER
I. He has the True Public Spirit. Solomon gave his invitation to all, as in Prov: “Unto you, O men, I call.” The words of the Sacred writer of Israel have a popular character, as distinguished from the writings of heathen nations, which were addressed only to minds capable of lofty speculation. The wisdom of the world despises and spurns away the ignorant. It is addressed to classes—the heritage of the favoured few. But, the true preacher is a public benefactor in the widest sense. He who seeks the highest and most lasting good for man is the genuine lover of the race. His benevolent designs are not circumscribed by sect, country, social position, or mental culture—they are wide as the wants of the soul, which are seen beneath all appearances and disguises.
1. This public spirit is opposed to all selfish ends. The true preacher does not seek wealth—his own glory—has no desire of display. His aim is to proclaim the only remedy for the world’s disease. He is lost in the supreme glory of his theme.
2. It is opposed to all lesser forms of benevolence. Solomon had acquired skill to increase the nation’s wealth, to adorn and beautify cities, palaces, etc. Yet he does not exhort men to attain this power, but rather to seek the Chief Good. The work of the true preacher promotes man’s temporal welfare, sharpens the spur of progress, spreads civilization, purifies and elevates literature. The collateral effects of Christianity are not to be despised. But the great end of the preacher is to convey lasting spiritual good. The good, of which he is the channel, has the stamp of immortality.
II. He has the impulse to utter the Great Verities of Religion. Solomon could not keep his knowledge of Divine truth and fervour of piety in the seclusion of his own mind and heart. He must let it forth for the good of all. The true preacher has an irresistible impulse to utter the message God has given him. Why?
1. Because he has true views of man—his position before God, and his destiny. He has his eye on the four last things. This gives him earnestness, and singleness of purpose.
2. Because he has a Divine call. No mere culture or training can fit a man to be a successful messenger of Divine truth. The true preacher is the creation of the grace of God. The Divine fire, hot within him, will be resplendent without. Every true preacher will be both a burning and a shining light.
3. Because the nature of his message must fill him with compassion, and this has the property of loving to spend itself. The messenger of mercy must catch the inspiration of true charity.
III. He has a Soul-History. Solomon had an eventful history of spiritual conflict with sin, sorrow, doubt, and disappointment. He had attained to peace through a terrible struggle. Woe to that man who has nothing but an outward history—no stirrings of an inner life. It may not be necessary for the true preacher to fight over again all the soul-battles of Solomon, but he must know what moral conflict is—the crisis of victory must have taken place in his life. Without such a history,
1. The symbols of Divine truth will be mere words, having no life or spirit.
2. His utterance of truth will be only professional.
3. He, at best, can only promote the religion of habit, taste, or culture, instead of true spiritual feeling.
IV. He has True Regal Power. Solomon was a Royal Preacher, and every preacher can be royal in his influence over souls. As mental power is superior to physical, so is spiritual to either. The men of literature are monarchs of the empire of mind. But the men who place spiritual principles deep in the heart of humanity have attained the greatest sovereignty beneath the Supreme Majesty. To gain a soul is to enhance the glory of our royal diadem. He who bears witness to the truth is a king. To possess Divine wisdom, and the power to utter it, invests a man with true kinghood. The Apostles still rule the Church by their words.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSE
Ecc_1:1. The methods God employs in the conveyance of His truth to man are not peculiar to religion. Men seek by spoken and written words to impress their thoughts on other minds. All who would affect public assemblies by speech must use the expedient of preaching. The great masters of knowledge, in every age, were, in their several ways, preachers.
Solomon was the inspired teacher of the people. His words of wisdom were not only uttered by the voice, but they were also made permanent in sacred literature, and so their influence is perpetual. But though the Christian preacher may not commit his words to the immortal custody of the press, they are engraven on human minds and hearts. That which is written on the soul lasts longer than inscriptions on brass or marble, than the still more enduring works of genius, or even than the Bible itself. The writing which God’s truth traces upon the spirit of man will outlast all the imperfect appliances of human learning. If a preacher is inspired by the Spirit, he can write books which will furnish the library of heaven.
Words become ennobled when they are used to convey spiritual ideas. The cross was once suggestive of disgrace and contempt; it now brings to our mind the dear remembrance of the deed of infinite love.
The common expressions of our daily life have deep spiritual significations. Hunger, thirst, truth, freedom, life, death—these words, as the preacher uses them, have meanings of sublime importance. The Holy Ghost can turn the common elements of human language into a celestial dialect. There is a better and a more enduring substance in language than the literature of the world can express.
The words of the true preacher.
1. Instruct.
2. Persuade.
3. Gain the affections.
4. Unite true souls here.
5. Prepare souls for the great assembly on high.
Solomon taught the people knowledge. Paul was “preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ” (Act_28:31). The preaching that does not teach is worthless.
Talent, logic, learning, words, manner, voice, action, all are required for the perfection of the preacher: but “one thing is necessary,”—an intense perception and appreciation of the end for which he preaches, and that is, to be the minister of some definite spiritual good to those who hear him [J. H. Newman].
Words are the garments with which thoughts clothe themselves. The mind cannot rest in what is vague or diffused: it can only apprehend ideas which have a definite expression. This law of our mental constitution makes the superior revelation of the Gospel a necessity. God has given us an expression of Himself.
1. By the Incarnate Word. Thought itself is invisible. We cannot follow the silent excursions of another’s mind. But speech is thought enbodied. The Invisible God has been manifested forth in His Son—the Divine Word. Logos signifies in Greek, both the word which expresses the thought outwardly, and also the inward thought, or the reason itself. The Eternal Word reveals the Eternal Reason. Christ is the power of God, and the Wisdom of God.
2. By His works. These are the thoughts of God as manifested by material things. Physical science is but the intelligent reading of those ideas of God which have taken form and shape in the universe of matter. Here are the Divine thoughts on beauty, force, mechanism, and contrivance to compass special ends for the welfare of His great family. Nature is a volume whose meaning is ever unfolding, and enhancing our conceptions of the Infinite Mind. “The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”
3. By the Scriptures. These are the thoughts of God concerning us men and our salvation. They reveal
(1.) His thoughts on our natural condition.
(2.) His thoughts on the means of our recovery.
(3.) His thoughts on the conditions of our welfare in the great future.
The Church can only be maintained by keeping spiritual thought alive by means of fitting words. The disciples were commanded to “teach all nations.”
A king does not lower his dignity by undertaking the office of a preacher. That sacred calling is honourable, because it is occupied with what is of infinite value and importance—the soul of man. The words of secular speakers are only concerned with the fleeting things of time, but the words of the preacher are concerned with man’s interest beyond the grave.
The statesman deals with the concerns of empires; but empires, though they flourish through a life of centuries, yet ultimately share in the mortality of their founders. The advocate vindicates the claims of individuals whose earthly existence is still more transient; but to the preacher alone is appropriated the assertion of a subject whose extent is infinite, whose duration is eternal. To him alone it is given to consider man in the one aspect in which he is unchangeably sublime. With every other view of his nature the low and the ludicrous may mingle; for in every other view he is a compound of the wondrous and the worthless; but in the contemplation of a being whose birth is the first hour of an unending existence, no artifice can weaken the impression of awful admiration which is the great element of sublimity [Archer Butler].
The Church, by the voice of her teachers, possesses a power to gather men together, and to unite them by the surest bonds. The society thus held together by the ties of a common heritage of truth, experience, and hope, has no elements of decay. Outside the Church, we find disunion and desolation. “We have turned every one to his own way.” Men can never be truly united into one family until they bear the same gracious and loving relations to our Heavenly Father. Success in preaching serves to expand the Parental Empire of God.
Christ is the true Solomon—the true collector of assemblies. He said to Jerusalem, “How often would I have gathered thee!” He will, in the end, collect all His people into one great assembly, and unfold to them the riches of His mind. He has yet many things to say unto us, but we cannot bear them now.
Human language cannot fully reveal the riches of infinite truth. The substance of Divine truth in the Bible is superior to the forms of language by which it is conveyed. The preacher’s best words fall short of the sublime verities of which they are the vehicle.
The garment of man’s speech must be narrower than the body of God’s truth, which by one means or another has to be clothed with it [Trench].
The preacher should be careful in the choice of words, for their right use and ordering is not merely an accomplishment, but is bound up with the interests of truth itself.
The mixture of those things by speech, which by nature are divided, is the mother of all error [Hooker].
The preacher must avoid the danger of accepting the words of religion instead of the things which they represent. There is behind the words a life-giving Spirit, without which they are vain. The advice of Bacon is to the point: ipsis consuescere rebus—to accustom ourselves to the things themselves.
The preacher’s words are a debt due to the Church.
The sun does not monopolize its beams, and engross its light; but scatters them abroad, gilds the whole world with them. It shines more for others than itself; it is a public light. Look on a fountain; it does not bind its streams, seal up itself, and enclose its waters, but spends itself with a continual bubbling forth. It streams forth in a fluent, liberal, and communicative manner; it is a public spring [Culverwell].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Ecc 1:1-2
Ecc 1:1-2
The book of Ecclesiastes is a dramatic biography, in which Solomon not only records, but re-enacts, the successive scenes of his search after happiness, a descriptive memoir, in which he not only recites his past experience, but, in his improvising fervour, becomes his former self once more.
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I. It need not then surprise us if we find in these chapters many strange questionings and startling opinions before we arrive at the final conclusion. Intermingled with much that is noble and holy, these "doubtful disquisitions" are not the dialogue of a believer and an infidel, but the soliloquy of a "divided heart," the debate of a truant will with an upbraiding conscience.
II. In the search after happiness, his first resource was knowledge, then merry-making, then the solace of absolute power. But no sooner did he find his power supreme and unchallenged than he began to be visited with misgivings as to his successor. "Yea, I hated all the labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me."
III. Who is there that apart from God’s favour has ever tasted solid joy and satisfaction of spirit? All will be vanity to the heart which is vile, and all will be vexation to the spirit which the peace of God is not possessing.
J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture II.
Ecc 1:1-11
The search for the summum bonum, the quest of the chief good, is the theme of the book of Ecclesiastes. Naturally we look to find this theme, this problem, this "riddle of the painful earth," distinctly stated in the opening verses of the book. It is stated, but not distinctly. For the book is a drama, not an essay or a treatise. Instead of introducing the drama with a brief narrative or a clear statement of the moral problem he is about to discuss, the Preacher opens with the characteristic utterances of the man who, wearied with many futile endeavours, gathers up his remaining strength for a last attempt to discover the chief good of life.
I. It is the old contrast—old as literature, old as man—between the ordered steadfastness of nature and the disorder and brevity of human life. As compared with the calm order and uniformity of nature, man’s life is a mere fantasy, passing for ever through a limited and tedious range of forms each of which is as unsubstantial as the fabric of a vision, many of which are as base as they are unreal, and all of which, for ever in a flux, elude the grasp of those who pursue them or disappoint those who hold them in their hands. The burden of all this unintelligible life lies heavily on the Preacher’s soul. The miseries and confusions of our lot baffle and oppress his thoughts. Above all, the contrast between nature and man, between its massive and stately permanence and the frailty and brevity of our existence, breeds in him the despairing mood of which we have the keynote in his cry, "Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."
II. All depends on the heart we turn to nature. It was because his heart was heavy with the memory of many sins, because, too, the lofty Christian hopes were beyond his reach, that the "son of David" grew mournful or bitter as he looked at the strong ancient heavens and the stable, bountiful earth and thought of the weariness and brevity of human life. This, then, is the mood in which the Preacher commences his quest of the chief good. He is driven to it by the need of finding that in which he can rest. He could not endure to think that those who have "all things put under their feet" should lie at the mercy of accidents from which their realm is exempt; that they should be the mere fools of change, while that abideth unchanged for ever. And therefore he set out to discover the condition in which they might become partakers of the order, and stability, and peace of nature—the condition in which, raised above all tides and storms of change, they might sit calm and serene even though the strong ancient heavens and the solid earth should vanish away.
S. Cox, The Quest of the Chief Good, p. 113.
The allegorical interpretations of Ecclesiastes, of which there have been an enormous number, are all based upon a similar mistake. They all assume that the author ought to have written something else. This kind of criticism, however ingenious, is dishonest and irreverent—dishonest, for it is an attempt to obtain unfairly confirmation for our own opinions; irreverent, for if a book be worth reading at all, it is our business to try and learn the author’s views, and not to teach him ours.
I. Koheleth begins his soliloquy with the thought that we are not immortal. "What profit hath a man," he asks, "of all his labour that he taketh under the sun?" The earth is possessed of perpetual youth, and she continually repeats herself; but how different it is with man. Generation after generation passes away, and returneth nevermore. We do not live even in the remembrance of our fellows. "But the earth abideth for ever." This was what angered Koheleth: that man should perish when the world in which he lived was eternal.
II. Apart from immortality, all that he said may be repeated with equal correctness today. Whoever takes Koheleth’s view of human destiny should participate in Koheleth’s despair. What avails it to be a Homer or a Caesar today if tomorrow I am to be nothing but a heap of dust?
A. W. Momerie, Agnosticism, p. 176.
References: Ecc 1:1-11.—J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. ix., p. 409; J. H. Cooke, The Preacher’s Pilgrimage, p. 12. Ecc 1:2—G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 20; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 102. Ecc 1:2, Ecc 1:3.—H. P. Liddon, Old Testament Outlines, p. 162.
Ecc 1:2-11
I. This passage is the preamble to the book; it ushers us at once into its realms of dreariness. It is as if he said, "It is all a weary go-round. There are no novelties, no wonders, no discoveries. The present only repeats the past; the future will repeat them both." From such vexing thoughts may we not escape by taking refuge in one permanence and one variety to which the royal Preacher does not here advert?—I mean the soul’s immortality and the renewed soul’s perpetual rejuvenescence, that attribute of mind which makes it the survivor of all changes, and that faculty of regenerate humanity which renders old things new and suffuses with perpetual freshness things the most familiar.
II. If the immortality of material forms is only that which they achieve through the immortality of the human soul, and if the true glorification of matter is its sanctifying influence on regenerate mind, we may learn two lessons from our argument. (1) There is no harm in a vivid susceptibility to those material appearances and influences with which God has replenished the universe. (2) But that susceptibility is good for nothing if it be not sanctifying. There is an idolatry of nature. There are some whose god is the visible creation, and not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture IV.
References: Ecc 1:2-11.—R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 22; T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 27; G. G. Bradley, Lectures on Ecclesiastes, p. 29.
Ecc 1:4
It is the manifest intention of the Divine Spirit, as shown in the sacred writings, that we should be taught to find emblems in the world we are placed in to enforce solemn instruction upon us.
I. The character of permanence in objects we behold may admonish us of the brevity of our mortal life. In a solitary or contemplative state of the mind the permanent objects give the impression as if they rejected and scorned all connection with our transitory existence; as if we were accounted but as shadows passing over them; as if they stood there but to tell us what a short day is allotted to us on earth. They strike the thoughtful beholder with a character of gloomy and sublime dissociation and estrangement from him.
II. The great general instruction from this is, How little hold, how little absolute occupancy, we have of this world! When all the scene is evidently fixed to remain, we are under the compulsion to go. We have nothing to do with it but as passing from it. Men may strive to cling, to seize a firm possession, to make good their establishment, resolve and vow that the world shall be theirs; but it disowns them, stands aloof: it will stay, but they must go.
III. But should not the final lesson be that the only essential good that can be gained from the world is that which can be carried away from it? Alas that mere sojourners should be mainly intent on obtaining that which they must leave, when their inquisitive glance over the scene should be after any good that may go with them—something that is infixed in the soil, the rocks, or the walls!
J. Foster, Lectures, 2nd series, p. 117.
Reference: Ecc 1:4.—J. Hamilton, Works, vol. vi., p. 484.
Ecc 1:4-10
I. It is universally acknowledged that the circle is the archetype of all forms, physically as well as mathematically. It is the most complete figure, the most stable under violence, the most economical of material; its proportions are the most perfect and harmonious: and therefore it admits of the utmost variety consistent with unity of effect. The universe has apparently been framed according to this type. Nature attains her ends not in a series of straight lines, but in a series of circles; not in the most direct, but in the most roundabout, way.
II. Passing from the physical world to the domain of man, we find there also innumerable traces of the law of circularity. "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh." Human life is like the wheel which Ezekiel saw in vision. Its aspects and relations, external and internal, are continually changing; one spoke of the wheel is always ascending while another is descending: one part is grating on the ground while another is aloft in the air. Action and reaction is the law of man’s life. A season of misfortune is usually followed by a season of success; and when circumstances are most prosperous, a time of reverses is not far off.
III. The first and most prominent doctrine which Christianity teaches is that retrogression is an element of progress. (1) "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," was its watchword when it first raised its voice amid the deserts and mountains of Judaea. Repentance is the germinal bud of living Christianity. (2) The afflictions and trials that bring the Christian low contribute in the end to raise him to a higher condition of heavenly-mindedness. (3) Death seems to the eye of sense the saddest and most mysterious of all retrogressions. The wheel is broken at the cistern; the circle of life completes itself, and returns to the non-existence from which it sprang. But the day of death is better than the day of birth, because death is a higher and nobler birth. The grave is an underground avenue to heaven, a triumphal arch through which spiritual heroes return from their fight to their reward, made conquerors, and more than conquerors, through Him that loved them.
H. Macmillan, Bible Teaching in Nature, p. 312.
References: Ecc 1:4-11.—J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 60. Ecc 1:6.—F. Schleiermacher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii.,p. 5. Ecc 1:7.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons, 2nd series, p. 122; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 302.
Ecc 1:12-14
I. Solomon found no rest in pleasure, riches, power, glory, wisdom itself. He had learnt nothing more, after all, than he might have known, and doubtless did know, when he was a child of seven years old; and that was simply to fear God and keep His commandments, for that was the whole duty of man. But though he did know it, he had lost the power of doing it; and he ended darkly and shamefully—a dotard worshipping idols of wood and stone among his heathen queens. And thus as in David the height of chivalry fell to the deepest baseness, so in Solomon the height of wisdom fell to the deepest folly.
II. Exceeding gifts from God, like Solomon’s, are not blessings; they are duties, and very solemn and heavy duties. They do not increase a man’s happiness; they only increase his responsibility—the awful account which he must give at last of the talents committed to his charge. They increase, too, his danger. They increase the chance of his having his head turned to pride and pleasure, and falling shamefully, and coming to a miserable end. As with David, so with Solomon. Man is nothing, and God is all in all. Let us pray for that great, that crowning, grace and virtue of moderation, what St. Paul calls sobriety and a sound mind. Let us long violently after nothing, or wish too eagerly to rise in life, and be sure that what the Apostle says of those who long to be rich is equally true of those who long to be famous or powerful, or in any way to rise over the heads of their fellow-men. They all fall, as the Apostle says, into foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition, and so pierce themselves through with many sorrows.
C. Kingsley, The Water of Life, p. 175.
Ecc 1:12-18
I. Solomon’s first resource was philosophy. He studied man’s position in this world. His appetite for knowledge was omnivorous; and whilst hungering for the harvest, he was thankful for crumbs. The result was satiety with satisfaction, or rather it was the sober certainty of "sorrow." The very pursuit of knowledge is penal. The search after happiness is itself a sore punishment. Unless it include the knowledge of God, there is sorrow in much science; that is, the more a man knows unless he knows the Saviour, the sadder may we expect him to become.
II. It would indeed give melancholy force to the saying, "Much wisdom is much grief," if much wisdom were fatal to the Christian faith, and if he who increased his general knowledge must forfeit his religious hopes. But whilst science is fatal to superstition, it is fortification to a Scriptural faith. The Bible is the bravest of books. Coming from God and conscious of nothing but God’s truth, it awaits the progress of knowledge with calm security. It is not light, but darkness, which the Bible deprecates; and if men of piety were also men of science, and if men of science would "search the Scriptures," there would be more faith in the earth, and also more philosophy.
III. In the region of revealed truth, increasing knowledge will not always be increasing conviction unless that knowledge be progressively reduced to practice. If knowledge be merely speculative, in extending it a man may only "increase sorrow," for it is with the heart that man believeth unto righteousness, and it is to the doers of His Father’s will that the Saviour promises an assuring knowledge of His own doctrine.
J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture V.
References: Ecc 1:12-18.—R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 36; J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 61. 1:12-2:11.—G. G. Bradley, Lectures on Ecclesiastes, p. 40.
Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26
I. As was natural in so wise a man, the Preacher turns first to wisdom. It is the wisdom that is born of wide and varied experience, not of abstract study. He acquaints himself with the facts of human life, with the circumstances, thoughts, feelings, hopes, and aims of all sorts and conditions of men. He will look with his own eyes and learn for himself what their lives are like, how they conceive of the human lot, and what, if any, are the mysteries which sadden and perplex them. This also he finds a heavy and disappointing task. The sense of vanity bred by his contemplation of the steadfast order of nature only grows more profound as he reflects on the numberless and manifold disorders which afflict humanity. Apart from the special wrongs and oppressions of the time, it is inevitable in all times that the thoughtful student of men and manners should become a sadder as he becomes a wiser man. To multiply knowledge, at least of this kind, is to multiply sorrow. We need only go through the world with open, observant eyes in order to learn that "in much wisdom is much sadness."
II. But if we cannot reach the object of our quest in wisdom, we may perchance find it in pleasure. Wisdom failing to satisfy the large desires of his soul, the Preacher turns to mirth. Once more, as he forthwith announces, he is disappointed in the result. He pronounces mirth a brief madness; in itself, like wisdom, a good, it is not the chief good: to make it supreme is to rob it of its natural charm.
III. It is characteristic of the philosophic temper of our author that, after pronouncing wisdom and mirth vanities in which the true good is not to be found, he does not at once proceed to try a new experiment, but pauses to compare these two vanities and to reason out his preference of one over the other. His vanity is wisdom. It is because wisdom is a light and enables men to see that he accords it his preference. It is by the light of wisdom that he has learned the vanity of mirth, nay the insufficiency of wisdom itself. Therefore wisdom is better than mirth. Nevertheless it is not best, nor can it remove the dejection of a thoughtful heart. Somewhere there is, there must be, that which is better still.
S. Cox, The Quest of the Chief Good, p. 126.
Ecclesiastes 1:12-3:22
Koheleth now mentions the unusual advantages which he had possessed for enjoying life and making the best of it. His opportunities could not have been greater, he considers, had he been Solomon himself. He henceforth speaks therefore under the personated character of the wise son of David. He speaks as one who represented the wisdom and prosperity of his age.
I. "I have set myself," he says, "to the task of investigating scientifically the value of all human pursuits." This, he assures us, is no pleasant task. It is a sore travail that God has allotted to the sons of men, which they cannot altogether escape. Koheleth thought and thought till he was forced to the conclusion that all human pursuits were vanity and vexation of spirit, or, according to the literal Hebrew, were but vapour and striving after the wind. There was no solidity, nothing permanent, nothing enduring, about human possessions or achievements. For man was doomed to pass away into nothingness.
II. Having stated his position in these general terms, he now enters into the subject a little more in detail. He reminds himself how at one time he had tried to find his happiness in pleasure and amusement; but pleasure had palled upon him, and appeared good for nothing: and as for amusements, Koheleth thinks that life might, perhaps, be tolerable without them. Having discovered the unsatisfactoriness of pleasure, Koheleth proceeds to inquire if there is anything else that could take its place. What of wisdom? Can that make life a desirable possession? He proceeds to institute a comparison between wisdom and pleasure. Pleasure is but momentary; wisdom may last for a lifetime. Pleasure is but a shadow; wisdom is comparatively substantial and real. The lover of wisdom will follow her till he dies. Ay, there’s the rub—till he dies. One event happeneth to them all. What then is the good of wisdom? This, too, is vanity.
III. In the third chapter Koheleth points out how anything like success in life must depend upon our doing the right thing at the right time. Wisdom lies in opportuneness. Inopportuneness is the bane of life. What we have to do is to watch for our opportunity and embrace it.
IV. In Ecc 3:14, Koheleth seems to rise for a moment into a religious mood. But his religion is by no means of an exalted type. Times, seasons, and opportunities, he says, are of Divine appointment; and, like nature’s phases, they happen in recurring cycles. God doeth it that men should fear before Him. The existence of so much unrequited wisdom in the world might seem to suggest that there is no higher power. But there is. God will rule the righteous and the wicked, and reward them according to their works. There is a time for every purpose and for every work, and therefore for the purpose of retribution among the rest.
A. W. Momerie, Agnosticism, p. 190.
References: Ecc 1:13.—J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 14. Ecc 1:14.—Ibid., pp. 28, 38; Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 339; W. G. Jordan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvii., p. 136.
Ecc 1:17
There are two ways of arriving at the knowledge of the truth respecting the importance and benefit of holiness and goodness. These two ways are—one the experience of what is good, the other the experience of what is bad. These are the two kinds of moral experience we see in the world. I shall compare the two together, first, as to their own character, and, secondly, with respect to their weight in the way of example to others.
I. As to their own character. It is to be admitted that the moral impression which is gained by a course of sin is often a very acute and deep one. There is nothing in the whole circle of human feeling and conviction deeper and more intense than the insight into the emptiness and vanity of the world which men of the world have sometimes at the close of their career. But what, after all, does this wisdom, which is gained by the experience of an evil life, do for them? The great use of wisdom is to make men act aright. If it come after all action is over, it is useless; it is mere seeing for seeing’s sake, and knowing for knowing’s sake. Here, then, lies the difference between that knowledge which is got by an evil life and that knowledge which is got by a good one. In both cases there is a strong moral conviction gained; but in the case of moral conviction gained by an evil life the harm has been done: and the conviction comes not to prevent the evil, but only to acquaint you with it. To state briefly the difference between the convictions which the experience of good and the experience of worldly men produce, we may say in a word that it consists in faith. In the conviction which is gained by an evil life there is no faith. The possessor would not trust anything but his own experience, and accordingly his conviction is mere matter of experience when he gets it.
II. As regards the comparison of these two kinds of experience in the way of example to others, I cannot but think that the value of that experience at which men of pleasure and men of the world arrive at the close of their careers, and which they communicate to others, is very much overrated. However strong and acute it may be in itself, as regards its effect upon others it is feeble, and for this very good reason: that the man’s advice is one way, and his acts have been in another. There is one, and only one, appointed way of doing good; and that is by being good.
J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 170.
Reference: Ecc 1:17.— J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 85.
Ecc 1:18
The declaration of the text may be considered as the expression of a soul that seeks satisfaction in mere earthly knowledge.
I. Mere earthly knowledge is unsatisfactory in its nature. Take as an illustration of this the field of creation. The knowledge of facts and laws can employ man’s reason, but it cannot ultimately satisfy it, and still less can it soothe his soul or meet the longings of his spirit.
II. Mere earthly knowledge is painful in its contents. How melancholy is the history of man when written down! Take away our hope in God, and we could bear to study history only as we forget all the higher ends it might serve as a school of training for immortal souls, and as the steps of a Divine Architect through the broken scaffolding and scattered stonework upwards to a finished structure. The very glimpse of this is reviving; but to give up at once Architect and end, and see human lives scattered and strewn across weary ages, and human hearts torn and bleeding with no abiding result—this surely would fill a thoughtful mind with pain. The more of such history, the more of sorrow.
III. Mere earthly knowledge is hopeless in its issue. For an illustration of this we may take the field of abstract thought. Let a man seek the origin and end of things without God, and doubt grows as search deepens, for doubt is on the face of all things if it be in the heart of the inquirer. As he enlarges the circumference of knowledge he enlarges the encircling darkness, and even the knowledge yields no ray of true satisfaction.
IV. Mere earthly knowledge is discouraging in its personal results. We may consider here the moral nature of man. Earthly science can do very much to improve man’s external circumstances. It can occupy his reason; it can refine and gratify his taste. But there are greater wants that remain. If the man seek something to fill and warm his heart, all the wisdom of this world is only a cold phosphorescence. The tree of knowledge never becomes the tree of life.
V. Mere earthly knowledge has so brief a duration. Here we may contemplate life as a whole. If the thought of God be admitted, all real knowledge has the stamp of immortality; but if there be nothing of this, "in one day all man’s thoughts perish." "The wise man dieth, and the fool also." The sweeter truth is to the taste, the more bitter must be the thought of leaving the pursuit of it for ever.
J. Ker, Sermons, p. 44.
Melancholy arises:
I. From the thought that life is too short even for the most ardent labour to wrest from the bosom of nature or the ocean of the soul a thousandth part of their secrets. "Death comes," we think. "Is all I have done for others and learnt for myself lost? Why may I not live to finish my work, to complete and round my knowledge? If death be all, then the increase of my knowledge is the increase of my sorrow." The remedy and the answer lie in the teaching of Christ. He has brought, it is true, upon the world an increased dread of death, for He has deepened the sense of moral responsibility; but in deepening responsibility He has also brought upon the world an increased delight in life, because He has made life more earnest, active, and progressive. The remedy then, when the thought of death comes to shroud our little term of being with melancholy, is to take up with eagerness again the duties and responsibilities of life. We look to Christ, and the two sources of the melancholy of which we speak—the idea of our work perishing, the idea of a cessation of the growth of knowledge—vanish away. (1) He died, it is true, when half the natural sands of life were run; but we see that His labour has not died with Him. It has passed as a power and life into the world. (2) In Him we are ourselves immortal, and the work which we have started and left to others here we carry on ourselves in the larger world beyond. But if so, it will require added knowledge, and indeed in its progress it will necessarily store up knowledge. In Christ we know that we shall never cease to learn.
II. The second source of melancholy is retrospective thought. Christ calls us to a higher thought of life. "Let dead idols bury themselves," He says; "come away from them, and follow Me; there are other ideals in front, better and larger than the past." It is the one inspiring element of Christianity that it throws us in boundless hope upon the future, and forbids us to dwell in the poisonous shadows of the past. We are to wake up satisfied in the likeness of Christ, the ever-young humanity. Therefore, forgetting those things which are behind, let us press forward unto the mark of the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus.
III. A third cause of melancholy is the sadness of the world. What is its remedy? The true remedy is to penetrate steadily into the depths of the dreadful mystery; to comprehend what destiny, and evil, and death mean; to go down into hell, and know it, and conquer it. This is what Christ did in resolute action upon earth; and out of this meeting of sorrow and evil face to face, not by passing them by and ignoring them, sprang His conquest. Evil was overthrown, sorrow was changed into joy, death was swallowed up in victory, because He went down into hell.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, p. 243.
We may contradict this text as we please, but we do not in reality contradict it by asserting its opposite; we only complete it by asserting its other half. Both statements are half-truths. The whole truth of the thing is only found in the assertion of both. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth pleasure, and—increaseth sorrow. This is what Albert Dürer saw and engraved in his subtle print of "Melencolia." It would be especially true in the artist’s time of those who were attempting to penetrate into the secrets of the physical world. For the true methods of scientific investigation had not been found. We are freed from that grief, for we are consciously advancing, having found true methods; but the same profound pain besets us in the science of metaphysics and of theology, and for the same reason: the want of true methods.
I. The melancholy which arises from the vague answers which we can only suggest to many of our deepest questions is made greater by the clear answers which our questions receive in science. Distinctness in one sphere seems to suggest that distinctness might be reached in all if we had power. We have wings, then; but we have the misery of knowing that they are not strong enough.
II. What is the remedy for the sadness of increased uncertainty which growing knowledge has added to spiritual problems? The remedy is plainly stated in the New Testament. But let us see if we cannot approach the New Testament statement from the side of scientific practice, and so strengthen its force. The certainties of science are mixed up also with uncertainties. Towards these uncertainties what are the practice and attitude of men of science? It is that of men who possess a "faith which worketh by love." They believe in truth, and their faith works through love of truth. The result has been the swiftest and the safest success. In other spheres then, and in a different meaning, this text is true: "This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith." In every way this is a lesson which we would do well to learn. The root of our cowardice, of our hesitation, of our inactive melancholy, is our faithlessness. We are not asked at first to believe in certain doctrines or in the opinions of men. We are asked to believe in eternal right, in a Father of spirits whose will is good. This is not a faith in the commandments and doctrines of men. It is a faith in eternal love. It is not a blind credulity; it is a faith which the man has proved in adversity, and by which he has conquered.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life, p. 250.
References: Ecc 1:18.—H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2661; J. Fordyce, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 303. 1—C. Bridges, An Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 1. Ecc 2:1.—J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 14. Ecc 2:1-3.—J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 165.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv4, 9, 13 Ecc 1:4. - 1Jn 2:17.
Ecclesiastes
WHAT PASSES AND WHAT ABIDES
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Ecc 1:4. - 1Jn 2:17.
A great river may run through more than one kingdom, and bear more than one name, but its flow is unbroken. The river of time runs continuously, taking no heed of dates and calendars. The importance that we attach to the beginnings or endings of years and centuries is a sentimental illusion, but even an illusion that rouses us to a consciousness of the stealthy gliding of the river may do us good, and we need all the helps we can find to wise retrospect and sober anticipation. So we must let the season colour our thoughts, even whilst we feel that in yielding to that impulse we are imagining what has no reality in the passing from the last day of one century to the first day of another.
I do not mean to discuss in this sermon either the old century or the new in their wider social and other aspects. That has been done abundantly. We shall best do our parts in making the days, and the years, and the century what they should be, if we let the truths that come from these combined texts sink into and influence our individual lives. I have put them together, because they are so strikingly antithetical, both true, and yet looking at the same facts from opposite points of view, But the antithesis is not really so complete as it sounds at first hearing, because what the Preacher means by ‘the earth’ that ‘abideth for ever’ is not quite the same as what the Apostle means by the ‘world’ that ‘passes’ and the ‘generations’ that come and go are not exactly the same as the men that ‘abide for ever.’ But still the antithesis is real and impressive. The bitter melancholy of the Preacher saw but the surface; the joyous faith of the Apostle went a great deal deeper, and putting the two sets of thoughts and ways of looking at man and his dwelling-place together, we get lessons that may well shape our individual lives.
So let me ask you to look, in the first place, at-
I. The sad and superficial teaching of the Preacher.
Now in reading this Book of Ecclesiastes-which I am afraid a great many people do not read at all-we have always to remember that the wild things and the bitter things which the Preacher is saying so abundantly through its course do not represent his ultimate convictions, but thoughts that he took up in his progress from error to truth. His first word is: ‘All is vanity!’ That conviction had been set vibrating in his heart, as it is set vibrating in the heart of every man who does as he did, viz., seeks for solid good away from God. That is his starting-point. It is not true. All is not vanity, except to some blase cynic, made cynical by the failure of his voluptuousness, and to whom ‘all things here are out of joint,’ and everything looks yellow because his own biliary system is out of order. That is the beginning of the book, and there are hosts of other things in the course of it as one-sided, as cynically bitter, and therefore superficial. But the end of it is: ‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.’ In his journey from the one point to the other my text is the first step, ‘One generation goeth, and another cometh: the earth abideth for ever.’
He looks out upon humanity, and sees that in one aspect the world is full of births, and in another full of deaths. Coffins and cradles seem the main furniture, and he hears the tramp, tramp, tramp of the generations passing over a soil honeycombed with tombs, and therefore ringing hollow to their tread. All depends on the point of view. The strange history of humanity is like a piece of shot silk; hold it at one angle, and you see dark purple, hold at another, and you see bright golden tints. Look from one point of view, and it seems a long history of vanishing generations. Look to the rear of the procession, and it seems a buoyant spectacle of eager, young faces pressing forwards on the march, and of strong feet treading the new road. But yet the total effect of that endless procession is to impress on the observer the transiency of humanity. And that wholesome thought is made more poignant still by the comparison which the writer here draws between the fleeting generations and the abiding earth. Man is the lord of earth, and can mould it to his purpose, but it remains and he passes. He is but a lodger in an old house that has had generations of tenants, each of whom has said for a while, ‘It is mine’; and they all have drifted away, and the house stands. The Alps, over which Hannibal stormed, over which the Goths poured down on the fertile plains of Lombardy, through whose passes mediaeval emperors led their forces, over whose summits Napoleon brought his men, through whose bowels this generation has burrowed its tunnels, stand the same, and smile the same amid their snows, at the transient creatures that have crawled across them. The primrose on the rock blooms in the same place year after year, and nature and it are faithful to their covenant, but the poet’s eyes that fell upon them are sealed with dust. Generations have gone, the transient flower remains. ‘One generation cometh and another goeth,’ and the tragedy is made more tragical because the stage stands unaltered, and ‘the earth abides for ever.’ That is what sense has to say-’the foolish senses’-and that is all that sense has to say. Is it all that can be said? If it is, then the Preacher’s bitter conclusion is true, and ‘all is vanity and chasing after wind.’
He immediately proceeds to draw from this undeniable, but, as I maintain, partial fact, the broad conclusion which cannot be rebutted, if you accept what he has said in my text as being the sufficient and complete account of man and his dwelling-place. If, says he, it is true that one generation comes and another goes, and the earth abides for ever, and if that is all that has to be said, then all things are full of labour. There is immense activity, and there is no progress; it is all rotary motion round and round and round, and the same objects reappear duly and punctually as the wheel revolves, and life is futile. Yes; so it is unless there is something more to be said, and the life that is thus futile is also, as it seems to me, inexplicable if you believe in God at all. If man, being what he is, is wholly subject to that law of mutation and decay, then not only is he made ‘a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death,’ but he is also inferior to that persistent, old mother-earth from whose bosom he has come. If all that you have to say of him is, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,’ then life is futile, and God is not vindicated for having produced it.
And there is another consequence that follows, if this is all that we have got to say. If the cynical wisdom of Ecclesiastes is the ultimate word, then I do not assert that morality is destroyed, because right and wrong are not dependent either upon the belief in a God, or on the belief in immortality. But I do say that to declare that the fleeting, transient life of earth is all does strike a staggering blow at all noble ethics and paralyses a great deal of the highest forms of human activity, and that, as has historically been the case, so on the large scale, and, speaking generally, it will be the case, that the man whose creed is only ‘To-morrow we die’ will very speedily draw the conclusion, ‘Let us eat and drink,’ and sensuous delights and the lower side of his nature will become dominant.
So, then, the Preacher had not got at the bottom of all things, either in his initial conviction that all was vanity, or in that which he laid down as the first step towards establishing that, that man passes and the earth abides. There is more to be said; the sad, superficial teaching of the Preacher needs to be supplemented.
Now turn for a moment to what does supplement it.
II. The joyous and profounder teaching of the Apostle.
The cynic never sees the depths; that is reserved for the mystical eye of the lover. So John says: ‘No, no; that is not all. Here is the true state of affairs: “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”‘ The doctrine of the passing generations and the abiding earth is fronted squarely in my second text by the not contradictory, but complementary doctrine of the passing world and the abiding men. I do not suppose that John had this verse of Ecclesiastes in his mind, for the word ‘abide’ is one of his favourite expressions, and is always cropping up. But even though he had not, we find in his utterance the necessary correction to the first text. As I have said, and now need not do more than repeat in a sentence, the antithesis is not so complete as it seems. John’s ‘world’ is not the Preacher’s ‘earth,’ but he means thereby, as we all know, the aggregate of created things, including men, considered apart from God, and in so far as it includes voluntary agents set in opposition to God and the will of God. He means the earth rent away from God, and turned to be what it was not meant to be, a minister of evil, and he means men, in so far as they have parted themselves from God and make up an alien, if not a positively antagonistic company.
Perhaps he was referring, in the words of our text, to the break-up of the existing order of things which he discerned as impending and already begun to take effect in consequence of the coming of Jesus Christ, the shining of the true Light. For you may remember that in a previous part of the epistle he uses precisely the same expression, with a significant variation. Here, in our text, he says, ‘The world passeth away’; there he says, ‘The darkness has passed and the true light now shineth.’ He sees a process installed and going on, in which the whole solid-seeming fabric of a godless society is being dissolved and melted away. And says he, in the midst of all this change there is one who stands unchanged, the man that does God’s will.
But just for a moment we may take the lower point of view, and see here a flat contradiction of the Preacher. He said, ‘Men go, and the world abides.’ ‘No,’ says John; ‘your own psalmists might have taught you better: “As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed.”‘ The world, the earth, which seems so solid and permanent, is all the while in perpetual flux, as our later science has taught us, in a sense of which neither Preacher nor Apostle could dream. For just as from the beginning forces were at work which out of the fire-mist shaped sun and planets, so the same forces, continuing in operation, are tending towards the end of the system which they began; and a contracting sun and a diminished light and a lowered temperature and the narrower orbits in which the planets shall revolve, prophesy that ‘the elements shall melt with fervent heat,’ and that all things which have been made must one day cease to be. Nature is the true Penelope’s web, ever being woven and ever being unravelled, and in the most purely physical and scientific sense the world is passing away. But then, because you and I belong, in a segment of our being, to that which thus is passing away, we come under the same laws, and all that has been born must die. So the generations come, and in their very coming bear the prophecy of their going. But, on the other hand, there is an inner nucleus of our being, of which the material is but the transient envelope and periphery, which holds nought of the material, but of the spiritual, and that ‘abides for ever.’
But let us lift the thought rather into the region of the true antithesis which John was contemplating, which is not so much the crumbling away of the material, and the endurance of the spiritual, as the essential transiency of everything that is antagonism to the will of God, and the essential eternity of everything which is in conformity with that will. And so, says he, ‘The world is passing, and the lust thereof.’ The desires that grasp it perish with it, or perhaps, more truly still, the object of the desire perishes, and with it the possibility of their gratification ceases, but the desire itself remains. But what of the man whose life has been devoted to the things seen and temporal, when he finds himself in a condition of being where none of these have accompanied him? Nothing to slake his lusts, if he be a sensualist. No money-bags, ledgers, or cheque-books if he be a plutocrat or a capitalist or a miser. No books or dictionaries if he be a mere student. Nothing of his vocations if he lived for ‘the world.’ But yet the appetite is abiding. Will that not be a thirst that cannot be slaked?
‘The world is passing and the lust thereof,’ and all that is antagonistic to God, or separated from Him, is essentially as ‘a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanishes away,’ whereas the man who does the will of God abideth for ever, in that he is steadfast in the midst of change.
‘His hand the good man fastens on the skies,
And lets earth roll, nor heeds its idle whirl.’
He shall ‘abide for ever,’ in the sense that his work is perpetual. In one very deep and solemn sense, nothing human ever dies, but in another all that is not running in the same direction as, and borne along by the impulse of, the will of God, is destined to be neutralised and brought to nothing at last. There may be a row of figures as long as to reach from here to the fixed stars, but if there is not in front of them the significant digit, which comes from obedience to the will of God, all is but a string of ciphers, and their net result is nothing. And he ‘abideth for ever,’ in the most blessed and profound sense, in that through his faith, which has kindled his love, and his love which has set in motion his practical obedience, he becomes participant of the very eternity of the living God. ‘This is eternal life,’ not merely to know, but ‘to do the will’ of our Father. Nothing else will last, and nothing else will prosper, any more than a bit of driftwood can stem Niagara. Unite yourself with the will of God, and you abide.
And now let me, as briefly as I can, throw together-
III. The plain, practical lessons that come from both these texts.
May I say, without seeming to be morbid or unpractical, one lesson is that we should cultivate a sense of the transiency of this outward life? One of our old authors says somewhere, that it is wholesome to smell at a piece of turf from a churchyard. I know that much harm has been done by representing Christianity as mainly a scheme which is to secure man a peaceful death, and that many morbid forms of piety have given far too large a place to the contemplation of skulls and cross-bones. But for all that, the remembrance of death present in our lives will often lay a cool hand upon a throbbing brow; and, like a bit of ice used by a skilful physician, will bring down the temperature, and stay the too tumultuous beating of the heart. ‘So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.’ It will minister energy, and lead us to say, like our Lord, ‘We must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh.’
Let me say again-a very plain, practical lesson is to dig deep down for our foundations below the rubbish that has accumulated. If a man wishes to build a house in Rome or in Jerusalem he has to go fifty or sixty feet down, through potsherds and broken tiles and triturated marbles, and the dust of ancient palaces and temples. We have to drive a shaft clear down through all the superficial strata, and to lay the first stones on the Rock of Ages. Do not build on that which quivers and shakes beneath you. Do not try to make your life’s path across the weeds, or as they call it in Egypt, the ‘sudd,’ that floats on the surface of the Nile, compacted for many a mile, and yet only a film on the surface of the river, to be swept away some day. Build on God.
And the last lesson is, let us see to it that our wills are in harmony with His, and the work of our hands His work. We can do that will in all the secularities of our daily life. The difference between the work that shrivels up and disappears and the work that abides is not so much in its external character, or in the materials on which it is expended, as in the motive from which it comes. So that, if I might so say, if two women are sitting at the same millstone face to face, and turning round the same handle, one of them for one half the circumference, and the other for the other, and grinding out the same corn, the one’s work may be ‘gold, silver, precious stones,’ which shall abide the trying fire; and the other’s may be ‘wood, hay, stubble,’ which shall be burnt up. ‘He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.’
So let us set ourselves, dear friends! to our several tasks for this coming year. Never mind about the century, it will take care of itself. Do your little work in your little corner, and be sure of this, that amidst changes you will stand unchanged, amidst tumults you may stand calm, in death you will be entering on a fuller life, and that what to others is the end will be to you the beginning. ‘If any man’s work abide, he shall receive a reward,’ and he himself shall abide with the abiding God.
The bitter cynic said half the truth when he said, ‘One generation goeth, and another cometh; but the earth abides.’ The mystic Apostle saw the truth steadily, and saw it whole when he said, ‘Lo! the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 All is Vanity
All is Vanity
1-11. The writer describes himself. He declares that all things are transitory and without result, whether they be the works or the life of man, or the natural forces of heat, air, and water. Language cannot do justice to nature's wearisome sameness. The oblivion which overtakes all.
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1. Preacher] see Intro. §§ 1, 2.
2. Vanity of vanities] lit.'breath of breaths'; the form of expression being a Hebrew way of indicating the superlative degree. Of all fleeting things existence is the most fleeting. The same figure is used in Psa_62:9; Psa_144:4 of the brevity of man's life. The word vanity, occurring thirty-eight times, strikes the keynote of the book. All things living and otherwise bear the stamp of the transitory.
3. What profit] Man toils; but even granting that he gains some tangible result, he cannot retain.
4. The earth abideth] Man is so far from being lord of the earth, that it survives ever fresh generations of its inhabitants, and so by contrast brings out more clearly the brevity of their existence.
5. Hasteth to his place] The sun, on the supposition of his apparent motion across the heavens from E. to W. by day, returns eastward beneath the earth by night.
6. The wind, etc.] We may render more closely thus: 'Going toward the south, and circling toward the north; circling, circling goeth the wind, and on its circlings returneth the wind.' The sameness involved in the constant renewal of its changes of direction is brought out by the wording. The 'circling, circling,' the changing, at once endless and monotonous, marks here too an emptiness of aim.
7. Unto the place] The writer supposes that the salt water percolates by underground fissures, getting rid of its salt on the way, and so through hidden channels returns to the sources whence it had set out.
8. All things are full of labour] RM 'all words are' too 'feeble' to set forth the case, so vast is the subject.
9. The thing] History has been repeating itself from all time, and will do so evermore.
10, 11. Is there] He calls on any one who may doubt his word to point to something which is really new. The only reason that events strike us as new is because that which has been is swept into oblivion. Previous generations have no existence for us, and we in like manner shall have no existence for those who come after us.
12-18. The writer, availing himself of his status, recounts how he had tested the various aspects of life in their aims and results, but all to no profit. Everything is perverse or defective. Great as were his acquirements, the result is nil, nay, worse than nothing.
12. Was king] see Intro. § 2.
13. My heart] We should say my 'mind,' but the heart was considered by the Jews to be the seat of the intellectual powers as well as of the emotions. All things] the different ways that men work, and their hopes and fears in so doing; their circumstances, pains, pleasures, feelings, aims. Perhaps, he says to himself, men of various trades, modes of life, surroundings, will enlighten me, or help me to bear my burden. This sore travail, etc.] Men who are endowed with any activity of mind cannot but be interested in all human endeavour; and their researches and enquiries, unsatisfying though they be, are a part of God's order.
14. Vexation of spirit] RV 'striving after wind': cp. Hos_12:1. The satisfaction that might have been expected from these studies is not to be attained. Air itself is not more elusive to the grasp.
15. Crooked] for the phrase here cp. Isa_40:4. The world is disordered, and there is no cure discoverable.
Numbered] The required numbers are lacking, which were needed to make up the sum of human action, and no amount of skill in arithmetic can supply the deficiency.
16. Great estate] RV 'Lo, I have gotten me great wisdom above all,' etc. (omitting 'am come to great estate and'). He has had exceptional advantages in gaining wisdom, and has made the most of his opportunities. Yet even so he has failed. What hope, then, can there be that others will solve the problem that remains dark to him? All they] see Intro. § 2. Wisdom and knowledge] knowledge, the possession of facts; wisdom, skill in employing them.
17. And folly] He tries whether the study of folly may perchance give him some grasp of its opposite, viz. wisdom. But this too only serves to confirm him in his general conclusion. Vexation of spirit] see on Ecc_1:14.
18. Much grief] Sir Isaac Newton spoke of himself as a child picking up a few pebbles on the shore of the wide sea of knowledge. So the more the veil is lifted, the wider is seen to be the extent of that which is still unknown. Bodily and mental exhaustion, sleepless and futile endeavour—this is the picture which concludes the writer's sketch of his quest after the highest good in the shape of wisdom.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v2 "Vanity," in Ecclesiastes, and usually in Scripture, means, not…
Vanity
"Vanity," in Ecclesiastes, and usually in Scripture, means, not foolish pride, but the emptiness in final result of all life apart from God. It is to be born, to toil, to suffer, to experience some transitory joy, which is as nothing in view of eternity, to leave it all, and to die. See Rom 8:20-22.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Analysis and Annotations
Analysis and Annotations
PART I. CHAPTERS 1-6
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1. The Prologue and the Search Begun
CHAPTER 1
1. The introduction and prologue (Ecc 1:1-11)
2. The seeker; his method and the results (Ecc 1:12-18)
Ecc 1:1-11. In the general introduction we have already referred to the opening verses as giving the information who the author is and what is the object of his treatise. So sure is the critical school that Solomon is not the king mentioned that one says “the fact that Solomon is not the author, but is introduced in a literary figure, has become such an axiom of the present day interpretation of the book, that no extended argument to prove it is necessary.” Still another makes the following remarks as to the date of the book: “I shall presume that we have in this book, a late, perhaps the very latest, portion of the Old Testament canon; and that the book was written, not in the palmy days of the empire of Solomon, but at a time when the Jewish people, once so full of aspirations to universal empire, always so intolerant of foreign supremacy, was lying beneath the yoke of Persian or Syrian or Egyptian kings; when the Holy Land had become a province, ruled by some Eastern satrap, and suffering from the rapacity and corruption inherent at all times in such government” (Dean Bradley). Such presumptions spring from ignorance about the message of the book. We shall find in the text the above assertions refuted and a confirmation likewise of the Solomonic authorship.
“Before following the Preacher in his great quest it should be noted that he is to be viewed as a man who himself belongs under the sun. Whether the word Koheleth is rendered “preacher,” “debater,” or “assembler,” or “one of an Assembly,” the whole tenor of the teaching proves it is wisdom from under the sun, natural wisdom, that is speaking. The wisest of men undertakes to observe and experiment with life under the sun, in order to find out for all men the outcome of all his searchings, and then rehearses all to an assembly of his fellows. He is not supposed to know any divinely-revealed wisdom, or to have heard of a righteousness of faith, or of divine mercy, or of forgiveness of sins. He is to make answer as a natural man to whom is given the resources and helps common to natural men, only he is wiser and richer than they, and so must bring the final answer for all. And also he is a Hebrew and knows of one living and true God. When he says “thou,” in advice or warning, it is not so much to some disciple or “son” he is speaking as to himself, or he is then assuming a high ground, far above “the maddening crowd,” but it is soon apparent how, in these most exalted frames of the pious and philosophic mind, he is still only a natural man, for he is found, soon after, in the depth of despair uttering his disgust and hate of life and exclaiming: “The whole is vapor and a chasing of the wind.” That “thou” is, after all a sign that he is talking to himself, telling what he and all men under the sun ought to do, but utterly fail to do.
Not only does he pronounce the verdict of “vanity” for all, but he resorts to the same passing mirthful enjoyment he commends to all; but he would do it all before God. He is indeed wiser and more serious than other men, only to become more perplexed and sorrowful than they.
On him hangs more heavily than on other men
... the burden of the mystery
... the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world.
He, if any, can say, “I know there is nothing better for them.” He is king and can lay the whole world under contribution to furnish the means for answer. “What can the man do who cometh after the king?”
He repeatedly says, “I have seen all the works that are done,” all the “oppressions”, and “all the labor that I have labored at.” And so he is to speak for the world, for the race, for man, for high, for low, wise and foolish, rich and poor, in hut and hall, living and dying. And he speaks as before God. He, of all men, feels a strange fear, seeing that somehow man’s imperfect vain life under the sun is mysteriously related to and controlled by the unalterable purpose and work of God. W.J. Erdman, Ecclesiastes.)
The first note as to vanity is found in Ecc 1:4-11. There is a law of repetition, or circle-movement. It works in the sphere of nature as well as in human life. Generation follows generation; the sun has his circle; the winds too have their currents in which they blow from north to south and south to north; the waters also are subject to the same law. History repeats itself, for the thing that has been, is that which shall be and that which is done is that which shall be done. There is then, no new thing under the sun; nothing is new, all is repetition, a monotonous unchangeableness. Man is in the midst of it; he too is subject to this law. Everything then under the sun is restless, unstable (except the earth itself, which abideth forever: Ecc 1:4) hollow and empty, therefore all is vanity. Here is a picture of unrest, weariness, if not melancholy and despair.
Ecc 1:12-18. On the critical objection that Solomon is meant in Ecc 1:12 see the general introduction. The great king, filled with wisdom and learning, rich and prosperous as none ever was before him in Jerusalem, nor after him, gives his heart to search out everything that is done under heaven. When he says: “I communed with mine own heart,” he states the method of his search. He does it by meditation and not through revelation. He searches not in the light which comes from above, but that which comes from nature and by observation. He tells us a little more of himself. “Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem; yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” Is this language not sufficient to establish beyond the shadow of the doubt that Solomon speaks? And if not Solomon, who was it who dared to write these words? And what are the given results by the great and wise king of Jerusalem? The result is twofold. “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit”--the pursuit of the wind, that is chasing air-bubbles. And another conclusion: “For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecc 1:18). What a verdict from such a man as Solomon was. He had all things man can enjoy; all pleasures and honors; great possessions, chariots, horses, palaces and a large estate and he exclaims “nothing but travail!” “Nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit!” It all leaves me empty; it does not satisfy.
But he had given himself to wisdom. He possessed unusual wisdom. The king was what we would term today a great scientist. He excelled in wisdom all the children of the East country. Proverbial in his days was “the wisdom of Egypt”; yet his wisdom was greater. His fame was in all nations round about. Philosophy and poetry were his great achievements. “And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes” 1 Kings 4:299, etc.). He was a great botanist, an ornithologist and zoologist. He traced God’s wonders in nature, that which the natural man can so easily do. But what about all this wisdom? Did it satisfy his soul? We listen to his answer: “I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.” The more knowledge the more sorrow. Alas! how trite it all is!
But is there something else which satisfies? Is there a higher wisdom and knowledge? There is, but in the book of the natural man it is unrevealed. That which satisfies, which is not vanity and vexation of spirit, is that which is above the sun, and not under it. From above the sun He came, who is the wisdom of God, the son of God. He has come and gone, but brought to the poor thirsting and hungry heart of man the true knowledge. He who died for our sins and is now back above the sun, is He “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” Col 2:1-23. That which alone can satisfy is Christ.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 12 General Introduction
General Introduction
v. 1. The words of the Preacher, in the sense of one who, from the rich stock of his knowledge, gives wise and profitable instruction, the reference being to Solomon, the son of David, king in Jerusalem, the capital of the entire kingdom of Israel and Judah at that time. The fact that Solomon does not mention his given name is easily accounted for by the fact that the entire book breathes the spirit of repentance, together with admonitions and warnings, such as are to be expected from an aged and experienced man rather than from a king.
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v. 2. Vanity of vanities, the most utter vanity, saith the Preacher, thereby announcing the theme of his entire book, vanity of vanities; all is vanity, that is, all earthly nature and everything pertaining to temporal things has been perverted, in consequence of sin, so that it no longer serves the original purpose of God, but the vain objects of sin.
v. 3. What profit, what lasting value, what enduring advantage, hath a man of all his labor, the toil and exertion with which he fatigues himself, which he taketh under the sun? The author does not say that man’s labor is useless, but that, in itself, it has no enduring, eternal value. While the sun runs his course with unfailing regularity, the doings of men seem altogether changeable and variable. The work of their hands is good, if done in the Lord’s service, but the misery and the hardships connected with it set the imprint of vanity upon their entire life.
v. 4. One generation passeth away, sinking down into the dust of death, and another generation cometh, replacing those who are laid in the grave; there is a continual going and coming; but the earth abideth forever, it stands the same, as long as the Lord so decrees, in the midst of the turmoil of changing centuries, calmly remaining while generations come and go.
v. 5. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, steadily pursuing his course, and hasteth to his place where he arose, to come up again in the east, governing time as the Lord ordered, Gen 1:16.
v. 6. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north, following certain fixed laws of the universe; it whirleth about continually, in an ever-returning change, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits, in courses whose general regularity has been learned even by human observers.
v. 7. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full, it does not overflow on account of the immense masses of water which it constantly receives; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again, in a constant evaporation and condensation, the cycle of ocean, clouds and fog, rain and dew, springs, creeks, and rivers continuing without intermission.
v. 8. All things are full of labor, full of trouble, weariness, fatigue on account of the curse following sin, Gen 3:19; man cannot utter it, the endlessness and burden of human troubles cannot be told by human tongue, it is beyond man’s ability to express it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing, the senses become wearied in trying to master the endless succession of impressions and phenomena which press upon them from all sides in the course of this sinful existence.
v. 9. The thing that hath been, that which has happened time and again in the past, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done, occurring over and over again in human experience; and there is no new thing under the sun, no matter how men may change their environment and place the newest achievements of science and invention into their service, the misery and the toil of life is ever the same, and the abuse of God’s gifts and the transgression and the dissatisfaction of man’s heart are ever the same.
v. 10. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? Has human nature and the misery of human life changed since the fall of man? It hath been already of old time, which was before us, always, within the memory of man.
v. 11. There is no remembrance of former things, men forget the lessons which the insufficient records of the past teach them; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after, for the impressive warnings of even the greatest cataclysms in the history of the world have gone unheeded. Cf Mat 24:37-39.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 7, 9, 12, 16 Like a vapor of mist, like a breeze in…
Like a vapor of mist, like a breeze in the wind, everything vanishes
This speaks of how everything in life vanishes and has no lasting value as if everything were like a disappearing vapor or breeze. AT: "Like a vapor of mist vanishes and like a breeze in the wind disappears, everything vanishes and has no lasting value" (See: Simile)
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What profit does mankind gain ... under the sun?
The author uses this rhetorical question to emphasize that man's work is pointless and has no lasting benefit. This question can be written as a statement. AT: "Mankind gains no profit ... under the sun." (See: Rhetorical Question)
under the sun
This refers to things that are done on earth. AT: "on the earth" (See: Idiom)
translationWords
teacher
descend
David
king
Jerusalem
profit
labor
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14 1:1 Ecclesiastes never uses the Teacher’s (Hebrew Qoheleth) name,…
1:1 Ecclesiastes never uses the Teacher’s (Hebrew Qoheleth) name, but King David’s son probably refers to Solomon (see also 1:12, 16; 2:4-9).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.