The title “Ecclesiastes” comes from a Greek word meaning a person is a preacher. Although no one is for certain who wrote the book we suggest that King Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes. The book of Ecclesiastes is different in scripture and there is no other book like it. It is the only book in the Bible that examines a human point of view rather than a divine point of view. This book bring man a word from God. It differs in many ways, it does not rely on the covenant, the status of Israel, prophecy, history, or the temple. Its focus is on man the creature and his life on earth. This book makes human life seem depressing.
The author got the ball rolling early in the book with “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2). We sometimes translate vanity to meaningless, emptiness, or useless. The author is talking about the “emptiness” of life as he saw it. Saying that everything is meaningless sounds depressing, but this is the author’s point of view.“I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.” (1:14) Nothing made sense to him because he had already tried pleasure, work, and wisdom to try to repair his sense of feeling lost in the world.
The author then states that there is nothing new under the sun, and for the most part is painfully true. Yet even now several hundred years later and nothing has changed in the world or in the ideas of men. Life is like nature by the fact that it’s just a never ending monotonous cycle without much purpose.
“The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.”(1:6-7)
So does pleasure make life better for the author. I mean even today we say “Enjoy yourself! Live it up!, YOLO!” At some point we as humans enjoy or find purpose by seeking pleasures, but that’s also meaningless according to the author. “I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.” Pleasure will make life more enjoyable but it too will diminish.
The author then turns to wealth and wisdom for a sense of purpose. This too doesn’t satisfy him. We spend so much time trying to gain wisdom that we aren’t wise until our final years. We spend hours working to accumulate wealth and for the most part never get the opportunity to enjoy the wealth before we die. So these conclusions made the author hate his life. “So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind.” (2:17)
Then in chapter 3 he views life from what we might call the existential viewpoint. “A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal;a time to break down, and a time to build up.” Some people call this viewpoint fatalism, because every living thing ends with death.
So If we just look and our existence such as the author does, setting beliefs aside, does human life on earth or “under the sun” have a purpose?
May, Peter. “The Book of Ecclesiastes Absurdity Pointing to Meaning.” Bethinking.org, 26 Feb. 2011, www.bethinking.org/is-there-meaning-to-life/the-book-of-ecclesiastes-absurdity-pointing-to-meaning
Missler, Chuck. “Is Life Really Worth Living?: The Book of Ecclesiastes: – Chuck Missler.” Koinonia House, 1 Jan. 2003, www.khouse.org/articles/2003/447/
Old Testament 