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2Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
4A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
5The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
6The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
7All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
8All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
9What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
10Is there a thing of which it is said,
"See, this is new"?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
11There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.
Reading this very lyrical passage is not an easy task. Not because the language is too difficult, or because the author's point is obscure. Instead, it is because his message is so very blunt and has a way of staring into our faces. In order to accept it you must block out all evidence to the contrary. This poem of circularity describes the world as a drab and tiresome place devoid of joy or even relief from the monotonous coming and going of all things, humans included. When held up against the grand scheme of a cosmic round about and coming and going of people, sun, wind, and water, any idea that would make life worthwhile living and labor something worth the effort is subsumed under the gloomy assessment of v.2: "It's all vanity, it's absurd!" Viewed from Qoheleth's balcony, human existence resembles ants going from here to there and back again before they get crushed under the wheel of history and vanish into oblivion. The cycles of inevitability, so characteristic for our poem, show mankind caught up in a prison of universal futility, and we cannot escape, for there is no innovation, no variation, only a seemingly endless round about.
Why are the cycles of nature so bad? Was the earth not designed to revolve around its axis, so that the sun appears to rise and set in regular intervals? Are jet stream and meteorological patterns not meant to function in largely predictable fashion? Why should we think of the laws of Newtonian physics as something absurd? Did not God make all these things from the dawn of creation, when he found them to be "very good" (Gen. 1:31)? How does Qoheleth come to enlist these aspects of creation as though there was something wrong with them?
The answer is, of course, that the poem assumes the presence of the curse on sin. The curse on account of human sin (Gen. 3:15ff.) has turned circularity or even regularity and predictability in creation (as part of the original design) into something absurd. Somehow sin has changed the very nature of things, so that the repetitive revolutions of the sun (as it appears) now take on a wearisome, frustrating nuance.
As for human life and work, says the author, our lives do not know a sense of satisfaction or accomplishment. Finish a work, and before you know it, you have to do it over again (think only of dishwashing…). There is no end to human toil, it is marked by frustration, and it lacks satisfaction that can stand the test of time. Hence, "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing" (1:8). Even if one is considered successful among his peers, death makes sure the sentence will hold up.
This is a rather unpopular outlook on life. But if it is true, and it is, if we are without God in the world, then who will deliver us from this prison of inevitability? Christ has, and he will. His resurrection from the dead broke the cycles of frustration, and he will resurrect his people when the new heaven and the new earth appear. And do not forget: "If anyone is in Christ, he is (already) a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17). We take account of the absurdity of life and work and have no illusions about it. But we have neither right nor reason to think of ourselves as prisoners, if the words of the gospel are true. I am not saying we will never be frustrated and cannot be touched by the foul breath of futility. Rather, wherever it raises its ugly head, challenge it! "For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, do not be subjected again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal. 5:1).
The author of these devotionals, the Rev. Martin Emmrich, is an ordained OPC minister (Westminster OPC, Corvallis, Oregon) as well as the author of Pneumatological Concepts in the Epistle to the Hebrews, a book on the teaching of Hebrews on the Holy Spirit. We are happy to make these devotionals on Ecclesiastes and other passages of Scripture available to you.
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