Day 5

"The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: ''Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.'" Ecclesiastes 1:1-2 

That’s a depressing statement for you! In fact, it introduces a depressing book. In its few chapters, the writer uses the word, ‘meaningless’ thirty-five times to describe his life, and uses the phrase ‘under the sun’, thirty-two times to describe the dimensions in which he is looking for meaning, which all becomes (nine times) ‘a chasing after the wind’. You cannot catch meaning, nor bottle it, nor bring it home. This is the default position of a person living with no larger perspective than life ‘under the sun’.

Surprisingly, this book is one of three books attributed to Solomon, the son and successor to King David. As a young man, discovering the joys of love with his new bride, he wrote the Song of Solomon. As a middle-aged man, he had written over 3,000 proverbs, and compiled some of them with others he had collected into the book of Proverbs. In his old age, he wrote Ecclesiastes, a cynical, retrospective view of life without God. That is the surprising part, but during his young days he had become seduced by material things, He lists many of them from, building great projects, planting vineyards, owning more herds and flocks than anyone, masses of silver and gold, owning male and female slaves, having musicians, the best wine, women and song, acquiring a hareem of a thousand women. “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure… Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun”(Ecclesiastes 2.10-11). He speculates about the difference between a dog and a human dying, for, “Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?" (Ecclesiastes 3.21).

This is life from the perspective ‘under the sun’, and as much as we can see, hear, touch, taste, feel and think with confidence within that framework. After the eleven chapters he comes to his conclusion. ‘Remember your Creator in the days of your youth’ and, “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man’ (Ecclesiastes 12.1 and 13).

He rediscovers the wisdom which he had once written about, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9.10). Material things do not feed the soul!