← Contents Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:26 ←→

Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:26

1I, THE TEACHER, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! 14I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

15What is twisted cannot be straightened;

what is lacking cannot be counted.

16I thought to myself, “Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

18For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;

the more knowledge, the more grief.

2:1I thought in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. 2“Laughter,” I said, “is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish?” 3I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.

4I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. 5I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. 6I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. 7I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. 8I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired men and women singers, and a harem as well—the delights of the heart of man. 9I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me.

10I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;

I refused my heart no pleasure.

My heart took delight in all my work,

and this was the reward for all my labor.

11Yet 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.

12Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom,

and also madness and folly.

What more can the king’s successor do

than what has already been done?

13I saw that wisdom is better than folly,

just as light is better than darkness.

14The wise man has eyes in his head,

while the fool walks in the darkness;

but I came to realize

that the same fate overtakes them both.

15Then I thought in my heart,

“The fate of the fool will overtake me also.

What then do I gain by being wise?”

I said in my heart,

“This too is meaningless.”

16For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered;

in days to come both will be forgotten.

Like the fool, the wise man too must die!

17So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 18I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. 19And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. 20So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. 21For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. 22What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? 23All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.

24A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Original Meaning

Joy, Work, and Profit (2:1–11)

THE KING HAS found wisdom limited in what it can achieve as he strives for profit from his labor. It has only succeeded in convincing him of the general pointlessness of human activity. Thus, he turns now to “pleasure,” testing himself (addressed in the second person as “you”) to discover whether a determined effort at enjoyment will somehow bring him a return on his investment. The Hebrew word is śimḥa (2:1), which in other contexts means “joy, gladness, gaiety”; indeed in 2:26; 5:20; 8:15; and 9:7 it is described as a gift of God like wisdom and knowledge. The translation “pleasure” is thus an unhelpful one, if it carries for the reader the connotation of things forbidden or questionable.

Gladness of heart, joy, pleasure—it is not that these things are not good in themselves in Ecclesiastes. Yet Qohelet has discovered that the pursuit of them with the hope of gain is just as pointless as the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge for that purpose. The concept śimḥa does not “accomplish” or achieve anything (v. 2). Indeed, it is as readily associated with fools as with the wise (cf. 7:4). The same is true of “laughter” (2:2), which is all too often uttered by those who have no profound grasp of reality (cf. 7:3–6).

The drinking of wine, likewise, is not of itself a necessarily foolish action (it is explicitly commended in 9:7), but it is not liable to “accomplish” anything. Qohelet’s quest here is to use wine with a view to “embracing folly”—albeit consciously and intentionally, his wisdom-imbued mind still in control—until he is able to sift out what is “good” and to be embraced by mortals during their brief lives (v. 3; cf. also v. 1). The wine is a means to that general end, rather than a stimulus, more narrowly, to cheerfulness; the NIV’s translation “cheering myself” is in fact an interpretative guess at the meaning of Hebrew mšk, which normally means “to draw, drag, lead.”

The double path that Qohelet walks is better brought out by the following partial translation of 2:1, 3: “I said in my mind, ‘Come, let me test you with joy and see what is good.’ . . . I searched with my mind to lead along [mšk] my body with wine—I myself shepherding my mind with wisdom—and to grasp folly until I saw what was good. . . .” He treads one path with his body while taking another with his mind, hoping in his intoxicated state to experience the full depths of “folly” and to arrive at discernment.

The overall intention of the experiment and the means by which it was conducted having been described, its detail is now laid bare. The “king” set out to transform his environment and thereby to facilitate his enjoyment of life. He “undertook great projects” (lit., “made great his works”) in the line with his great wisdom of 1:16, but perhaps also with the connotation of godlike behavior (cf., e.g., the use of this verb gdl in the Hiphil positively of God in 1 Sam. 12:24; Ps. 126:2–3, and negatively of those who exalt themselves against God in Jer. 48:26, 42; Ezek. 35:13).

He put superhuman effort into what he did (Heb. maʿ aśeh, “works,” is used in Ecclesiastes 1:14; 2:17, of all the “things” that are done under the sun). Houses, vineyards, gardens, and parks are all mentioned, the last of these words (Heb. pardes) deriving from the Persian word pairi-daeza, “an enclosure,” from which we also ultimately derive our word “paradise.” Paradise is indeed evoked by the reference to the “trees” that fill these gardens and parks, watered by their reservoirs (cf. Gen. 2:6–10)—a world that is then “populated” (cf. Gen. 2:15–25) by the king’s own people: male and female slaves and the children born to them (Eccl. 2:7).

The enormous wealth of the king is portrayed (2:7–8) in terms of unparalleled numbers of herds and flocks, hoards of treasure that have been gathered in part from “kings and provinces” who have either been plundered or have brought tribute, and unspecified numbers of human beings devoted to the task of pleasing him, whether in song or in bed (if the last few words of v. 8, taʿ anugot bene haʾadam šidda wešiddot, are indeed a reference to concubines). The first word, from the Hebrew root ʿng, is often used simply of “delighting” in someone or something, whether it is God (e.g., Job 22:26; 27:10; Ps. 37:4; Isa. 58:14), material blessing (Ps. 37:11; Isa. 55:2), or maternal breasts (Isa. 66:11). Sometimes it refers to something or someone that is delightful or indeed tender, delicate, or soft, and particularly to a woman (Deut. 28:54, 56; Isa 47:1). The noun taʿ anug (NIV “delights”) also appears in Proverbs 19:10 of a fool living the lifestyle of the nobility, in Song of Songs 7:6 of the unspecified “delights” of a woman, and in Micah 1:16; 2:9 of children and homes that are the delight of adults.

From these references it can be seen that, although it is perfectly plausible to interpret taʿ anug in 2:8 as referring to women, we cannot be entirely sure that this is what is meant. Yet the context favors it, since we expect a reference here to some counterpart to the singers—that is, to particular and specific “delights of the sons of men” (lit. trans.) rather than to delights in general. The play on words between šarim wešarot, “men and women singers,” and šidda wešiddot itself implies this. It would greatly help us to know for certain the meaning of this last phrase, but we do not. Yet a derivation from Heb. šad, “breast,” seems most likely, and we gain help as to meaning from Judges 5:30a, raḥam raḥamatayim leroʾs geber (lit., “a womb or two for each man”). A phrase like this is often explained in terms of synecdoche, whereby the part of something can stand for the whole—thus the NIV translation of Judges 5:30a, “a girl or two for each man.” It is not always clear, however, that the intention is to refer to the whole female person rather than to the part in which the men whose perspective dominates the text are interested (whether “womb,” because of childbearing potential, or “breast,” where it is perhaps the potential for sexual fulfillment that is in mind). The best way in which to translate the second part of Ecclesiastes 2:8 may in fact be: “I acquired for myself male and female singers and the delights of the male—a breast or two.”

Much of the description of what the “king” achieved and acquired echoes what we know of Solomon’s reign from 1 Kings 3–11. He was a king who constructed many buildings, had many slaves and much treasure, and knew many women. Yet once again a distance from Solomon’s time is suggested (Eccl. 2:7; cf. also 2:9), and it is clear that not all the details of our passage correspond to those that we find in the Kings account (note, e.g., the striking disclaimer in 1 Kings 10:21 about the relative worthlessness of silver in Solomon’s day, when compared to Eccl. 2:8). Solomon is simply one of those many characters throughout history who have set out on the path described here, and his reign functions as a convenient backdrop for Qohelet’s reflections. However, Qohelet himself (unlike Solomon toward the end of his reign),4 kept wisdom by him throughout the entire experience (2:9; cf. 2:3), as he opened himself up to every “pleasure” (Heb. śimḥa, better “joy,” v. 10)—he remained in control of the experiment.

The closing verses of this section present in summary the mixed conclusions of Qohelet’s experiment (vv. 10–11). First he tells us that he did in fact find joy in all his toil (“my heart took delight in all my work [ʿamal],” v. 10; the Heb. verb here is śmḥ, from which the noun śimḥa in v. 10 also comes). Indeed, this joy itself was the “reward” (Heb. ḥeleq) arising out of all his toil (Heb. ʿamal, NIV “labor”); it was what he “possessed” when all was said and done (cf. ḥeleq in 2:21, where the NIV translates it as “all he owns”; and in 11:2, where the phrase translated “give portions” might better be rendered “divide what you own”).

Yet immediately the “king” proceeds to the final result of his experiment (v. 11). That is, he “surveyed” or turned to look at what he had done (Heb. maʿ aśeh, cf. v. 4)—what he had toiled to achieve—and his assessment was that it was all pointless (Heb. hebel; see comments on 1:2). There was no “gain” (Heb. yitron). While engaged on the experiment on its inside, as it were (and even though mentally detached from it to some extent), he found joy as his reward; but considering it coolly from the outside after its completion and bringing to it the mentality of the balance sheet, he pronounced it all a “chasing after the wind.” The reward was not an adequate one when measured by the aspirations that drove the experiment. His determined effort at enjoyment had not brought a sufficient return on the investment. Joy is as limited as wisdom in what it can achieve.

This insight will, in due course, lead on to Qohelet’s important advice on how to live one’s life contentedly, in some of which ḥeleq reappears:

3:22: “There is nothing better for a man than to enjoy [śmḥ] his work, because that is his lot [Heb. ḥeleq, better trans. as reward].”

5:18–19: “Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot [ḥeleq, reward]. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot [ḥeleq] and be happy [śmḥ] in his work—this is a gift of God.”

9:9: “Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless [better trans. as brief] life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless [fleeting] days. For this is your lot [ḥeleq, reward] in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.”

The emphasis lies on enjoyment or joy as itself the reward that we may expect from life and all our effort expended in living it. There is no surplus, no profit beyond that. Indeed, the “reward” is itself a gift from God, an inheritance in which we share rather than a prize that we earn (cf. 9:6) for ḥeleq as our “share” [NIV “part”] of life under the sun; also Gen. 31:14; Num. 18:20; Deut. 10:9, etc., for the frequent use of ḥeleq in the sense of inherited land or property). It is in receiving life as a gift from God and in not striving to manipulate it and exploit it in order to arrive at some kind of “gain” that mortal beings can find contentment.

Bridging Contexts

JOY AND WISDOM, the focal points of Qohelet’s attention in this section of Ecclesiastes, are often mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament. The first is found predominantly among family and friends (e.g., Song 3:11; or as it should have been in Gen. 31:27), in fellowship with God’s people at festivals and at other times (e.g., Num. 10:10; 1 Sam. 18:6; 2 Sam. 6:12; 1 Kings 1:40), and (at least when the people of God are thinking straight) in company with God (e.g., Deut. 12:7, 12, 18; 28:47; Ps. 4:7; 16:11; 30:11; 100:2). It is an outcome of life that is lived within a set of good relationships, and it is abundantly present wherever one reads of life as God designed it to be. At the same time, it is also markedly absent when people sin, when disruption is caused to relationships, and when divine judgment falls on the land (e.g., Isa. 24:11; Jer. 7:34).

There is, indeed, a party atmosphere throughout much of the Old Testament when normal life lived out in God’s presence is described. It is this general biblical context that makes Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 such extraordinary reading. The idea that joy should be pursued individualistically as a means to the end of “gain” is exceedingly curious within this context. The book of Proverbs, for example, views joy as the outcome of doing such things as righteousness and justice and promoting peace (Prov. 10:28; 12:20; 21:15), and in fact it warns against too great an attachment to joy in itself (21:17). The idea of “gain” from pursuing joy is entirely incomprehensible within this broader Old Testament context. Joy is a good in itself, which comes to us as a gift as we live unto God and in human community and experience the blessing of it all. The New Testament sees it in a similar way as a consequence of unexpectedly experiencing God’s grace and mercy (Luke 1:58) or of finding the treasure that is the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 13:44), or as the unexpected result of a visit to Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:8; cf. also Luke 24:41, 52). It is one of the gifts or fruits the Holy Spirit brings (e.g., Acts 13:52; Rom. 14:17; Gal. 5:22).

When Qohelet acknowledges in 2:10, then, that he found joy in his work, only then to pass on quickly to the question of “gain,” he deliberately misses the point in the interests of describing what is truly, if insanely, a common view of the purpose of life. There is no surplus to joy beyond joy itself. There is indeed no pathway to joy except by refusing to pursue it and to grasp at it. Qohelet’s own considered view of the matter as it is found in 2:24–26 fits the broader biblical context far better. At the same time, his description in 2:17–23 of the life of the person who will not accept the divinely ordained reality is as graphic as any other biblical description of the “way of the wicked.” It is a sobering account of the relentless anxiety of the materialist who lives under the shadow of unavoidable death—an anxiety that disturbs both serenity in the daytime and sleep at night, in contrast to the joy that energizes daily life and leads on to peaceful slumber (Ps. 4:7–8; cf. 127:2).

If joy cannot be grasped and manipulated for “gain,” biblically speaking, then neither can wisdom or knowledge. It is not that wisdom is at all an intrinsically bad thing; the remainder of the Bible agrees with Qohelet that it is certainly better than folly and that it is the necessary possession of mortal beings (e.g., Prov. 4:1–9; or Matt. 10:16, which advises that Christians be as wise as serpents). Jesus himself is presented as a wise teacher especially in Matthew’s Gospel, constantly recommending that his hearers learn from observation of creation what is true about God and about themselves (e.g., Matt. 6:25–34).

Yet there are serious limitations to what empirical inquiry can do for us, as Qohelet shows and as the remainder of the Bible also teaches. Reality in the end evades our grasp as we pursue it by this method (as Eccl. 7:23–29 will underline; cf. Job 28:1–28). If in the end we cannot understand this, or if we perhaps refuse to accept it and decide to retain our own limited perspective on the universe at the center of our thinking rather than placing there the revelation of God who made it, then we are bound to go badly astray. For the great multitude of facts we may discover about the world require some greater Story about the nature of things, containing some central and undisputed larger Facts, in the context of which their meaning and significance may be comprehended.

In the absence of such a Story (often referred to as a metanarrative—a narrative that embraces and explains all others) with its important Facts, wisdom and knowledge can only ever bring to the perceptive and serious thinker “frustration and mental pain” at best (Eccl. 1:18), along with a sense of despair even about the purpose of “knowing” itself. At worst it leaves the person who is trying to understand the world caught up in a web of illusion, as “wisdom” is claimed where none exists, and falsehood is promoted as truth (1 Cor. 1:18–2:16). For the Christian, the necessary Story is told in the Bible, and among the many important facts that the Bible communicates to us, the central Fact is that “God was in Christ.” It is this that provides the only safe and sound platform for the pursuit of wisdom.

Jesus himself is seen in some parts of the New Testament, indeed, as the personification of wisdom, referring and alluding back to those passages in Proverbs where wisdom is already personified as a charming female confidante and guide who addresses humankind, inviting people to accept her counsel (Prov. 1:20–33; 8:1–9:6; cf. Matt. 11:16–19, 25–30; John 1:1–3; 1 Cor. 1:24, 30; Col. 1:15–20). Thus, an important Old Testament theme is developed in a Christ-centered way: that wisdom derived independently of and even in opposition to God is no wisdom at all and brings no real enlightenment. This is already the message of Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve’s grasping after godlikeness through wisdom resulted only in the knowledge that they were naked and in all the consequent alienation from God, from each other, and from the earth. Significantly, this is also the message of 1 Kings 1–11, which asks how a king so “wise” as Solomon could nevertheless be so foolish that in the end he departed completely from God’s ways and lost his kingdom.

It is in fact generally kings, more than any other sort of human being in the Old Testament, who grasp after godlikeness in the manner we are discussing here, looking to burst through the confines of mortal life and to achieve “gain” of one kind or another. We have already noted the allusions to this kind of hubris in Ecclesiastes 2:1–11, as “Solomon” tries to reinvent his environment. One of the best examples in the Bible is presented by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, who in 2 Kings 18–19 presents himself to Israel as an alternative god who will lead the people out of bondage and into a new promised land (18:31–32); who has vanquished the true God, who is both powerless and deceitful (18:32–35; 19:10–13); and who has imposed himself in a godlike way upon creation (19:23–24). Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 1–4 provides us with another good example.

These are the kinds of people, along with Solomon, who have the resources at their disposal to make a credible attempt at equivalence with the gods. Yet they only represent in a particularly blatant way what the Bible presents to us as the characteristic set of human choices. Faced with life set within the confines that God has ordained, even though this may involve living in a paradise where joy abounds and where wisdom can be sought in dependence on God, from the very beginning human beings have chosen to transgress the boundaries in search of something “more,” turning the life that comes to us as a gift to be enjoyed into capital that might fund exploitation and expansion. Qohelet is only one biblical voice that seeks to persuade us that the “more” does not exist and that in pursuing it we lose ourselves.

A final comment needs to be made in this connection about the question of gender. It is obvious that the perspective of 1:12–2:26 is resolutely male. It is a king who undertakes these inquiries into wisdom and joy, and women appear only as his playthings. The question arises, therefore—as it always must arise when any biblical text is read in the wider biblical context that reminds us that we are created male and female and redeemed as such in Christ—as to whether there are any specific issues of gender that need to be addressed in moving toward a Christian reading of the passage.

It is difficult to see that there are such issues, however. It is certainly true that historically, and including biblical times, it is men who have mainly been in a position to indulge their lust for divinity in precisely the manner described here. Women, lacking independence and power, have most often been the victims, rather than the initiators, of such pretensions to deity. Yet beyond the particularities bound up with “Solomon,” the passage concerns the essential human tendency (which is certainly not gender-specific) to try to shape and to fashion reality in our own image, rather than to receive it already shaped from God. As such, it speaks to all who are tempted in this direction, whether male or female.

We may note the offensiveness of the way in which women are referred to in 2:8, then, and how far short it falls of a biblical view of women overall (as indeed the attitude to human beings generally does in 2:7), without being distracted from the main point. For it is assuredly just as possible (although for reasons of unequal power distribution historically less common) for a woman who loves herself more than she loves God to abuse men as it is for a man of such character to abuse women. There are always, in the Bible, enormous social costs that arise from idolatry, whoever the idolater may be.

Contemporary Significance

About 1883 something like a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of “Impressionism,” and I had come to realize that I did not know how to paint or draw. In short, I found myself in a deadlock.9

I’m the king of the world.10

There are not many kings (or queens) left in the world, and those who still exist often tend at least to try to behave like ordinary mortal beings. We have come a long way from the doctrine of the “divine right of kings” as it was commonly held and practiced in medieval and early modern Europe.

That is not to say, however, that we have fewer people in the world who aspire to live like kings (and queens). On the contrary, we have probably never lived in an age in which more people worldwide aspired to such a lifestyle, driven on in particular by a rapacious and immoral advertising industry that promises us the earth in return for our souls, and by a movie and TV industry that provides us with an ever-fresh succession of “role models” (if that is the correct term) for our imitation and an endless supply of fantasies that we can live out in preference to real life. Only kings and the elite few who surrounded them in the ancient world (and indeed for most of human history) could hope to fashion their environments to some extent after their own whim and liking. Most people faced a harsh reality every day, which allowed no self-deception about human nature and destiny. Modern life in the West, however, is full to the brim with illusion and delusion, as we are constantly told that there are “gains” to be made that will radically alter life itself. There is yet another way to increase our income, yet another way to improve our health and stave off illness and death, yet another way to increase our sexual pleasure. The Canadian radio station Z95.3 was found in mid-1999 to be offering “a new life for the millennium.” Further inquiry revealed that this “new life” consisted in various material possessions (a new house, a new boat, and so on). To such an extent has real life become diminished in the midst of fantasy. It was with no apparent sense of inappropriateness that James Cameron prefaced his “king of the world” proclamation (above) during the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony, at which he received an Oscar for his fictional account of the sinking of the Titanic, with a brief (very brief!) moment of silence in memory of the real victims of the tragedy. No sense of outrage was apparent, either, in his audience.

If the aspiration to “kingship” is thus deeply rooted in our sickly materialistic and superficial culture, the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge is closely allied to it, at least in principle. The very foundation of the modern economic miracle in the West was indeed laid several centuries ago in the explosion of empirical inquiry that is often labeled “the scientific revolution” and in subsequent industrialization and technological advance. We understand better than any generation before us, we imagine, how to make the world work for us. We stand on the edge of yet a further revolution in genetics, which will give us substantial control, we believe, of human life itself. All this is the consequence of looking into the nature of things, and it has bred enormous self-confidence, culturally, in our ability to govern ourselves and in due course to usher in utopia. A politician can hardly ever get elected to office nowadays, in fact, unless he or she more or less promises that this goal is achievable—that things are always and only going to get better. Education has also formally been drawn into this lusting after paradise, as wisdom and knowledge are portrayed not simply as goods in themselves that enable us to live well in the world, but as ways of “getting ahead”—mechanisms that enable us to fulfill our own personal dreams. The point of education is to get good grades, and the point of getting good grades is to put oneself in a position to “gain.”

The irony of all this is that it is often precisely those who have pursued wisdom and knowledge most relentlessly and have probed reality most deeply who understand most fully just how limited still is our understanding at the end of the quest. This is as true in the realm of art as in the realm of physics. In illustration of this we may add to the Renoir quote at the head of this Contemporary Significance section the following, written only a few months before his death in 1919:

I feel I am still making some progress. I am beginning to get to know how to paint. It has taken me fifty years of work to get this far—and there’s still more to do. . . . 11

The culture marches confidently on, however, even in the face of such suggestions of inadequacy and limitation. There is even talk of conquering death itself:

Death is an imposition on the human race, and no longer acceptable. Man has all but lost his ability to accommodate himself to personal extinction; he must now proceed to physically overcome it. In short, to kill death; to put an end to his own mortality as a consequence of being born.12

It is not difficult to understand the contemporary significance of Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:26, then, particularly when it is remembered what the reality of our modern culture is that underlies its confident, abrasive tone and its pretensions to divinity. The reality is the widespread sense of futility and weariness that Qohelet himself describes in this passage—the “first-person testimony” that contradicts (as the testimony of “Solomon” does in Ecclesiastes) the story that is usually told in public, and which provides a very different perspective on the culture. Empiricism has undeniably brought great gains to humanity, but it can only partially grasp what is true, and it cannot tell us the meaning of things.

One of my earliest memories as a university student is of standing at a party watching an extremely bright philosophy major, a bottle of vodka in one hand, sitting against a wall while banging his head rhythmically against it. He had thought deeply, and he would have known what Ecclesiastes 1:18 means, if he had ever read it. Empirical inquiry, which starts from myself and attempts to move outward to embrace what is true, can only do certain things for us; and they are not the most important things. The same is true of education more broadly.

It is likewise evidently the case just how unfulfilling is the accumulation of wealth in the pursuit of joy and how little “gain” there is at the end of the pursuit. Solomon’s life is the life of many men in our culture: the carrying through of great projects, the building of personal monuments, the exertion of power over many other human beings, the amassing of wealth, and the possession of many women. What does it add up to? “A chasing after wind,” with accompanying stress and anxiety (particularly about how to ensure that one’s legacy is passed on) and sleepless nights, and at the end death—the ultimate auditor’s report.

Why do people pursue “gain” in such obviously futile and unsuccessful ways? It is a mystery. It is the irrationality, in fact, of sin. It is an ancient phenomenon, of whom Alexander the Great is perhaps one of the best examples: a high-flying young man with the world literally at his feet, who pushed too far and died young. Modern forms of such world-beating include professional sports, with their endless quest for success and glory, even though no one can explain what winning really achieves. As a memorable episode of The Simpsons reminds us, “The road to the Superbowl is long . . . and pointless—I mean, when you really think about it.”

Qohelet and the rest of the Bible advocate a different way of living. The biblical view of life is that it is designed to be lived in humility and obedience before God, accepting the limitations that are placed on us as mortal beings and finding joy and satisfaction in the ordinary things of life (including intellectual inquiry). As we walk this pathway, we will be “surprised by joy” (to borrow the title of C. S. Lewis’s autobiography); but joy is only a signpost on the journey, not its end, and still less a means to some other human end beyond it. As we walk on this path, we should certainly engage our minds and our curiosity and use such gifts of intellect as we possess for all the good that they can achieve, but we should remember that our pursuit of truth is always carried out in the context of Truth’s pursuit of and self-revealing to us and that it is certainly not to be used for selfish ends. Following this narrow pathway may not gain us entry into Encyclopedia Britannica or Who’s Who, along with those many others who have pursued their own vision of life often at the expense of love for God and neighbor (although many famous people recorded on those pages have also loved as well). We will, however, be found in the book of life, which has different entry qualifications.

At the end of time, in fact, it is those who have done the ordinary things well who will “gain” something, not those who have sacrificed these things for some grander scheme. Those who have found joy in such things will know greater joy; those who have depended on God for wisdom will know yet more wisdom; and those who have lived their lives in the knowledge that death is the ultimate statement of human noncontrol will rise to new life beyond death. It is they, ultimately, who will receive the inheritance mentioned (incomprehensibly in the context of Ecclesiastes itself, who does not think of life beyond death) in 2:26. It is not those like Mr. Burns in The Simpsons who, in response to Homer’s observation that “you’re the richest man I know,” replies, “Yes, but I’d trade it all for more.”

It is C. S. Lewis who once again provides us with one of the best pictures of this reality, in The Magician’s Nephew. A London cabdriver finds himself to his surprise in Narnia, where he meets the lion, Aslan, whom he vaguely recognizes. Aslan, however, tells him that he (Aslan) has known the cabby for a long time; and although the cabby and his wife are the most ordinary of people, they find themselves crowned king and queen of their new homeland, joyful and blessed in their new lives. The wicked witch-queen Jadis, by contrast, who has grasped after immortality and has become a goddess, flees to the far north and must endure endless unhappiness, for “length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery.”13

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal. 5:22–23)

Original Meaning

Wisdom As an Instrument for Understanding the World (1:12–18)

IT IS UNSURPRISING that we should begin with wisdom. Solomon’s wisdom was famous—a gifting from God that brought him riches and honor, that produced justice and prosperity for his people, and that attracted admiration and visitation from people all over the ancient world (1 Kings 3:12–13, 16–28; 4:20–34; 9:10–10:29). Wisdom was the very foundation of the life of one of Israel’s most successful and effective kings.

Yet the first-person testimony of “Solomon” tells us a different story from the one we might have expected on the basis of the narrative account of his life. It comes to us in two sections (vv. 12–15 and 16–18), each with its own statement of what Qohelet set out to do and what he discovered, and each with its own concluding proverb. The first section essentially tells us of the role that wisdom played in leading Qohelet to the point of view expressed in 1:1–11, while the second offers some comments on wisdom itself.

(1) “Solomon” first applies his wisdom to the business of “all that is done under heaven” (v. 13; cf. v. 3), and he discovers only that the burden that God has “laid” (the NIV’s rendering of Heb. ntn, “to set, give”) on human beings is a heavy one. It is a “sorry business” (NEB) or an “evil occupation”1 that God has delegated to us, characterized by futile activity (“all of them are hebel [pointless], a chasing after the wind,” v. 14; cf. comments on 1:1–11). The manner of the speech may at first suggest that there is some divine desire that human life should inevitably be of this character, yet passages like 2:24–26; 3:12–13 reveal that this is not Qohelet’s opinion. We should understand God’s “giving” of the “sorry business,” therefore, in the wider context of biblical belief that whatever happens in the world has a general “God-ordainedness” about it, since nothing can happen outside of God’s will.

To put this another way, God permits things to happen in his world that are his “will” only in the general sense that they will not happen if he chooses not to permit them. They are not his “will” in the narrower sense of representing his deepest desires and most heartfelt intentions with respect to his creatures. The judgment of God, for example, is not, biblically, something that proceeds from the deepest heart of God, which is to bless and to love his creatures (note, e.g., Lam. 3:31–33); God would, biblically, rather that his creatures repent of their sins and return to him (e.g., Hos. 11:8–9).

Nevertheless, God also allows people to suffer the consequences of their decisions, giving them over to these consequences and in a sense thereby “willing” them (e.g., Rom. 1:18–32). God ordains that their world should have a certain shape and content, but their own beliefs and decisions are themselves bound up with the kind of world they inhabit, and they have moral responsibility in respect of that world, which is not inevitably the one they must inhabit (cf. Eccl. 2:26). The Heb. verb ntn can itself often be translated “permit, ordain” rather than “give” (e.g., Gen. 20:6; 31:7; Ex. 3:19; Num. 20:21; 21:23).

That we should understand Ecclesiastes 1:13–14 in this looser way—that God has “ordained” that life should be a “heavy burden” for humanity in all its striving and struggling and chasing after the wind—is confirmed by the proverb that Qohelet cites in 1:15 in connection with this general human experience of life. The futility of life as it is characteristically lived out “under heaven” is captured here in terms of people trying to straighten what is twisted and to count that which is “lacking.” The key to understanding the first line is found in 7:13: “Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?” The emphasis there and in 7:14 is on accepting what comes from the hand of God rather than striving with it and struggling against it.

It seems likely, particularly in view of the suggestion in 1:1–11 that the fundamental human problem resides in a lack of harmony between common human aspirations and the very nature of reality itself, that the futility of 1:14 is to be understood precisely in terms of a human refusal to accept things as they are. There is a human insistence that the impossible can in fact be achieved—that what God has made “crooked” or “twisted” can indeed be made straight by human, mortal effort. It is all futile, for God is God, and the world is the way it is. Refusing to accept reality can only result in unhappiness and weariness (since wind cannot be caught, however hard the chase).

The second line of the proverb in 1:15 likewise presents us with an impossibility: counting what is “lacking.” The Hebrew word here is ḥesron, from the verb ḥsr, “be lacking, deficient.” The idea of “deficit” as the condition that people cannot accept and to which they foolishly respond by “counting,” as if the deficit were in fact a surplus, ties this part of the proverb also to 1:1–11, with its question about where the human profit might occur in consequence of human effort. There is no “gain” of this kind from toil, Qohelet tells us; there is only and always a deficit. To pursue gain is therefore only and always futile. In due course this observation will lead him to suggest a different way of thinking about profit and toil, as he turns our attention away from toil as a means to the end of profit and presents profit, instead, as enjoyment of what God gives us (including toil itself).

(2) If the first part of 1:12–18 has viewed wisdom as an instrument through which to view reality and has found it useful in coming to a clear perception of the world in all its futility, the second part (vv. 16–18) now turns to consider wisdom in itself. Qohelet had previously devoted himself (natan ʾet-leb) to study the world (v. 13) and had found only pointless activity; now he applies himself (natan leb) to the understanding of wisdom (v. 17). Perhaps greater effort in sifting through what is known and separating out wisdom from “madness and folly” is the way ahead for human beings.

“Madness” (holela) carries connotations of a boastful arrogance that sets itself against God rather than praising God;2 “folly” (usually spelled siklut, but here śiklut) is its occasional partner in Ecclesiastes (2:12; 7:25; 10:13) and the common antithesis to wisdom (2:3, 13; 10:1; cf. also 10:6 for a related noun and 2:19; 7:17; 10:3, 14 for the character called “the fool” [sakal]). Perhaps it is possible through concentrated intellectual effort to distinguish these things more accurately—to refine one’s understanding of the world—and thus to escape from the trap set by life for the ordinary person.

Is there “profit” (“gain,” cf. 1:3) here? Qohelet does not think so. It is not that wisdom is useless, for he has just used it in verses 12–15 to arrive at important conclusions about the world in which he lives, and he will go on employing “wisdom” throughout chapter 2 (e.g., 2:3), acknowledging that it is better than folly (2:13, and implicitly in 2:19, 26). Yet it is not itself something that can be grasped hold of and controlled (1:17), nor can it offer mortal beings release from the “evil business” of living. Although wisdom and knowledge are good and useful, they paradoxically bring with them “sorrow” (1:18; perhaps better, “frustration,” Heb. kaʿas) and “grief” (makʾob, “mental pain”)—not least, one suspects, because they enable people like Qohelet to gain particular clarity as to just how “evil” the “business” of living can be. We may note the recurrence of makʾob and kaʿas in that reverse order in 2:23 (NIV’s “pain and grief”),3 in the midst of a graphic account of the “sorry business” of life. The point is that wisdom and knowledge dispel illusions.

Bridging Contexts

JOY AND WISDOM, the focal points of Qohelet’s attention in this section of Ecclesiastes, are often mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament. The first is found predominantly among family and friends (e.g., Song 3:11; or as it should have been in Gen. 31:27), in fellowship with God’s people at festivals and at other times (e.g., Num. 10:10; 1 Sam. 18:6; 2 Sam. 6:12; 1 Kings 1:40), and (at least when the people of God are thinking straight) in company with God (e.g., Deut. 12:7, 12, 18; 28:47; Ps. 4:7; 16:11; 30:11; 100:2). It is an outcome of life that is lived within a set of good relationships, and it is abundantly present wherever one reads of life as God designed it to be. At the same time, it is also markedly absent when people sin, when disruption is caused to relationships, and when divine judgment falls on the land (e.g., Isa. 24:11; Jer. 7:34).

There is, indeed, a party atmosphere throughout much of the Old Testament when normal life lived out in God’s presence is described. It is this general biblical context that makes Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 such extraordinary reading. The idea that joy should be pursued individualistically as a means to the end of “gain” is exceedingly curious within this context. The book of Proverbs, for example, views joy as the outcome of doing such things as righteousness and justice and promoting peace (Prov. 10:28; 12:20; 21:15), and in fact it warns against too great an attachment to joy in itself (21:17). The idea of “gain” from pursuing joy is entirely incomprehensible within this broader Old Testament context. Joy is a good in itself, which comes to us as a gift as we live unto God and in human community and experience the blessing of it all. The New Testament sees it in a similar way as a consequence of unexpectedly experiencing God’s grace and mercy (Luke 1:58) or of finding the treasure that is the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 13:44), or as the unexpected result of a visit to Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:8; cf. also Luke 24:41, 52). It is one of the gifts or fruits the Holy Spirit brings (e.g., Acts 13:52; Rom. 14:17; Gal. 5:22).

When Qohelet acknowledges in 2:10, then, that he found joy in his work, only then to pass on quickly to the question of “gain,” he deliberately misses the point in the interests of describing what is truly, if insanely, a common view of the purpose of life. There is no surplus to joy beyond joy itself. There is indeed no pathway to joy except by refusing to pursue it and to grasp at it. Qohelet’s own considered view of the matter as it is found in 2:24–26 fits the broader biblical context far better. At the same time, his description in 2:17–23 of the life of the person who will not accept the divinely ordained reality is as graphic as any other biblical description of the “way of the wicked.” It is a sobering account of the relentless anxiety of the materialist who lives under the shadow of unavoidable death—an anxiety that disturbs both serenity in the daytime and sleep at night, in contrast to the joy that energizes daily life and leads on to peaceful slumber (Ps. 4:7–8; cf. 127:2).

If joy cannot be grasped and manipulated for “gain,” biblically speaking, then neither can wisdom or knowledge. It is not that wisdom is at all an intrinsically bad thing; the remainder of the Bible agrees with Qohelet that it is certainly better than folly and that it is the necessary possession of mortal beings (e.g., Prov. 4:1–9; or Matt. 10:16, which advises that Christians be as wise as serpents). Jesus himself is presented as a wise teacher especially in Matthew’s Gospel, constantly recommending that his hearers learn from observation of creation what is true about God and about themselves (e.g., Matt. 6:25–34).

Yet there are serious limitations to what empirical inquiry can do for us, as Qohelet shows and as the remainder of the Bible also teaches. Reality in the end evades our grasp as we pursue it by this method (as Eccl. 7:23–29 will underline; cf. Job 28:1–28). If in the end we cannot understand this, or if we perhaps refuse to accept it and decide to retain our own limited perspective on the universe at the center of our thinking rather than placing there the revelation of God who made it, then we are bound to go badly astray. For the great multitude of facts we may discover about the world require some greater Story about the nature of things, containing some central and undisputed larger Facts, in the context of which their meaning and significance may be comprehended.

In the absence of such a Story (often referred to as a metanarrative—a narrative that embraces and explains all others) with its important Facts, wisdom and knowledge can only ever bring to the perceptive and serious thinker “frustration and mental pain” at best (Eccl. 1:18), along with a sense of despair even about the purpose of “knowing” itself. At worst it leaves the person who is trying to understand the world caught up in a web of illusion, as “wisdom” is claimed where none exists, and falsehood is promoted as truth (1 Cor. 1:18–2:16). For the Christian, the necessary Story is told in the Bible, and among the many important facts that the Bible communicates to us, the central Fact is that “God was in Christ.” It is this that provides the only safe and sound platform for the pursuit of wisdom.

Jesus himself is seen in some parts of the New Testament, indeed, as the personification of wisdom, referring and alluding back to those passages in Proverbs where wisdom is already personified as a charming female confidante and guide who addresses humankind, inviting people to accept her counsel (Prov. 1:20–33; 8:1–9:6; cf. Matt. 11:16–19, 25–30; John 1:1–3; 1 Cor. 1:24, 30; Col. 1:15–20). Thus, an important Old Testament theme is developed in a Christ-centered way: that wisdom derived independently of and even in opposition to God is no wisdom at all and brings no real enlightenment. This is already the message of Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve’s grasping after godlikeness through wisdom resulted only in the knowledge that they were naked and in all the consequent alienation from God, from each other, and from the earth. Significantly, this is also the message of 1 Kings 1–11, which asks how a king so “wise” as Solomon could nevertheless be so foolish that in the end he departed completely from God’s ways and lost his kingdom.

It is in fact generally kings, more than any other sort of human being in the Old Testament, who grasp after godlikeness in the manner we are discussing here, looking to burst through the confines of mortal life and to achieve “gain” of one kind or another. We have already noted the allusions to this kind of hubris in Ecclesiastes 2:1–11, as “Solomon” tries to reinvent his environment. One of the best examples in the Bible is presented by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, who in 2 Kings 18–19 presents himself to Israel as an alternative god who will lead the people out of bondage and into a new promised land (18:31–32); who has vanquished the true God, who is both powerless and deceitful (18:32–35; 19:10–13); and who has imposed himself in a godlike way upon creation (19:23–24). Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 1–4 provides us with another good example.

These are the kinds of people, along with Solomon, who have the resources at their disposal to make a credible attempt at equivalence with the gods. Yet they only represent in a particularly blatant way what the Bible presents to us as the characteristic set of human choices. Faced with life set within the confines that God has ordained, even though this may involve living in a paradise where joy abounds and where wisdom can be sought in dependence on God, from the very beginning human beings have chosen to transgress the boundaries in search of something “more,” turning the life that comes to us as a gift to be enjoyed into capital that might fund exploitation and expansion. Qohelet is only one biblical voice that seeks to persuade us that the “more” does not exist and that in pursuing it we lose ourselves.

A final comment needs to be made in this connection about the question of gender. It is obvious that the perspective of 1:12–2:26 is resolutely male. It is a king who undertakes these inquiries into wisdom and joy, and women appear only as his playthings. The question arises, therefore—as it always must arise when any biblical text is read in the wider biblical context that reminds us that we are created male and female and redeemed as such in Christ—as to whether there are any specific issues of gender that need to be addressed in moving toward a Christian reading of the passage.

It is difficult to see that there are such issues, however. It is certainly true that historically, and including biblical times, it is men who have mainly been in a position to indulge their lust for divinity in precisely the manner described here. Women, lacking independence and power, have most often been the victims, rather than the initiators, of such pretensions to deity. Yet beyond the particularities bound up with “Solomon,” the passage concerns the essential human tendency (which is certainly not gender-specific) to try to shape and to fashion reality in our own image, rather than to receive it already shaped from God. As such, it speaks to all who are tempted in this direction, whether male or female.

We may note the offensiveness of the way in which women are referred to in 2:8, then, and how far short it falls of a biblical view of women overall (as indeed the attitude to human beings generally does in 2:7), without being distracted from the main point. For it is assuredly just as possible (although for reasons of unequal power distribution historically less common) for a woman who loves herself more than she loves God to abuse men as it is for a man of such character to abuse women. There are always, in the Bible, enormous social costs that arise from idolatry, whoever the idolater may be.

Contemporary Significance

About 1883 something like a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of “Impressionism,” and I had come to realize that I did not know how to paint or draw. In short, I found myself in a deadlock.9

I’m the king of the world.10

There are not many kings (or queens) left in the world, and those who still exist often tend at least to try to behave like ordinary mortal beings. We have come a long way from the doctrine of the “divine right of kings” as it was commonly held and practiced in medieval and early modern Europe.

That is not to say, however, that we have fewer people in the world who aspire to live like kings (and queens). On the contrary, we have probably never lived in an age in which more people worldwide aspired to such a lifestyle, driven on in particular by a rapacious and immoral advertising industry that promises us the earth in return for our souls, and by a movie and TV industry that provides us with an ever-fresh succession of “role models” (if that is the correct term) for our imitation and an endless supply of fantasies that we can live out in preference to real life. Only kings and the elite few who surrounded them in the ancient world (and indeed for most of human history) could hope to fashion their environments to some extent after their own whim and liking. Most people faced a harsh reality every day, which allowed no self-deception about human nature and destiny. Modern life in the West, however, is full to the brim with illusion and delusion, as we are constantly told that there are “gains” to be made that will radically alter life itself. There is yet another way to increase our income, yet another way to improve our health and stave off illness and death, yet another way to increase our sexual pleasure. The Canadian radio station Z95.3 was found in mid-1999 to be offering “a new life for the millennium.” Further inquiry revealed that this “new life” consisted in various material possessions (a new house, a new boat, and so on). To such an extent has real life become diminished in the midst of fantasy. It was with no apparent sense of inappropriateness that James Cameron prefaced his “king of the world” proclamation (above) during the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony, at which he received an Oscar for his fictional account of the sinking of the Titanic, with a brief (very brief!) moment of silence in memory of the real victims of the tragedy. No sense of outrage was apparent, either, in his audience.

If the aspiration to “kingship” is thus deeply rooted in our sickly materialistic and superficial culture, the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge is closely allied to it, at least in principle. The very foundation of the modern economic miracle in the West was indeed laid several centuries ago in the explosion of empirical inquiry that is often labeled “the scientific revolution” and in subsequent industrialization and technological advance. We understand better than any generation before us, we imagine, how to make the world work for us. We stand on the edge of yet a further revolution in genetics, which will give us substantial control, we believe, of human life itself. All this is the consequence of looking into the nature of things, and it has bred enormous self-confidence, culturally, in our ability to govern ourselves and in due course to usher in utopia. A politician can hardly ever get elected to office nowadays, in fact, unless he or she more or less promises that this goal is achievable—that things are always and only going to get better. Education has also formally been drawn into this lusting after paradise, as wisdom and knowledge are portrayed not simply as goods in themselves that enable us to live well in the world, but as ways of “getting ahead”—mechanisms that enable us to fulfill our own personal dreams. The point of education is to get good grades, and the point of getting good grades is to put oneself in a position to “gain.”

The irony of all this is that it is often precisely those who have pursued wisdom and knowledge most relentlessly and have probed reality most deeply who understand most fully just how limited still is our understanding at the end of the quest. This is as true in the realm of art as in the realm of physics. In illustration of this we may add to the Renoir quote at the head of this Contemporary Significance section the following, written only a few months before his death in 1919:

I feel I am still making some progress. I am beginning to get to know how to paint. It has taken me fifty years of work to get this far—and there’s still more to do. . . . 11

The culture marches confidently on, however, even in the face of such suggestions of inadequacy and limitation. There is even talk of conquering death itself:

Death is an imposition on the human race, and no longer acceptable. Man has all but lost his ability to accommodate himself to personal extinction; he must now proceed to physically overcome it. In short, to kill death; to put an end to his own mortality as a consequence of being born.12

It is not difficult to understand the contemporary significance of Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:26, then, particularly when it is remembered what the reality of our modern culture is that underlies its confident, abrasive tone and its pretensions to divinity. The reality is the widespread sense of futility and weariness that Qohelet himself describes in this passage—the “first-person testimony” that contradicts (as the testimony of “Solomon” does in Ecclesiastes) the story that is usually told in public, and which provides a very different perspective on the culture. Empiricism has undeniably brought great gains to humanity, but it can only partially grasp what is true, and it cannot tell us the meaning of things.

One of my earliest memories as a university student is of standing at a party watching an extremely bright philosophy major, a bottle of vodka in one hand, sitting against a wall while banging his head rhythmically against it. He had thought deeply, and he would have known what Ecclesiastes 1:18 means, if he had ever read it. Empirical inquiry, which starts from myself and attempts to move outward to embrace what is true, can only do certain things for us; and they are not the most important things. The same is true of education more broadly.

It is likewise evidently the case just how unfulfilling is the accumulation of wealth in the pursuit of joy and how little “gain” there is at the end of the pursuit. Solomon’s life is the life of many men in our culture: the carrying through of great projects, the building of personal monuments, the exertion of power over many other human beings, the amassing of wealth, and the possession of many women. What does it add up to? “A chasing after wind,” with accompanying stress and anxiety (particularly about how to ensure that one’s legacy is passed on) and sleepless nights, and at the end death—the ultimate auditor’s report.

Why do people pursue “gain” in such obviously futile and unsuccessful ways? It is a mystery. It is the irrationality, in fact, of sin. It is an ancient phenomenon, of whom Alexander the Great is perhaps one of the best examples: a high-flying young man with the world literally at his feet, who pushed too far and died young. Modern forms of such world-beating include professional sports, with their endless quest for success and glory, even though no one can explain what winning really achieves. As a memorable episode of The Simpsons reminds us, “The road to the Superbowl is long . . . and pointless—I mean, when you really think about it.”

Qohelet and the rest of the Bible advocate a different way of living. The biblical view of life is that it is designed to be lived in humility and obedience before God, accepting the limitations that are placed on us as mortal beings and finding joy and satisfaction in the ordinary things of life (including intellectual inquiry). As we walk this pathway, we will be “surprised by joy” (to borrow the title of C. S. Lewis’s autobiography); but joy is only a signpost on the journey, not its end, and still less a means to some other human end beyond it. As we walk on this path, we should certainly engage our minds and our curiosity and use such gifts of intellect as we possess for all the good that they can achieve, but we should remember that our pursuit of truth is always carried out in the context of Truth’s pursuit of and self-revealing to us and that it is certainly not to be used for selfish ends. Following this narrow pathway may not gain us entry into Encyclopedia Britannica or Who’s Who, along with those many others who have pursued their own vision of life often at the expense of love for God and neighbor (although many famous people recorded on those pages have also loved as well). We will, however, be found in the book of life, which has different entry qualifications.

At the end of time, in fact, it is those who have done the ordinary things well who will “gain” something, not those who have sacrificed these things for some grander scheme. Those who have found joy in such things will know greater joy; those who have depended on God for wisdom will know yet more wisdom; and those who have lived their lives in the knowledge that death is the ultimate statement of human noncontrol will rise to new life beyond death. It is they, ultimately, who will receive the inheritance mentioned (incomprehensibly in the context of Ecclesiastes itself, who does not think of life beyond death) in 2:26. It is not those like Mr. Burns in The Simpsons who, in response to Homer’s observation that “you’re the richest man I know,” replies, “Yes, but I’d trade it all for more.”

It is C. S. Lewis who once again provides us with one of the best pictures of this reality, in The Magician’s Nephew. A London cabdriver finds himself to his surprise in Narnia, where he meets the lion, Aslan, whom he vaguely recognizes. Aslan, however, tells him that he (Aslan) has known the cabby for a long time; and although the cabby and his wife are the most ordinary of people, they find themselves crowned king and queen of their new homeland, joyful and blessed in their new lives. The wicked witch-queen Jadis, by contrast, who has grasped after immortality and has become a goddess, flees to the far north and must endure endless unhappiness, for “length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery.”13

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal. 5:22–23)

Original Meaning

Wisdom As an Instrument for Understanding the World (1:12–18)

IT IS UNSURPRISING that we should begin with wisdom. Solomon’s wisdom was famous—a gifting from God that brought him riches and honor, that produced justice and prosperity for his people, and that attracted admiration and visitation from people all over the ancient world (1 Kings 3:12–13, 16–28; 4:20–34; 9:10–10:29). Wisdom was the very foundation of the life of one of Israel’s most successful and effective kings.

Yet the first-person testimony of “Solomon” tells us a different story from the one we might have expected on the basis of the narrative account of his life. It comes to us in two sections (vv. 12–15 and 16–18), each with its own statement of what Qohelet set out to do and what he discovered, and each with its own concluding proverb. The first section essentially tells us of the role that wisdom played in leading Qohelet to the point of view expressed in 1:1–11, while the second offers some comments on wisdom itself.

(1) “Solomon” first applies his wisdom to the business of “all that is done under heaven” (v. 13; cf. v. 3), and he discovers only that the burden that God has “laid” (the NIV’s rendering of Heb. ntn, “to set, give”) on human beings is a heavy one. It is a “sorry business” (NEB) or an “evil occupation”1 that God has delegated to us, characterized by futile activity (“all of them are hebel [pointless], a chasing after the wind,” v. 14; cf. comments on 1:1–11). The manner of the speech may at first suggest that there is some divine desire that human life should inevitably be of this character, yet passages like 2:24–26; 3:12–13 reveal that this is not Qohelet’s opinion. We should understand God’s “giving” of the “sorry business,” therefore, in the wider context of biblical belief that whatever happens in the world has a general “God-ordainedness” about it, since nothing can happen outside of God’s will.

To put this another way, God permits things to happen in his world that are his “will” only in the general sense that they will not happen if he chooses not to permit them. They are not his “will” in the narrower sense of representing his deepest desires and most heartfelt intentions with respect to his creatures. The judgment of God, for example, is not, biblically, something that proceeds from the deepest heart of God, which is to bless and to love his creatures (note, e.g., Lam. 3:31–33); God would, biblically, rather that his creatures repent of their sins and return to him (e.g., Hos. 11:8–9).

Nevertheless, God also allows people to suffer the consequences of their decisions, giving them over to these consequences and in a sense thereby “willing” them (e.g., Rom. 1:18–32). God ordains that their world should have a certain shape and content, but their own beliefs and decisions are themselves bound up with the kind of world they inhabit, and they have moral responsibility in respect of that world, which is not inevitably the one they must inhabit (cf. Eccl. 2:26). The Heb. verb ntn can itself often be translated “permit, ordain” rather than “give” (e.g., Gen. 20:6; 31:7; Ex. 3:19; Num. 20:21; 21:23).

That we should understand Ecclesiastes 1:13–14 in this looser way—that God has “ordained” that life should be a “heavy burden” for humanity in all its striving and struggling and chasing after the wind—is confirmed by the proverb that Qohelet cites in 1:15 in connection with this general human experience of life. The futility of life as it is characteristically lived out “under heaven” is captured here in terms of people trying to straighten what is twisted and to count that which is “lacking.” The key to understanding the first line is found in 7:13: “Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked?” The emphasis there and in 7:14 is on accepting what comes from the hand of God rather than striving with it and struggling against it.

It seems likely, particularly in view of the suggestion in 1:1–11 that the fundamental human problem resides in a lack of harmony between common human aspirations and the very nature of reality itself, that the futility of 1:14 is to be understood precisely in terms of a human refusal to accept things as they are. There is a human insistence that the impossible can in fact be achieved—that what God has made “crooked” or “twisted” can indeed be made straight by human, mortal effort. It is all futile, for God is God, and the world is the way it is. Refusing to accept reality can only result in unhappiness and weariness (since wind cannot be caught, however hard the chase).

The second line of the proverb in 1:15 likewise presents us with an impossibility: counting what is “lacking.” The Hebrew word here is ḥesron, from the verb ḥsr, “be lacking, deficient.” The idea of “deficit” as the condition that people cannot accept and to which they foolishly respond by “counting,” as if the deficit were in fact a surplus, ties this part of the proverb also to 1:1–11, with its question about where the human profit might occur in consequence of human effort. There is no “gain” of this kind from toil, Qohelet tells us; there is only and always a deficit. To pursue gain is therefore only and always futile. In due course this observation will lead him to suggest a different way of thinking about profit and toil, as he turns our attention away from toil as a means to the end of profit and presents profit, instead, as enjoyment of what God gives us (including toil itself).

(2) If the first part of 1:12–18 has viewed wisdom as an instrument through which to view reality and has found it useful in coming to a clear perception of the world in all its futility, the second part (vv. 16–18) now turns to consider wisdom in itself. Qohelet had previously devoted himself (natan ʾet-leb) to study the world (v. 13) and had found only pointless activity; now he applies himself (natan leb) to the understanding of wisdom (v. 17). Perhaps greater effort in sifting through what is known and separating out wisdom from “madness and folly” is the way ahead for human beings.

“Madness” (holela) carries connotations of a boastful arrogance that sets itself against God rather than praising God;2 “folly” (usually spelled siklut, but here śiklut) is its occasional partner in Ecclesiastes (2:12; 7:25; 10:13) and the common antithesis to wisdom (2:3, 13; 10:1; cf. also 10:6 for a related noun and 2:19; 7:17; 10:3, 14 for the character called “the fool” [sakal]). Perhaps it is possible through concentrated intellectual effort to distinguish these things more accurately—to refine one’s understanding of the world—and thus to escape from the trap set by life for the ordinary person.

Is there “profit” (“gain,” cf. 1:3) here? Qohelet does not think so. It is not that wisdom is useless, for he has just used it in verses 12–15 to arrive at important conclusions about the world in which he lives, and he will go on employing “wisdom” throughout chapter 2 (e.g., 2:3), acknowledging that it is better than folly (2:13, and implicitly in 2:19, 26). Yet it is not itself something that can be grasped hold of and controlled (1:17), nor can it offer mortal beings release from the “evil business” of living. Although wisdom and knowledge are good and useful, they paradoxically bring with them “sorrow” (1:18; perhaps better, “frustration,” Heb. kaʿas) and “grief” (makʾob, “mental pain”)—not least, one suspects, because they enable people like Qohelet to gain particular clarity as to just how “evil” the “business” of living can be. We may note the recurrence of makʾob and kaʿas in that reverse order in 2:23 (NIV’s “pain and grief”),3 in the midst of a graphic account of the “sorry business” of life. The point is that wisdom and knowledge dispel illusions.

Bridging Contexts

JOY AND WISDOM, the focal points of Qohelet’s attention in this section of Ecclesiastes, are often mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament. The first is found predominantly among family and friends (e.g., Song 3:11; or as it should have been in Gen. 31:27), in fellowship with God’s people at festivals and at other times (e.g., Num. 10:10; 1 Sam. 18:6; 2 Sam. 6:12; 1 Kings 1:40), and (at least when the people of God are thinking straight) in company with God (e.g., Deut. 12:7, 12, 18; 28:47; Ps. 4:7; 16:11; 30:11; 100:2). It is an outcome of life that is lived within a set of good relationships, and it is abundantly present wherever one reads of life as God designed it to be. At the same time, it is also markedly absent when people sin, when disruption is caused to relationships, and when divine judgment falls on the land (e.g., Isa. 24:11; Jer. 7:34).

There is, indeed, a party atmosphere throughout much of the Old Testament when normal life lived out in God’s presence is described. It is this general biblical context that makes Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 such extraordinary reading. The idea that joy should be pursued individualistically as a means to the end of “gain” is exceedingly curious within this context. The book of Proverbs, for example, views joy as the outcome of doing such things as righteousness and justice and promoting peace (Prov. 10:28; 12:20; 21:15), and in fact it warns against too great an attachment to joy in itself (21:17). The idea of “gain” from pursuing joy is entirely incomprehensible within this broader Old Testament context. Joy is a good in itself, which comes to us as a gift as we live unto God and in human community and experience the blessing of it all. The New Testament sees it in a similar way as a consequence of unexpectedly experiencing God’s grace and mercy (Luke 1:58) or of finding the treasure that is the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 13:44), or as the unexpected result of a visit to Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:8; cf. also Luke 24:41, 52). It is one of the gifts or fruits the Holy Spirit brings (e.g., Acts 13:52; Rom. 14:17; Gal. 5:22).

When Qohelet acknowledges in 2:10, then, that he found joy in his work, only then to pass on quickly to the question of “gain,” he deliberately misses the point in the interests of describing what is truly, if insanely, a common view of the purpose of life. There is no surplus to joy beyond joy itself. There is indeed no pathway to joy except by refusing to pursue it and to grasp at it. Qohelet’s own considered view of the matter as it is found in 2:24–26 fits the broader biblical context far better. At the same time, his description in 2:17–23 of the life of the person who will not accept the divinely ordained reality is as graphic as any other biblical description of the “way of the wicked.” It is a sobering account of the relentless anxiety of the materialist who lives under the shadow of unavoidable death—an anxiety that disturbs both serenity in the daytime and sleep at night, in contrast to the joy that energizes daily life and leads on to peaceful slumber (Ps. 4:7–8; cf. 127:2).

If joy cannot be grasped and manipulated for “gain,” biblically speaking, then neither can wisdom or knowledge. It is not that wisdom is at all an intrinsically bad thing; the remainder of the Bible agrees with Qohelet that it is certainly better than folly and that it is the necessary possession of mortal beings (e.g., Prov. 4:1–9; or Matt. 10:16, which advises that Christians be as wise as serpents). Jesus himself is presented as a wise teacher especially in Matthew’s Gospel, constantly recommending that his hearers learn from observation of creation what is true about God and about themselves (e.g., Matt. 6:25–34).

Yet there are serious limitations to what empirical inquiry can do for us, as Qohelet shows and as the remainder of the Bible also teaches. Reality in the end evades our grasp as we pursue it by this method (as Eccl. 7:23–29 will underline; cf. Job 28:1–28). If in the end we cannot understand this, or if we perhaps refuse to accept it and decide to retain our own limited perspective on the universe at the center of our thinking rather than placing there the revelation of God who made it, then we are bound to go badly astray. For the great multitude of facts we may discover about the world require some greater Story about the nature of things, containing some central and undisputed larger Facts, in the context of which their meaning and significance may be comprehended.

In the absence of such a Story (often referred to as a metanarrative—a narrative that embraces and explains all others) with its important Facts, wisdom and knowledge can only ever bring to the perceptive and serious thinker “frustration and mental pain” at best (Eccl. 1:18), along with a sense of despair even about the purpose of “knowing” itself. At worst it leaves the person who is trying to understand the world caught up in a web of illusion, as “wisdom” is claimed where none exists, and falsehood is promoted as truth (1 Cor. 1:18–2:16). For the Christian, the necessary Story is told in the Bible, and among the many important facts that the Bible communicates to us, the central Fact is that “God was in Christ.” It is this that provides the only safe and sound platform for the pursuit of wisdom.

Jesus himself is seen in some parts of the New Testament, indeed, as the personification of wisdom, referring and alluding back to those passages in Proverbs where wisdom is already personified as a charming female confidante and guide who addresses humankind, inviting people to accept her counsel (Prov. 1:20–33; 8:1–9:6; cf. Matt. 11:16–19, 25–30; John 1:1–3; 1 Cor. 1:24, 30; Col. 1:15–20). Thus, an important Old Testament theme is developed in a Christ-centered way: that wisdom derived independently of and even in opposition to God is no wisdom at all and brings no real enlightenment. This is already the message of Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve’s grasping after godlikeness through wisdom resulted only in the knowledge that they were naked and in all the consequent alienation from God, from each other, and from the earth. Significantly, this is also the message of 1 Kings 1–11, which asks how a king so “wise” as Solomon could nevertheless be so foolish that in the end he departed completely from God’s ways and lost his kingdom.

It is in fact generally kings, more than any other sort of human being in the Old Testament, who grasp after godlikeness in the manner we are discussing here, looking to burst through the confines of mortal life and to achieve “gain” of one kind or another. We have already noted the allusions to this kind of hubris in Ecclesiastes 2:1–11, as “Solomon” tries to reinvent his environment. One of the best examples in the Bible is presented by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, who in 2 Kings 18–19 presents himself to Israel as an alternative god who will lead the people out of bondage and into a new promised land (18:31–32); who has vanquished the true God, who is both powerless and deceitful (18:32–35; 19:10–13); and who has imposed himself in a godlike way upon creation (19:23–24). Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 1–4 provides us with another good example.

These are the kinds of people, along with Solomon, who have the resources at their disposal to make a credible attempt at equivalence with the gods. Yet they only represent in a particularly blatant way what the Bible presents to us as the characteristic set of human choices. Faced with life set within the confines that God has ordained, even though this may involve living in a paradise where joy abounds and where wisdom can be sought in dependence on God, from the very beginning human beings have chosen to transgress the boundaries in search of something “more,” turning the life that comes to us as a gift to be enjoyed into capital that might fund exploitation and expansion. Qohelet is only one biblical voice that seeks to persuade us that the “more” does not exist and that in pursuing it we lose ourselves.

A final comment needs to be made in this connection about the question of gender. It is obvious that the perspective of 1:12–2:26 is resolutely male. It is a king who undertakes these inquiries into wisdom and joy, and women appear only as his playthings. The question arises, therefore—as it always must arise when any biblical text is read in the wider biblical context that reminds us that we are created male and female and redeemed as such in Christ—as to whether there are any specific issues of gender that need to be addressed in moving toward a Christian reading of the passage.

It is difficult to see that there are such issues, however. It is certainly true that historically, and including biblical times, it is men who have mainly been in a position to indulge their lust for divinity in precisely the manner described here. Women, lacking independence and power, have most often been the victims, rather than the initiators, of such pretensions to deity. Yet beyond the particularities bound up with “Solomon,” the passage concerns the essential human tendency (which is certainly not gender-specific) to try to shape and to fashion reality in our own image, rather than to receive it already shaped from God. As such, it speaks to all who are tempted in this direction, whether male or female.

We may note the offensiveness of the way in which women are referred to in 2:8, then, and how far short it falls of a biblical view of women overall (as indeed the attitude to human beings generally does in 2:7), without being distracted from the main point. For it is assuredly just as possible (although for reasons of unequal power distribution historically less common) for a woman who loves herself more than she loves God to abuse men as it is for a man of such character to abuse women. There are always, in the Bible, enormous social costs that arise from idolatry, whoever the idolater may be.

Contemporary Significance

About 1883 something like a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of “Impressionism,” and I had come to realize that I did not know how to paint or draw. In short, I found myself in a deadlock.9

I’m the king of the world.10

There are not many kings (or queens) left in the world, and those who still exist often tend at least to try to behave like ordinary mortal beings. We have come a long way from the doctrine of the “divine right of kings” as it was commonly held and practiced in medieval and early modern Europe.

That is not to say, however, that we have fewer people in the world who aspire to live like kings (and queens). On the contrary, we have probably never lived in an age in which more people worldwide aspired to such a lifestyle, driven on in particular by a rapacious and immoral advertising industry that promises us the earth in return for our souls, and by a movie and TV industry that provides us with an ever-fresh succession of “role models” (if that is the correct term) for our imitation and an endless supply of fantasies that we can live out in preference to real life. Only kings and the elite few who surrounded them in the ancient world (and indeed for most of human history) could hope to fashion their environments to some extent after their own whim and liking. Most people faced a harsh reality every day, which allowed no self-deception about human nature and destiny. Modern life in the West, however, is full to the brim with illusion and delusion, as we are constantly told that there are “gains” to be made that will radically alter life itself. There is yet another way to increase our income, yet another way to improve our health and stave off illness and death, yet another way to increase our sexual pleasure. The Canadian radio station Z95.3 was found in mid-1999 to be offering “a new life for the millennium.” Further inquiry revealed that this “new life” consisted in various material possessions (a new house, a new boat, and so on). To such an extent has real life become diminished in the midst of fantasy. It was with no apparent sense of inappropriateness that James Cameron prefaced his “king of the world” proclamation (above) during the 1999 Academy Awards ceremony, at which he received an Oscar for his fictional account of the sinking of the Titanic, with a brief (very brief!) moment of silence in memory of the real victims of the tragedy. No sense of outrage was apparent, either, in his audience.

If the aspiration to “kingship” is thus deeply rooted in our sickly materialistic and superficial culture, the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge is closely allied to it, at least in principle. The very foundation of the modern economic miracle in the West was indeed laid several centuries ago in the explosion of empirical inquiry that is often labeled “the scientific revolution” and in subsequent industrialization and technological advance. We understand better than any generation before us, we imagine, how to make the world work for us. We stand on the edge of yet a further revolution in genetics, which will give us substantial control, we believe, of human life itself. All this is the consequence of looking into the nature of things, and it has bred enormous self-confidence, culturally, in our ability to govern ourselves and in due course to usher in utopia. A politician can hardly ever get elected to office nowadays, in fact, unless he or she more or less promises that this goal is achievable—that things are always and only going to get better. Education has also formally been drawn into this lusting after paradise, as wisdom and knowledge are portrayed not simply as goods in themselves that enable us to live well in the world, but as ways of “getting ahead”—mechanisms that enable us to fulfill our own personal dreams. The point of education is to get good grades, and the point of getting good grades is to put oneself in a position to “gain.”

The irony of all this is that it is often precisely those who have pursued wisdom and knowledge most relentlessly and have probed reality most deeply who understand most fully just how limited still is our understanding at the end of the quest. This is as true in the realm of art as in the realm of physics. In illustration of this we may add to the Renoir quote at the head of this Contemporary Significance section the following, written only a few months before his death in 1919:

I feel I am still making some progress. I am beginning to get to know how to paint. It has taken me fifty years of work to get this far—and there’s still more to do. . . . 11

The culture marches confidently on, however, even in the face of such suggestions of inadequacy and limitation. There is even talk of conquering death itself:

Death is an imposition on the human race, and no longer acceptable. Man has all but lost his ability to accommodate himself to personal extinction; he must now proceed to physically overcome it. In short, to kill death; to put an end to his own mortality as a consequence of being born.12

It is not difficult to understand the contemporary significance of Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:26, then, particularly when it is remembered what the reality of our modern culture is that underlies its confident, abrasive tone and its pretensions to divinity. The reality is the widespread sense of futility and weariness that Qohelet himself describes in this passage—the “first-person testimony” that contradicts (as the testimony of “Solomon” does in Ecclesiastes) the story that is usually told in public, and which provides a very different perspective on the culture. Empiricism has undeniably brought great gains to humanity, but it can only partially grasp what is true, and it cannot tell us the meaning of things.

One of my earliest memories as a university student is of standing at a party watching an extremely bright philosophy major, a bottle of vodka in one hand, sitting against a wall while banging his head rhythmically against it. He had thought deeply, and he would have known what Ecclesiastes 1:18 means, if he had ever read it. Empirical inquiry, which starts from myself and attempts to move outward to embrace what is true, can only do certain things for us; and they are not the most important things. The same is true of education more broadly.

It is likewise evidently the case just how unfulfilling is the accumulation of wealth in the pursuit of joy and how little “gain” there is at the end of the pursuit. Solomon’s life is the life of many men in our culture: the carrying through of great projects, the building of personal monuments, the exertion of power over many other human beings, the amassing of wealth, and the possession of many women. What does it add up to? “A chasing after wind,” with accompanying stress and anxiety (particularly about how to ensure that one’s legacy is passed on) and sleepless nights, and at the end death—the ultimate auditor’s report.

Why do people pursue “gain” in such obviously futile and unsuccessful ways? It is a mystery. It is the irrationality, in fact, of sin. It is an ancient phenomenon, of whom Alexander the Great is perhaps one of the best examples: a high-flying young man with the world literally at his feet, who pushed too far and died young. Modern forms of such world-beating include professional sports, with their endless quest for success and glory, even though no one can explain what winning really achieves. As a memorable episode of The Simpsons reminds us, “The road to the Superbowl is long . . . and pointless—I mean, when you really think about it.”

Qohelet and the rest of the Bible advocate a different way of living. The biblical view of life is that it is designed to be lived in humility and obedience before God, accepting the limitations that are placed on us as mortal beings and finding joy and satisfaction in the ordinary things of life (including intellectual inquiry). As we walk this pathway, we will be “surprised by joy” (to borrow the title of C. S. Lewis’s autobiography); but joy is only a signpost on the journey, not its end, and still less a means to some other human end beyond it. As we walk on this path, we should certainly engage our minds and our curiosity and use such gifts of intellect as we possess for all the good that they can achieve, but we should remember that our pursuit of truth is always carried out in the context of Truth’s pursuit of and self-revealing to us and that it is certainly not to be used for selfish ends. Following this narrow pathway may not gain us entry into Encyclopedia Britannica or Who’s Who, along with those many others who have pursued their own vision of life often at the expense of love for God and neighbor (although many famous people recorded on those pages have also loved as well). We will, however, be found in the book of life, which has different entry qualifications.

At the end of time, in fact, it is those who have done the ordinary things well who will “gain” something, not those who have sacrificed these things for some grander scheme. Those who have found joy in such things will know greater joy; those who have depended on God for wisdom will know yet more wisdom; and those who have lived their lives in the knowledge that death is the ultimate statement of human noncontrol will rise to new life beyond death. It is they, ultimately, who will receive the inheritance mentioned (incomprehensibly in the context of Ecclesiastes itself, who does not think of life beyond death) in 2:26. It is not those like Mr. Burns in The Simpsons who, in response to Homer’s observation that “you’re the richest man I know,” replies, “Yes, but I’d trade it all for more.”

It is C. S. Lewis who once again provides us with one of the best pictures of this reality, in The Magician’s Nephew. A London cabdriver finds himself to his surprise in Narnia, where he meets the lion, Aslan, whom he vaguely recognizes. Aslan, however, tells him that he (Aslan) has known the cabby for a long time; and although the cabby and his wife are the most ordinary of people, they find themselves crowned king and queen of their new homeland, joyful and blessed in their new lives. The wicked witch-queen Jadis, by contrast, who has grasped after immortality and has become a goddess, flees to the far north and must endure endless unhappiness, for “length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery.”13

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal. 5:22–23)