Ecclesiastes 1 opens with the Preacher’s verdict on life apart from God: “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” The sun rises and sets, the wind circles, the rivers run into a sea that is never full, and “there is no new thing under the sun.” Then Solomon begins his own story. He set his heart to search out everything by wisdom, and found that even wisdom, pursued for its own sake, is “vexation of spirit”: “in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
A study in Ecclesiastes 1 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 12 min read
The Words Of The Preacher
“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?”
Ecclesiastes 1:1-3
“The Preacher” translates the Hebrew Qoheleth, one who gathers an assembly and speaks to it. He is “the son of David, king in Jerusalem”: Solomon, the wisest and richest man of his age. The Lord had appeared to him twice. He had built the temple and prayed at its dedication. And then, as 1 Kings 11 records, his many foreign wives “turned away his heart after other gods.”
Ecclesiastes is Solomon looking back on those lost years. He writes as a man who has tried everything, and who has come home.
“The book of Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon in his old age, after he had fully proved that all the pleasures earth is able to give are empty and unsatisfying. He there shows how impossible it is for the vanities of the world to meet the longings of the soul.”
Ellen G. White · The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 3, p. 1164
His verdict comes first: “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” The Hebrew word hebel means a breath, a vapour, the mist of your breath on a cold morning. It is there, and then it is gone. “Vanity of vanities” is the Hebrew way of saying “the most vaporous of all,” just as “holy of holies” means the holiest place. Life lived for itself alone, Solomon says, has no more substance than that.
Notice the phrase that will run through the whole book: “under the sun.” It appears some thirty times. Solomon is describing life as it looks when we leave God out, measuring everything by what can be seen and gained on earth. From that viewpoint he asks, “What profit hath a man of all his labour?” What is left when it is over? Jesus asked the same question: “what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).
No New Thing Under The Sun
“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.”
Ecclesiastes 1:4-11
Solomon looks at nature and sees endless circles. Generations come and go, but the earth stays. The sun rises and “hasteth” back to rise again. The wind blows south and north, round and round. The rivers pour into the sea and the sea is never full, because the water rises, falls as rain, and runs back to the rivers. Solomon describes the water cycle three thousand years before science explained it.
But his point is not science. It is that man is part of the same restless round. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” We are made with a hunger that nothing under the sun can fill. We see, and want to see more. We hear, and want to hear more. And each generation thinks it has found something new, but “there is no new thing under the sun.” Technologies change; the human heart does not. Pride, greed, lust and fear are as old as Eden.
Worst of all, “there is no remembrance.” The famous and powerful of one age are forgotten by the next. Solomon, who built so much for his own glory, knew that his name too would fade. Only what is done for God lasts (1 John 2:17).
In Much Wisdom Is Much Grief
“I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
Ecclesiastes 1:12-18
Now Solomon begins his personal story. His first experiment was knowledge. He “gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven.” No one was better equipped. God had given him “wisdom and understanding exceeding much” (1 Kings 4:29). He studied plants and animals, wrote three thousand proverbs and a thousand songs (1 Kings 4:32-33).
And his conclusion? “All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” The phrase means “chasing the wind.” Knowledge could describe the world, but it could not fix it: “that which is crooked cannot be made straight.” Learning cannot make a crooked heart straight. Only God can do that.
“Solomon had great learning; but his wisdom was foolishness; for he did not know how to stand in moral independence, free from sin, in the strength of a character molded after the divine similitude.”
Ellen G. White · The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 3, p. 1165
“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” The more Solomon understood of the world, the more he saw its pain and brokenness, and the less he could do about it. Knowledge without God does not bring peace. It brings clearer sight of the problem, without the answer.
It was the oldest temptation of all: to seek knowledge apart from God’s word. In Eden the serpent promised that the forbidden tree would make Adam and Eve “as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). They gained knowledge, and lost Paradise.
“Age after age, the curiosity of men has led them to seek for the tree of knowledge; and often they think they are plucking fruit most essential, when, like Solomon’s research, they find it altogether vanity and nothingness in comparison with that science of true holiness which will open to them the gates of the city of God.”
Ellen G. White · The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 1, p. 1083
Ecclesiastes 1 leaves us with an honest ache. Life under the sun, even at its richest and wisest, is a breath. That ache is not a mistake. It is the hunger God placed in us so that we would look above the sun, to Him. As the Preacher will say in chapter 3, God “hath set the world in their heart” (3:11), a sense of eternity. Nothing smaller than God can fill it.
