TEXT [Commentary]

  I.   Frame Narrative: Prologue (1:2-11)

2 “Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!”

3 What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. 6 The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. 7 Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. 8 Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

NOTES

1:2 meaningless. This word occurs over 35 times in this short book, marking it as a major theme, particularly of the body of the book (1:12–12:7). As a matter of fact, the refrain “Everything is meaningless . . . completely meaningless” may be seen as the Teacher’s bottom line since the second wise man (see “Author” in the Introduction) introduces the Teacher’s thoughts with this refrain here and then summarizes them similarly in 12:8. The basic meaning of the Heb. word is “vapor” or “bubble,” but in Ecclesiastes it is used metaphorically to mean “devoid of meaning.” Attempts to make the word suggest the brevity of life (see Fredericks 1993) are unpersuasive.

1:3 What do people get? Lit., “What profit is there for a person?” What is the ultimate end once all our activities cease? Is there any significance to our work, including our work at searching for meaning? This rhetorical question assumes the answer is “nothing”—people get nothing for all their hard work.

hard work. This renders a phrase (see also 2:18) that might be lit. translated “my toil that I toil.” The Heb. root (‘amal [TH5999, ZH6662]) occurs here in noun and verb form, which serves to emphasize its importance for the thought of the verse. The word usually has negative connotations and is well translated by “hard work,” “toil,” or “drudgery.”

under the sun. The Teacher’s thought may be characterized as “under the sun” thinking—that is, thinking apart from the revelation of God. It is not that he completely leaves God out; after all, he reflects on who God is and gives advice about a relationship with him in ch 5. However, his thinking about life is restricted to what he sees happen on earth and is not based on what he learns from Israel’s prophets.

1:5 hurries. Lit., the verb sha’ap [TH7602, ZH8634] means “to pant.” The sun can hardly keep up with its daily cycle. The picture supports the Teacher’s point that in spite of all the strenuous effort, nothing meaningful is accomplished in the world.

1:6 The wind blows south, and then turns north. The Heb. utilizes a literary device that is called delayed identification. The subject “wind” is actually toward the end of the verse. Thus, as the verse describes something going south, north, and round and round, the reader is not certain until the end that the author is describing the wind. Such a device grabs the attention of readers and gets them involved, but, as with many Heb. literary devices, it is hard to reflect it in a modern translation without sounding wooden.

1:9 History. Heb. does not have a word for history as such, but this translation is a good one for the literal but vague “that which was.”

COMMENTARY [Text]

As was explained in the introduction, the first part of the book contains the words of someone who is speaking about Qoheleth (“the Teacher”). Although the same is true of the epilogue (12:8-14), most of the book represents the words of Qoheleth speaking in the first person about himself.

The prologue (1:2-11) is the second wise man’s introduction before the reader encounters the Teacher’s speech. It essentially sets the mood for what follows, giving a foretaste of the conclusion that the Teacher reached in his exploration for meaning in this world. The tone is somber and expresses the conclusion that while there is a lot of activity in the world, it is tedious. To use a modern image, we are like rats on a wheel, running constantly but getting nowhere.

It begins by expressing the Teacher’s final conclusion: “Everything is meaningless.” As we will see in the chapters that follow, the Teacher looked for lasting significance in many different areas of life and came up empty. In 1:3 he asks a rhetorical question that he will repeat elsewhere in his reflections (see 3:9; 5:16). He asks what people get for all their hard work, and the assumed answer is “absolutely nothing.” There is no profit to life. Indeed, according to 1:4-8, this is true not only for individuals but also for corporate humanity, nature, and even history. In 1:4, he takes the long view—a consideration of the ebb and flow of humanity from one generation to another—and concludes that nothing changes.

He then turns to nature, where change seems obvious at first glance, but closer inspection shows its insignificance. The sun moves through the sky, certainly, but it is the same every day, rising and setting, rising and setting. The wind blows, suggesting progress or change, but actually it simply blows in a circle getting nowhere (1:6). The same natural circular movement is seen with water (1:7). The water flows down the river to the sea, but the sea never gets full. Why? Because it simply recycles into the river, which flows back down into the sea, back to the river again, ad infinitum. After observing and commenting on all this motion that actually goes nowhere, the Teacher confesses his boredom with it all (1:8). Life is truly unsatisfying.

In 1:8-11 the Teacher reflects on the realm of human action. It again is characterized by constant motion, but on closer reflection he realizes that here, too, there is no real progress. Nothing is really new; history just repeats itself. If something strikes people as an innovation, it is only because they have forgotten something that actually happened in the past. A little research will show that it was an illusion; nothing is new. This paragraph also introduces another theme that wears heavily on the Teacher—forgetfulness. What we do today seems new and exciting to us, but it is not really new and will not be remembered in the future. Such an insight takes all the steam out of living and so-called creativity. The present loses out to the past and the future.