Under the sun: the Teacher examines life

Ecclesiastes is a short book of wisdom that begins with the words of 'the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem' (1:1). The Hebrew title of the book, Qoheleth, is a rare word that probably means one who gathers or addresses an assembly, and 'Teacher' or 'Preacher' are common translations. The book has an unusual shape: a first-person report by the Teacher, framed at the start and the end by a narrator who speaks about him and commends his work (12:9-14). In Jewish practice the book is read at the festival of Sukkot, the harvest celebration, when Israel recalls that life in the wilderness and on the earth is passing.

Tradition ascribes the book to Solomon, who is the best-known son of David to be king in Jerusalem and who was famous for wisdom, wealth and building (1 Kings 3 to 11). The description in 2:4 to 9 of vineyards, gardens, pools, servants and treasure matches the portrait of Solomon. Many scholars, however, hold that the Hebrew of the book is later than Solomon's day, with some vocabulary that looks Persian or Aramaic and grammar close to late biblical Hebrew, and they date it between the fifth and third centuries BC. A fragment of the book found among the Dead Sea Scrolls dates from the second century BC, which gives the latest possible date. Others suggest that the book uses Solomon as a literary persona, a royal 'voice' adopted by a later wise man. The class does not require a decision, because the book presents itself as the reflections of a wise king, and later writers read it that way.

The first audience was a community that held to the covenant but lived in a world of injustice, short lives and unanswered questions. The Teacher addresses a question that every wise person meets: if everything ends in death, what is gained by anything? He answers by examining life and reporting what he finds.

Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature, but it belongs to the questioning side of that tradition, with Job. Proverbs says that wise living tends to produce life, and Ecclesiastes asks what happens when it does not, and when death comes to everyone. The key to reading it is to keep track of the speaker. For most of the book the Teacher is speaking in the first person, and his view is limited to what can be seen 'under the sun', a phrase that occurs nearly thirty times and means within life on earth, without appeal to what lies beyond. The frame narrator at the end (12:9-14) then evaluates the Teacher's words.

This leads to the main interpretive question: how does the Teacher's view relate to the book's final message? Some scholars, such as Michael Fox, read the book as a consistent expression of the absurd, in which the Teacher finds that life does not add up and calls on readers to accept joy as it comes. Others, such as Tremper Longman, think the frame narrator is gently correcting the Teacher: the Teacher shows where thought leads when God is left out of the picture, and the narrator points his son to the fear of God. Many commentators in the Jewish and Christian traditions see the Teacher as a believer who is wrestling honestly. Each of these readings takes the book as part of the canon. The Talmud (Shabbat 30b) reports that some rabbis wished to withdraw it because it seemed to contradict itself, but it was kept because it begins and ends with words of Torah.

A second rule is to follow the refrains. The word hevel appears more than thirty times, and the call to enjoy food, drink and work recurs, always as a gift from God (2:24; 3:13). Together they show a world that cannot be mastered and a God who gives and is to be feared.

1:1-11. The Teacher states his theme in 1:2 with a phrase the BSB renders 'Futility of futilities... Everything is futile.' The Hebrew word hevel means a breath or vapor. It is the word that names Abel (Genesis 4), whose life was cut short and who has no recorded descendants. It can mean transient, empty or baffling, and its range is part of the book's design. The poem that follows (1:4 to 11) shows generations passing and the earth remaining, the sun rising and setting, the wind turning, and the streams running to the sea, which is never full. The cycles of nature do not get anywhere. The question in 1:3 is about 'gain' (yitron), a word of the market meaning profit: what surplus is left after a person's work?

1:12 to 18. The Teacher introduces himself as king over Israel in Jerusalem and sets out to examine all that is done under heaven. He calls it a burdensome task that God has given to human beings. His discovery is that the world is crooked and cannot be made straight (1:15), and that more wisdom brings more sorrow (1:18). His repeated verdict is that it is a chasing after wind, an effort to catch what cannot be held.

2:1 to 11. The second experiment is pleasure. He tries wine, laughter and great projects: houses, vineyards, gardens, parks with every kind of fruit tree, pools to water the forest, slaves, flocks and herds, silver and gold, singers and the delights of men. He denied himself nothing his eyes desired (2:10). Yet when he looked at all his work, it was hevel and a chasing after wind, and there was no gain under the sun (2:11). The description is detailed enough to show that this was not the complaint of a poor man.

2:12 to 26. He compares wisdom and folly and sees that wisdom has an advantage as light has over darkness, but that death comes to both, and the wise and the fool will be forgotten (2:13 to 16). He hates his toil because he must leave it to someone who has not worked for it and may be a fool (2:18 to 21). Then comes the first of the refrains: there is nothing better for a person than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in his work, and that this too comes from the hand of God (2:24). Enjoyment is not the goal of the world but a gift in it.

3:1 to 8. The poem on times lists fourteen pairs of opposites: birth and death, planting and uprooting, killing and healing, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, embracing and refraining, war and peace, and others. The point is that life has seasons, set by someone other than ourselves. The poem does not say that every action is right at all times, and it does not tell the reader what to do. It teaches humility: events come to us in an order we did not choose.

3:9 to 15. God has made everything beautiful, or fitting, in its time, and has put 'eternity' (olam) in the human heart, yet human beings cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end (3:11). The Hebrew word olam is difficult. It can mean a long duration, the world, or a sense of the whole of time. The sense is that human beings sense there is more than the moment, but cannot see the whole. The conclusion is that nothing can be added or taken away from what God does, and that he has done so that people will fear him (3:14).

3:16 to 22. The Teacher sees wickedness in the place of justice. He answers that God will judge both the righteous and the wicked (3:17), but then adds that human beings and animals share the same fate and the same breath, and asks who knows whether the spirit of man goes up and the spirit of the animal down (3:21). The question is not a denial but an admission that this cannot be known by observation under the sun. The chapter ends with the refrain: nothing is better than to rejoice in one's work, for that is a person's lot (3:22).

Ecclesiastes teaches honest theology under the curse. Genesis 3 had said that the ground would be cursed and that toil would be hard and end in death. The Teacher is exploring the condition of those who live east of Eden. He is not denying God. He affirms that God gives work, enjoyment, times and judgments, but he also insists that human beings cannot master the whole. The book therefore opposes two false attitudes: the pride that thinks life can be controlled, and the cynicism that gives up. Its answer is to receive life as a gift and to fear God.

The book also states the problem of death. The Old Testament faith of the Teacher's day had limited light on what comes after death. The Psalms (16:10; 49:15; 73:24) hint at hope, Job 19:25 speaks of a Redeemer, and Daniel 12:2 speaks plainly of resurrection, but Ecclesiastes keeps to what can be seen. Its honesty about death prepares the way for a fuller revelation. The book also affirms judgment (3:17; 12:14), so death is not the last word on injustice.

Within the canon, the book sits next to Proverbs and Song of Songs, which are also ascribed to Solomon. Proverbs gives the rule of the wise life, Ecclesiastes shows its limits, and the Song celebrates one of the gifts that the Teacher says God gives. Together they present a fuller wisdom than any one of them alone.

The connections here are mainly echoes and a fulfillment by contrast. The Teacher is a 'son of David, king in Jerusalem' who sought wisdom and found futility under the sun. Jesus is the Son of David who is greater than Solomon (Matthew 12:42), and in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (Colossians 2:3). The first king searched the world and found it empty; the greater Son of David enters the world and, through his death and resurrection, answers what the Teacher could not.

Paul takes up the Teacher's word hevel. In Romans 8:20-21, he says that creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but by the one who subjected it in hope that it would be set free from decay. The Greek word he uses is the one used for hevel in the Greek Old Testament. This is a clear echo of Ecclesiastes. The 'futility' that the Teacher describes is real, Paul says, but it is not final. And in 1 Corinthians 15:58 Paul concludes the chapter on the resurrection by saying that because Christ has been raised, the work done in the Lord is not in vain. The Teacher's question about gain finds its answer there. Colossians 3:1-2 tells believers to set their minds on things above and not on earthly things, which marks the difference between a life lived only 'under the sun' and one lived with Christ.

The poem on times (3:1 to 8) is echoed in New Testament language about the 'fullness of time' (Galatians 4:4) and Jesus' announcement that the time is fulfilled (Mark 1:15). The Teacher's statement that God will judge (3:17) is taken up in Acts 17:31, which says that God has set a day on which he will judge the world by a man he has appointed, and in 2 Corinthians 5:10. These are echoes and fulfillments, not predictions: the Teacher does not foretell Christ, but the New Testament answers his questions in him.