Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities! all is vanity.
Ecclesiastes opens with a verdict, and the verdict covers everything. The man who gives it had every resource a person could want — so if he found nothing worth keeping, where can anyone else look?
The verdict would carry little weight from a man life had treated badly. So it matters who is speaking, and what his title means.
If a disappointed man said this — one whose hopes life had crushed, one the road had treated roughly — no one could wonder at such an opening. But these are the words of the most prosperous, humanly speaking, of men the world has ever witnessed. And his verdict is not about some things, but about all. And here he takes a title not found elsewhere outside this book — Preacher. He would gather those around him who wanted to hear, and teach them, for that is the meaning of the term. Other parts of Scripture deal with the future and with the path of the righteous on earth. This book speaks to everyone whose heart is in the world, busy with the business of life, and tells them what these things really are.
One Hebrew word carries the whole book. Adam and Eve once used it to name a son.
The word "vanity" appears no fewer than 37 times in this book! It is the Hebrew word "hevel," which is also found in the name Adam and Eve gave to their second son Abel (Gen. 4:2) after sin had entered the world through their disobedience.
Another writer describes the thing itself as "a mere breath, a vapour passing over the earth, short-lived in its existence."
Other parts of Scripture deal with guilt and forgiveness. This book takes up a different trouble, and adds a strange twist: more advantages make the ache worse.
This book does not discuss guilt, as Psalm 32 and Psalm 51 do. It discusses the unhappiness of a man whose heart never rises above created things. The fullest means, the highest ability, the highest rank, the most active mind, the finest taste — yes, and wisdom beyond all other men — only make the dissatisfaction and the misery sharper... It is the fruit of the fall and of sin: what else could it be? "Vanity of vanities," and not here and there only, but "All is vanity" — the whole of it passing away, and most of all man without God. It is not true of the faith that looks above the sun to the resources of grace, and lives in the fear that keeps His commandments.
The weight of this verdict rests on who ran the test.
Man's wisdom is not the only thing proved at fault. The world itself goes on trial, and "vanity" is what stands written over it all... The trial is made by one with all the resources of a kingdom such as Solomon's. Men of the world need plenty of material to build the happiness they seek. On that score, "what can the man do who comes after the king?" He also has the wisdom to use these resources, and a heart set on doing it. If the result is failure after all, who then shall succeed?
The Preacher weighs everything by one measure: what he can see. That shapes how to read his conclusions.
The whole book of Ecclesiastes speaks from the standpoint of earthly wisdom. In it we see the struggles of a mind looking closely at life, without the aid of revelation. He says many wise things, many true things, but it all comes from the standpoint of sight, from earth.
The Preacher searches everywhere under the sun. One direction stayed closed to him.
But is there something else which satisfies? Is there a higher wisdom and knowledge? There is, but this book — the book of the natural man — does not reveal it. What satisfies, what is not vanity and frustration of spirit, is above the sun, not under it. From above the sun He came, who is the wisdom of God, the Son of God... That which alone can satisfy is Christ.
- Vapour. "Vanity" is the Hebrew word for a breath that passes. Adam and Eve gave that word to Abel as his name, after sin entered the world.
- Verdict. The trouble here is not guilt but emptiness. It is the unhappiness of a heart that never rises above created things.
- Verified. The richest and wisest of men ran the test, so no one can claim a better shot at it — "who then shall succeed?"
- Vantage point. The Preacher reasons by sight alone, without revelation. So the book records true observations, not final answers.
- Above. What is under the sun is vapour; the satisfaction the Preacher could not find came from above the sun, in Christ.
What profit hath man of all his labour wherewith he laboureth under the sun?
The book opens with a verdict: everything under the sun is vanity. Then comes a question for every hard-working person alive. After a lifetime of toil, what is left over? Commentators say the question needs no answer, and the rest of the book shows why.
Solomon is not describing a lazy man. He picks the busiest, happiest worker he can find, then sets one fact beside him.
He takes up the busy, hard-working man, toiling away — the man who finds plenty to do, is happy doing it, and is taken up with the business of life. But why does the Preacher cry out like this? Why is his view of things so sad? The secret comes out. "A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever." The earth remains; man does not. So the question needs no answer.
The phrase is the key to the whole book. It marks off the ground the search may cover.
The second phrase we notice is "under the sun." It appears twenty-nine times in this book. What is "under the sun" is on the earth. There is, of course, something above the sun: heaven, the heavenly things... In all his searching into the things under the sun, the writer does not depend on divine revelation, on what is above the sun. He reaches his results by the light that nature gives. His resources are within himself. The phrase "I communed with my own heart," which occurs seven times in this book, confirms this. So Ecclesiastes is the book of the natural man apart from divine revelation. That is why the name Jehovah never appears — the name God takes as He enters into covenant relation with man. The book names God only as Elohim, His name as Creator.
Within those limits, one fact cancels every gain. This book looks at death from an unusual angle:
Death is the wages of sin, but Ecclesiastes does not look at it that way. Solomon does not dwell on how death entered the world. He dwells on its presence here, as a worm at the root of the tree of pleasure. It spoils pleasure and chills enjoyment. It cuts a man off just as he would sit down, after years of toil, to reap the fruit of his labour... To man, feeling the results of the fall, death is the great spoiler that blasts all his hopes. What happens after death is another matter; other Scriptures set that out. This book looks at death from this side of the grave.
This is not a poet's mood. It is the report of an experiment, run by the one man with the means to run it.
Thank God, before Solomon ended his career his eyes were opened. God led him to write this striking book, and in it he records the results of the experiment. He was not inspired in doing what he did, but he was inspired to record the result. Listen to what he says: I have investigated on a grand scale, on a scale that others can never touch. Others might have one per cent of it. I have had the whole hundred per cent. And the verdict is, there is no profit in it at all. There is no profit under the sun.
This verse opens a different wound from guilt. The more a person has, the deeper it goes.
What is discussed here is not guilt, as in Psalm 32 and Psalm 51, but the unhappiness of a man whose heart never rises above created things. The fullest means, the highest ability, the most exalted rank, the most active mind, the most cultivated taste — yes, and wisdom above all men — only make the dissatisfaction and the misery sharper. Solomon was the man both to feel it when he turned away from God, and to give us the profit of it, when grace led him to review it all and pass it on as a lasting warning.
If nothing under the sun pays, the answer lies outside that circle. Direction matters more than scale.
Happy, serious, simple lesson! The highest achievements or the richest prosperity in things under the sun are all vanity. But the smallest service to the Lord — even giving a cup of cold water in His name — has the value of eternity in it.
And the gain is not only future. Bring God in, and the calculation changes:
But what of God? If God is to be in control, and if I am to live my life under His eye, then that changes the whole matter. Now godliness is great gain — this awareness of God, this living under the eye of God, this having God as the trust and the glory of our hearts, with the contentment that flows from it.
- Question — The verse asks what a lifetime of work leaves behind. It needs no answer. The earth stays; the worker does not.
- Limit — "Under the sun" keeps the search on earth. The natural man works by his own resources, apart from God's revelation, so the covenant name Jehovah never appears in the book.
- Spoiler — Here death is not the wages of sin but the worm at the root. It cuts a man off just as he sits down to enjoy what he earned.
- Verdict — Solomon ran the experiment at a scale no one else can reach. God then inspired him to record the result: no profit under the sun.
- Profit — Real gain lies above the sun. Godliness with contentment is great gain now, and a cup of cold water given in His name carries the value of eternity.