#938 Ecclesiastes 1 Spinning Orbs

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,

vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

3 What does man gain by all the toil

at which he toils under the sun?

4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,

but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down,

and hastens to the place where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south

and goes around to the north;

around and around goes the wind,

and on its circuits the wind returns.

7 All streams run to the sea,

but the sea is not full;

to the place where the streams flow,

there they flow again.

8 All things are full of weariness;

a man cannot utter it;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

nor the ear filled with hearing.

9 What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there a thing of which it is said,

“See, this is new”?

It has been already

in the ages before us.

11 There is no remembrance of former things,

nor will there be any remembrance

of later things yet to be

among those who come after.

The Vanity of Wisdom

12 I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. 14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

15 What is crooked cannot be made straight,

and what is lacking cannot be counted.

16 I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

18 For in much wisdom is much vexation,

and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. Ecclesiastes 1 ESV

Ecclesiastes 1

A book of philosophy, an apologetic looking at life without regard to Revelation or Eternity. Many have pondered these questions, observations about life, and this book always reminds me of the late Ravi Zacharias. 

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. I believe this to be written by Solomon, and there are parts which correlate well to both his wisdom and his folly.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity - He takes upon himself the cold statement of observation, of this life being all there is, no God, no eternity, just this life without outside revelation. What is the meaning of  such a life? Men strive at many things to establish meaning, legacy and value.

What does a man gain by all the toil - The memories of others? Those can be strange and quite indifferent to the truth. Nature demands we do something, she burns calories, dehydrates, freezes in the cold, and the stomach can only go so long without food. Either we work hard, or find someone else to work for us, if we want to live.

…35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and for the gospel will save it. 36 What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?… Mark 8: 35-37

4-7 A generation goes, the sun rises and the wind blows - Everyone can see and observe these things in their time under the sun. The earth remains though generations of people have past. We know now from advances in science that the earth orbits the sun and spins on it's axis, but with the eye we observe and say, "sunrise and sunset." The streams flow, and the sea is not full, the water evaporates and continues the cycle. 

8-11 All things are full of weariness - The eye is always looking, but this does not guarantee perception. The ear hears even when it doesn't want to, but this does not guarantee understanding. There is nothing new under the sun, though technology increase, we are only learning more about what was already here, based upon the principles that existed all along. As soon as something is new to us it is also very close to being outdated. We not only forget former things, but though we excel in industry, we cannot remember how to live without technology. It has been done and done well by others in the past, but it is lost art to us. We cannot learn from what we have discarded, and we refuse to learn from history, but we also cannot learn from what is left unrecorded.

“What is the difference between a squirrel in a cage who only makes his prison go round the faster by his swift race, and the man who lives toilsome days for transitory objects which he may never attain?” (Maclaren)

12-14 And I applied my heart to seek and to search out - He asked God for wisdom to lead as king, and He had available to him, the wisdom that comes from God through Scripture, and that which is limited to observation of all that goes on under the sun. Ecclesiastes applies an earthly wisdom, and with that Solomon has sought the meaning and purpose of life or that in the acquisition of such knowledge and wisdom, such is the purpose. 

“The two words are not synonymous. The former verb implies penetrating into the depth of an object before one; the other word taking a comprehensive survey of matters further away; so that two methods and scopes of investigation are signified.” (Deane)

“All that is done under heaven shows that the total resources of a limited world-view are the object of study; the vertical aspect is not yet in view.” (Eaton)

What is crooked cannot be made straight - What is lacking cannot be accounted for either. In all of man's searching he cannot find everything on his own. There is within every template of trained thought, every discipline of science, something yet fully understood. What men have been certain of in the past can be destroyed in a day. Many models have been rejected for being proved wrong, but some have been held to by a pseudo faith, because those that believe liked what they believed. There is no fixing some things; they are perverse and cannot be made true. 

16-18 I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly - He looked at nature and then turned to look inside himself. Set aside the moral law, without God's revelation, and chase madness, run after folly. I looked for answers when I was young, in cow pastures where blue ringers grew, LSD, meth, cocaine. I searched the bottom of many a bottle, and found heartache and sorrow, dependency and rage. We chased women like game, but it never filled, adrenaline, but woke up bored the next day. The more he knows the more vexing. The more he experiences, the more he sees, the more sad he becomes.