# 491 Ecclesiastes – In search of meaning in life – 1:1-2 meaningless/empty/a vapour?

So, the question is,have there been times in your life when you could identify with the feelings of Qoheleth? When you felt like everything seemed meaningless? I have, and to be honest, it is not a great place to be.

As mentioned previously, some scholars suggest that the first 11 verses of Ecclesiastes is written as an introduction to the writings of Qoheleth by a second person, who writes:  

1 The words of the Teacher son of David, king in Jerusalem:

² “Meaningless! Meaningless!”                                                                                                                                                                       says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.”

It is interesting to see how the seemingly shocking opening words are translated in different versions. For example:

“Hevel havalim” – Hebrew meaning vapour or breathe i.e. fleeting (Orthodox Jewish Bible),

“it’s all smoke” [Message],

^“Vapor of vapors and futility of futilities… All is vanity (emptiness, falsity, and vainglory).” (AMPC).

Pointless! Pointless! …utterly meaningless! Nothing matters!  (Complete Jewish Bible)

It would appear that, in one sense, James in the NT expresses something similar in his letter to those who boast about the future, and this concerning the fleeting nature of our short lives. He says:

¹³ Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. (James 4:13-17)

Or as the Amplified Version puts verse 14:

¹⁴ Yet you do not know [the least thing] about what may happen tomorrow. What is the nature of your life? You are [really] but a wisp of vapor (a puff of smoke, a mist) that is visible for a little while and then disappears [into thin air]. (AMPC)

In fact, the word “meaningless” is used at least 34 times in Ecclesiastes, just to get his point over. We shall consider these times as we work our way through this book.

Christopher Wright suggests that this the word for “meaningless” could also suggest “Baffling, enigmatic. You know there must be some meaning or point in life, but it constantly eludes you; you can’t get to the bottom of it. In the end life is a mystery, an enigma. Whatever meaning there is (and presumably there is one) is hidden from us. We just struggle to make sense of things that seem senseless most of the time.” (# 60)

He continues: “This sense of “a baffling enigma” seems close to Qoheleth’s view of life in this world as we know it. We live in a world we just can’t understand. Or at least, even though there is a great and increasing amount that we can and do understand, there are aspects of life and our experience that just don’t make sense and so much that seems beyond our abilities or our control. And even when we have an intuitive belief that there must be a point and a meaning in it all somehow, we can’t quite put our finger on it with definitive and satisfying answers. That is what propels Qoheleth on his journey.” (# 60)

Kidner writes:

“A wisp of vapour, a puff of wind, a mere breath – nothing you could get your hands on; the nearest thing to zero: vanity of vanities, says the teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. [KJV] … [an ominous word] … a desperate word… pointless… The author… wants us to look very closely at the world we can see [under the Sun – 1:3] and at the answers it seems to give, before he will do more than drop hints of his own standpoint… At the end of the book the lines will be firmly drawn, and Qoheleth revealed as a man of faith.” (# 59)

Quoting G.S. Hendry he says “Qoheleth writes from concealed premises, and his book is in reality a major work of apologetic… [it] is in fact a critique of secularism and of secularized religion.” (G.S. Hendry, Introduction to article ‘Ecclesiastes’, in The New Bible Commentary Revised (IVP,1979, p. 570) (# 59)

So, how do you feel about those “aspects of life and our experience that just don’t make sense and so much that seems beyond our abilities or our control.” Do these times lead to despair or is it these times when you turn your eyes on Jesus, the One who is in control and in whom life does make sense?

I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till  it overflows).  (Jesus – John 10:10b)