# 492 Ecclesiastes – In search of meaning in life – 1:3-8 Living under the sun.

As we continue in Ecclesiastes, we discover yet another fascinating phrase used at least 27 times in the book. It is, under the sun and first noted in 1:3 where Qoheleth says:

³ What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?   

It appears that this is the frame of reference for Qoheleth’s teaching. All that he speaks about concerns our lives on earth (under the sun). It is the realm of human beings in time and space, living and dying on planet Earth. The boundaries are between birth and death. He hints later in his book that there is more, but this comes much later. “Path after path will be relentlessly explored to the very point at which it comes to nothing. In the end, only one way will be left.” (# 59) But we need to work our ways through the many things that he describes as meaningless before all is revealed.  

 A Footnote from the AMPC on 1:3 says, “Ecclesiastes is the book of the natural man whose interests are confined to the unstable, vanishing pleasures and empty satisfactions of those who live merely ‘under the sun.’”

And so, Qoheleth writes:

³ What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?

It’s a good question. Surely there must be some gain, some profit, some benefit from all our hard work. And yet, at times, one wonders, depending on what we do for a living, if it really has been worth all the energy and time we have spent doing this work. At the end of the day, end of the year, when we finally retire, what benefit did we get out of all our toil and sweat?  

But we do have to work to just survive in this world, don’t we? Well, most of us do! And in fact, Qoheleth’s view of work is quite positive at times as we find as we read further.

As C Wright comments:

“… work is a good thing in itself (as Qoheleth will agree again and again). God created us in God’s own image, and the first picture of God we see in the Bible is as a worker: thinking, deciding, planning, executing, shaping, forming, filling, accomplishing in a systematic and purposeful way. A creature that will reflect God in some way simply has to have similar capacities. And we do. It is fundamentally and constitutionally human to work. Work is an essential dimension of our God-imaging role within creation.” (# 60)

Qoheleth continues then describing what he sees as the “circularity of life.” (# 60)  

⁴ Generations come and generations go,
    but the earth remains forever.
⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.
⁶ The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course.
⁷ All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.
⁸ All things are wearisome,
    more than one can say.                                                                                                                         The eye never has enough of seeing,
    nor the ear its fill of hearing.

In one sense, the teaching is correct. Nothing wrong with his observations. Generations do come and go. The sun rises, the sun sets. Everyday the same. Winds move from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure, east to west, north to south, day after day after day. And then there is that amazing water cycle in our world. Due to evaporation and precipitation, the water moves from oceans to land and back again as rivers drain into the oceans and there it begins all over again. Never ending!  Incredible! In fact, in the wisdom of God, without it we would not be able to survive as we do on this planet. But, to the teacher, it appears as a picture of relentless boring repetition … wearisome… nothing new under the sun.

As David Pawson puts it, from the teacher’s perspective, “you are getting nowhere fast; you are just going round in circles. That is why the sun rose this morning and will go to bed tonight, because we are just spinning round, getting nowhere fast. Believe you me, after your funeral it will [still] be going round. You will have had no impression on it whatever. So, life is pointless.” (# 61)

It appears that all is gloom and doom from the perspective of Qoheleth as he shatters any sense of optimism amongst his readers. Fortunately, his quest for meaning continues and bit by bit he reveals that indeed there is a place for optimism, but in the end it all comes back to God. The teacher seems to be knocking us down in order to wake us up to be realistic and then lift our eyes up “above” the sun. As John wrote concerning his vision in Revelation: “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth’”. (Revelation 21:1) Now there is hope!