Making Sense of Ecclesiastes

Among all the books that make up the Bible, the Book of Ecclesiastes is unique literature. It is part of the wisdom literature of the Bible. But it is different. Sometimes when people read it they can become sad and feel a sense of loss. The reason may lie in how the word in Hebrew transliterated as havel  is translated. The English translations vary. Some render it as "vanity," others as "meaningless" or "futile" and some as "purposeless" A more literal translation would be merest breath (Robert Alter) carrying the idea of a vapor, wind, something real but illusive. The author of Ecclesiastes who says he is a Teacher or Preacher relates how people such as himself try in vain to obtain lasting fulfillment in various things or activities to excess and to the exclusion of God, who alone can give true meaning to life.

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Psalms 119:105 Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.

Transcript

Title:  Making Sense of Ecclesiastes

Date: January 27, 2026

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 1:1-3

AI TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad. God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light on our path. Today's topic, reading the book of Ecclesiastes.

You know, sometimes reading the Bible is a real challenge. And one of the books that can trip people is the book of Ecclesiastes. And you know why? because it's unlike any other book in the entire canon. It is poetry. So, there are other books of poetry. For instance, you have the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon, and you have the Psalms themselves. And then there are sections of like Isaiah and others that have poetry embedded in them. So, poetry is found in the Bible and poetry is also in Ecclesiastes.

But Ecclesiastes is different in many ways. In fact, when you read Ecclesiastes, you can either become sad and depressed, or you can just be confused and trying to untangle your mind. But remember that Ecclesiastes is the word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit. And so, it has truth for us in it, so it's worth the effort of the struggle. So, I want to challenge you to read the book of Ecclesiastes along with me. I'll be reading Ecclesiastes for the next several weeks as we have a home Bible study on Tuesday night in which we are going to be reading Ecclesiastes word for word and commenting and interacting with the text. And I urge you to read the book of Ecclesiastes.

Now you have to understand that when you read poetry, you have to understand that it's not the same as chronology. It's not the same as narrative. So, you have to take into consideration the nature of the literature that you're reading. So that requires some rewiring sometimes of our minds. You know, reading history is relatively easy. I have a timeline. This event happens and it causes this event and this event. But when we read poetry, we're dealing with word pictures and we're dealing with alliteration. We're dealing with all kinds of methodology in order to give us a meaning, but the meaning is not necessarily straightforward. It's there, but you have to perceive it by looking at the literature.

It's important that we remember that reading the Bible is an exercise in reading literature. The Bible is literature, and it goes by the rules of literature. So, when you read the Bible, you have to pay attention to the genre. That's what's written, how it's written, what kind of language it is. For instance, in the New Testament, we have the epistles as letters. They're letters written from the apostles to the churches. And so we can read them like letters, albeit they are rearranged a little bit different from the way we ordinarily do letters, but they're letters. You have history, you have biography or autobiography. and you have Apocalypse. Now Apocalypse is symbolic language describing judgments of God or sort of events that are cataclysmic in nature. We have that in the New Testament in the book of Revelation. Maybe that will be another podcast.

But today I want us just to open the book of Ecclesiastes and just look at three verses together and they're important in our understanding the literature. It opens with who's writing Ecclesiastes. Guess what? There's no name given, but it says this, the words of the teacher, or it could be the words of the preacher. You see, it could be either one. It means the one who assembles people to give them instruction or to recite something to them. He's an assembler. an assembler who's going to give words of wisdom. Ecclesiastes is a wisdom literature, so it's conveying wisdom. It's wisdom from God by divine revelation. We take seriously the passage that's found, for instance, in Paul's writing where he says that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for instruction. and for teaching us the way of righteousness and other ways in which it is profitable to us.

So, the words of the teacher, he identifies himself as the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Therefore, it has been surmised that Solomon is the probable writer of Ecclesiastes. But if you know the history of Solomon, and surely you should by reading Samuel or most of the 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles, you'll find the story of Solomon embedded in those books. He is one of the sons of David, and he was his successor to the throne after David died. And Solomon begins with great promise, but Solomon falls to great depths. because of the marriages he contracted, marriages with foreign leaders, daughters, and he builds him idol places for their idols, and he introduces idolatry into Jerusalem. And when you read about Solomon, you know, this great man of wisdom sometimes acted like a fool. Now that's my opinion, but I'm basing it on the story that we're given of Solomon in the Bible.

But perhaps Ecclesiastes is written toward the end of Solomon's reign and life. And after he looks back over his life, and in looking over his life, he can say about it, you know, he lamented, it's futile, it's pointless, it's vanity. These are the words that are translated in Ecclesiastes verse two, chapter one, verse two. These words are used by different translators. The World English Bible says, vanity of vanity says the preacher, vanity of vanities all is vanity. But if you read those words and just on the surface of them, the way we think of vanity, we would probably think, well, everything's useless in life. There's no point to life, but that is definitely not the message of Ecclesiastes. It is veiled in a way. In other words, we can pursue all kinds of legitimate things, but we may pursue them in illegitimate ways. We may pursue them into excess or to the exclusions of others or to the exclusion of God. building our lives on things that are not eternal, things that are not a permanence, things that are elusive. That's really what the author of Ecclesiastes is after.

Here's another translation from the Christian Standard Bible. The words of the teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem, absolute futility, says the teacher, absolute futility, everything is futile. Well, maybe that has a little better root than vanity. But if you dig down into the meaning of the word vanity, you can finally get to it. But I don't know that we should have to do that. Perhaps there's a better translation. Well, let's go to the New Living Translation. It reads, everything is meaningless, says the teacher, completely meaningless.

Ah, but when I read Ecclesiastes, I find that there is a presentation of something that seems to be futile, a vanity that he's tracing after, but then there'll be words of wisdom that give us the absolute opposite, a contrast, so the book is full of tension. And it has words in it that are not meaningless, and that are not futile, and that are not vanity, but are the truth of God. So, we have to look for those words. They are the gems, the diamonds that are placed in the midst of the text.

Here's the New International Version. The words of the teacher. Meaninglessness, again, he uses it, utter meaningless. And then back to the English Standard Version, the one we ordinarily use in our church. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, vanity of vanities, everything is vanity. Well, I think that none of those are the best translation of the word, because the word that's used doesn't carry those precise meanings. The word carries the idea of something that is not permanent, something that you can't really grasp with your hand, something that's like the wind.

Listen to Adler's translation in his book, The Wisdom Books, a translation from Hebrew, of Hebrew poetry of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. It's probably a more literal translation of the Hebrew. In fact, he doesn't even translate the word for who's speaking, and I can't pronounce it right. He has kohelet as the Hebrew title for the speaker. He means a teacher or a preacher. That's a specific role of the person. So, it's not a personal name. We're not told that it's Solomon or some other king.

But the word hevelet, I'm not pronouncing that exactly right either. I'm not very good on my Hebrew pronunciation. It wasn't my strong subject. But here's the literal translation, merest breath. It implies something that's like a passing vapor or something that slips through your fingers like wind. It's real. It's like a puff of smoke. So, you have some smoke. You can try to reach your hand out to the smoke. It's real. You can smell it. You can see it. But if you try to grasp it, you can't grasp it. Your hand just passes through, and it floats away. It's gone. It's like the vapor. That's what the author of Ecclesiastes is telling us. There's so much of life that we look to for meaning that's really like the wind. It's passing. Even human life is passing. It soon slips away.

Look, there are other verses of scripture found outside of Ecclesiastes that use this word that's translated this way. Psalm 144, verse four, man is like a breath. It's that same word. His days are like a passing shadow. Now the word futility is used by Paul in Romans 8.20, but this is not Hebrew, he's translating from Greek. But he says, for creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. Now what he's telling us, you know, is that creation was made by God good, perfect, wonderful, and it was made for the exact habitation of man, made in the image of God.

But you know what man did, and Adam and Eve, they violated the one commandment that God gave them that was prohibition. Do not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat it, thereof you will die. But they in rebellion against God, Eve was deceived, but Adam was not, took the fruit and ate it, and thus mankind fell. In Adam all have sinned. In Adam, all have been declared guilty, and we are born after the likeness of fallen, sinful Adam. Not only did Adam fall, but he subjected the whole creation, all of Earth and all of our solar system. He subjected it to a futility. He subjected it to something that it was not meant to be. There's disorder and chaos. There's evil sin.

Psalm 39, verses five and six. Behold, you made my days a few hand breaths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath. Think about that. Surely a man goes about as a shadow. Surely for nothing their eternal man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather. It's one of the points in Ecclesiastes. People pursue wealth. They accumulate wealth, and the more wealth they get, the more they want to hold on to it. They could bless the world with it, but so many people, when they have more than enough, refuse to share it or do it so reluctantly. They simply want to get more and more and more. Ah, what a waste. 

Even Ecclesiastes 2. speaks about the same thing, that people pursue things as vanity and a striving after when. So that's even used in the text, a striving after when. Ecclesiastes 2, 26. Ecclesiastes 2, 23 says, for all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity, a futility, a meaninglessness. 

No, really, it's a mere shadow. It's something that's elusive. You can't really hold onto it. So that's what Ecclesiastes is driving at. Man pursues many things to find meaning and purpose in life. But when we pursue things rather than the creator God himself, we will find that all of it is elusive. It's like a passing shadow. It's like a puff of smoke that you can't hold to. 

But there's one you can hold to. He's the creator. It's the God who made all things and who made us so that we might have true relationship in Him. And to make that possible for fallen man, He has sent His Son, the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who came down into this world of elusiveness. subjected himself to the futility of fallen creation, and in his own body on the tree, he took to himself our guilt and our transgressions so that we could find eternal life, permanence in him. 

The eternal life that begins now when we believe that will endure forever in the resurrection from the dead when he returns and these mortal frames. shall be translated at the resurrection into the immortal bodies for the dwelling of God in his own spirit, united with our spirit. We will be living with God here on a new heaven and a new earth. 

Everything in earth, everything in life seems to be a constant repetition, going on and on in cycles. But God is the one who can give true meaning, true permanence, and true life to all who seek him in faith. 

This has been Wayne Conrad with Bible