{"id":5037,"date":"2025-11-13T16:01:56","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5037"},"modified":"2025-11-13T16:01:56","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T21:01:56","slug":"ecclesiastes-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/13\/ecclesiastes-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecclesiastes 1:1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Each day this month we\u2019re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible \u2013 exploring what we can learn from chapter one \/ verse one of various Old and New Testament books.<\/em>

\u201cMeaningless!\u00a0Meaningless!\u2019 says the Teacher. \u2018Utterly meaningless!\u00a0Everything is meaningless.\u2019\u201d

Yes, I know. That\u2019s actually the second sentence of Ecclesiastes.

But it was clearly meant to be the jarring introduction to one of the Bible\u2019s strangest books.

It packs a wallop for the simple reason that it doesn\u2019t seem to align with \u201cGod loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,\u201d the first \u201claw\u201d of evangelist Bill Bright\u2019s famous Four Spiritual Laws<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0

As we noted in our extended look at Ecclesiastes a few years ago, this book isn\u2019t like anything else in Scripture.\u00a0It\u2019s probably the most misunderstood and maligned resident of either Testament.

Some commentators have described its tone as cynical and despairing.\u00a0Rabbis spent centuries debating its inclusion in the Jewish Scriptures.\u00a0Christian preachers have cast their votes for its importance primarily by ignoring it. It\u2019s entirely possible to attend church services for 50 years and never hear a single sermon from a text in Ecclesiastes.\u00a0

At the same time, Ecclesiastes is one of the most joyful books in the Bible.\u00a0It identifies pleasure as one of God\u2019s greatest gifts.\u00a0The author unflinchingly declares, as he wraps things up, that nothing is more important than obeying God. \u00a0

Ecclesiastes clearly deserves to be one of the five \u201cwisdom\u201d books of the Old Testament, which, taken together, constitute a whopping 15% of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

The author (traditionally thought to be Solomon) conducts what might be called the Royal Experiment: Is it possible to have everything in the world \u2013 fame, power, love, money, wisdom, and influence \u2013 only to make the dreadful discovery that everything that\u2019s part of the so-called Good Life adds up to exactly Nothing?

That opening sentence seems to telegraph his despairing answer: Yes<\/em>.

So we have to ask: If God\u2019s people have good reasons for believing that every moment is shot through with meaning, and that death itself cannot rob us of our life with God and each other, why is there a book in the Bible that begins by declaring that everything is meaningless?

\u201cMeaningless\u201d represents the Hebrew word hebel<\/em>, which appears 86 times in the Old Testament.\u00a0Scholars have struggled to agree on a good one-word English translation.\u00a0If you grew up reading the King James Version, you might remember the opening of Ecclesiastes as \u201cVanity of vanities, everything is vanity.\u201d\u00a0Other translators opt for \u201cuseless,\u201d \u201csmoke,\u201d \u201cmist,\u201d or \u201cmere breath.\u201d

Everyone agrees that hebel<\/em> is something that doesn\u2019t last, or that doesn\u2019t produce its intended result.\u00a0It\u2019s here today, gone tomorrow.

Hebel<\/em> is something you can\u2019t count on.

And that brings us to the very next verse, where we read the author\u2019s exasperated protest: \u201cWhat do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?\u201d

Here the author isn\u2019t making a comment about the physical challenges of plowing, harvesting, and bricklaying under the intense Palestinian sunshine, even though almost every task in the ancient Near East took place outdoors, and none of them were easy.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0

\u201cUnder the sun\u201d is shorthand for this world<\/em> \u2013 the visible world that is all around us, the one that we can access by means of our five senses. The writer of Ecclesiastes makes the case that if we look for the meaning of life in this world only<\/em>, we will never find it.\u00a0

If the quest for life\u2019s meaning is like solving a jigsaw puzzle, then some of the pieces seem to be missing.\u00a0And we don\u2019t have the picture on the box to guide us, even though every religion worth its salt is shouting, \u201cHere it is!\u00a0 This is what you\u2019re looking for.\u201d\u00a0Ecclesiastes says that all of our eating, drinking, sleeping, working, loving, fighting, and hoping take place under the sun \u2013 in this world and this world alone.\u00a0

And if all our answers for life\u2019s biggest questions come from this world alone, they will turn out to be hebel<\/em>. They will be meaningless, short-of-the-mark, as insubstantial as an early morning fog.\u00a0

That may seem like an esoteric philosophical point that doesn\u2019t have a whole lot to do with what you\u2019re going to have for lunch.\u00a0

But how your life turns out<\/em> inevitably depends on where you choose to start<\/em> \u2013 the so-called \u201cfirst principles\u201d that you choose to believe. \u00a0

The hard-bitten American journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) mocked people who fell for religious answers.\u00a0He was fully content with atheism as a bedrock assumption.\u00a0But his quest for a deeply satisfying this-world-only life came up empty.\u00a0\u201cThe basic fact about human experience is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.\u00a0It is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in any sense.\u201d\u00a0

The author of Ecclesiastes would not have been surprised.\u00a0He himself enthusiastically pursued the search for meaning under the sun, and also came up empty.\u00a0

The reason Jewish rabbis and Christian preachers ultimately gave their thumbs-up to the inclusion of Ecclesiastes in the canon is the author\u2019s bottom line, especially as spelled out in his last chapter: \u201cNow all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind\u201d (12:13).

Or, if you prefer a summary in six words: Outside of God, Everything is Meaningless<\/em>

And what about us?

We can thank God that the sun will once again appear at tomorrow\u2019s sunrise \u2013 and that \u201cbeyond the sun\u201d there is indeed true Meaning waiting to be found.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Each day this month we\u2019re looking closely at one of the 1:1 verses of the Bible \u2013 exploring what we can learn from chapter one \/ verse one of various Old and New Testament books. \u201cMeaningless!\u00a0Meaningless!\u2019 says the Teacher. \u2018Utterly meaningless!\u00a0Everything is meaningless.\u2019\u201d Yes, I know. That\u2019s actually the second sentence… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1029,487],"class_list":["post-5037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-11-series","tag-meaning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5039,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5037\/revisions\/5039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}