If there is a single book in all of Scripture that rescues me from despondency and hopelessness, it is the Book of Ecclesiastes. It is also a book to which I turn frequently when – as I noted recently – I have lost my way or forgotten that which is true. I regard the book to be a message of deep wisdom, written by one (presumably Solomon) who had wrestled with God and become convinced of the inscrutable nature of His ways.

In one of my reference books – I do not know which – is written the following description of Ecclesiastes:

Koheleth’s Purpose and Theme: he uses traditional tools of wisdom to refute and revise its traditional conclusions. Like Job, he protested the easy generalizations with which his fellow teachers taught their pupils to be successful. They had oversimplified life and its rules so as to mislead and frustrate their followers. Their ‘wisdom’ was superficial and the ‘counsel’ thin in a world beset by injustice, toil, and death. The sages trod on territory belonging to God when they tried to predict with certainty the outcome of conduct both wise and foolish. The freedom of God and the mystery of His ways were realities that Koheleth knew better than they, who did not always recognize the limits divine sovereignty has placed on human reason, wisdom, and understanding. Failure to recognize human limits has caused man to value their own wisdom, pleasure, prestige, wealth, and justice far too much.”

I first came across this approach to Ecclesiastes while at Denver Seminary. A little commentary on the book by David Hubbard, former president of Fuller Seminary, caught my attention and helped me make sense of the book. This was in stark contrast to almost all the other commentaries I had encountered that dismissed the book as “an unenlightened man’s view of life.” It was the beginning of an important reservoir of wisdom from which I was to drink in future periods of spiritual drought.

What has been difficult for me for more than twenty years, however, is the little Hebrew word hebel. It appears 36 times in the book (in all chapters except 10) and is translated “vanity” or “vanities” most of the time. The trouble is that “vanity” (NASB, ESV, KJV) is one of those words that, while having denotative value, has virtually no connotative power for me. Other translations employ words such as “meaningless” (NIV, NLT), “futility” (Holman), and “nonsense” (CEV). Elsewhere in the OT it is rendered “worthless,” “futile,” “breath,” and “shadow.” These don’t help much, either.

The best word I’ve found for hebel is the English word “vacuous.” This word can mean, among other things, “without content . . . empty . . . purposeless.” TWOT says of hebel as employed in Ecclesiastes,

[The use of hebel in Ecclesiastes] may be grouped into several subdivisions. First are those passages in which the author states his inability to find fulfillment in work, both in his failure to be creative and in his lack of control over the privilege of free disposition of his possessions; this is ‘vanity’: 2.11, 19, 21, 23; 4.4, 8; 6.2. Second are those verses in which the author struggles with the idea that the connection between sin and judgment, righteousness and final deliverance is not always direct or obvious. This is an anomaly about life and it is ‘vanity’: 2.15; 6.7-9; 8.10-14. The meaning of hebel here would be ’senseless.’ Thirdly are those verses in which the author laments the shortness of life; this is ‘vanity’: 3.19; 6.12; 11.8, 10. Life, in its quality, is ‘empty’ or ‘vacuous’ (and thus unsubstantial), and in its quantity is ‘transitory.’”

The kosmos or aion, says Koheleth, is vacuous. The world system is empty, temporary, hollow, lacking in susbstance, without lasting value. It calls to us, beckons us, lures us, lulls us. It is an instrument in the hands of the Enemy (1 Jn 5.19).

Next: “Here we go ’round again”


2 Cor 1:13