What does the Teacher mean? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
So you are hypothetically going through the Bible for the first time. You have never read it all before and you are going through the Wisdom books. Job started you off introducing you to the main character. That makes sense. You start off Psalm 1:1 and read:
Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
That’s a good start to a book about worship and introduced you to the book as a whole. Proverbs 1:1 is just an introduction, but the next few verses spell it out for you.
The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel:
2 To know wisdom and instruction,
to understand words of insight,
3 to receive instruction in wise dealing,
in righteousness, justice, and equity;
4 to give prudence to the simple,
knowledge and discretion to the youth—
5 Let the wise hear and increase in learning,
and the one who understands obtain guidance,
6 to understand a proverb and a saying,
the words of the wise and their riddles.7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Makes sense. After reading about the woman of great character, you’re eager to see how wisdom continues. How will the next book, the book of Ecclesiastes start off?
Well, the first verse is an introduction. Okay. Let’s see what the next one says!
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
Um. Is this the Bible? Surely this is the start of a story where we’re going to see the opposite. Right?
Unfortunately for you, no. As you go through the book, you wonder if this could be the most dismal book you have ever read. Why is this in the Bible? Not only that, it started off saying everything is meaningless! What’s going on?!
(FYI, a lot of material in this series will be pulled from what I have written for class from here out so you’ve been warned.)
The word for meaningless is hebel. הֶבֶל (1:2) Bartholomew says this has been given a variety of interpretations such as “meaningless,” “useless,” “absurd,” “futility,” “bubble,” “trace,” “transience,” and “breath.”[1] Enns prefers to read it as “absurd.”[2] Goldingay sees a parallel between the life of man, Adam אָדָם, and then the word hebel, seeing it as the name of Adam’s son, Abel. He sees an opening with Genesis and that Adam appears more frequently here than anywhere else in the Old Testament.[3] Goldingay views the life of Abel as a mere breath that shows up and disappears just as quickly.
The idea brings to mind futility ultimately. However you want to interpret it, it is not a pretty picture. The Teacher, as I will call him, is looking at reality and saying “What is the point of anything here?” We will expound on the next few verses soon, but notice that there is no remedy being given in this blog? I’m not at all saying the Teacher is right, but I am also at this point not saying he is wrong. As we go through, I hope to give more explanation to what he’s saying and why he’s saying it and how it fits with the whole of the biblical narrative.
I hope you’ll join me.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
[1] Craig Bartholomew, Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2009), 105.
[2] Peter Enns, Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2011), 31.
[3] John Goldingay, Ecclesiastes (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf And Stock, 2021), 113.