Ecclesiastes 1 - 2

A Meaningless Life Under The Sun

Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes and starts the book with a nihilistic declaration: "Life is meaningless!"  The Hebrew word hebel is used by Solomon and is translated as vapor, vanity, or meaningless depending on the version of the Bible being used.  Life is a vapor - short-lived, indefinable, unable to be contained.  Solomon also employs the idiom "under the sun" meaning "here on Earth" or "in this world."

As the wisest man to ever live, Solomon was blessed with great material wealth and prosperity. However, as he surveyed his life and wisdom he realized that in his self-expression his life was meaningless. He tried every kind of pleasure. Laughter, wine, building large homes, and planting lush gardens did nothing to assuage the emptiness of life.  He acquired slave, herds, flocks, a massive wealth.  He had hundreds of wives and concubines and every entertainer money could buy, yet Solomon could find know lasting meaning in all of this.  To him, it was a vapor, a pointless vanity and totally meaningless.

In his disgust, he realizes that a life without God is meaningless.  He realized that there is nothing new under the sun, that the "new morality" is just the old immorality. That his wealth will be someone else's when he dies and that all his labor has no lasting effect.  He, as a wise man, will die just like the foolish man.

Verse 24 of chapter 2 reads, "Then I realized that these pleasures are from God. For who can ear or enjoy anything apart from him?" Paul makes a similar statement in 1 Corinthians 15:19, "And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world."  Thus a life without Christ is meaningless.