Bible Commentaries

Ecclesiastes 1:2).

"Vanity,"—a light wind, a puff, a breath that passes away instantly. This is the king's judgment! Already he begins to show that he is a man. He built his palace, but its foundations were laid in the fickle wind, and the palace itself was but a tinted dream! It is something to know the quality of the elements with which we have to deal, and the nature of the things that are round about us. A knowledge of the universal helps towards a knowledge of the particular. The climate determines the building. As men grow in the knowledge of life's tragedy, the one thing they seem to see most clearly is life's emptiness. Time itself ceases to have volume or duration, and to be but a flying wind. "Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand-breadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity." This is the voice of another teacher not wanting in social dignity and large spiritual experience. "Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity." Thus the word "vanity" is not limited to Ecclesiastes: it is found in the Ecclesiastes 1:3-11).

This is the Preacher's view of life as it is commonly seen, We are not to understand that the Preacher is stating things as they really are; he is rather giving a view of life as it appears in passing. Some of it Ecclesiastes 1:13).

This verse shows us that: he was no mere prodigal, but a student determined and zealous, climbing the high hills of wisdom and laying his measuring-line on the wide breadth of understanding. He wanted to know all things, and ended by knowing nothing as it really is. He found out the doctrine of the Unknowable long before our philosophers supposed themselves to have discovered it, and taught it with a plainer directness. Along with the doctrine of the Unknowable came the kindred doctrine of the Impossible:—

"That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered" ( Ecclesiastes 1:15).

What God left out man cannot put in. He may clumsily imitate it, but his imitation at its best is rude and nearly useless. Man makes hands of wax, eyes of glass, limbs of wood,—ghastly travesties of nature, and better imitations of death than of life! God leaves out genius, and men stuff their memories with the chaff of information; God leaves out poetry, and men jingle together such words as Love and Dove, Health and Wealth, Far and Star, and sell the cracked rhyme for music; God leaves out memory, and men buy almanacs and diaries. On one side is written Unknowable, on the other is written Impossible; and man swings between the two, like a pendulum, always in procession and making one tick exactly like another. Then Coheleth rushed from wisdom to folly and made a friend of madness, thinking that the earth was bigger at night-time than in the daylight; but lo! he struck his head against great beams and lamed himself upon the sharp rocks, and found himself in the morning within an inch of unfathomable abysses! As for conquering by wisdom, he found that the end of one horizon was the beginning of another, and that when he had scaled the hills the stars were as far off as ever, laughing at his impotence and coldly telling him that there was "no thoroughfare." And in his "much wisdom" he found "much grief," and as he increased knowledge he increased sorrow! Poor soul indeed, much vexed and harassed, plagued by his own ambition, having aspiration enough to get away from the valley, yet carrying with him all up the hill the want, the pain, the fear, which dig graves everywhere and make the highest places low. Yet it is important to observe that with all this experience Coheleth never disputes the value of real wisdom, but always exhorts men to seek understanding and secure it. "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding."

So much for the case as thus far presented by Coheleth. If this is all, the best medicine for many men is suicide. If life is a case of veering, veering, of getting up only to fall down again, of eating, drinking, sleeping, and whirling round a routine course of so-called duty, of laughter without joy, and mourning without hope, the nearest way is the best, for it is simply leaping out of nothing into nothing, out of the nothing of noise and fret into the nothing of unconsciousness and annihilation. "This way out!" from your misery, your chagrin, and pain, and shame,—this way,—by rope, or steel, or river, or poisoned cup,—this way into absorption and oblivion! The omissions of this statement, regarded as a survey and report of the constitution and process of things, are most remarkable. So far as it goes the case is well stated, but as a representation of the whole idea of life, it is simply deficient in every element of spiritual truth. It is the world seen through a dense mist; it is a world supposed to be complete in itself; in short, it is not a world as we understand it who read events in the Scriptural sense. For example, all the primary religious elements and conditions are wanting. In this rude world of Coheleth's there is no God, no altar, no revelation, no outward and upward way. It is a world of information, fact, monotonous repetition, laughter, madness, folly, and self-terminating wisdom. This, in many respects, is the key of the book. The Preacher sought to satisfy the infinite with the finite, and that is what all non-religious men are endeavouring to do. To prove the emptiness of this world is not to prove that there is no other world, but is rather to suggest the existence of some larger sphere of life and experience. Here, again, we come upon the necessity of making the old distinction between geography and astronomy. A man may seek a long time in this world before he finds the explanation of the daylight which makes it glad. The fact is that the daylight is not in the earth, but is shed upon it from higher places. So it is with the great problem of human life; its answer is not in itself, it is a revelation from above. It is easy to denounce this world by proving its emptiness, and gathering together in one great host its pains and disappointments. All that side of the case is perfectly right, and can lead to but a sorrowful conclusion: the fact to be remembered is that that view leaves out every religious element and condition, which is equal to a man proving that the earth is a scene of darkness simply because he only visits it in the gloom of midnight. Not until what we understand by the Christian religion rises upon human life do its great revelations shine upon it with all the splendour of assured hope. Where primary religious ideas are wanting, all that is helpful in a life of discipline, and all that is beautiful in moral sympathy, must be wanting also. The man who describes himself in this text, though a king, is little better than a lawless and self-indulgent child. He wants to see the rivers filling up the sea, instead of eternally falling through a sieve; he wants new toys. He becomes tired of things, and cries for something better. His world has no perspective; his world has no outlook. He does not know that there is an altar-stair leading up through the darkness to other and fairer worlds. The idea of this being a school never strikes him. We are now keeping strictly within the limits of this report in so saying; what may strike him afterwards will in due time appear. Meanwhile our attention is fixed upon this survey only. He is king, he is master, he is everybody; and herein the royalty of his position was a drawback. Had he struggled his way up to the throne, as his ancestor did, he would have learned many a lesson on the rough way; but he was a great man's son, and he never spoke but in the imperative mood. A brief verb, and simple in conjugation, was Coheleth"s; it had but one mood,—stern and sullen,—and it came back upon him at last as an echo that meant nothing. Whether he will become anything better as we study his book remains to be seen; in the meantime his world is small and poor. As we see the earth not by its own light, but by the light of the sun, so we are to see life not by the few sparks which may be emitted by social friction, but by the light of the world that is to come. We are to look at "things not seen," to "endure as seeing the invisible," to walk "in the power of an endless life." Jacob saw the ladder rising to the sky; Stephen saw "heaven opened;" Paul said, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." As we cannot see the earth without the sun, so we cannot truly see time without eternity, or the Here without the Hereafter. We think we can, and that is our chief mistake,—a mistake out of which every other comes. The wise man will say: "This is not all; there is something beyond these shadows; there is life not yet discovered; I will no longer be a light unto myself; I will say unto the Lord, "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel."" When this is the state of mind in which the student pursues his studies, the whole scene changes, the clouds are rich with stars, and the wind is full of music.

Observe our power to make this a very little world if we please. Shut out God, deny eternity, close the Holy Book, make death the full-stop of life, and the "great globe itself" darkens into a charnel-house, and the transient beauties which pass over its surface make its dreariness only drearier. "Vanity of vanities," saith the Convener;—"Place of service and dawn of heaven," saith the Christian.