Ecclesiastes does not clearly tell us who wrote it. The only name in the book is Qoheleth, variously translated as “The Preacher” or “The Teacher.” The form Qoheleth is feminine, and some have taken that literally to suggest the author may have been an otherwise-unknown woman teacher of wisdom, writing about King Solomon. Still, it may be simpler just to agree with the traditional view that Solomon himself was the author. If so, that would suggest that Song of Solomon represents him in his youth, full of young love; and Ecclesiastes shows him as a cynical old man.

In any case, the author expresses a desire to discover “what is good for mortals to do under heaven during the few days of their life” (Ecclesiastes 2:3). The book struggles to come up with a positive answer, since so much human endeavor accomplishes so little. “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” (1:2). Should we, perhaps, seek after wisdom? “Wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise have eyes in their heads, but fools walk in darkness” (2:13-14). Yet in the end the wise and the foolish are all just as dead: “the same fate befalls all of them … what happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?” (2:14-15).

Well, then, perhaps we should just focus on our own happiness, while we can, since we’ll all be dead soon? Maybe not. Pleasure and laughter are vain madness (2:1-2): an extensive collection of wine, real estate, gardens, music, wealth, and concubines (2:3-8) all adds up to “vanity and a chasing after wind” (2:11).

There may be “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance” (3:4), yet in the end we all die like dogs: “the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other” (3:19). It’s all pretty depressing. Nevertheless there is a hint of something yet to come: “I know that whatever God does endures forever … God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him” (3:14). What if, rather than each of us trying to find our own wisdom or our own pleasure, we learned instead to stand in awe before the Lord?

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It is a crazy world, O God, full of madness and vanity: and in the midst of it all we surely need you. We need your presence; we need your grace; we need your call; we need your peace. Help us, Lord, to stand in awe before you! Come and sustain us, O God of our salvation!

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