We often hear that, along with Leviticus, Ecclesiastes is the “most peculiar book,” lurking in the Bible’s back alley.1 But it is high time that we retire this old dirge. God has concealed much gold here, therefore much glory is ours if we are careful to read Solomon’s wisdom with ears tuned to the melody of redemptive history and eyes opened to the glory of the Lord (Prov. 25:2; 2 Cor. 3:18). In fact, I want to suggest we should instead consider Ecclesiastes as the apotheosis of the old covenant. By way of sheer contrast, it offers more clearly the good news of the new covenant than any other book in the Hebrew Scriptures. This is a large feat; so, we will only here consider Solomon’s pursuit of pleasure in the second chapter as a test case to be applied throughout.
Ecclesiastes 2 must first be situated before interpreted. For structure is not antecedent to meaning; structure is meaning.2 Canonically, then, I suggest that Ecclesiastes be considered the first of Solomon’s four quartets, the quadriga of so-called wisdom literature, beginning his life-long reflections as king of golden-age Israel.3 Solomon offers to us the bare and unembellished literal sense. Outwardly considered, his kingdom looks like the height of glory; behind the curtain, however, are the wry thoughts of the king himself, his private commentary on the public splendor. In this way, old man Solomon is here, as Balthasar says, “critical transcendentalist avant la lettre.”4 Structurally, Ecclesiastes, like other books of wisdom, is enigmatic; however, as Ockham’s Razor—or perhaps Jordan’s Switchblade—tells us, it is most likely chiastic.5 As to the structure of the particular pericope under our immediate consideration (2:1-11), though, we are certainly dealing with a chiasm.
A. I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was a fruitless vapor (2:1).
B. I said of mirth, “It is mad,” and of merriment, “What use is it?” I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of Adam to do under heaven during the few days of their life (2:2-3).
C. I made magnificent works (1:4a).
D. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many a concubine, the delight of the sons of Adam (1:4b-8).
C’. So I became magnificent and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem (2:9a).
B’. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no merriment (2:9b-10b).
A’. For my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I turned about all my hands’ deeds and the toil I had expended in doing it; and behold, all was a fruitless vapor and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun (2:10c-11).6
Before we consider the ideas of this passage, we note preeminently the translation of hebel, Solomon’s supposedly soulless grouse that is traditionally translated as vanity. Hebel, however, has a wide spectrum of usage throughout Scripture; and like most concepts in Scripture, it is better described than lexically defined.7 Words often mean much more than their lexical or etymological definition. Context and canonical usage must chiefly dictate the organic means for translating a biblical term.8 Thus, when one puts together all of the biblical data, hebel is best conceived of as that which does produces no effect.9 Most translations seem to get either side of this balance but over accentuate either the transcendental critique connoted by fruitlessness—i.e., meaningless (NIV, NLT), vanity (ESV, NRSV), pointless (BBE), or useless (NCV, GNT)—or the image connoted by vapidity—i.e., smoke (HCSB) or vapor as such (Meyers10). For this reason, I suggest that it is best we translate hebel as the quasi-kenning “fruitless vapor.”
We also note that, by the time that we reach Ecclesiastes 2:1-11, Solomon has well established the first conclusion of the book. After the proem (1:1-11), Solomon’s first chapter concludes that, though he has much wisdom, wisdom itself is fruitless vapor (1:12-18). Solomon is not here denigrating or detesting the wisdom that he asked for and received from Yahweh (1 Kings 3:3-15); rather, he bemoans the fact that wisdom per se does not scratch the existence itch, the restless-heart syndrome of humanity after Adam (1:16). That is, wisdom taught Solomon principally that wisdom does not decrease but only “increases vexation . . . [and] sorrow” (1:18) since it is inevitably ignored by the present generation or incredulously impugned by the next.
This context is key to understand what is going on in chapter 2. For here we pivot from the intellectual to the sensual. In our sanctified speculation, we imagine Solomon’s wisdom was leading him, then, to the proper conclusion; perhaps the restless heart does not find rest by peering into the deep roots of reality but by indulging in the good fruits of reality, seeking animal pleasure through imbibing earthly delights rather than seeking intellectual power through investigating heavenly designs. Yet again, the test fails: having found the rational sorrowful, he now finds the appetitive empty. Through the ravenous eye (2:3; 2:9; cf. 1:18), Solomon first stuffs his soul with the baser pleasure, the mere merriments of the “sons of Adam”—namely, women and wine (2:2-3).11 By doing so, Solomon is quite literally acting like a son of Adam. Consider early stories of Genesis, where the two preeminent sons of Adam, Seth and Noah, are corrupted by means of women (Gen. 6:1ff) and wine (Gen. 9:20ff) respectively. Multiplying these, Solomon then turns to focus on the more refined pleasures, the “magnificent works” suitable for a son of God—namely, the finest international goods for cultured enjoyment (2:4-9).
These labors of lust acquired, Solomon declares twice that he surpassed all who were before him in Jerusalem (2:7; 2:9); and indeed, he made greater works and acquired more wealth than either David or Saul; but this observation is too parochial, for he also brought greater regional and religious—regional because religious!—peace than either the old Jebusite warlords (Joshua 15:63; Judges 1:21; 19:11) or Melchizedek (Gen. 15:17-24; cf. 1 Kings 8:56; 10:1-10; 2 Chron. 2:12). All who were before him in Jerusalem were beneath him. Thus, the mutual magnificence of Solomon and Israel did in fact result in some reward for all involved (2:10-11).
Having allowed his unchecked eye to judge as acceptable any amusement under the sun like his mother Eve, Solomon then beckons our judgment to behold the judgment of these pursuits. Solomon admits that what appears to be expansions of his hands were really empty zephyr, “an expanse of spirit in a waste of shame” (Shakespeare, “Sonnet 129”). As if turning our face by force from gawking at his glut of glories, he directs our moral imagination by summarizing his exploits with a single word: toil (2:10; cf. 1 Kings 12:6ff). The word ringing immediately harkens us back, yet again, to Genesis—particularly to the futility of toil imposed upon the earth in Genesis 3:17 as a penalty for Adam’s sin. Solomon recognizes that he is doing what those without the hope of a life beyond the curse of death and decay do: eat, drink, and pursue merriment (1 Cor. 15:32). Caught in the middle of this covenantal tale, the Adamic king finds that any existence and any pursuit that is not lived under a new Adam in a new world freed from futility of toil and filled with the Spirit is a dusty denouement of fruitless vapor. Importing all of Havilah’s gold will not a new Eden make. The best that he can build is Babel redux. In sum, the pursuit of pleasure gives no “leverage” over life’s fruitless vapidity.12 Yet, it is precisely this kind of pursuit—and not the particular pursuit of pleasure or power or any other stimulant as such—that is the central problem in Ecclesiastes. No tonic can undo the toil of Adam’s sons.
Solomon is writing in the old world, bound under the cursed Serpent. But it was not always so. God designed this world to be the visible backdrop of the unfolding drama of the union of heaven and earth through its domestic (Gen. 1:28), agrestic (Gen. 2:15), and metallurgic (Gen. 2:11-12) cultivation, which was all an expression of man’s covenantal fidelity, his love for his Father (cf. Luke 3:38). Meanwhile, waiting for the man’s Spirit-filled reign and God’s rain, the earth—and Eve!—waited for Adam’s toil-less touch to burst forth delightful fruit within them(Gen. 2:5; 1:28; 2:25), which itself would be an aid to and evidence of doxology. Scripture portents this doxological potential of the earth in the image of an incubating mist (Gen. 2:6); but without the Spirit-animated Adam, the earth was consigned to hold its store inside a watery vapor (Gen. 2:7). Yet, when Adam came, instead of being subject of the Spirit’s rushing blessing, used to coax the pleasing fruit from the ground, he sinned and became the object of the Spirit’s stormy judgment, condemned to cut through thorns only to discover in the potentialized mist a fruitless vapor (cf. Ps. 1; Jer. 2). After Adam’s sin and God’s sentence, nothing under the sun now held the potential to bring the creation to full maturity and glory; indeed, mystery of mysteries–the hebel was not only outside but within man. Thus, there was no quantity or quality of external toil that could first undo the internal turmoil of Adam—nothing, that is, except a New Adam (Gen. 3:15).
This is the center from which Ecclesiastes centrifugally spirals, barely hanging on the fringes of grace’s gravity. Life did indeed go on after Adam’s apostasy but only as hebel. Even though God promised a Last Adam that would one day undo the hebel imposed, and Solomon is an Adam on the path to this Last Adam; in fact, one could even say that Solomon was the nearest thing to New Adam in the epoch of the Old Adam. For, he was the son of God by covenant (cf. 2 Sam. 7; Ps. 2; 89); he was a christ (1 Kings 1:28-53), a royal priest and prophet; he received the knowledge of good and evil by request (1 Kings 3:1-15); and when he was lifted up, he began to draw all nations to himself (1 Kings 10; cf. Ps. 72). Yet, all of Solomon’s earthly gain and glory only lead to the realization that behind his perceived lack was an even greater lack. The restless heart at the zenith of Old Adams, by acquiring the height of wisdom, grew ultimately restless because what his wisdom discovered was the need for an entirely renewed cosmos, a people filled with ruach and not hebel.
Herein, though, lies the wisdom of the wisdom. Solomon entices us not to “wait without hope”13 but rather, by contrast, to behold the beauty of the new covenant in the incomplete form of the old. For the Last Adam, the greater than Solomon, has come (Matt. 12:42); the curse of the ground has been broken (Zech. 14:20-21); the Spirit has been given to humanity afresh (Acts 2; Rom. 8:1-17; and the cursed powers of the old world have been completely de-potentialized (Col. 1:15). Reading Ecclesiastes, not according to the letter but according to the Spirit, shows us that the earth has been and will be fully and finally cultivated into a temple-palace for God and His people to dwell; for the coming of the Sun of Righteousness dispelled the fruitless vapor by making truly fruitful pleasures possible and, chiefly, by making truly faithful people possible. Rather than the vicious abuse of wine and women and wonderful works of cultural magnanimity, these may become what they were always intended to be: channels of doxological dominion under the freedom of the glory of the sons of God (Rom. 8:18-25). We are no longer bound to turn these means into ends because the hebel without and within is vaporized by the Spirit’s fiery presence in us.
There is also, though, we must admit, a real sense in which this story isn’t complete. Though the entire world is not now without the life-giving Spirit, there are entire realms of the world that are still in hebel-darkness. Those realms can be in the house next door or even in the next room. What’s more, even we who have the first fruits the Spirit still groan with the Spirit in prayer because what is already is not yet (Rom. 8:23-27). Though futility is finally undone, futility is not completely undone—what has commenced is not yet consummated. Indeed, we live in a world that still encourages us to make our lives into living hebels by the endless pursuit of pleasure. What is different is this: in the old covenant, the pursuit of terrestrial pleasures was necessarily hebel without any potential; but in the new covenant, a Christless pursuit of pleasure via wine and women and public works is potentially but not necessarily fruitless vapor. The fruitless vapor is taken away from these pleasures not because futility is entirely gone but because our restless hearts have found rest in by dwelling in and being indwelt within the Spirit’s realm, the Church, the microcosm where we learn how to properly enjoy the pleasures of earth, by giving thanks for them in the Eucharist. In Word and Sacrament we have something like a pedagogy of simplest pleasures—a good book, bread, and wine, surrounded by those we love. In the Last Adam, Jesus Christ, and with thanksgiving to the Father, we may take in all pleasures with true peace and joy, knowing that they are all gifts of grace. Would you like to know in part the wonder of a world without hebel? Kiss your wife, go to a symphony, or go drink a glass of wine; and say, “Thank you, Father. Thy kingdom come, Lord Jesus!” And even when we sharply suffer the not yet of the new covenant’s already, we also hold the sure hope and promise that, though all these joys are only shadows, and though all our toilsome sufferings feel like hebel, the Spirit of glory and grace is working in and through these pleasures and perils for our greater joy and glory (Rom. 8:28-30).
Gage Crowder is a classical school teacher and pastoral intern. He lives near Huntsville, Alabama with his wife and two children.
- Robert Altar, The Writings: Ketuvim, vol. 3, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Co., 2019), 673. ↩︎
- Peter J. Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), 148-153. ↩︎
- A thesis in itself, there is much here to unpack that is beyond the scope of this paper—let the reader understand. Of course, this claim flouts the canonical ordering of the book. But thankfully, there is inspired table of contents for us to abide by. Moreover, it assumes that Solomon wrote Job. Without space to defend this view, I’ll simply ask this question: who else could have written so wise a work? Finally, this statement suggests that Ecclesiastes is part of a literary whole not by mere redaction but by composition. If Ecclesiastes is the literal sense, Song of Songs is the allegorical, Proverbs the tropological, Job the anagogical. We will have to bring full implication of this idea to bear elsewhere. ↩︎
- Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theology: The Old Covenant, trans. Brian McNeil and Easmo Leiva-Merikakis, ed. John Riches, GL 6 (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991), 130. ↩︎
- See David Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis-Malachi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1999), 192-198. ↩︎
- This translation is a literary mut born from Big Name translations, Jeff Meyers musings, Robert Altar embellishments, and everything in between. ↩︎
- The first time we see hebel is immediately after the fall, where it is a proper appellation of Adam and Eve’s youngest son Abel (Gen. 4:2). Of interest, we note there is a connection between the name and other Solomonic themes—(a) the curse on a fruitless ground, (b) a son that lives a life long enough to be described as a “vapor” (cf. James 4:14), and (c) the fact that he is a shepherd of the sheep. Later, hebel is an oft-employed term for idols (Deut. 32:21; Ps. 31:6; Is. 57:13; Jer. 10:15), idols which are consistently ridiculed throughout Scripture for their inability to give what is desired (Is. 44:9-20; Ps. 115:5-8; 1 Kings 18:20-40). Further, hebel describes entire empires: Egypt (Is. 30:6-7), Israel (2 Kings 17:15), and “all nations” (Jer. 16:19) ultimately offer only emptiness. In any case, what is emphasized and summarized by the singular term hebel is the object’s lack of fecundity—be it by length of existence or quality of existence. ↩︎
- Altar, “The Heresy of Explanation,” ibid. ↩︎
- Many thanks to Will Gunter for this pithy summary of the data. ↩︎
- Jeffery J. Meyers, Ecclesiastes Through New Eyes: A Table in the Mist (Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2006), 42-43. ↩︎
- Though it is not explicitly stated until verse 8, “lay hold of folly” should harken back to Proverbs 3 and Song of Songs 7, where the act of “laying hold” is a sexual metaphor. Moreover, Folly, as personified in the book of Proverbs, is a sexual deviant. Historically, Solomon does this by acquiring his 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). The concept of laughter in verse 2 could also be reference to “conjugal caress” (cf. Gen. 26:8; Song of Songs passim). ↩︎
- Meyers, Table in the Mist, 58. ↩︎
- T. S. Eliot, “East Coaker” from the Four Quartets, I.26. ↩︎