“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (NIV)
Solomon tells us his conclusion right away. Everything in life is meaningless. His concept is that everything in life suffer from a meaninglessness that is unrepairable. Pretty bleak stuff. The rest of the chapter supports this conclusion. Solomon is presenting the Temporal (Temporary) perspective of human existence (material world). In other words, if God is out of the picture, can we find anything of value? Here, we also see the first instance of “under the sun.” This phrase (also written as “under the heavens”), is a reference to the temporal (material) world.
4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. 7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. 8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
In this section Solomon lays out the cycle of nature. his contention is that nothing changes in the unending cycle of nature. Unending cycles of nature express the unending monotony of life.
8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. 9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. 11 No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
This is the unending cycle of labor. Despite our efforts, we are still not satisfied. Futility of life extends to the past and the future. Man works hard, never makes a lasting difference, and is forgotten.
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 15 What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. 16 I said to myself, “Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. 18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
Solomon makes a search for what matters by using Human Wisdom. This is important because this is the basis of his experiment. He is looking at life through the prism of someone who does not have an eternal outlook. This is a person who only sees life from birth to death. Human wisdom does not include eternity. Human wisdom shows us how to live our life better, but sheds no meaning on life. Brushing your teeth is wise. Changing the oil in your car is a wise thing to do. Saving for the future is also wise. These are things we try to do in our life. Why? Because the preparation you put into brushing your teeth will get you stronger teeth for your older age. Changing your oil helps your car to stay running. Saving for the future helps you to have easier times later on. All of these things are good, but none of them shed any light on deeper meanings in life. They simply help us live better. When we jump down to verse 15, we see the pointlessness Solomon arrives at. What is crooked cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted. There is a hopelessness that we ultimately arrive at when we are living from pole to pole (birth to death). We can’t straighten our lives, we’re overwhelmed by the the uncontrollable nature of existence, we can’t reduce life to an easy and manageable system. Pretty hopeless, eh? Well, even in our hopelessness there is an eternal component that we end up missing. If we scroll back up to verse 13, where Solomon is measuring things via human wisdom, we also see that he pops out of the temporal view and injects God into the mix: What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! This is interesting because Solomon says that God has laid a burden on mankind. But what is the burden? Is the burden our endless toil? The monotony of life? No. The burden is actually our understanding of the the monotony and meaningless of life. Why would God do this? Why would he allow his creations to come to this conclusion? We have to pop over to Romans to get a little more insight.
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
God places this restlessness in us for a very specific reason. Paul, echoing what Solomon is suggesting, frames it in the present suffering of the believers under Roman rule. If you look at verse 20, you’ll see that people (the creation) are subjected to frustration. Frustration can mean many things, but in this context means that God injects this understanding of meaningless into his creations, for the sole hope that when you arrive at a meaningless time in life, when all hope seems lost, you’ll find God (the will of the one who subjected it). Have you ever wondered why life seems meaningless? Felt like there was something vital missing. Pondered that you’re just a cog in the machine and there is really no consequence to your actions? You may remember a time in your life when this was true. When you came to understand that life, the way you were living it, had no real value. It could have come about when you were working, maybe going to school, when life was settling in and becoming monotonous. When you finally looked up and saw that you have been headed in a direction which has no end, and even more so, no meaning. This is more universal than you may think. If you talk to people with any sort of depth, you’ll find that most people, especially followers of Christ, have gone through this. They’ve reached a point in their life when operating in the temporal world is just not enough. They reach this plateau of meaningless and don’t know where to go. You see, understanding meaningless causes us to ultimately seek God. Is this universal? Does it happen to everyone? I believe it does. Here’s why: We are designed in a a broad way by God. First:
We are designed to be social (Gen 2:18-25) We are given work to do (Gen 2:15) We are designed to have fellowship with God (Gen 3:8)
So, if we are designed a certain way, then to operate at full capacity, we must accept and operate the way we’re supposed to. A car cannot fly. Well, perhaps it can for a very short time; but it isn’t designed to fly. It very specifically is built to run over the road. If we use a car in the way it is designed to be used, then it is very effective. In the same way, we are built to work in a specific fashion. If we remove any of the basic ways we are built, then the machine breaks down. Men, think about how you operate when you are out of work. You go a little crazy, don’t you? That’s because you are built to work, to produce, to take care of things. When you remove the social aspect of the way we are built, what do you have? Someone who climbs into himself, becomes a hermit. But let’s say you have the work and you have the social. Many people can operate well with these two things and forget the third, the fellowship with God. Can a person exist without this component? This is where God intervenes. The meaningless of life can overtake one here, for even the best parties and gatherings and trips and experiences grow stale over time. Even the best work situation can grow monotonous and boring, can become tiresome, even irksome, and one can get anxious to move on, to do some more worthwhile. God intervenes in our lives. He builds the monotonous nature in us, stirs the meaninglessness of life until we are moved to action. This is indeed a God thing, because we are built for eternity, and when we deny that eternity and try to live without it in our lives, we deny our design. When we deny our design, we’re not operating at the full capacity in our lives. Chapter 2
2 I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. 2 “Laughter,” I said, “is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?” 3 I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly— my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives.