Thoughts on Ecclesiastes 1

Today’s reading: Ecclesiastes 1; Galatians 1

There are two things I want to call out as we get into Ecclesiastes that I personally found helpful in understanding the book when I learned them; (1) the author is not the preacher, and (2) “hevel” means smoke, not meaningless or vain.

The first point to understand is that the author and the preacher (or teacher depending on the translation) are not the same person. The book opens saying, “The words of the Preacher…,” which always led me to assume that the book was the words of the Preacher, but that’s not actually the case. The author is telling us, “This is what the Preacher says,” but then will later interject to not fully agree with the Preacher or to offer a different conclusion to the Preacher’s words.

In the Bible Project’s video on Ecclesiastes in their wisdom series they describe the Preacher as the critic or the cynic. His is a voice that is an important counterbalance to the book of Proverbs which, at times, seems to have an overly optimistic or simplistic view of the world (though his is often an overly cynical view of the world). Wisdom is found in considering both perspectives together, which is why the author brings the words of the Preacher to the Scriptures even though he doesn’t always agree with them.

The second thing I wanted to call out is the Hebrew word “hevel.” Most English translations will translate hevel as “vain” or “meaningless,” but the word actually means “smoke.” So the preacher is not calling everything meaningless or vain, as it reads in English, but is using an expression with no real English equivalent that derives from smoke. Smoke is a very real thing, it has form and substance, and yet it also shifts quickly and easily and can’t be grasped. If you try to reach out and grab hold of it, despite how real it is, it will slip through your fingers and you can never get a hold of it. So the preacher’s point is that so much of life, and so many things in it, are like smoke. No matter how settled or secure things may seem, a stiff breeze can be enough to shake it all up and leave you reeling, and no matter how good or enjoyable something may seem, the more you chase after it, the more it slips through your fingers like grasping smoke. He is not saying these things are meaningless, pointless, or bad, but that they are elusive and fickle things to set our hopes and future on. 

These two points, for me at least, really helped this book make a lot more sense when I first learned them, so I wanted to pass them along as we start this book for anybody else who maybe didn’t know one or the other.