The Preacher

In context

The book calls its writer “the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem” but never gives his name (Ecclesiastes 1:1, 12); many readers have taken him to be Solomon. His word “vanity” stands for a Hebrew word for a breath or a vapor. He tries work, pleasure, wisdom and wealth “under the sun” and calls each “vanity and a chasing after wind” (2:11). He says he hated life, for the work under the sun grieved him and the wise man dies just like the fool (2:16–17), and he sees the tears of the oppressed, who “had no comforter” (4:1).

Between the hard words come plain good things: to eat and drink and enjoy one’s work “is the gift of God” (3:13); “two are better than one” (4:9); and God “has made everything beautiful in its time” and “set eternity in their hearts” (3:11).

The last poem pictures the years before death: the keepers of the house tremble, the grinders stop because they are few (12:3); many readers have seen an aging body in its pictures. Then “the dust returns to the earth as it was,” as the Lord told Adam, “and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (12:7; Genesis 3:19). Near its close it says, “Fear God and keep his commandments” (12:13).