Everything else is born just to eventually die, everything is going through the same meaningless cycle day after day, year after year, generation after generation. The Preacher explores why it is just an illusion that some people have an advantage over others in life. From the human perspective, it seems like wisdom, pleasure, strength, toil, or wealth might give you an advantage of others. If you learn enough, gather enough, are strong enough, or work hard enough maybe you can win at life.
But in the end, who wins? No one. At the end of every generation, everyone is dead. No one wins. No one survives. And no one is really remembered. All the stuff people accumulated for themselves is given to someone else who will squander it and waste it away. In light of our impending death, all the pursuits of chasing after strength, pleasure, learning, money, etc. All these pursuits are like chasing after wind, even if you ever caught it in your hand, you would still have nothing.
God sees the big picture. The Teacher speaks in chapter 2 of his huge construction projects, his artistic endeavours and his sexual adventures.
He concludes: "Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun" verse Today, the leisure "industry" is huge. We're constantly being offered more entertainment — more TV channels, more phone data, more experiences, more everything. However much we have, it isn't enough. Ambition is pointless. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?
The Teacher says it's not worth it: "All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. People are foolish. That chapter is about how the wrong people get the good jobs and end up in charge. It happens today, too: and other people's mistakes don't just end up harming themselves but others too.
We can't assume that someone, somewhere, knows what they're doing; the chances are that they don't. Death is final. And the last chapter is a moving picture of old age, with the failure of sight and hearing, decreased mobility "the grasshopper drags himself along" and white hair "the almond tree blossoms" before "man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets".
But threaded through the book are pointers to something better. Our lives are lived under the eyes of God. Click here to subscribe to First Things. Comments are visible to subscribers only. Log in or subscribe to join the conversation. Support First Things by turning your adblocker off or by making a donation. Close Login. Web Exclusives First Thoughts. Intellectual Retreats Erasmus Lectures.
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