Imagine a couple from your congregation coming to your office. They have been married almost three years and are expecting their first child. They are experiencing a mix of excitement and trepidation at the thought of raising a child in today’s world and want counsel and encouragement from God’s Word.
You share in their excitement and offer congratulations. As to what to expect, you explain that their best efforts to raise their child in the faith may be fruitless. In fact, not only might that child turn from Christ, he or she may well turn on them, breaking their hearts and leaving them to wonder where they went wrong.
You then look up to see their stunned expressions and gaping mouths.
That is the reaction many readers have to the book of Ecclesiastes. With all its seeming negativity and pessimism, we can wonder why it is even included in the Bible.
What do we make of Ecclesiastes? What is God’s pastoral purpose for us in it?
The Way of Wisdom
Ecclesiastes is a wisdom book with an attitude, urging us toward caution and discernment. It dives into the deep end of life’s injustices, frustrations, and confusion. Whereas other wisdom literature in Scripture begins with “blessed,” Ecclesiastes stresses “vanity.”
Wisdom carries the truth of God and meets us in the trenches of life. It stands in contrast to what is right in our own eyes. It steadies us as winds of doubt and confusion rock the boat and threaten to undo us. It is an instrument helping us navigate by faith and not by sight.
All wisdom, though, is not created equal. Like scammers try to trip us up with authentic-looking communications that introduce a virus, so foolishness can masquerade as wisdom. James, a wisdom book itself, distinguishes wisdom from above and “wisdom” that is earthly, unspiritual, demonic (James 3:15). Such demonic wisdom panders to our perceptions and preferences but leads to death.
One prominent ploy of Satan is to prompt us to question the character of God. In the Garden of Eden, he enticed Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit by suggesting that God’s prohibition did not have her best interest at heart. It was actually God who was the deceiver, and who was withholding what was good. Satan proposed a better way.
Amidst such conflict, Ecclesiastes speaks.
A Formula for Frustration
It is the way Ecclesiastes communicates wisdom that surprises us. The observant Preacher of Ecclesiastes sets the tone at the outset:
“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2).
Vanity in the extreme. All is but a vapor, a mist that dissipates and offers no fulfillment, foundation, or future.
“Vanity of vanities” is one of three phrases the Preacher uses to characterize what he observes, along with “under the sun” and “striving after wind.” “Under the sun” refers to the fallen creation beset by the ravages of sin. “Striving after wind” expresses frustration and fruitlessness. We see all three phrases combined in a formula of sorts: “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind” (1:14).
Why does the Preacher give us this formula? On the one hand, he wants to strip off our rose-colored glasses and show us the harsh realities of life in a fallen world. On the other hand, he wants to keep us from trying to find meaning and hope in temporal things.
While the Preacher encourages us with good gifts and providences of God — such as family, friends, possessions, pleasure, accomplishments, health, and beauty — he lets us know that all these things are a vain hope for deliverance and certain disappointment in our search for lasting satisfaction.
By exposing the futility of it all, the Preacher has us looking elsewhere.
Finding Our Bearings
Through Ecclesiastes, God equips us for a post-Eden journey. We find our bearings not in the morass of a fallen creation but in the wisdom of the Creator God who lives and reigns on high.
The Preacher gives us glimpses of these bearings throughout his collection of observations under the sun, almost as breaks in the clouds, reminding us that the sun shines and there is more to life than meets the eye.
Things can seem chaotic and random, yet the Preacher notes order and declares that “to everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven” (3:1). He highlights the vast difference between the Creator and the creature: “As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything” (11:5).
The living God who inhabits eternity (Isaiah 57:15) has put eternity into our hearts, but our existence is as the creature and not the Creator. We cannot “find out the work that God does from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
In the face of our futile, frustrating, fruitless efforts to find meaning, the Preacher directs us away from ourselves to the living God and provides us with the key for navigating life under the sun: “ I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.” (3:14).
It is not until the end of the book that the Preacher puts this key in our hand and spells it out: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (12:13). In fearing God we give him the glory and place he deserves, flowing out in our trust and obedience.
We maintain our bearings as we traverse this world under the shadow of death by fixing our eyes on the God who reveals himself and who has spoken. We gain wisdom by reverent regard for God and exercise it by hearing his word and putting it into practice.
The Veil of Vanity
Ecclesiastes brings us face to face with a fallen world, but it lifts our eyes beyond it to the Creator God who fills our lives with good gifts and who offers life and hope. We are to give him honor as the living God and to listen to him in all life holds. That is the starting point for the conduct of life and enjoyment of all he provides.
God draws this wisdom line in the sand drawn elsewhere, too. Here’s one example from Isaiah:
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
3 Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David (55:2-3).
As we give ear to him, God points us to his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the one Shepherd of Ecclesiastes 12:11. In him “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). He is the fountain of living water (John 4:13-14; 7:37-38). Because he lives, our labors are not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). And ultimately, Jesus himself is our salvation, significance, confidence, comfort, satisfaction, and strength.
By the word “vanity” (hebel, used 38 times in Ecclesiastes) the Preacher exposes the futility and folly of seeking life, meaning, and hope apart from God. The Preacher attaches the label to everything under the sun.
Perhaps we can best understand the issue at hand through how the word is used in the ballad of Moses that displays the glory of God and the wonder of his grace: “They have made me jealous with what is no god; they have provoked me to anger with their idols” (Deuteronomy 32:21). The word “idols” translates the Hebrew hebel.
Vanity is as a veil that when pulled back reveals an idol, which can neither save nor satisfy. But our hope and delight is the Lord our God.
Stanley D. Gale is a retired PCA pastor and author of several books on the Christian life. His most recent is “Under the Sun: Redemptive Reality in the Book of Ecclesiastes” (Shepherd Press, 2025).