Sunday Sermonette: Why bother?

As promised, I'm sparing you the remaining drivel of Proverbs. The book known in English as Ecclesiastes is more interesting. The title is the Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word קֹהֶלֶת , Kohelet, which  means something like "the person addressing an assembly," i.e. teacher or preacher. However, oddly, it is a feminine form. Scholars, who assume the speaker must have been a man, have struggled to explain this. The structure implies that an unnamed person has transcribed the preacher's words, who then summarizes at the end.

Although Kohelet is traditionally said to be Solomon, as with Proverbs and everything else attributed to him that is fanciful. Based on linguistic considerations, the book was written between 450 and 180 BCE, long after Solomon's death. It's inclusion in the Tanakh is rather puzzling as it seems to constitute a rejection of faith. Apologists explain this in various ways, e.g. perhaps we are to interpret it as a cautionary bad example. Whatev. The literary quality is certainly better than most of what we've encountered so far. Here's the first chapter. The KJV is more familiar, which translates what is given here as "meaningless" as "vanity." But that can be confused with a different meaning of the word -- unhealthy self-regard -- so the New International Version is more accurate, if less poetic. Chapter 1 rather reminds me of Hamlet's soliloquy of despair. The speaker seems very depressed. Again, theologically this is highly heretical.

1 The words of the Teacher,^[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:

² “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.”

³ What do people gain from all their labors
    at which they toil under the sun?
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.
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.

Wisdom Is Meaningless

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.

Footnotes

1. Ecclesiastes 1:1 Or the leader of the assembly; also in verses 2 and 12