Ecclesiastes 1: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The book opens with the words of the Teacher, a son of David who was king in Jerusalem, who declares that everything is empty. He points to the repeating cycles of generations, sun, wind, and rivers, and says nothing under the sun is new and no one is remembered. He then describes his own search: using wisdom he examined everything done under the sky and found it all empty, a chasing after wind. The chapter closes with his conclusion that more wisdom brings more sorrow.

Claim by Claim

1. 1:1
   • These are the words of Qoheleth, the Preacher.
   • The Preacher is a son of David.
   • The Preacher was king in Jerusalem.
2. 1:2
   • The Preacher said, 'Vanity of vanities.'
   • The Preacher said, 'Vanity of vanities' a second time.
   • The Preacher said that everything is vanity.
3. 1:3
   • The verse asks what profit a man has from all his labor.
   • The labor in question is the labor a man toils at under the sun.
4. 1:4
   • One generation goes.
   • Another generation comes.
   • The earth remains forever.
5. 1:5
   • The sun rises.
   • The sun goes down.
   • The sun hurries to the place where it rises again.
6. 1:6
   • The wind goes toward the south.
   • The wind turns toward the north.
   • The wind goes around and around continually.
   • The wind returns again on its circuits.
7. 1:7
   • All the streams run into the sea.
   • The sea is not full.
   • To the place where the streams go, there they return to go again.
8. 1:8
   • All things are wearisome.
   • No one is able to speak it.
   • The eye is not satisfied with seeing.
   • The ear is not filled with hearing.
9. 1:9
   • What has been is what will be.
   • What has been done is what will be done.
   • There is nothing new under the sun.
10. 1:10
    • The verse asks whether there is any thing of which one may say, 'See, this is new.'
    • Such a thing has already existed in the ages that were before us.
11. 1:11
    • There is no remembrance of former people or things.
    • There will also be no remembrance of later people or things among those who come after them.
12. 1:12
    • The speaker identifies himself as the Preacher.
    • The Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
13. 1:13
    • The Preacher set his heart to seek and explore by wisdom.
    • The object of his search was everything that is done under heaven.
    • This is an evil business.
    • God has given this business to the sons of man to be occupied with.
14. 1:14
    • The Preacher saw all the works that are done under the sun.
    • All of it is vanity.
    • All of it is a chasing after wind.
15. 1:15
    • What is crooked cannot be made straight.
    • What is lacking cannot be counted.
16. 1:16
    • The Preacher spoke with his own heart.
    • He said he had become great.
    • He said he had increased in wisdom beyond all who were before him over Jerusalem.
    • He said his heart had seen much wisdom and knowledge.
17. 1:17
    • The Preacher set his heart to know wisdom.
    • The Preacher set his heart to know madness and folly.
    • The Preacher learned that this also is a chasing after wind.
18. 1:18
    • In much wisdom there is much vexation.
    • Whoever increases knowledge increases pain.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1

"Teacher" translates the Hebrew word Qoheleth, formed from a root meaning "to assemble" or "gather": someone who calls a group together and addresses it. The King James renders it "Preacher." It is used through the book as a title rather than a personal name. "Son of David, king in Jerusalem" points to Solomon, though the book never names him and "son of" in Hebrew can mean any male descendant.

1:2

The Hebrew word behind "empty" is hebel, whose basic sense is vapor, mist or breath, something real enough to see but impossible to grasp or hold on to. Depending on the sentence it can carry the sense of futile, fleeting, insubstantial, or absurd; no single English word covers it, and "vanity" in the King James means emptiness, not conceit. "Empty of empties" (King James "vanity of vanities") is a standard Hebrew way of forming a superlative, like "king of kings" or "song of songs": the utmost possible case of the thing.

1:3

"Under the sun" is this book's recurring phrase for the observable world of human life on earth, everything that happens where people can see it. It occurs about thirty times and functions as a boundary marker for what the Teacher is talking about.

1:4

A generation is all the people born around the same time. Your grandparents, your parents, and you are three of them.

1:5

The Hebrew verb translated "hurries" literally means pants or gasps for breath, the sun is pictured as laboring its way back to its starting point, tired like a worker.

1:6

"Circuits" means the loop the wind travels. It goes around the same path again, then again, without ever finishing.

1:7

The Hebrew of the second half is compressed and can be read two ways: that the water returns to the place the rivers set out from, or simply that the rivers keep going, again and again, to the place they always go. The picture of endless circuit is clear; the mechanism is not spelled out.

1:8

The Hebrew word here means both "words" and "things," so the line can equally be read "all words are wearisome (no one can say it all" or "all things are wearisome) no one can describe it." Both readings are old and translators divide between them.

1:11

The Hebrew has no noun, only a plural form that may be masculine ("former people") or neuter ("former things"). So the verse can mean earlier generations are forgotten, or earlier events are forgotten; the Hebrew allows both at once.

1:12

The Hebrew verb form normally means "I was" or "I have been" king, an odd thing for a reigning monarch to say about himself, and translators divide over whether to render it as a completed past or as a simple statement of status.

1:13

"I set my mind" renders the Hebrew "I gave my heart." In Hebrew the heart is the seat of thought, decision and intention rather than of feeling, closer to the English "mind" than to the English "heart." The same phrase recurs in verse 17.

1:14

The Hebrew phrase behind "chasing after the wind" uses a word that can mean pursuing, striving after, herding, or feeding on; ruach means both "wind" and "breath/spirit." So the image has been read as chasing wind, herding wind, feeding on wind, and, as in the King James "vexation of spirit", as a troubling of the spirit. The phrase recurs as a refrain through the book.

1:15

Both halves are proverbial sayings the Teacher quotes. The second uses accounting language: a shortfall, something absent from the total, cannot be entered in the count: you cannot add up what is not there.

1:16

The Hebrew reads "all who were over Jerusalem before me." If the speaker is Solomon, only David had reigned there as an Israelite king before him, so the phrase is generally taken broadly, covering all earlier rulers and wise men of the city, including those before Israel held it.

1:17

In Hebrew wisdom writing, "folly" does not mean low intelligence. It names a settled way of living that ignores or rejects wisdom, a practical and moral failing rather than a mental one. "Madness" is its paired extreme, behavior that has lost its bearings altogether.