" The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after."
He calls himself “the Preacher.” “The Philosopher” is perhaps more fitting, for this book reads like a piece of modern existentialist philosophy. In this book all the despair of life that a human mind can fathom is heaped together in seeming defiance to any one who desires meaning and hope. Yet hope is exactly what the “Preacher” is up to.
“Vanity of vanities” - the term “vanity” means “soap bubble” and thus gives a picture of life that is illusive, trivial, short-lived and empty. All that life is, all that we hold dear is nothing more than soap bubbles. And not just soap bubbles but soap bubbles of soap bubbles. It is the lowest, most trivial and empty soap bubble imaginable.
To bolster his argument the Preacher highlights the endless repetition of life. A generation comes, a generation goes. Life goes on, but so does death. Nothing changes. Each day the sun rises. There is hope. But each day it sets again. Even the wind runs in cycles. A cool breeze, a warm breeze, a easterly wind, westerly wind, it’s all the same wind. It’s just coming about for another pass. All the streams run into the sea, he observes, and yet the sea never grows full. Why? Because it’s just the same water flowing in an endless cycle.
“All things are full of weariness,” he continues. Endless, wearying repetitions. Nothing new, nothing unique, just the same weariness that has been cycling for ages and ages. Then the Preacher switches gears here from the cycles of nature to the futility of pleasure. Why is it that no matter how much beauty you see, you only want to see more? Or why do you never hear a song and stop and think that you shall never have to hear a song again? “The eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” Your desire for more drives you on, but you must realize, says the Preacher, you will never find what you are looking for (or hearing for as the case may be). Mic Jagger was right, “Can’t get no satisfaction.” “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”
The despair continues. Our entire existence is nothing more than a wearying cycle. There is nothing new, not really. “What has been is what will be.” The moment you think that something is new, you discover that it has already been ages before. Here I think the Preacher does not speak of technology, which even an ancient would know is advancing, but of ideas. There are no new ideas. What makes man’s state even more tragic, though more tolerable, is that he doesn’t even get it. He thinks these things are new, but it is only because the past has been forgotten. The great ideas of the past are gone, but really they are simply the great ideas of the present. And the logic, though depressing, is clear. The new will one day be the forgotten. All that you toil to build will fade from memory only to be repeated as something new. And so life goes on and on and on in futility.
If these thoughts depress you, then you get it. The Preacher is going somewhere through all of this, but to get to the end one must “feel” the beginning. Hope is found only when the despair is fully grasped.
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