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WorkQohelet

Ecclesiastes

A king's son tests wealth, wisdom and pleasure, finds every gain to be breath, and still tells his reader to eat and drink.

by Qohelet18 passages held

  • English, a translation held here, and your language
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Original title
קֹהֶלֶת
First published
250 BCE(aged 50)
Original language
Hebrew

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Overview

The speaker of this book calls himself Qohelet, son of David and king in Jerusalem, and rabbinic tradition read him as Solomon writing in his old age, although the book never names Solomon. Scholars credit an unnamed sage and date the writing to the Persian or early Greek period, between about 450 and 180 BCE: its late Hebrew is full of Aramaic forms and borrows Persian words such as pardes, an orchard, and pitgam, a decree. This page uses the name the book gives. Ecclesiastes is a wisdom book of the Hebrew Bible, one man's report of his search for what a life can gain, set inside a narrator's frame that speaks of him in the third person. It argues against the confident teaching of Proverbs, where the diligent prosper and the wise outlast the fool. Qohelet tries wisdom, pleasure and wealth for himself and finds otherwise: the wise and the fool die alike, people and animals share one fate, and the fastest runner does not always win the race. His word for all of it is hebel, breath or vapour, which the King James Version renders as vanity. What he offers instead is modest: eat, drink and find good in your work, because that portion is the gift of God. The advice has a close parallel in the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh. An epilogue, which most scholars read as a later hand, ends by telling the reader to fear God and keep his commandments. The rabbis argued over the book. The Mishnah, the code of Jewish law compiled around 200 CE, records the rival schools of Shammai and Hillel disagreeing over whether it was holy scripture. The Talmud says the sages wanted to withdraw it because its sayings contradict one another, and kept it because it begins and ends with words of Torah. Synagogues read it at Sukkot, the autumn festival of booths. Ernest Hemingway took the title of The Sun Also Rises (1926) from its first chapter, and Pete Seeger set its list of times and seasons to music as "Turn! Turn! Turn!", which the Byrds took to number one in 1965.

Key concepts

What does vanity mean in Ecclesiastes?

It translates the Hebrew hebel, breath or vapour, not pride in one's looks. To call something hebel is to say it cannot be held or kept: it is real while it lasts and then it is gone. Qohelet applies the word to labour, wealth, wisdom and life itself, which a person spends as a shadow. The famous cry vanity of vanities means something like the most fleeting of all.

Why does the book keep saying under the sun?

The phrase marks the vantage point of the whole inquiry: the human world as anyone can observe it from below, with no revelation from above. It recurs more than twenty times. Everything Qohelet reports, from the oppressed with no comforter to the fast runner who loses, is what he has seen under the sun, and his verdicts claim no more than that view allows.

What is vexation of spirit?

It is the King James phrase that keeps company with vanity, naming the frustration of straining after something that cannot be grasped. After every experiment, building, gathering silver, pursuing wisdom, Qohelet adds that this too is vanity and vexation of spirit. Where vanity says the thing will not last, vexation says what chasing it does to the one who chases.

What does Qohelet mean by a portion?

A portion is a person's allotted share, given by God, and it consists of ordinary goods: eating, drinking and rejoicing in one's labour. It is not a reward that can be stored or passed on, which is why a rich man can lack it. Qohelet says plainly that this was his portion of all his labour, the one gain that is actually received.

What is the point of the poem about a time for everything?

The poem lists paired moments, a time to be born and a time to die, to plant and to pluck up, to mourn and to dance, to show that every event has its fitting hour. Qohelet then adds the catch: God makes everything beautiful in its time, yet no one can find out the whole work from beginning to end. People live inside the seasons without seeing the calendar.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Breath Under the Sun

What does a person keep from all the work they do under the sun? Wealth, pleasure and wisdom are each put to the test, and each comes back as hebel, a breath that does not last.

Against the teaching that the diligent prosper and the wise endure, Qohelet runs an experiment with a king's means: houses, vineyards, gardens, silver, singers, and then wisdom itself. Each brings a moment's delight and no lasting gain, because the heir may be a fool and the wise are forgotten as quickly as anyone. He grants that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness, yet even knowing has a ceiling: no one can find out the work God does from beginning to end.

  • futility
  • labor
  • wealth
  • wisdom
  • folly
  • limits of knowledge
  • time
  • desire

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One Fate for All

If the wise die like fools and people die like animals, what difference does a good life make? Death and chance flatten every distinction a person works to earn.

Qohelet looks hard at what confident proverbs leave out: just people treated as the wicked deserve, the oppressed weeping with no comforter, the race not won by the swift. Time and chance happen to them all, and one event, death, ends them all. He will not even promise that the human spirit goes upward while the animal's goes down. Yet the same observer rates a living dog above a dead lion, and finds more wisdom in the house of mourning than at the feast.

  • mortality
  • death
  • aging
  • youth
  • chance
  • justice
  • animals
  • sorrow
  • uncertainty

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Your Portion: Eat, Drink and Find Good

Once no gain can be kept, what is left worth wanting? The answer is modest and insistent: bread, wine, work and the person one loves, taken as a gift rather than earned as a prize.

Again and again the search returns to one counsel, that nothing is better than to eat, drink and find good in one's labour. Qohelet calls it a portion, the share God gives, and sets it against the man who loves silver and is never satisfied, or the rich man denied the power to enjoy his riches. The joy is urgent because the grave holds no work, no knowledge and no wisdom: whatever the hand finds to do, it should do with all its might.

  • enjoyment
  • pleasure
  • contentment
  • divine providence
  • patience

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Few Words Before God and King

How should someone act in a world they cannot steer, under rulers who oppress and a God who is in heaven while they are on earth? With caution, few words and kept promises, not with grand righteousness.

Alongside its large verdicts the book gathers sharp practical counsel. Before God, let words be few and pay what was vowed, since rash offerings are the sacrifice of fools. Toward power, keep the king's command, while noticing that a poor and wise child is better than an old and foolish king, and that the poor wise man who saved a city was soon forgotten. Even virtue has a limit: be not righteous over much. An epilogue, probably a later hand, closes with fear God and keep his commandments.

  • speech
  • promises
  • political power
  • prudence
  • religion
  • divine judgment
  • gender
  • human limits

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Within this work

passages held
18
distinct concepts
53
by passages held, corpus-wide
#788

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “enjoyment” and “mortality”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 3 concepts, joined by 2 pairings. 9 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
enjoymentmortality4
mortalitywisdom3

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. -250 Ecclesiastes (קֹהֶלֶת) you are here EN
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