The Ecclesiastes in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE
LITERATURE
1. Structure of the Book:
Reading this book one soon becomes aware that it is a
discussion of certain difficult problems of human life. It
begins with a title Eccl (1:1), followed by a preface (1:2-
11). It has a formal conclusion (12:8-13). Between the
preface and the conclusion the body of the book is made up
of materials of two kinds--first a series of "I" sections,
sections uttered in the 1st person singular, a record of a
personal experience; and second, an alternating series of
gnomic sections, sections made up of proverbs (say 4:5,6,9-
12; 5:1-12; 7:1-14,16-22; 8:1-8; 9:7-10; 10:1-4; 10:8
through 12:7). These may be called the "thou" sections, as
most of them have the pronoun of the 2nd person singular.
The idea of the vanity of all things characterizes the
record of experience, but it also appears in the "thou"
sections (e.g. 9:9). On the other hand the proverb element
is not wholly lacking in the "I" sections (e.g. 4:1-3).
2. The Contents:
In the preface the speaker lays down the proposition that
all things are unreal, and that the results of human effort
are illusive Eccl (1:2,3). Human generations, day and night,
the wind, the streams, are alike the repetition of an
unending round (1:4-7). The same holds in regard to all
human study and thinking (1:8-11). The speaker shows
familiarity with the phenomena which we think of as those of
natural law, of the persistence of force, but he thinks of
them in the main as monotonously limiting human experience.
Nothing is new. All effort of Nature or of man is the doing
again of something which has already been done.
After the preface the speaker introduces himself, and
recounts his experiences. At the outset he had a noble
ambition for wisdom and discipline, but all he attained to
was unreality and perplexity of mind (Eccl 1:12-18). This is
equally the meaning of the text, whether we translate
"vanity and vexation of spirit" or "vanity and a striving
after wind," ("emptiness, and struggling for breath"),
though the first of these two translations is the better
grounded.
Finding no adequate satisfaction in the pursuits of the
scholar and thinker, taken by themselves, he seeks to
combine these with the pursuit of agreeable sensations--
alike those which come from luxury and those which come from
activity and enterprise and achievement Eccl (2:1-12). No
one could be in better shape than he for making this
experiment, but again he only attains to unreality and
perplexity of spirit. He says to himself that at least it is
in itself profitable to be a wise man rather than a fool,
but his comfort is impaired by the fact that both alike are
mortal (2:13-17). He finds little reassurance in the idea of
laboring for the benefit of posterity; posterity is often
not worthy (2:18-21). One may toil unremittingly, but what
is the use (2:22,23)?...
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