Old Testament
Ecclesiastes
12 chapters
Start reading: Ecclesiastes 1About this book
Ecclesiastes is the honest notebook of a teacher who has tried everything under the sun and reports what he found. Wisdom, pleasure, work, wealth and power are each tested, and each turns out to be fleeting, like breath or vapor, which is the word the book repeats. The Teacher watches injustice, sees that the wise and the foolish both die, and admits he cannot work out everything God is doing. Yet the book does not end in despair. Again and again he points to simple gifts: eating, working, enjoying a spouse and friends, all received as from God's hand. Because life is short and mysterious, he urges reverence, humility and generosity. A closing voice sums up the book by calling readers to fear God and keep his commands. Readers differ on how much of the Teacher's gloom is his own view and how much the book itself endorses, but most find in it a realistic, deeply human kind of faith.
- Author
- The Teacher, or Qoheleth, traditionally identified with Solomon; many scholars think a later author wrote in his voice.
- Date
- Uncertain: from the time of Solomon in the tenth century BC to some centuries later, depending on how one reads the language.
- Audience
- People in Israel who seek wisdom, and every reader who has wondered whether life has lasting meaning.
Themes
Outline
- 1:1–2:26The Teacher searches for meaning
- 3:1–4:16Seasons, injustice and toil
- 5:1–6:12Reverence, wealth and dissatisfaction
- 7:1–9:18Wisdom, death and living well
- 10:1–11:6Folly, wisdom and taking risks
- 11:7–12:14Youth, old age and the conclusion
Key verses
Chapters of Ecclesiastes
- 1Ecclesiastes 1The Teacher, traditionally identified with Solomon, opens with the famous verdict that everything is meaningless, or vapor, like a breath.
- 2Ecclesiastes 2The Teacher experiments with pleasure, laughter, wine, great projects, gardens, servants, wealth, and music, denying himself nothing, and finds it all empty.
- 3Ecclesiastes 3The chapter opens with the well-known poem that there is a time for everything under heaven: birth and death, planting and uprooting, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, silence and speech, love and hate, war and peace.
- 4Ecclesiastes 4The Teacher sees the tears of the oppressed with no one to comfort them, and concludes that the dead are better off than the living, and better still is one who has never seen such evil.
- 5Ecclesiastes 5The Teacher advises caution when going to God's house: listen more than offer the sacrifice of fools, and do not be hasty with words in prayer, since God is in heaven and you are on earth.
- 6Ecclesiastes 6The Teacher describes a person to whom God has given wealth, possessions, and honor, yet who cannot enjoy them because a stranger consumes them.
- 7Ecclesiastes 7This chapter is a series of sayings that contrast surprising pairs: a good name is better than fine perfume; the day of death better than the day of birth; a house of mourning better than a house of feasting, since sorrow teaches the heart.
- 8Ecclesiastes 8The Teacher commends respect for the king and observes that wisdom brightens a person's face.
- 9Ecclesiastes 9The Teacher observes that the righteous and the wise are in God's hands, but the same fate, death, comes to all.
- 10Ecclesiastes 10A few dead flies make perfume stink; a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.
- 11Ecclesiastes 11The Teacher encourages generosity and bold action: cast your bread on the waters, invest in more than one venture, and do not wait for perfect weather, since you cannot know what disaster may come or how God makes all things.
- 12Ecclesiastes 12The Teacher urges the young to remember their Creator before the years of decline arrive, painting old age in vivid images of dimming light, trembling guardians, and a household falling quiet, until the body returns to dust and the spirit to God.