Ecclesiastes 1:1–11 | World English Bible Classic
1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
3 What does man gain from all his labor in which he labors under the sun?
4 One generation goes, and another generation comes; but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises.
6 The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north. It turns around continually as it goes, and the wind returns again to its courses.
7 All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, there they flow again.
8 All things are full of weariness beyond uttering. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 That which has been is that which shall be, and that which has been done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it may be said, “Behold, this is new”? It has been long ago, in the ages which were before us.
11 There is no memory of the former; neither shall there be any memory of the latter that are to come, among those that shall come after.
Ecclesiastes begins with a speaker, a verdict, and a question. The speaker is introduced as a royal teacher in Jerusalem. His verdict is that everything is hevel, a word whose image is breath or vapor. His question is what advantage a person gains from all the work done under the sun. The poem that follows does not begin by telling us how to feel about life. It asks us to watch the world closely enough to understand why the question is so difficult.
The title “Preacher” translates Qoheleth, a Hebrew designation associated with an assembly or gathering. It presents a voice addressing others with observations collected and weighed. The opening eleven verses have the form of a poem: a question about labor is followed by a procession of images, each adding something to the question. The speaker will later investigate wisdom, pleasure, possessions, and work directly. Here he first teaches us how to look.
“The son of David, king in Jerusalem” evokes Solomon, the royal son of David whose wisdom, wealth, and great projects are described in Kings. The speaker examines human advantage from a position of unusual opportunity. Access to wealth, learning, and authority allows him to test possibilities unavailable to most laborers. If lasting gain can be secured by human resources, this is a voice well positioned to look for it.
The repeated phrase “Vanity of vanities” is an emphatic Hebrew construction, comparable in form to “Song of Songs.” The Preacher announces a verdict of extraordinary breadth: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Repetition makes the words difficult to overlook, but the poem supplies their substance. The verdict will be illustrated by workers who pass away, creation that keeps moving, appetites that remain unsatisfied, and memories that disappear.
The Hebrew word hevel names breath or vapor. It is something real but fleeting, something that can be seen or felt without being grasped and kept. The English word “vanity” can suggest self-admiration; here the governing picture is impermanence and elusiveness. A person can hold an object, count a payment, or inhabit a house. He cannot hold the breath of his life in place or make an achievement immune to time.
Think of breath visible on a cold morning. For a moment it takes shape, and then the air carries it away. That image can speak of brevity, but also of what escapes our attempts to secure it. Ecclesiastes will use hevel across several circumstances, and the precise emphasis develops with its context. Here the following question about gain tells us what is at stake: after the effort has been spent, what can the worker finally keep?
Verse 3 turns the declaration into a question: “What does man gain from all his labor in which he labors under the sun?” The word translated gain is yitron, a term for advantage or profit. It asks about the benefit an undertaking yields. The distinction between doing work and obtaining an advantage from the work is essential. A great deal of activity can occur without producing what the worker hoped to retain from it.
The language of profit comes naturally from commerce: an investment is made, costs are paid, and something remains as an advantage. The Preacher applies that question to the whole of a human life. Work consumes strength and days; the worker hopes that the result will be worth what was spent. Verse 3 asks what remains to the person when the accounting includes not merely a day’s wages but the passing of the worker himself.
A farmer may grow grain, a builder complete a house, and a parent provide a meal. Each achievement has its own immediate result. The Preacher presses beyond those results to the worker’s relation to them: the harvest is consumed, the house passes to other occupants, and the parent belongs to a generation that will depart. The question is not simply what labor produces but what lasting advantage belongs to the laborer.
“Under the sun” locates the investigation in the visible world where people labor and live out their days. The sun marks those days with a rhythm no worker can suspend. The phrase becomes one of the book’s recurring expressions for the human vantage point: we observe events as people living within time, without possessing the whole course of what God does.
This gives the question its sharpness. Labor can be useful, beautiful, and necessary, yet usefulness within a day is different from permanence beyond a lifetime. The Preacher is interested in that difference. He will not allow a worker’s genuine accomplishments to conceal the fact that the worker is mortal.
Genesis provides an important biblical setting for this combination of labor and passing life. Work existed before human disobedience: God placed the man in the garden to cultivate and keep it in Genesis 2:15. The difficulty cannot therefore be explained by calling work itself a punishment. After the transgression, however, God's words join grievous labor to a life ending in the ground:
Genesis 3:17–19 | World English Bible Classic
To Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to your wife’s voice,
and have eaten from the tree,
about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’
the ground is cursed for your sake.
You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life.
It will yield thorns and thistles to you;
and you will eat the herb of the field.
You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground,
for you were taken out of it.
For you are dust,
and you shall return to dust.”
Genesis 3 sets the laborer between bread and dust. The ground supplies food through difficult work, and the worker eventually returns to the ground from which he was taken. Ecclesiastes 1 describes what that condition looks like when watched across generations. The field receives another worker; the days continue; the labor of the departed does not grant them possession of the future.
Verse 4 begins answering the question through a contrast: “One generation goes, and another generation comes; but the earth remains forever.” The people move across a world that outlasts them. They arrive, labor, and depart; the ground on which they performed their work remains available to another generation.
Before we watch the sun or follow the rivers, we watch people disappear. The poem establishes the human problem first. Creation’s recurrence is viewed by someone whose own place within it is temporary. The earth’s continuance cannot be counted as the individual worker’s personal continuance. The field can remain productive after the person who cleared it has died.
The earth “remains forever” in the poem’s comparison: generation after generation passes across a world that continues to receive them. The emphasis is on duration as experienced by mortal people. An ancestor’s field may still be there when no one remembers the ancestor’s name. The ground’s apparent stability throws human transience into relief.
Verse 5 then turns to the sun: “The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises.” We might expect the sunrise to provide an image of fresh beginnings. Here the line follows the sun through its whole movement and brings it back to the place from which the movement begins again. Rising is followed by setting, and setting by a return that prepares for another rising.
The word hurries gives the description an almost laboring character. The sun is portrayed through vigorous movement, yet its destination becomes the starting point of another journey. The line joins exertion to return: the setting sun has not finished with rising. The daily course supplies a visible pattern for the question about labor.
The wind in verse 6 gives the same pattern a different form. It goes south, turns north, turns continually, and returns to its courses. The repeated language of turning makes the sentence participate in what it describes. Instead of receiving one brief statement that the wind moves, we follow its changing direction until the words themselves have taken us around and back.
The sun follows a recognizable daily course; the wind changes direction. The second image therefore adds something to the first. Recurrence does not require every movement to look identical. The wind can reverse its direction and still return to its courses. Variety within the movement has not changed its recurring character.
Then the rivers introduce another apparent destination: “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full.” Water moves toward a receiving body, but the receiving never reaches the condition we might expect from continual accumulation. The streams do not announce that the sea has finally received enough and the work can stop. The last line adds again to the picture: where the rivers flow, they flow again.
Taken together, the sun, wind, and rivers are not three interchangeable illustrations. The sun travels a daily course; the wind turns through changing directions; the rivers flow toward a destination that is never finally full. The images progress from return, to restless turning, to endless receiving. Their different movements teach the same observer to notice that activity is not identical with lasting gain.
Verse 8 brings the observer into the picture: “All things are full of weariness beyond uttering.” After the rapid movement of the natural images, even the attempt to describe everything becomes exhausting. The Hebrew expression is compressed, but the world’s motion and repetition give the words their setting. The observer could describe another sunrise, another change of wind, and another river running toward the sea, yet the account would remain unfinished. The weariness belongs not merely to the moving world but to the human attempt to take its measure.
The verse then names the eye and ear: “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” Our senses continually receive what the world offers, but receiving more is not the same as reaching completion. Seeing one thing makes room for another sight; hearing one account does not end the desire to hear. The poem has moved from creation’s ceaseless activity to the observer who cannot finish taking it in.
The sea and the ear are linked by the language of being filled. Rivers pour into the sea without bringing its receiving to an end; sounds reach the ear without bringing hearing to an end. The eye likewise continues to look. The repeated pattern now includes both the world and the person trying to understand it.
A person may witness a remarkable event, learn something useful, or enjoy a beautiful sight. Those experiences are genuine goods, but none brings the activity of seeing and hearing to a final resting place. The Preacher is showing how deeply the rhythm of ongoing desire belongs to ordinary human life.
The movement from past to future extends the pattern beyond the observer’s own experience. What has been supplies the pattern for what shall be. The observer has entered a sequence already underway, and the future will not become wholly detached from that history simply because he has not experienced it yet. The changing generations of verse 4 inhabit a world whose recurring patterns extend beyond any one generation’s observation.
“There is no new thing under the sun” follows the poem’s repeated courses. People come and go, but human undertakings return in recognizable forms. Work, desire, rivalry, achievement, loss, and the hope that the next undertaking will yield what the last could not belong to these recurring patterns. The claim of novelty in verse 10 has to be heard within that larger recurrence.
A new invention can alter the way people work, communicate, or travel. Yet the inventor still belongs to a passing generation, and the users of the invention still seek advantage, recognition, comfort, and security. The poem directs us to the recurring condition of the people who make and use things. Novel means do not by themselves give human beings a new relationship to time.
Verse 10 gives that tendency a voice: “Is there a thing of which it may be said, ‘Behold, this is new’?” The claim directs attention toward something visible now. The answer directs attention toward what came before: “It has been long ago, in the ages which were before us.” The disagreement concerns the observer's judgment about the thing, not whether he has genuinely encountered something. He knows what has entered his experience; he does not thereby know everything that has preceded it.
Verse 11 exposes the weakness in the observer’s historical reach. Our confidence that something has never been seen before depends upon remembering what came before, and remembrance is precisely what the closing verse calls into question. Recurrence is asserted, novelty is claimed, the past is invoked, and memory fails. What appears unprecedented may partly reveal how much has been forgotten.
The wording of verse 11 can point to former and later people or to former and later events. Both readings fit the poem’s concern with generations and recurrence. The essential observation is that memory does not preserve the past intact. Those who live afterward know only fragments of what came before them, and they too will be remembered incompletely by those who follow.
This also closes a possible refuge from the first contrast. If the generation must pass away while the earth remains, perhaps being remembered can give its members a lasting place. Verse 11 refuses to make that expectation secure. The people who remember us are themselves passing people. Entrusting a name to their memory has not removed that name from the world of loss.
Psalm 90 gives us another biblical voice considering passing generations and human work. The psalm is a prayer addressed to the God who existed before the mountains and the earth. Its perspective deepens the contrast in Ecclesiastes: the earth seems enduring when compared with a human lifetime, but even the earth has its beginning before God.
Psalm 90:1–17 | World English Bible Classic
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place for all generations.
2 Before the mountains were born,
before you had formed the earth and the world,
even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
3 You turn man to destruction, saying,
“Return, you children of men.”
4 For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past,
like a watch in the night.
5 You sweep them away as they sleep.
In the morning they sprout like new grass.
6 In the morning it sprouts and springs up.
By evening, it is withered and dry.
7 For we are consumed in your anger.
We are troubled in your wrath.
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
9 For all our days have passed away in your wrath.
We bring our years to an end as a sigh.
10 The days of our years are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty years;
yet their pride is but labor and sorrow,
for it passes quickly, and we fly away.
11 Who knows the power of your anger,
your wrath according to the fear that is due to you?
12 So teach us to count our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
13 Relent, Yahweh!
How long?
Have compassion on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen evil.
16 Let your work appear to your servants,
your glory to their children.
17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us.
Establish the work of our hands for us.
Yes, establish the work of our hands.
Psalm 90 begins by naming God the dwelling place of his people “for all generations.” Where Ecclesiastes watches one generation replace another, the psalm names the One who receives them all. He is God “from everlasting to everlasting,” before the earth itself. The contrast clarifies Ecclesiastes 1:4: God is not merely another enduring part of creation; he precedes it. Human life is brief, but the brevity is measured before a God whose existence is not bounded by human years.
Human years then pass before him like yesterday or a watch in the night. The grass springs up and withers, an image whose compression makes a whole life look brief. The prayer does not romanticize that passing. It names sin, divine anger, labor, sorrow, and years ending as a sigh. Its request for wisdom arises from acknowledging that condition rather than denying it.
The petitions that follow ask God to meet his servants within those brief days. Moses asks for compassion, for satisfaction in God’s loving kindness, and for gladness after affliction (Psalm 90:13–15). Verse 16 asks that God’s work appear to his servants and his glory to their children. The psalm therefore brings generations into view again, this time through prayer for those who will follow. Its acknowledgment of mortality gives rise to dependence on God for mercy and joy, not to a refusal to value the life still given.
The closing petition, “Establish the work of our hands for us,” answers the laborer’s longing in a different register from self-made gain. People still work within brief lives, but they may ask God to give that work its proper fruit. The request depends on his favor, not on their power to make their achievements permanent.
That changes how a person carries ordinary responsibility. The parent still prepares the meal; the builder still lays the foundation; the farmer still tends the field. Their work has immediate value because people need food, shelter, and care. But they need not demand that the work make them permanent. They can serve faithfully in the days entrusted to them and acknowledge the God upon whom those days depend.