“So I (Solomon) became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also, my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 2:9-11

Solomon tells us that he had tried every earthly pursuit and pleasure and all were found wanting. Yes, this life does have its pleasures and satisfactions, and we should thank God for them (Ecclesiastes 2:24–25; 5:18–19; 8:15). But in the final chapters, he points to the ultimate answer once we have learned that nothing under the sun can completely and permanently satisfy. That can be the only reason, why this book is in the Bible.

The author puts himself—and his readers—in the shoes of the secularist, one who gives little thought to God. He wants us to look closely at the visible world and the answers it seems to give before he will do more than drop hints of where he is taking us.

In Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, he drops another hint of where he is going. He writes: “He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time.” This is an indirect reference to Genesis 1:31: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” He continues, saying God “has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Here is the implicit recognition that we have been created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), with the capacity to relate to Him personally. But from our creaturely position “under the sun”, without biblical insight and with an evolutionary mindset, this life looks like an untidy chaotic mess, with no apparent rhyme or reason. We never have the satisfaction of fully understanding what God is doing (Eccl.:16–17).

We need God’s revelation, this is the author’s whole point: we cannot plumb the mystery of life without God’s help. We have arrived in the middle of life’s drama, not knowing the plot. Without the backdrop revealed to us in the early chapters of Genesis, the truth about our beginnings, and why the world is now broken, will remain a mystery to us. The book of Ecclesiastes ends with the call to acknowledge the limits of our perspective and our understanding, and to accept our status as creatures under the dominion of our Creator. (Ecclesiastes. 12:1).

Throughout the book, the author continues his demolition of false hope and self-sufficiency. He notes the harshness of life (Eccl. 3:16; 4:1) and the breakdown of law and order (Eccl. 8:11) as part of the evidence of humankind’s bias toward evil. His observations are summed up in Eccl. 7: 29: “See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” This is another indirect reference to Genesis, this time to Adam and Eve, created originally “upright” before their disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:1–6). In seeking to be “like God, knowing good and evil”, they chose to deny their creaturely status by reaching for more than God had granted them. Ever since mankind has had a propensity to evil, and the originally perfect world has become harsh and chaotic. G.S. Hendry comments: The eyes of Ecclesiastes are fully open to the vanity and the corruption to which the creation is subject (Romans 8:20 ff), and the whole book has been aptly described as an exposition of the curse of the Fall (Genesis 3:17–19).

By the end of chapter 10, the author’s work of demolition is complete; the site has been cleared. Chapters 11 and 12 point us to “the end of the matter” (Eccl. 12:13). These two chapters fall into three sections which can be summed up in three crisp commands:

Be Bold (Eccl. 11:1-6): We are here warned against being overly cautious: “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap” (v. 4). Few great enterprises have waited for ideal conditions; no more should we. “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days” (v. 1). There is an element of risk in any enterprise, he says, but it is better to launch out and fail than to keep our resources to ourselves.

Be joyful (Eccl. 11:7-10): Verse 7 captures the bliss of being alive, but this is balanced by the knowledge that life’s pleasures will give way to “the days of darkness” (Eccl. 11:8). We are warned against letting life’s gifts beguile us into living for them alone. Verse 9 puts us on the right path: “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth … Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.” The prospect of divine praise or blame makes every detail of life significant. To know this is to be reminded that we reap what we plant.

Be Godly! Eccl. 12:1-8, 13-14. The final chapter speaks of honouring God with our lives while we can do so and before our strength fades and our bodies return to the dust. To “remember … [our] Creator” (v. 1) is to drop all pretense of self-sufficiency and to commit ourselves to Him. Verses 2–7 use rich imagery to remind us that death is inevitable.

In verse 2, the chill of winter is in the air as the rains persist, and the clouds turn daylight into gloom. In the verses that follow, the various members and faculties of the body are pictured as a household that has suffered the ravages of time. The scene in these verses brings home to us the fading of physical and mental powers that will always accompany advancing age. One by one, old friends disappear, familiar customs change, and hopes long-held must be laid aside.

One’s youth, then, is the best time to face this stark reality: “Remember … your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’” (Eccl. 12:1).

He has brought us at last to “the end of the matter” (Eccl. 12:13). Here finally is the goal for which we were made: the eternal God toward whom the eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11) was meant to lead us. When this world has given us its finest things, there is still a hunger in us that only God Himself can satisfy. These souls of ours cannot live on the wretched husks of a purely materialistic philosophy. Sooner or later a famine sets in. That immaterial part of us that we call the soul or the spirit can never quite delude itself that the atmosphere of a secular society is its native air. We were made for eternity, and nothing “under the sun” can fully or permanently satisfy us.

Centuries after this book was written, One greater than Solomon said to a lonely Samaritan woman standing beside a well:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” John 4:13–14