Commentaries:
In chapter 2, Solomon launches into what he had learned about his works of building material things like houses and gardens and seeking even greater wealth. His conclusion? All of these material achievements were nothing but vanity, a grasping after wind.
He finds no real, sustained profit in them, nothing that truly added to his quality of life, no lasting fulfillment. He does not mean they resulted in no sense of achievement or passing pleasure, but that their fruit never truly fulfilled God's purpose for man. Therefore, those things are poor substitutes for a sustained sense of well-being. He then proceeds into an exploration of wine and entertainment. These are simply another form of materialism, ways of pleasing the flesh. He concludes that they, too, are folly, a mad pursuit.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Ecclesiastes and Christian Living (Part Seven): Contentment
Solomon says, "Hey, I have done all these things, and after I am dead, nobody will even remember who did them." Some call the Bible—Adam and Eve, the Flood, the Exodus, and so forth—mythical, legendary, allegorical, and contrived. In fact, it has been just within the last few years that archaeologists have—for the first time ever—unearthed secular evidence for the existence for the great David!
What usually happens is that a biblical personage remains a shadowy figure until something apart from the Bible "proves" that he existed. He may be one of the greatest men who ever lived, yet the world wonders. "Did he really live, or was he just a composite figure made up by Hebrew writers trying to beef up their past?"
Solomon cries foul when he realizes that this will happen to him. He concludes, "Life is meaningless."
John W. Ritenbaugh
Ecclesiastes and the Feast of Tabernacles (Part 2)
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