“I said in my heart: “I will go forth and overflow with delights, and I will enjoy good things.” And I saw that this, too, is emptiness.”
- Ecclesiastes 2:1
The Continued Hopelessness of Solomon
Picking up from chapter 1, Solomon continues by going and making merry, enjoying the many good things he has gotten, only to find it empty. He reports that laughter and rejoicing are empty and self deceiving.
So, he withdraws from wine. He looks back to wisdom to find what a man should do with his life, how to spend his brief days well.
He builds bigger, better, and more. He plants trees, vineyards, and gardens, and he makes ponds to irrigate them. He collects herds of cattle, and servants, and flocks, and he does more than any man who comes before him in Jerusalem.
He goes on to describe the wealth he gathers, the singers, and ornamental bowls and pitchers for wine. And in all of this, he says, wisdom never left him.
He does, essentially, whatever he wants.
But when he turn a his mind towards all of this good, all of this pleasure, all of this richness, he finds it empty.
Nothing is permanent under the sun.
And when he considers wisdom and foolishness, he asks himself: “What is man, that he would be able to follow his Maker, his King?“
And he realizes that wisdom and foolishness are as different as light from darkness, but that both things would pass away. And how does it benefit one more than the other, if both will die?
No one will remember the wise man, or the fool, forever. In the great expanse of time and history, all is forgotten eventually. And he sees again that everything under the sun is meaningless, and evil, and empty, and affliction to the spirit.
So, he starts to hate all of his work again, because he knows he is going to die, and the work he is doing is going to be handed off to an heir, and he doesn’t know if that heir is even going to be a good heir, or an idiot. What if he, when being in charge of all the work I’ve done, turns it to ruin?
In verse 26, I find one of the most interesting statements. He states that God gave the good man wisdom, knowledge, and rejoicing, and the wicked man affliction and needless worrying, to gather things for the good man.
But Solomon has been needlessly worrying this whole time, and gathering, and working, and he is also full of wisdom, and knowledge, and rejoicing.
But to him, this matters little. He closes out the chapter by saying that this too, is emptiness, and a hollow worry of the mind.
I know this is all very heavy, and depressing, but I promise, it’s going to get better. Solomon isn’t all despair and worry. There is more to this life than emptiness under the sun. This has been the setting of the foundation, the groundwork that must come before the construction. It’s not the most pleasant, but good things come to those who build their foundation wisely.
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