Alluding to a Key Problem, and Taking a Look Around (Studying Ecclesiastes 1:3-11)
Alluding to a Key Problem, and Taking a Look Around (Studying Ecclesiastes 1:3-11)
Thinking Scripturally While Reacting Culturally
In this section of Ecclesiastes chapter 1, Solomon alludes to a key problem that he will bring up repeatedly in this book — man’s impending death. It is this problem around which the entirety of Solomon’s main thesis is built.
What true pleasure can be gained from all of man’s achievements, knowing that everything he accumulates in life will just pass to someone else? We pass away from this world, while the earth keeps doing its thing, so what is the point?
Trying to answer these questions apart from realizing God’s plan for our lives is futile — or as we have already seen, “vanity of vanities, says the preacher.”
A Sobering Reality — Verses 3-4
“What profit has a man from all his labor In which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; But the earth abides forever.”
Another way of saying this, again, is — What is the point? Solomon embarks on a long treatise looking at life “under the sun” from the pointless perspective of life lived without God. It is not until the end of the book (and likely near the end of his life), when Solomon reaches his conclusion:
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil.” (Ecc. 12:13-14)
Throughout Ecclesiastes, Solomon is going to give glimpses into his prior life lived apart from fearing God, and the perspective Solomon had in these moments was bleak, to say the least. Solomon is going to give us glimpses of moments wherein he seemed downright depressed, and it all had its root in the fact that he was sidetracked from Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 living.
When Solomon says, “One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever,” he is emphasizing the transiency of human life. He is not speaking literally regarding “the earth abides forever.”
We have plain Scriptural teaching in 2 Peter 3:10-12 that “the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up”/“dissolved” and “the elements will melt with fervent heat.”
We may safely presume that Solomon means WHILE THE EARTH REMAINS (see Gen. 8:22 below), “the earth abides forever”; that is, it keeps on doing its thing, while human life appears for a little while and then quickly vanishes away (James 4:14).
“While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)
Scientific Observations of “the Earth Doing its Thing” — Verses 5-11
“The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, And hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, And turns around to the north; The wind whirls about continually, And comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come, There they return again. All things are full of labor; Man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us. There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come By those who will come after.”
Simple natural processes that we tend to take for granted, like the sun faithfully rising and setting each day, the earth’s perfect revolutions around the sun, and the wind circulating over the earth, illustrate perfectly that God’s design for natural law supersedes human life, from the perspective of longevity.
Did you know that without the wind, life on earth would be impossible?
What If There Were No Wind Video
We tend to take things like this, and the earth’s perfect distance from the sun, and many other scientific facts crucial for life for granted, but Solomon, a scientist in his own right, did not. He used the scientific phenomena around him to correctly observe that God’s creation “keeps on keeping on,” while human life comes and goes.
Solomon continues with these observations in verse 7 when he comments about the water cycle. He then comments in verse 8 about man’s inability to fully understand everything there is to know about science. Man is incapable of expressing everything there is to know about the labor of all things in the earth. Even the human body’s ability to keep on seeing and keep on hearing is perplexing from the perspective of “how.”
Solomon concludes this section in verses 9-11 when he essentially says, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Life’s natural processes “keep on keeping on” just as they always have, just as God set in motion at the beginning. “There is nothing new under the sun.” “Is there anything of which it may be said, ‘See, this is new’? It has already been in ancient times before us.”
Verse 11 presents a sobering thought regarding the fact that the vast majority of people who will ever live are not remembered past a generation or two of their descendants: “There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come By those who will come after.”
What can we gather from all of this?
Life is all around us. It’s a beautiful creation of God. But ever since the fall (Genesis chapter 3), death is also a part of the human experience. Because of this sobering reality, we must live our lives with the understanding that our appointment with death will eventually arrive (see Heb. 9:27).
When that moment comes, life goes on … for everyone else. The earth will keep on doing its thing. Those close to us will mourn our loss for a time, but eventually earthly memory of our name will likely be lost entirely.
But the God Who created us and His universe will still know our name (cf. Isa. 43:1). And the Judge of all the earth will be the Determiner of our souls’ everlasting home (2 Cor. 5:10).
May we all live our lives accordingly!
With love always,
Chase
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.