I have A LOT of thoughts, so when someone commented to me, “You seem like a man with a thought,” I couldn’t help but ponder the singularity of that statement. My mind is always on the move, often forgetting things or leaving sentences unfinished. This happens not for a lack of thought but for overabundance of thought. I have a feeling I am not alone.
This idea of constant racing thoughts reminds me of the book of Ecclesiastes—most of it a preacher’s thoughts that come fast and furious, much like my own. A word that appears 38 times in the rather short book underlines a key message. The original Hebrew word,הֶבֶל is transliterated as hevel. Often modern English bibles will have a footnote: “hevel literally a breath or vapor” and translate the word as vanity, futility, or meaningless. This word carries a much more complex meaning than any one of those words alone. It is a word we read in Genesis 4 as the name of the second human son, Abel, a person we hear about in only one of the 929 Psalms and chapters of the Old Testament. Abel is a fleeting breath, or hevel. He was here one second, gone the next, his life and story cut short by his angry brother, Cain. By linking the keyword of Ecclesiates to the first narrative in the post-garden world, the author provides an aid for how to navigate a world where the relationship between action and outcome often seems contrary.
Biblical authors frequently employ a technique of reflecting a deeper meaning of the story through the way it is told. Ecclesiastes is written so that you experience the preacher’s fleeting, innermost thoughts as though they were your own. By doing this, the author highlights an even deeper meaning of the word hevel. Consider the passage Ecc. 2:13-15a: Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. 14 The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. 15 Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?”
Which one is it? Is it better to be foolish or wise? That is also the meaning of hevel. Just when you think you have a grasp on understanding, it disappears like grabbing at smoke or vapor. Life is filled with this paradoxical dilemma; one we ourselves often face in our own thoughts. Is the meaning of life enjoyment or is it nothing? Is it better to be foolish or wise? Why do bad things happen to good people?
The enigmatic narrative continues when, in Ecc 7:15, an almost unmistakable allusion is made back to the beginning of the sin-filled world: In my hevel [Abel] life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. Surely we do not live in a world of injustice where it is better to be wicked than righteous? Luckily, that is not where the author leaves us. The proposed solution to this existential dilemma involves a fundamental shift in perspective. Even in the midst of the curses in the Garden there is blessing, in pain there is food and childbirth. Instead of nakedness we are clothed by God. In leaving the Garden we are promised ultimate victory through the seed of Eve. Ecclesiastes leads us to recognize that though this life seems unjust we can be confident that our righteous deeds will be accepted: a sentiment echoed in Hebrews 11:4.
David understood in writing Psalm 16 that when we let God dwell with us we will find the fullness of joy and pleasures evermore. Enjoying the fleeting gifts from God provides us temporary relief from the sin that, in the beginning, brought about hevel in the first place. While justice may seem to be delayed in this fleeting world, it is never denied (Ecclesiastes 8:11-13).
In a world characterized by constant mental stimulation and pleasure seeking, we must slow down and relinquish control. We must get rid of the vanities in our lives: possessions, social approval, politics, and endless entertainment. Ecclesiastes exposes these things as hevel and points us to God who offers hope, joy, and purpose for our lives. Isa 55 tells the unrighteous to forsake their thoughts and the wicked to forsake their way and with the Lord there is abundant compassion and pardon that leads us not in moping and doubt but in joy and peace. When we stop trying to be “a man of thought” and instead try to become, paraphrasing, “a man after God’s own thoughts,” that is when we will reach the same conclusion the author does in closing the book.
Ecclesiastes 12:13: The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
