Ecclesiastes

No. 244 Ecclesiastes 7:1-8
Ecclesiastes is the least sentimental book in the Bible, written by a voice that has tried everything under the sun and reports back without flattering anyone. Chapter 7 is a run of its better than sayings,...
No. 260 Ecclesiastes 5:13-20
Ecclesiastes keeps circling the same hard facts, and here the subject is money. The Teacher names a specific tragedy he has watched happen: wealth hoarded by its owner to his own harm. The man guards his...
No. 305 Ecclesiastes 10:11-20
Ecclesiastes 10 is a string of observations, and most of them circle the same organ: the mouth. The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious, the Teacher says, but a fool is swallowed by his own lips. The fool...
No. 412 Ecclesiastes 8:1-8
Ecclesiastes 8 opens with a compliment to wisdom, that it makes a person's face shine and softens the hardness of their expression, and then it gives some practical counsel about serving under a king whose...
No. 431 Ecclesiastes 3:16-22
Ecclesiastes stares straight at the hardest facts, and this passage stacks two of them right next to each other. First, injustice. The Teacher says he looked at the place of justice, the courts, the seats of...
No. 531 Ecclesiastes 9:1-6
The Preacher of Ecclesiastes is looking hard at something most of us prefer not to look at directly: the fact that everyone dies, and death does not sort people by how they lived. The same event, he says,...
No. 667 Ecclesiastes 10:1-10
Ecclesiastes is the Preacher's long look at life under the sun, and by chapter 10 the argument has loosened into a string of proverbs set side by side. The first is the sharpest. As dead flies make the...
No. 744 Ecclesiastes 4:7-16
The Preacher keeps walking through the world noticing what is empty, and here he stops at a man working alone. There is one who has no son and no brother, he says, and no end to his toil, and his eyes are...
No. 765 Ecclesiastes 5:1-7
The Preacher turns, for a moment, from the vanity of life under the sun to the way a person comes before God, and his counsel is mostly about the mouth. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God, he...
No. 998 Ecclesiastes 2:12-16
The Preacher turns to compare wisdom and folly. He sees plainly that wisdom is better than folly as light is better than darkness; the wise man has his eyes open while the fool walks in the dark. But then a...
No. 1294 Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
The Preacher closes his book with a call and a poem. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, he urges, before the evil days come and the years when you say, I have no pleasure in them. Then he paints...
No. 1319 Ecclesiastes 7:9-14
The Preacher gathers a handful of sayings about how to meet the days as they come. Do not be quick to anger, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. Do not ask why the former days were better than these, for...
No. 1549 Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
The Preacher describes an experiment. He set out to find meaning in pleasure and achievement, denying himself nothing. He tried laughter and wine; he built houses, planted vineyards and gardens and orchards,...
No. 2020 Ecclesiastes 8:9-17
The Preacher wrestles with the tangled workings of the world: the wicked prospering, the righteous suffering what the wicked deserve, judgment delayed. And after all his searching he reaches an honest...
No. 2202 Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
The Preacher begins his book with a stark declaration: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does a person gain, he asks, from all the toil at which they labor under the sun? And he paints a picture of...
No. 2265 Ecclesiastes 11:1-10
The Preacher, who has spoken much of the uncertainty of life, gives counsel about how to act in the face of it. Cast your bread on the waters, he says, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to...
No. 2442 Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
The Preacher lays out his famous catalog of times: a time to be born and a time to die, to plant and to uproot, to weep and to laugh, to keep silence and to speak, to embrace and to refrain. For everything...
No. 2847 Ecclesiastes 6:1-12
The Preacher names an evil he has watched weigh heavily on people: a man to whom God gives riches, wealth, and honor, so that he lacks nothing he desires, and yet God does not grant him the ability to enjoy...
No. 3036 Ecclesiastes 3:9-15
The Preacher reflects on the burden of human labor and then says something profound: God has made everything beautiful in its time, and he has put eternity into the human heart, yet so that no one can find out...
No. 3379 Ecclesiastes 9:13-18
The Preacher tells of a small city besieged by a great king, saved not by weapons but by the wisdom of one poor man, who is then forgotten by everyone. From this he draws his conclusions: wisdom is better than...
No. 3508 Ecclesiastes 12:9-14
The whole book of Ecclesiastes, with its restless searching after meaning under the sun, comes down at last to a settled conclusion. The words of the wise are like goads, the Preacher says, prodding us in the...
No. 3551 Ecclesiastes 7:15-29
The Preacher offers hard-won, balanced wisdom. He observes that a righteous person may perish while a wicked one lives long, so life under the sun does not always reward as we expect. He warns against...
No. 3747 Ecclesiastes 9:7-12
After so much reflection on the vanity of life, Qoheleth turns to counsel that is warm and grounded: eat your bread with joy, drink with a glad heart, enjoy life with the one you love, and whatever your hand...
No. 3763 Ecclesiastes 2:17-26
Qoheleth wrestles with a bitter thought: he has labored with wisdom and skill, and yet he must leave everything to someone who comes after him, who may be a fool and did nothing to earn it. This realization...
No. 3905 Ecclesiastes 1:12-18
The Preacher, a king with every resource to pursue wisdom, sets out to search out by wisdom everything done under the sun, and reports his sobering conclusion. He gained great wisdom, more than anyone before...
No. 4005 Ecclesiastes 5:8-12
The Preacher observes a truth about wealth that runs against our instincts: he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. The craving for more is never filled by...
No. 4192 Ecclesiastes 4:1-6
The Preacher looks at the restless striving that drives so much human labor, and he traces it to an unexpected root: envy. All toil and all skill in work, he observes, come from a man's envy of his neighbor....