Ecclesiastes: and the Search for Meaning

Over time, Kohelet recognizes that it is precisely temporality that offers humans beauty, meaning, and joy.

Money, in their world, was an instrument to support a transformative occupation and to feed an addiction, indeed a compulsion, to live on a higher spiritual plane.

having a human-only focus ultimately leads to anguish and despair.

It is possible that Qohelet’s use of hebel has Cain and Abel in mind. Abel’s unjust and meaningless murder is just the kind of datum that Qohelet wrestles with…what sets the world adrift is the human desire for autonomy and to play God, rather than embracing one’s creatureliness.

Both Shakespeare and Ecclesiastes force us to ponder if it is, indeed, true that there is nothing new under the sun because, ironically, their works were radical and enduring.

Our lives are unfinished and unfinishable. We do too much, never enough and we are done before we’ve even started.

Studying Tanakh benefits from establishing a general, overall impression before reviewing exegetes.

In this last stage, “we find exuberant affirmations of life, and the joy and wisdom that it can bring. Kohelet has now learned, and seeks to teach, the deeper lesson of hevel: Transience as inspiration.”

Kohelet is the Hebrew Bible’s textual memento mori; the words are the author’s sacred canvas.