Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Ecclesiastes 1:4-11
The Meaninglessness of What Men Seek To Accomplish Comes Out In The Fact That Life Simply Follows A Continual Unchanging Repetition. It Is Purposeless and Boring and Unenlightening And Accomplishes Nothing Of Value. It Simply Repeats the Same Old Thing (Ecclesiastes 1:4).
‘One generation goes, and another generation comes, and the earth goes on for ever.'
Here we discover the essence of his thinking. Men may labour but nothing really changes. Nothing permanent is accomplished. One generation after another goes on in the same way as the previous generation, labouring on seemingly endlessly. Life just goes on pointlessly, on and on as man struggles to survive.
This is then illustrated by a number of examples of the endless repetition of life. (Later he will point out that the one way of escape from this endless meaninglessness of life is to live before God and find comfort in His presence. It is that alone which can bring permanent worthwhileness to life - Ecclesiastes 2:24; Ecclesiastes 5:18; Ecclesiastes 9:7).
‘The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where he arises. The wind goes towards the south, and turns around to the north. It turns around continually in its course, and the wind returns again to its rounds.'
Both sun and wind continue their daily and nightly activities in the same old way. The sun follows a continual pattern, rising, setting, and then racing round to rise again. There is possibly here a hint of Egyptian influence, although the idea of the sun speeding underneath in order to rise again must have been a common one, for men saw it go down in one place at night, and in the morning come up at the opposite side from which it went down. The wind varies slightly more in its course, first going south, and then north, and so on, but even then only in order to continually follow a similar course time and again. It is continually coming and going in the same old way, continually following its regular courses.
The description of the sun is reminiscent of ideas in Egypt about Ra, who makes his daily journey over the earth, and his nightly journey under the earth. But here it the idea is demythologised. Ra is degraded to a thing. However, the writer must have been conscious of the ideas of others. Thus ‘under the sun' must be seen as containing at least some stress on the sun's meaninglessness, however seen, as well as on its long term uselessness. It is simply seen by him as a part of the pattern of nature.
‘All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers go, there they go again.'
The rivers also follow the round of life. They go into the sea, evaporate, rise as clouds, fall again in rain, and again go into the sea. They follow the same continual process. And the sea never fills up. All their effort seems in vain. So the process is meaningless, it has no final purpose.
The point behind all this is not to criticise nature. It is to point out that these things, like man's labour, have no achievable final end in view. They are not leading anywhere, but just going on and on in an endless round.
‘All things are full of weariness. Man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which shall be, and that which has been done, is that which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun.'
Man too is caught up with this continual process. All things are simply continually boring and frustrating, not worth talking about, not satisfying the watching eye, nor the hearing ear, for it is nothing new. What has happened will happen again and again. What is done by man will be done again and again. There is nothing new anywhere, wherever we look under the sun. Man's knowledge of, and from, life gets him nowhere.
This is the view of life of the thinking man. Unless we simply go on without thinking this must be our conclusion. There is nothing on earth finally worth living and striving for, or discovering. It may be of advantage in the short term, but it passes. It is not permanent. It does not reach to the very basis of life.
‘Is there anything of which men say, “This is new”? It has already been in the ages which preceded us.'
He then challenges his hearers to tell him whether anyone can point to anything that is really new. He concludes that they cannot, although those with short memories may think that they can. But they are wrong. Nothing happens now which has not happened a hundred times before through past ages. It has all happened again and again in the ages that preceded us. Man by searching never really finds out anything new. Life is just endless repetition.
‘There is no remembrance of the former things, nor will there be any remembrance of the latter things which are to come, among those who will come after.'
Man never learns. Each generation ignores what previous generations have learned. They do not think it important enough to remember. And what they themselves do and learn will then in its turn also be forgotten by future generations. And thus they may sometimes think that they have come up with a new wisdom. But in the end, if they only knew it, if they searched, they would discover that it is but the same old wisdom that men have always known, possibly wrapped up in a different way.