Ecclesiastes 1:2

Vanity of vanities The form is the highest type (as in the "servant of servants" of Genesis 9:25, the "chief over the chief" of Numbers 3:32) of the Hebrew superlative. The word translated "vanity," identical with the name Abel or Hebel(Genesis 4:2) means primarily a "breath," or "vapour," and as such becomes the type of all that is fleeting and perishable (Psalms 62:9; Psalms 144:4). It is uniformily translated by "vanity" in the English Version of this book, which is moulded on the Vulgate as that was upon the LXX. The other Greek versions gave "vapour of vapours" (Hieron. in loc.) and this may perhaps be regarded as, in some respects, a preferable rendering. The watchword of the book, the key-note of its melancholy music, meeting us not less than thirty-nine times, is therefore, whether we take it as a proposition or an exclamation, like that of the Epicurean poet "Pulvis et umbra sumus" (Hor. Od.iv. 7. 9), like that also, we may add, of St James (James 3:14) and the Psalmist (Psalms 90:3-10). In the Wisdom of Solomonapparently written (see Introduction, chap. v.) as a corrective complement to Ecclesiastes we have a like series of comparisons, the "dust," the "thin froth," the "smoke," but there the idea of -vanity" is limited to the "hope of the ungodly" and the writer, as if of set purpose, avoids the sweeping generalizations of the Debater, who extends the assertion to the "all" of human life, and human aims. It is not without significance that St Paul, in what is, perhaps, the solitary reference in his writings to this book, uses the word which the LXX. employs here, when he affirms that "the creature was made subject to vanity" and seeks to place that fact in its right relation to the future restitution of the Universe (Romans 8:20).