Page 121 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are
without excuse (Rom. 1:20).” People can gather a certain amount of information from creation, including
the necessary fact of a Creator. Yet unless the Creator speaks, humans are without hope of eternity. As
much as one might try to find meaning without God’s help, life is empty.

The rest of the introduction, 1:1-11, underscores his thesis with illustrations from the unceasing cycles of
nature. We frail humans come and go, but the earth is always here. The sun rises and sets. The wind
blows around and around the world. Rain falls. Streams flow to the sea, yet the sea is never full.
Watching these natural cycles makes a human weary. There is nothing really new in life. Oh, someone
might invent a new way to cook fish or might make a gadget to help cook fish, but people have been
cooking fish for centuries and will continue to do so for centuries. The labor of humans is so meaningless
that no one remembers a dead generation for very long no matter how well they cooked fish. We might
remember the names and faces of our grandparents, but great grandparents are gone from our minds.
At one time they laughed and worked hard and loved and planned. Now they are gone. We too will one
day be gone, no matter what we do.

13.2 Objectives

1. You will be introduced to key phrases that explain the author’s pagan viewpoint.

2. You will begin to see how “meaninglessness” is the major characteristic of human life.

3. You will understand that God has purposely designed life to draw our attention to Him.

13.3 Meaningless life under the sun: 1:1-6:12

The Teacher asks, “What do people gain from all their labor at which they toil under the sun
(1:3)?” He is using another favorite word. This specific word for “labor” occurs some 30 times
in Ecclesiastes and speaks of the drudgery of work. Moses used the word for “trouble” in
Psalm 90:14, “Our days may come to seventy years or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the
best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” All those
days and weeks and years spent working hard, what is their value? Nothing works out quite the way we
anticipate. Our intentions may be the best, but somehow the results are marred.

In a famous incident, the World Health Organization once tried to help residents of
Borneo exterminate houseflies, which were widely suspected of spreading disease there.
Officials sprayed the insides of houses with large quantities of DDT, an action that
triggered an unforeseen and nearly disastrous sequence of events. As the flies died, local
gecko lizards (their natural predator) feasted on the fly corpses and sickened from the
DDT concentrated in them. Their sick condition made the geckos easy prey for house
cats, who ate their fill of the DDT-poisoned geckos and likewise sickened and died. The
loss of the cats gave rats free run of people’s houses. When the rats began to devour
food and to threaten people with serious disease – in particular, with bubonic plague –

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