Okay, so everything is vanity! Well, really, the better translation is everything is smoke. Vanity and meaningless don't quite grasp what the Qohelet (the gatherer) or the preacher is saying here.
He is saying everything is smoke. And if everything is smoke, we're in the thick fog. That means we can't see very well, or we're blinded, in a sense. We see things, of course; we can touch them, we can taste them, we can see them, we can define them, we can identify them. But that which is of the world and under the sun is smoke, and we're blinded by it. And so, following God is truly by faith alone; we can't see God with all the smoke around us. So, the Qohelet here is experimenting to test himself and his heart. But you'll see that a great deal of delusion comes with trying to master folly.
I'll give you Ambrose's commentary here. There are a couple of commentaries in front of me, but one from Ambrose says, commenting specifically on Ecclesiastes 2:12-26, "To speak now of this life. The person who has taken his soul in vain, who is constructing the things of the world and building the things of the body. We arrive each day to eat and drink, yet no one is filled so that he does not hunger and thirst after a short time. Daily we seek prophets, and to greed, there is set no limit. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. He that loves silver will not be satisfied with silver. There is no limit to toil, and there is no profit in abundance."
This is a good insight from Ambrose. Solomon is the preeminent example of the full range of the human experience; who in the world is more abundant than Solomon? And that is his claim here. Who in the world is wiser than me? Who in the world has had more experiences than me? I have experienced the full range of human experiences and everything the world has to offer in its fullness which is under the sun. I've had the wealth. I've blown it away, and I've gained it back again. I've had the women. I've had the slaves. I've had the instruments. I've had the wine, the best of wines. I've had the rivers that flowed out of my gardens. I've had everything, yet there wasn't any true lasting abundance in this. And to come out of that kind of experiment unscathed; indeed, there are some consequences to what he's doing here, but most men could not have survived, that is, maintained their soul with this giving into vice and giving into sin and giving into the things of the world.
He, Solomon, immerses himself fully in the smoke and in the things of the world, and he comes out of the other end, probably with a limp; with a lot of humility, and as we'll find at the end of the book, is that there was no abundance to be had. No true lasting abundance; it was mist. And therefore, this teacher, this gatherer, gathering the people is telling us; look and see, I've done it all. But, let me warn you, Solomon says, there is no abundance in these things- it's all chasing after the wind. There is no abundance in too much wine, and there is no abundance in too much worldly wisdom. Lasting abundance comes from the Lord, who alone can fully fill us. And true abundance is not just being fully filled, but it's going to the source that can't be emptied or exhausted, right! So, in one sense, we can be full in this world for a time, but we notice that in our eating, drinking, and sexual pleasures, we're never really satisfied. And those things start to empty themselves; they begin to lose their ability to fill us, right! This is a problem with divorce; men overly consume their wives; they never give to their wives; they never sacrifice themselves for their wives. They overconsume their wives, and before you know it, their wives are empty. And maybe they're not actually empty, but the man's perspective is that she no longer has anything to offer him; there's nothing she can give him anymore. She's dry and can no longer quench his appetite. And so, he must leave her and go to someone else who can fill him. Smoke!
The idea here in Ecclesiastes is that the Lord never empties, and the Lord never runs out. He is truly the source of abundance. So even though we are filled then emptied, filled then drained, the source of our filling, the fount that quenches our thirst is never empty; it is never dried. But everything else in this world dries up; everything else is smoke and vapor. So, Christians will find true abundance: joy and peace in the Lord. And if you want to truly experience and enjoy the things in this life, and for them to have ultimate meaning, those things must be found in the Lord and given unto the Lord daily.
