40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 (Episode 420)

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Chad and Daniel begin the book of Ecclesiastes in this episode. They talk about the authorship and theme of the book. What is life like under the sun? Is everything really vanity, and what does that mean? Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 Podcast Network Fundraiser! 1517 Podcasts 1517 on Youtube 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 Academy - Free Theological Education What's New from 1517: Available Now: Encouragement for Motherhood Edited by Katie Koplin Pre-order: Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament by Chad Bird 30 Minutes in the NT on Youtube Remembering Rod Rosenbladt Available Now: Be Thou My Song by Kerri Tom More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

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40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you go and check out everything else that 1517 is doing. All the free stuff that 1517 is doing. It's all over there at 1517.org. You might have heard at the beginning of this podcast, of course, that we are in the middle of the Podcast Network Fundraiser. You heard a little spiel from Caleb.

Let me just encourage you to support the fundraiser. You can go to that link in the show notes, and you can be a supporter of this network, which, of course, helps this show keep doing what it's doing, coming to you free. So if you are able, we would certainly appreciate your help in the month of June as we try to raise funds for not just this show, but for the entire 1517 Podcast Network. All right, Chad, we are starting a new book today. and uh this one is going to be you know it's not often that you get to start a book that is unlike really anything that you've done thus far i mean you know so we've done some you know the old testament books where you know genesis exodus like those books are kind of similar it's just like the continuing of a story and maybe if you're in some prophets those are similar uh

first and second kings and first second samuel similar and we just did one that was a little bit different. You had Job, but that's kind of like Esther and Jonah. Those are kind of these one-off stories that are sort of isolated. But now we get to start Ecclesiastes, and this is something altogether different. Yeah, this is definitely a standalone kind of book. I mean, of course, it's ranked within the genre of wisdom literature, just like Proverbs and Job are, but it is distinct, for sure. I mean, it's kind of a standalone kind of book for lots of different reasons, not just for the way the material is presented, but just what you might call the overall tone or theme of the book, which we will get into right away. In fact, in the second verse,

we'll already be introduced to the theme of it. So the way it starts out is the words of, and i'm reading here the esv the words of the preacher the son of david king in jerusalem now right away we're we're encountering something which is a source of a lot of a lot of discussion and that is who is this well preacher and in hebrew it's kohelet in fact that's the that's the hebrew title of this book kohelet so we call it ecclesiastes uh because well basically Ecclesiastes is derived from the Greek translation of this word for the preacher. So in Hebrew, Kohelet is a title. So this isn't just a name, but it's a title of someone.

Okay, what kind of title is this? It's from the Hebrew verb kahl, which is related to the idea of an assembly. So a lot of times this is explained. It kind of makes sense that the assembler is the one who is spoken of here. So Kohelet is the one who is kind of the head of an assembly. The way I picture this is kind of a classroom kind of setting. So Kohelet is the professor, we might say, the teacher. He's the head of this assembly.

These are gathered together and he's talking to them. He's pondering the frustrations of life, we might say, and the limits of knowledge, the limits of wisdom and the seeming injustices of the world and a lot of other things as well that we're going to get to. But it's a title, not a name, so that's kind of the first thing to keep in mind. So we get Ecclesiastes then from the Greek derivative of this Hebrew name. So he's described here as this Kohelet, the head of this assembly, but then also as the son of David, king of Jerusalem. Now, if we just started out, verse 1, by saying, the words of the son of David, king in Jerusalem, well, then the first thought that would leap immediately to mind would be Solomon, right?

Because he's a son of David, and he's also king of Jerusalem. And it's supposed to be wisdom literature, and you're like, hey, I heard he was pretty wise. Pretty wise, pretty wise dude. Yeah, and not only that, where Solomon was characterized, he was like the wise man of the Old Testament, even though, of course, his life ended in. and foolishness, foolish idolatry, as we talked about when we were covering Kings. You know, other things in the book strongly suggest that Solomon, well, I'll say that he is the author or the author of at least a large section of the book. And these are the sections which we'll get to really toward chapter two, where he talks about basically all he's done with

his money, the things that he's built. We know that Solomon was a great builder. We know that he gathered around himself a large number of concubines and singers and a lot of other things that are talked about in the course of the book. So the content of the book and this opening sentence is strongly suggestive that who we're talking about here is Solomon. In fact, that has been the long-held traditional view of the authorship of the book, although there are pretty strong and somewhat convincing arguments against Solomon. And one of these is that, and of course we can't see this in translation, but when you read this in the Hebrew, it's a very

different kind of Hebrew than what we encountered so far in all the books that we've covered. In fact, there's a lot about the Hebrew that suggests it is a later form of Hebrew. So not the kind of Hebrew that, for instance, we would encounter in all of the writings which are basically contemporary with Solomon's life. This actually sounds a lot more like some of the, what's called Mishnaic Hebrew or Rabbinic Hebrew that I studied when I was back in my graduate studies at Hebrew Union College. It doesn't ring, it doesn't sound like the kind of Hebrew that would have predated that by centuries. So that's one argument against

Solomonic authorship. And there's some phrases in here too, which would kind of be kind of strange in the mouth of Solomon. For instance, he's going to say in verse 12, I, Kohelet, have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And then he goes on to talk about how he, in the next few verses, that Solomon says, or the author says, that I have acquired great wisdom surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me. Well, there was only one king who was over Jerusalem before Solomon. That was David. I mean, there were certainly other kings in Jerusalem before David, but they weren't Israelite kings. They were the kings who had been there for generations, were part of the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem. Now, that being said,

it's kind of balanced this out. For me, anyway, the arguments for Solomonic authorship outweigh those that are against it. I mean, there's plenty, you can read the commentaries on this, and there's explanations given for the reason the Hebrew sounds the way it does, and maybe this language of all who are over me in Jerusalem is just kind of an idiom of speech. In other words, I have this great wisdom which surpasses other kings, we might say. I've always thought this, Chad, and I don't know if this might not make any sense at all, but for some reason it helps me read the book of Ecclesiastes. so if someone's like hey do you think solomon wrote ecclesiastes i am in the position that i

say probably but let me tell you how uh i still uh think about solomon whether he wrote it or not to me like this seems like there's two options uh one that solomon wrote it which is the one i lean to but even if he didn't it still seems like it's about him definitely it's about him Yeah, even the people who reject Solomon authorship will say something like, the author has embraced the persona of Solomon. Yeah, I think it's like clearly about him. So it's one of those things where it's like, either he wrote it himself or somebody else. It's almost like somebody else was reading his diaries or something. And this is something they wrote about Solomon.

And so either way, I feel like the right thing to do when you read Ecclesiastes is to read it with Solomon in mind. Yeah, definitely. I think even those who reject Solomonic authorship would agree with that. So here's where I come down. The book is structured basically like this. You've got a preamble, which is verses 1 through 11 of chapter 1, and you've got kind of a postscript. You got a conclusion, which is going to be at the end of chapter 12. And in

between that, you have a lot of first person speech. So we don't have like, I Kohelet until we get to verse 12. So the way that I read this is that you have a wisdom teacher who introduced the sayings of Kohelet, the kind of the reflections of Kohelet, Solomon. And then he introduced it, these first 11 verses, and then he also wrapped it up at the very end of chapter 12. And that very end of chapter 12 is one of these where when you get to the end, you almost have to go back and read the entire thing from the beginning, because it's the end where he's going to basically take all of this frustration and vexation and vanity and just the idea of the incompleteness of life lived under the sun. And he's going to, as it were, put you over the sun. He's going to put

you in this divine perspective in which he kind of doesn't solve all of the problems, but he gives you the outlook that conforms with the rest of scripture. And, but he does that at the end where he talks about fearing God and keeping his commandments. And so you kind of go to the end, you're like, ah, that's the key. And then when you go back and read the rest of the chapters, You can read it in light of this perspective that was saved for kind of that finale of the book. But the way the whole book is set up is basically, as we'll see rapidly, life under the sun. So that's a perspective that you have to adopt when you're reading this. Which, I mean, this gets to bigger questions on biblical interpretation in general.

I mean, you could apply this to any biblical book, but it certainly applies to Ecclesiastes. You can't simply read kind of one verse sections and then apply those as biblical truth, because when you do, you're going to come away with a very skewed understanding of life. So I've seen people do this. You know, they'll take something like a verse that says the dead know nothing. uh or it he talks a lot about how you know the seeming vanity of life because we all die you know a living dog is better than a dead lion or those who are dead are better off than the living we if you simply rip that verse out of context and kind of throw it out there is oh

here's biblical truth not only are you doing an injustice to the text you are subverting the very purpose for which the book was written the book is written to say okay tell you what people let's just let's pretend let's talk let's let's reflect as if we're just living with a purely earthly perspective we're not going to talk about the divine perspective we're just going to talk about life under the sun and we're going to talk about what people can and can't do we're talking about why some men are talking about fools we're talking about accomplishments we're talking about pleasure. We'll talk about all these various things which characterize life. And let's ask the question, if there is no perspective from over the sun, if we only have a perspective

under the sun, then come on, what's the point of it all? I mean, no matter what you do, you're all going to die. You pursue pleasure, you're going to die. You're a great, wise, powerful king, you're going to die. You accomplish wonderful things in life. You have it may be success in career or you you you construct this this monumental edifice okay you're still going to die so if if that's the only perspective that you have is life under the sun then as we're going to see already in verse two it's vanity of vanities what's what is the what is the the real meaning of life if in fact everybody ends up in the same place in in the grave and so it's it speaks to not just uh the ancient people who would have been reading this

but it man this is a talk about a contemporary message you know people are trying to find meaning they're trying to find purpose in life and they're seeking it under the sun and no matter how much they delude themselves in the end it's all just in vain because you're here for a while no matter what you accomplish it's over you're dead and then what purpose did your did your life served so this the the overall purpose of the book is to give us the that under the sun perspective and then at the end to say you know what there is a better way there's a better way to view the purpose of your life and achievements and wisdom and folly and that is from the divine perspective which then is a conformity with the whole rest of the message of the scriptures yeah i mean what i

think the most i see this all the time uh i think the most common sort of title for a sermon series or a Bible study series, when they're dealing with Ecclesiastes, I see this one all the time. It's always Life Without God. This is always the title, which is a pretty appropriate one. The reason a lot of people use it is because that sort of is the thing. I would add to that, though, that I think the conclusion is, yes, certainly we get a view of what it would be like if you just decided

that you were going to live life as if there was nothing above the sun that would be without god but the conclusion is not simply that i mean i know we're getting ahead but i think this helps us read it the conclusion is not simply that therefore like the this would be a frustrating and bad way to live so we should believe in god and like that'll that if we believe in god then we'll have like a better way to live that'll be what it is and that makes all your problems and And that makes all these other things just, like, untrue now. Now, like, everything said before this is now, like, reversed. It's not that.

It's that, because you have to understand what he says, which is that this is, like, what's important. To know God and to keep his commandments. So this would be to know God and to hear his words, to listen to his words, right? This is what it would be. Which is the same thing, by the way. So this is a redundant statement To know God and to hear his words Well the way that you would know God

The only way that you would know God Would be to hear his words To keep his words To listen to what he has to say I would say this There's sort of this argument of like Could you be wise enough That you would

No longer need to listen to the words of God No Could you be strong enough Could you be powerful enough could you have enough joy and pleasure and prosperity that the words of God would have nothing to say to you? No. This is the big conclusion, is that no matter what you achieve and what ladder you ascend, whichever thing happens to be the thing that you want to do, could you ever ascend that ladder high enough where the words of God would have nothing to

say to you? And the answer to that is no. In fact, you're going to find vanity at the end of all of those things if you don't have the words of God. So I think that there's this real emphasis on what a treasure it is that God has given us His words, He's spoken to us, that we might know Him, and that's the thing that you should be valuing above all things in this life, is the fact that something above the sun has revealed itself to you. Yeah, and just to build on that, to piggyback on that, when you have that message of Ecclesiastes, it certainly puts you with the perspective that you need.

But even that, until you get to the full revelation in Christ, even that is going to be lacking, right? I mean, you can, for instance, be, I'd say you've decided you're going to be a theist so I believe in God so I'm going to have the divine perspective okay well that's certainly better than

being a deist or a gnostic or an atheist a whole lot rather you be a theist than all of those but even then it's going to be frustrations there's going to be limits to your knowledge because what do you know about this God

what kind of God is he what does he think about you Is he just kind of the all-powerful, theos God in the sky, or is there something more? So when you get to the full revelation of Christ, you realize, oh, that's who God is, and that's what he thinks about me, and that's what he's done for me.

Well, Chad, and of course that's true, because again, if you take this command, if you're reading this and you say to know God and keep his commandments, and you just change that to, which by the way is not you playing fast and loose with the text or anything if you change that to keeping his words his sayings his the things he's said his teaching uh that would be the word and what is christ he's john will tell you explicitly that he is the word flesh word made flesh right and so to know god and to cling to hang on to uh his his words well you have the all of course you

have the ultimate revelation of what this means when the word become takes on it becomes incarnate takes on flesh and blood like that now you really know if you you might have you might have seen like known some about god because he's revealed it through his through the things that he said and then the things that he said his word is now like a person and like if now you now you really know what god is like yeah so i mean with all that perspective from ecclesiastes meant talk about a book that's uh in the service of the gospel yeah yeah i mean it's this uh this sets us up for for the gospel in a in a pretty amazing way and and in a way that uh i mean so much of this sounds contemporary uh well because it is i mean it's it's a it's a universal truth

throughout history it doesn't matter whether you're living in the the 10th century bc in jerusalem or whether you're living in in our day and age i mean this is the this is the law of humanity these are our questions these are our frustrations uh and these are the unknowns in life all of which then lead us to the full revelation of who god is in christ so it's a good book for preaching the gospel it's good at least for getting us there to a right understanding what the gospel truly speaks to us in life under the sun even though it's uh fairly depressing yeah it is it is yeah yeah if you if you just read the book uh without that that uh that finale that gives us the proper perspective then yeah it's it's very frustrating i mean it's it's very

depressing and and rightly so i mean it's designed to be that way yeah because it is designed to say okay you want to live life uh just with the under the sun perspective life without god well yeah Welcome to a sad and a cynical kind of life. Well, it's the thing that does this, like, you can do it, and you might think you're doing it well, but there's going to be this looming truth over your head the whole time. There's this thing chasing you, which eventually catches everyone, called, You're Gonna Die. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, so that's the first verse. We're 21 minutes in. We've done good. We'll pick it up. We've set the table. We've set the table, yeah. So the words of Kohelet, the son of David King in Jerusalem. And then, bam, right away, verse 2, he's going to hit us.

He's going to hit us with the theme word that's going to dominate the whole rest of the book. And that is usually translated vanity. so let me just read I'll read the next couple of verses verses 2 and 3 vanity of vanities says the preacher vanity of vanities all is

vanity what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun so let's stop there for a minute so the word that's translated here as vanity is hevel which you would write in

English as H-E-B-E-L. The B is often pronounced as a V, so H-E-V-E-L is kind of the way that sounds, Hevel. Now, we talked about this before. One of the ways the Hebrew expresses a superlative is by repetition of the noun. So you see this in Song of Songs, or Holy of Holies, or King of Kings, or Servant of Servants. There's these kind of superlatives all over the Old Testament. So when we hear vanity of vanities this is talking about that which is the the most vain thing now is is vanity the the best best translation of this well the the hebrew hevel is uh is one of these words that can refer to something quite literal but it's often used metaphorically so literally, hebel refers to something like breath or breeze or wind or vapor. And it's used that way

in a number of times in the Old Testament. By the way, hebel is used 38 times in Ecclesiastes. That's over 50% of its uses throughout the rest of the Old Testament. So this is definitely the theme word of the book occurring 38 times. So literally, it means something like vapor, breath, breeze, wind. But most of the occurrences are metaphorical in nature. So it refers to something which is kind of unsubstantial. That is, it lacks concrete substance. So unsubstantial or worthless or pointless or futile. It can also refer to something that's just kind of transitory and used that way because the wind or the vapor is transitory as well. It can also be used to something which is kind of obscure or difficult to understand.

Like, you know, the wind, you can't see it, and so it's kind of obscure. It's enigmatic. So those are the metaphorical... There's not much to a vapor. There's not much to a vapor. There's not much to it. Now, imagine I said it like this. I was trying to explain to you, like, the most vaporous thing, and I was like, this

is like the vapor of a vapor, okay? It's not just like the breath, which you can't see. It's like the breathing of your breath. How finite and crazy is that? It's nothing. So if you were to say, so vanity of vanities, vapor of vapor. It's like the vapor coming off of a vapor, man. There's nothing there.

Yeah. Yeah, so it's ephemeral. It's fleeting. It's passing. But it's also, I mean, it's got a very, not just kind of transitory nature, but it's, the words that are used around Hevel throughout Ecclesiastes are much more negative than that. So one of the phrases that we're going to see occur in this chapter and then several other places throughout the book is chasing after the wind, which is, I think, one of the most humorous, I mean, it's a negative image, but it's humorous as well, chasing after the wind. Trying to catch it. yeah you see this guy who's who's running around running down the road you ask him

you know run beside him what do you what are you chasing what are you after i'm chasing the wind it's humorous in a two-fold way because okay you're chasing the wind well obviously you're never going to catch it but let's say theoretically that you did you caught the wind okay what do you have you still have nothing yeah so you chase it you have nothing you catch it you have you have nothing i picture this guy running around with a net trying to like catch the wind trying to catch like that's that's like the i don't think that's the absurdity that the author is trying to paint here is like i just imagine this guy with a big old butterfly net seeing if he can capture the wind and uh yeah it doesn't work like that dude yeah i you you you said the word

absurdity and in fact that is that's one one translation that's that's put out uh for for this word it's absurd so absurdity of absurdities i mean it's there really is we we don't have we don't have an english word that's going to capture the hebrew word uh hevel just too many other too many connotations of the word because you know when we hear vain for instance if i if i talk about someone is vain typically today we think about someone being you know thinking that they're more impressive than they actually are. Or they're just concerned about appearances. Full of themselves.

Full of themselves, yeah. And that's not really... I mean, that might be one of the connotations of Hevel. That's really not the main concern of this. This is talking about the emptiness of life in a very negative sort of way.

But most of the time, English translations render this as vanity, so that's kind of what we'll stick with i suppose but just realize the hebrew hevel has a much broader meaning than that you kind of have to anytime you hear when you're reading vanity in your english translations just understand that there's a a lot of words around that which are negative in nature which kind of give it the coloring that that it connotes so five times in uh in verse two uh he uses vanity vanity of vanity he says the preacher vanity of vanities and then all is just in case you didn't get the the point

all is vanity now and then he goes on to explain like why he thinks this right yeah then he kind of builds on that he's just introducing it here so we we catch the main motif that he's going to hammer home time and time and time again so he's gonna he's gonna go about this argument a lot of different ways he's just kind of giving us okay this is what i'm gonna be talking about now i'm to provide you with many different kinds of examples from many different aspects of life to describe why I'm saying that everything under the sun is, in fact, Hevel, is vain. So he starts out with verse 3, which I've already read. What does man gain? Follow the toil at which he toils under the sun. What's he going to get out of this? Because let me tell you what happens.

verse 4, a generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens, literally that's pants, pants to the place where it rises. So the sun is kind of like a guy running around the track. He runs around once, twice, three or four times, however long. He's breathing heavy. He's panting. That's kind of the sun. It's going in circles, around and around and around it goes. And then not just the sun, but the wind, verse 6. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north. Around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits, the wind returns. So we got the sun, we got the wind. What about water, verse 7? All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow

again. All things, he says in verse 8, all things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun. I'll just keep reading until I get to the end of verse 11. Is there a thing of which it is said, see this is new it's already been in the ages before us there's no remembrance of former things nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after so this is the first way in which he's describing vanity of vanity just using examples from from creation i mean verse four when he says generation goes and generation comes but the earth remains

forever it's kind of a uh kind of a slap in the face to humanity you know if we're supposed to be the the crown of god's creation well it looks like it's it's not working out that way because here's a generation that rises up and then it's gone but the earth remains forever i mean it seems like the earth must be the pinnacle of god's creation because it's the only thing that really sticks around when generations here and then they're gone now the generation rises up they disappear and the only thing that seems to stick around forever is the earth itself it continues generation to generation he's making this argument that uh is a true thing i've heard people say this many times like this statement is usually used as as a way to sort of keep you humble and not

think too much of yourself but it's essentially uh what he's saying here which is he's not doing it for that reason he's just doing it to tell you this is a depressing thought and that is that uh But everybody is two generations from having an earth full of people with no memory of them. Yeah. This is how it goes. So, like, I'll die. Chad will die. Our kids and our friends or whatever people that are still, they'll remember us.

And then maybe our grandkids, they're kids. They'll remember us. Maybe we were old when they were young. And that's it. yeah i the way i'll often uh try to uh to point this out is i'll say you know if you're teaching this to a group ask the group uh how many of you can name give the the first and last name of your great-grandparents yeah or your especially your great-great-grandparents oh it's very few even even great-grandparents it's like uh maybe they'll come up with a name maybe there's i don't know 10

20 percent of the people who have a name most don't i don't know you know yeah they can't tell you they don't didn't know you they don't there's not there's not some some fondness um that comes to mind when they when that name comes to mind they might just know the name maybe they were named after you or something but they don't they don't they don't have any memory of you and this seems to be the argument like that i mean best case scenario you know uh maybe somebody knows what your name was, but no one's going to, you're two generations away from nobody having any memory of you. So like, what are we even doing here?

You're right. You're right. Which is one of the ways, which is why one of the ways people try and achieve immortality is by, you know, making a name for themselves, right? They don't want to be forgotten, you know, because that's the, that's the frustration in life. I'm trying to make a name for myself and build my own Tower of Babel so people will remember me.

Well, chances are they won't. I mean, that's just, that's the way that life goes. Now, this can be understood positively, can be a humbling experience for us, but that's not, yeah, as you say, that's not the reason he's saying this. He's pointing out, you know, this, the absurdity of life and the fact that we're kind of, as one commentator put it, the human environment is like a monotonous prison, you know? Yeah. You're trapped. There's no getting out. Well, this is what verse 11 is about. I mean, there is no remembrance of former things, right? Nor will there be any remembrance of things.

So even the things that are yet to come, the ones that come after that won't remember those things, right? So even the thing that's brand new tomorrow, the baby born tomorrow, it is also just two generations away from nobody remembering it and no one caring about it. So you sort of have this, we're all dealt the same lot here, and this is all vanity. This is all absurd and chasing after the wind, right? So you can't have immortality. You can't even have everlasting memory, like some kind of weird form of immortality that would be like, well, at least everyone will remember me.

Well, I mean, if you're Julius Caesar, everyone might know your name, but they have no memory of you. You cannot control this. They don't remember you. they just know your name and that's not immortality no that's that's the extent of what you have achieved and and sometimes they know you for your infamy yes rather than than for your for your fame there's a verse verse 10 when it says is there a thing in which it has said see this is new it's already been an agent before us of course this isn't saying that there's not you

know there's new inventions there's new things that happen that's not what it's talking about It's talking about the regularities of human life, which are described in Ecclesiastes. People being born, people living for a while, people dying. That doesn't change. No one's going to discover the 25th hour in a day. It's never going to happen. Not going to happen. yeah so and it and this is why i mean these kinds of these kind of verses that we've just read

are why a book like this is can be of such service for uh for the gospel i mean not only because it's setting up the the troublesome lot that we have been dealt in life to where we live we work and suffer and play and they get children and we die and that's it uh not nothing because of that But also because there is something here, like in verse 10, which is kind of winking at us of a greater truth that's behind us. So when I hear verse 10, is there a thing of which it is said, see, this is new? And he says, it's already been an age before us. Actually, there is. There is one new thing that happened in the history of the world.

And that was the incarnation of Christ. Yeah. And his work. I mean, so you go through all these generations of people leading up to the incarnation, like, yeah, nothing new. Everything's pretty much still the same. One generation comes, one generation goes. And then all of a sudden, you have an angel appearing to a virgin and saying, hey, there's something new that's about to happen under the sun. Yeah, this is the God.

This is why the prophetic word where God says—contrast what he says here, like, where he says, like, look, no generation has ever seen anything new. Like, whatever it was, that's what it's going to be. Then God shows up prophetically and says, behold, I am doing a new thing. A new thing, yeah. It's the only new thing that's ever happened, by the way. Like, really. Like, the really new thing. Something that has never happened before that has to do with humanity.

and this happens of course yeah in the in the in the coming of christ and then undoes all this other stuff where it's like hey listen man no one's gonna remember you forever that's not true now jesus undoes that nobody you're all you're all gonna die that's not true now death is defeated like all all of these things so so you have to read this as uh if this is in fact the case like apart from Christ undoing death, being this new thing that has never been seen before, yeah, all of this is, it is sort of all absurdity in life, is this sort of just this big, meaningless vexation.

Yeah, so when God decides he's going to do the new thing, he doesn't, you know, just sort of do a new thing. Yeah. Okay, yeah, it's kind of a new thing. no it like everything is different now yeah i think it's in his uh i think it's in c.s lewis's book on miracles when he talks about the incarnation you know is the greatest event in in human history uh because yeah all of a sudden this gives newness to to it all yeah i mean like like you said well they're now yeah there's a new thing in the sun god has become man he's actually

united to himself, our human nature. And because of that, then we are in Christ, we're a new creation. Death has been defeated. Sin has been forgiven. We have a new humanity. He's the head of a new humanity because we're no longer just the fallen children of Adam, but we're the redeemed and righteous children of our Heavenly Father through Christ. And not only that, but you have the promise of a of a new creation new heavens and a new earth that's going to come as a result of this so when when solomon says see is there anything new under the sun yeah there is and this new thing changes everything there's nothing unaffected by this changes your whole argument i mean like because the ultimate argument like all this stuff can be said because it's like and

then you die there's all this toil all this pleasure seeking and all this wisdom and then you die but in christ now you get to say like not exactly i don't know i'm i'm in him who is the resurrection of the life so i actually i'm gonna live forever actually so so actually i won't be forgotten no i will always be remembered uh before the lord so well i mean we got we got going we got 11 verses in which is pretty good for introducing a new book uh and uh we'll we'll pick up with the I, the preacher in verse 12 when we come back next episode. All right, man. Sounds good. I'll see you then. See you then. Hello, 1517 Podcast listeners. This is Chad Bird, co-host of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament with an announcement from the 1517 Podcast Network. Throughout the

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