Ecclesiastes Chapter Two | week Two

Week two, chapter two of Ecclesiastes!

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summary of chapter two

The theme of chapter two is 'Pleasures are Meaningless', as pleasures give no meaning to life; even pursuing pleasure gives us no meaning or even satisfaction. 

As we read about last week Solomon had many pleasures in his life. Many resources I read from explained he had many houses with gardens, male and female slaves, herds upon herds of cattle and other animals (more than anyone in Jerusalem), silver and gold, treasures of kings and provinces (tributes from neighboring territories), he even owned singers, concubines (women who lived with him, but possessed a lower status than his wife or wives; I read somewhere that he had 300 concubines in addition to 700 wives- could you  imagine?).

Amongst pleasures, work, and wisdom are also considered meaningless. 

Work (labor) apart from God is meaningless. Work without God, in pursuit of human fulfillment, is grievous and meaningless; leads to despair. Only in God does life have meaning and true pleasure; not through money and what money can buy. Without God, nothing will satisfy, but with God we find satisfaction and enjoyment. 

True pleasure comes only when we acknowledge and revere God.

Even wisdom, or lack of wisdom, is meaningless, according to the author. The Bible uses the word 'folly', folly is described as lack of good sense, foolishness. Wisdom is obviously better than folly, just like light is better than darkness. Possessing worldly wisdom while better than not having any, is still foolish. At the end of the day worldly wisdom means nothing, both folly and worldly wisdom has the same fate- SORROW. 

Being wise is not always something meaningful, because as we know, in this world people often forget the wise leaders and heroes.

We will look at another two verses this week, as they go together. 
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Weekly verse(s)

VERSES 10-11: I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure, my heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

Material items are temporary, they crumble and fail.

Once these things are gone, what are you left with? 

An empty heart, a God sized whole in your heart. 

We shouldn't be looking for answers to fill that whole in earthly ways.

​Only God can fill our heart in ways we never knew. 

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