Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of
vanities; all is vanity [Eccl. 1:2].
“Vanity” here speaks of emptiness. It is to waste life
without any purpose or any goal. It means to live like an animal or a bird
lives. There are a great many people who live like that.
I was in a hotel in the Hawaiian Islands where the jet
set come. They fly all over the world spending a few days or weeks in
Hawaii, then at Acapulco in Mexico, and then the Riviera in France, then to
Spain, North Africa, South Africa, and so on. They are world travelers. I
watched these folk and listened to their conversation at the dinner table,
out in the hotel lobby, and in the elevators. The thing that impressed me
about them was how purposeless their lives really are. They talked about
people they had seen in other places. They talked about plays they had seen.
They would ask, “Where are you going from here?” Someone would say, “Wasn’t
that place where we were last year a bore!” There was no aim, no goal, no
purpose in life. This is also the conclusion of Solomon. Vanity of vanities.
Emptiness of emptiness. It is just like a big bag of nothing.
Solomon in the Book of Proverbs gives us gems of wisdom.
In Ecclesiastes he gives us globules, not of wisdom, but of folly. Then in
the Song of Solomon love is the subject. Wisdom, foolishness, and
love—Solomon was an expert in all three fields. He knew how to play the
fool; he was wise in government; and his love life was quite a story.
Solomon was the wisest of men, but no man ever played the fool more
thoroughly than he did. He is the riddle of revelation. He is the paradox of
Scripture. The wisest man was the greatest fool. The Book of Ecclesiastes
will reveal this.
“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” is life without God.
It is man walking and talking “under the sun,” trying to get something out
of life.
There is another class of people whom I meet in motels
and hotels as I travel. These are the conventioneers. This is the day of
conventions. I have listened to them and watched them. They are different
from the jet set, but they, too, are looking for something. They have the
big cocktail party or beer bust. Then they have a huge banquet with a big
show. They try it all, but there is that note of bitterness. There are dregs
left in the glass of life.
McGee, J. Vernon: Thru the Bible
Commentary. electronic ed. Nashville : Thomas Nelson, 1997,
c1981, S. 3:107-108