Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings has given elohim to sons of Adam to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me -- and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.
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According to the Wikipedia article entitled Ecclesiastes, the definition of the word says it is a Greek root that means “assembly,” which is derived from the Hebrew word “Kohelet,” which bears the same translation. The interesting thing to grasp from that article is this observation made: “As Strong's concordance mentions, it is a female active participle of the verb kahal in its simple (qal) paradigm, a form not used elsewhere in the Bible and which is sometimes understood as active or passive depending on the verb, so that Kohelet would mean '(female) assembler' in the active case (recorded as such by Strong's concordance), and '(female) assembled, member of an assembly' in the passive case (as per the Septuagint translators).” This means the female gender makes this ‘Book of Wisdom’ be strongly associated with the goddess principle, whereby Solomon wrote of Wisdom as “her,” meaning his soul’s spiritual possessor, by a worldly elohim. This is the opposite of being a soul married to Yahweh [a masculine “assembler”]. Thus, everything in this book should be attributed to that feminine voice emanating from Solomon’s pen.
As opposed to David’s Psalms identifying “Yahweh” and his elusions to an inner elohim that led him to write songs, one should find these selected verses (from two chapters) absent of that name. In verse one of chapter one [not read today], Solomon wrote similarly about what one can expect to find from this Book, in the same way David would write such introductions as a song relative to the “sons of Korah.” In the first verse in chapter one, we read immediately, “words of the teacher” (“diḇ·rê qō·he·leṯ”). In verse two, where we read, “vanity of vanities, says the teacher,” the absence of a name leads one to connect the “teacher” to “wisdom,” as this is known to be a Book of Wisdom, as “assembled words of the teacher.” Thus, the “teacher” is a feminine spirit, not Yahweh.
The Hebrew words translated as “vanity of vanities” are “hă·ḇêl hă·ḇā·lîm,” with those two repeated in this verse, along with another use of “hă·ḇêl.” The Hebrew word “hebel” means “vapor, breath.” In the Wikipedia article, they quote this first verses, explaining: “the Hebrew word hevel, "vapor", can figuratively mean "insubstantial", "vain", "futile", or "meaningless".” This implies that the “teacher’s words” were “vain, futile, or meaningless.” I see this as better understood as Lady Wisdom speaking of the source of Solomon’s wisdom, as it came to him much like the ”vapor” of truth came upon the oracle of Delphi. The use of “habel” is then a statement about an unseen possessor of Solomon’s soul, where “vapor of vapors” becomes a statement of two souls or two spirits [unseen sources of animation within flesh] have joined. As such, verse two says, “soul of souls says the teacher , soul of souls the whole soul .” Instead of David’s soul being possessed by Yahweh’s Son and His Spirit [a Trinity], Solomon is wholly one with the goddess of wisdom, which he loves so much.
In verse twelve, the first person “I” is a statement of the ego or identity that Solomon had, where “I the teacher” becomes a statement of his lord or controller. Solomon did not speak for himself, as much as he spoke what “the teacher” told him to say. When this then leads to Solomon writing (in verse thirteen): “applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven” [NRSV], this says his soul was not seeking Yahweh in any way. As the king of Israel in Jerusalem [names that imply “Who Retains Yahweh as one of His elohim” and “Teaching Peace”], Solomon’s “heart (“lib·bî”) was “seeking and searching for wisdom.” His love was of knowledge, which was to be godlike. When this then says “under heaven,” this should be read as implying “underneath spiritual.” That “under” is hidden and out of view, with the “heaven” being metaphor for the inner soul and its possessing spirit.
The second statement in verse thirteen is then said to say this quest for knowledge is “burdensome,” or “unhappy business,” where all knowledge necessary for a Saint is “given” by Yahweh to those souls that are “sons of elohim,” as “Adam” resurrected. No effort is required to “seek and search” for knowledge, when everything one needs to know is freely “given” by Yahweh to His wife-souls. The “burden” or “unhappiness” comes from finding that a human brain cannot know everything; and, much of what it thinks it knows is found to be wrong.
In verse fourteen, which the NRSV translates as an impossible venture to know everything – “I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind” – this is a double-edged verse that cuts two ways. What is missed is that not recognized as a statement of true wisdom, which is “I have seen all the works that are done under the son.” The “sun” is a statement of the light of truth, which comes from Yahweh’s inner elohim. The “works” or “deeds” are those of a Saint, who can easily defeat a
ain in logical argument, without any need to say, “Give me a moment to check my resources.” These “deeds done under the son” were how Jesus so often left the Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes at a loss for words, when their ploys and plots failed miserably. Thus, when the “sun” is seen as this light of truth that is available to all resurrected as Yahweh’s Son, the last words say, “and indeed all breath striving for spirit.” That states the “deeds” of ministry, where a soul does whatever Yahweh’s Son leads one to do in His name.
When chapter one’s verse fourteen speaks of seeing “all the deeds that are done under the sun,” this speaks of a spirit that has rebelled against Yahweh’s command to serve mankind and thus were enslaved within the scope of the earth, just as souls are enslaved within their bodies of flesh (the earth). Those elohim that are spoken of thirty-two times in Genesis 1 are those which were told to rest on the seventh day – when Yahweh created His elohim Adam. Those fallen elohim that (like the serpent) were thrown within the confines of the material plane, can only attempt to lure souls away from Yahweh, by using their access to His knowledge (the serpent was the craftiest of the animals), which came from their time during the Creation. Still, Solomon wrote in chapter two, verse eighteen, “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me -- and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish?”
Here, again, the “I” is a statement of personal identity with wisdom, where “hatred” is a core element of being, rather than love. This speaks of the service to Yahweh that an elohim has sworn an oath to do forever; but the hatred is for those temporal souls in death that will turn back to dust. The goddess of wisdom hates serving souls in death that will come and go, with the next soul not yet known to be a servant to wisdom or a servant to Yahweh. This places a perspective on a soul that would sacrifice self, to serve Yahweh totally as “foolish.”
When verse nineteen poses the question, “who knows , whether wise he will be or a fool ?” this says not even the goddess wisdom knows what souls will choose to do. To then continue in the third-person masculine singular (where the masculine indicates a divine spirit, of Yahweh), to say “he will have dominion over all my labor in which I have toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun this also is vapor” (or “vanity, meaningless”). This says that even as much as a feminine god or goddess (a demon spirit) has control over a soul in a body of flesh, all that work and effort will come to naught, should that soul change course and seek Yahweh to serve completely. In short, it says all efforts to attempt to become a Big Brain in the world will fail, leading a soul to realize wisdom is not all it is proposed to be.
Verse twenty speaks of a soul realizing the error of toiling for the brain, when the “heart” found “despair.” This says all the facts and figures, all the statistics that point in one direction are empty forms of knowledge. When all those “labors” are revealed by the “sun” – the light of truth – the truth makes averages be seen as lies and half-truths.
Verse twenty-one then speaks of two Adams, where “’ā·ḏām” and “ū·lə·’ā·ḏām” speak of the dual merger of a divine soul with an ordinary soul of mankind, trapped in a body of flesh. It is the “heart” of men and women (their souls) that find “despair” and seek the Son of Yahweh within their souls (“adam”). This presence then leads them “to toil for wisdom and knowledge and skill.” However, it is “yet to mankind who has not toiled for this [led by adam] that has been set [the heritage of the Patriarchs to become “Israel”].” It then follows the truth that says a soul without Adam’s soul is “a vapor of evil great.” Without divine guidance, one’s soul invites Satan to control its fate.
Verse twenty-two then poses the question that can be summed up as asking, “What else has a soul to do when enslaved in a prison of flesh?” The NRSV poses this question as: “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?” The element of the “sun” being the wisdom, knowledge, and skill that comes from the light of truth is missed in this paraphrase. The answer is more imprisonment that separates a soul from Yahweh – reincarnation or eternal damnation. The truth posed by the question asks, “Why would any soul not welcome the demands of the works and toils of righteous living, if that was all it took to become free for eternity?” It is innate laziness and the influences of evil that play on that flaw that turn this question into one that implies, “Who work hard when the spirit of wisdom can make it easy for a soul to figure things out?”
The answer then tells the truth that failure to do the work places a soul in the darkness of “night,” where no light of truth is shown. The “night” reflects upon the state of death that is the worldly realm. A soul can only animate a bag of dirt for so long, before it must be expelled for judgment. That judgment brings out the “burden” and “sorrow” of a life in the flesh that went totally wrong. When Yahweh told His elohim to “take a rest” when the seventh day came [we are still in the seventh day today], only those who rebelled against Yahweh will steal the “hearts” of mankind and lead them to “vainly” resist doing what is right.