The Book of Ecclesiastes is an essay on the topic "Is life worthwhile?" Ironically, the writer answers this question in the negative. He considers the various ends or goals for which people live and finds that each of these reasons brings only vanity and frustration: "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." Referring to himself as an elderly person of considerable means and as a man who personally has tested the ways by which people pursue a meaningful life, the writer finds that life, ultimately, is self-defeating. He has tried riches and found that they do not satisfy. He has sought fame and found that it, too, is an empty feeling. He has even pursued wisdom, but it, likewise, fails to satisfy the human spirit. The more he learns, the more dissatisfied he becomes with that which he has already attained.
Some people follow the course of justice, believing that they will be rewarded, but the author of Ecclesiastes is convinced that there are no rewards. His observations tell him that a righteous person fares no better than a wicked person; at times, the righteous person doesn't even fare as well. Regardless of how an individual lives, we will all be forgotten after we die, for death comes to the righteous and the wicked alike. The writer appears to be familiar with some people's belief that rewards and punishments will be meted out to individuals in a future life that is beyond the grave, but he takes no stock in this notion. He tells us that the death of a human is comparable to that of a beast, and he asks ironically, "Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?" He says emphatically, "All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless." He does not believe in progress but is committed to a theory of cyclical history: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." True, each generation thinks it develops something new, but the achievements of former generations are forgotten, just as those of the present generation will not be remembered. Furthermore, the writer sees no point in trying to make the world better: "What is twisted cannot be straightened; what is lacking cannot be counted." People's desires cannot be satisfied, for the more people see, the more they want to see; the more things people acquire, the less satisfied they become with what they have obtained.
