Solomon is speaking philosophically. The pleasures of nature, for example, as great as they are—and they are incomparable—cannot provide contentment. The very force that makes them seem so desirable also deprives us of the rest we are seeking.
The fault is not in them but in ourselves. They cannot fill us because we have another longing that we are trying to satisfy with the things of this world. And this is even more true of the things we ourselves have made or won or earned.
Solomon built a famous temple, but his eyes could not be satisfied with it. He heaped up gold, but it did not make him happy. He married seven hundred wives, but he longed for a single wife whom he could love and who would sincerely love him in return.
The eye is never satisfied because the soul desires life. Thus the great pleasures of the eyes can become a curse as well as a blessing.
The thing that has been is that which shall be.
More on the theme of the perpetual return.
Old people are tired. They do not have rest from the pleasures of seeing and hearing, but they may be tired of those pleasures. They do not have rest from their labors, the rest they were seeking all along, but they are tired of their labors and cannot go on.
This puts them in a strange predicament. They continue to be restless, but their weariness now stands in the way of contentment. The only way to make this clear is to make their weariness clear; which is just what Solomon is going to do, at some length.
First, the thing that has been is what shall be. Or as he will say later, there is nothing new under the sun. You are blissfully unaware of this when you are young because, well, you are young. You have not lived long enough to see the perpetual return.
The passion of the moment is what governs youth. We think we are Changing Things, and this energizes our labors. But the older we get, the more conscious we become that things never really change. Yesterday’s big initiative is replaced with tomorrow’s big initiative—and in that sense they are the same.
Think of the professional baseball team. There are certain things they must do in order to win the World Series. But once they have won one, those things do not change. They still have to do them in order to win. And twenty years later they have to do them all over again.
Or think of the brave young DA who has come to town to clean up things and put an end to corruption. If she is a very energetic young woman, she may succeed in cleaning up some things, but she will never put an end to corruption. There will be many DAs after her following the same path to glory.
This is the perpetual return. While we are engaged in our labors we do not see their repetitive nature. We think we are accomplishing something great, something new. But when we grow a little older and see other people doing the same things, we realize that history has a repetitive quality.
The thing is done over and over again and nothing really changes. Success does not give us what we are looking for. It does not bring happiness or closure. This is why the thing itself—the effort, the great initiative—has become wearisome to Solomon in his old age.
Is there anything of which it might be said, See, this is new?
Not really, no. Oh sure, there are new things, like computers and jets; but Solomon was not thinking of exterior things. He was thinking about the arcs of our lives.
Aren’t we all children at one time who go to school? Don’t we all grow up and get married and have children of our own and jobs we think are important? Aren’t we all interested in making our homes comfy? Don’t we all have our favorite sports teams and political parties?
Is there anything new in all this? We can hear Rosalind speaking as clearly to us today as the bright young girl who lives next door. We can empathize with Diomedes when he says the war he fought with such great success did not lead to the happiness he was seeking.
Their old stories are just like our stories because, no, there is nothing really new. There is only the perpetual return and the sense of weariness it can produce in the soul.
There is no remembrance of former things.
Aha—we caught him. Of course we remember former things! There are histories. There are whole museums.
But that is not what Solomon has in mind. First, histories are seventy-eight percent stories. We are not remembering the past so much as we are seeing someone’s interpretation of the past.
Solomon knew about Job and Abraham and Moses and Joshua and some of the things they had done. Very few people make it into written histories, however. And in the case of the vast majority of us it is literally true that there is no remembrance of former things.
If you don’t think so, try to find out the history of your own town. Try to find out what was going on in the life of the average citizen, your counterpart, two hundred years ago. You can’t. It is literally as if the vast majority of those who lived in the past had never even existed.
Consider the case of Sally Barnes, resident of the bucolic town of Sherman, Connecticut, from 1771 to 1846. Sally was once very likely a fresh-faced young highland lass, full of dreams. She may have been a great mother and neighbor; she certainly has a prime view. But who remembers her now?
More, outside of her little circle of family and friends, who even knew that she existed in her own time? Did they know about Sally in the lively town of Danbury, just twenty miles south, or in the blooming metropolis of New York, a little further down the road?
Here’s an interesting exercise: How many of us know the names of our own great-grandparents? If we do not know them, then how can we expect anyone else to know them? And if no one knows them, then isn’t Solomon simply speaking the truth when he says there is no remembrance of former things?
I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
Here he identifies himself as Solomon. Some wags would say “with” Solomon. Either way, the meaning is the same. The unhappiness this man is experiencing is all the more remarkable because he is the king, and everyone expects kings to be happy.
Or at the very least, they expect them to hide any unhappiness they might have. Ecclesiastes is like David going up into his chambers to weep after Absalom was slain. Sorrow and unhappiness are signs of weakness in a king. The nation and its captains would prefer they not be seen.
Solomon’s name is ironic. It means peace, which in one sense is appropriate since he reigned over Israel in a time of peace; but he himself is not at peace. Far from it. He who brought peace to Israel is troubled in his soul, almost beyond his ability to express it.
So then there are two kinds of peace. There is exterior peace where all is outwardly placid, calm; and then there is inner peace, shalom, the “peace that passes all understanding.” Solomon had the first but not the second. But of what value is the first without the second?
Solomon is the king, and his name means peace, but he is not the king of peace. The purpose of Ecclesiastes is to make this abundantly clear.
And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom
concerning all things that are done under heaven.
Now of course we all know that when God offered to give Solomon his heart’s desire, the one thing he asked for was wisdom, specifically to rule and judge the nation of Israel at a tender age. This indicated that he loved wisdom; he desired it more than any other thing.
Here he says he “gave his heart” to it. He had an inquisitive mind, like Marcus Aurelius or Thomas Jefferson. He had a passion to know about “all things that are done under heaven.” He was curious about nature and how it works, and also about human nature, and the nature of being.
This makes Solomon a very unique king. Plato talks about the philosopher-king, but it does not seem to have