Ecclesiastes chapter 2 expands upon the pointlessness of earthly pleasures, going so far as to call everything achieved in this life emptiness. My personal Bible has subheadings for parts of the chapters, and three of them in this chapter are titled “The Emptiness of Pleasure,” “The Emptiness of Possessions,” and “The Emptiness of Work.”
It’s really interesting how Solomon hits on the three main things that we consider the largest vices in today’s times: pleasure: sex, partying, and the like; possessions: money, a house, nice cars, etc.; and work: a solid career, things built by your own two hands, and more. These three things are the trifecta of unfulfilling tragedy.
Let’s start examining the emptiness of these with pleasure. Verses 1-3 say, “I said to myself, ‘Go ahead, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy what is good.’ But it turned out to be futile. I said about laughter, ‘It is madness,’ and about pleasure, ‘What does this accomplish?” I explored with my mind how to let my body enjoy life with wine and how to grasp folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom—until I could see what is good for people to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.”
Sounds dreary, doesn’t it? It might even sound untrue to many. Because, surely, laughter can’t be madness! It’s happiness in a sound. It’s contentment. It’s joy. And pleasure absolutely accomplishes something! It gives happiness, comfort, and contentment. But do these things really do that? I say no, and here’s why.
Look at laughing from an outside perspective: how long does it last? When you laugh, you may go on for as many as few minutes, but when you’re done laughing, the effect is gone. Your eyes uncrinkle, your lips settle back into a relaxed position, and the sound of merriment is snuffed out. As soon as the moment has passed, so too has laughter. So too, has any benefit. It’s fleeting.
And what about pleasure? Parties, alcohol, foolishness. It all feels great temporarily, but what happens when you leave the party? When you sober up? When you face the consequences of your foolishness? All of what you experienced in the midst of these actions is gone. You break free of the monotony for a few moments, and then it comes right back.
Next is possessions. Verses 3-10 described all that Solomon gained in his life. He had houses, vineyards, gardens, parks, every kind of fruit tree, a whole irrigation system to water his trees, tons of servants, more cattle and sheep than he knew what to do with, silver, gold, and all kinds of treasures, his own private musicians, more than 700 wives and 300 concubines. As he says in verse 10, “All that my eyes desired, I did not deny them. I did not refuse myself any pleasure, for I took pleasure in all my struggles. This was my reward for all my struggles.”
So, if there was any person to ever exist who could have found joy in things he owned, it was Solomon. Yet, he didn’t. Verse 11 says, “When I considered all that I had accomplished and what I had labored to achieve, I found everything to be futile and a pursuit of the wind. There was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
Even though he worked hard to get all those things, they weren’t worth it. I find that this part of Ecclesiastes fits really well with Mark 8:46, “For what does it benefit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his life?” Clearly, it benefited Solomon in no way. As we know from the book of 1 Kings, he had the kingdom he presided over taken away from him and given to David for the things he owned and did.
And finally, we get to the emptiness of work. In verses 18-19, 23, it says, “I hated all my work that I labored at under the sun because I must leave it to the man who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will take over all my work that I labored at skillfully under the sun. (23) For all his days are filled with grief, and his occupation is sorrowful; even at night, his mind does not rest. This too is futile.”
Man, talk about dreary, yet again, with Ecclesiastes. But really, take some time to think about this. Personally, I’ve had those moments where I’ve thought deeply about my life on this Earth, having to wake up early in the morning, drive to work, work all day, drive home, work at home, and then sleep, just to do it again the next day. If I think too hard about it, I nearly have an existential crisis worrying about how meaningless those actions are. Just thinking about the monotony of it could drive me insane, and I doubt I’m the only one who has considered this.
Don’t you spend some nights wherein you consider just giving up going to work because you’re not accomplishing anything, anyway? That’s what Solomon’s talking about here. Solomon was wise and skilled at many things, and he dreaded the idea of passing on the achievements of his work to someone who would not do it as well as him. He dreaded it to the point that he dreaded doing the work, and he realized that there’s no point to it all.
Here’s the conclusion: Everything about this Earth and life on it is empty. Your happiness is empty because it cannot hold you up. Your possessions are empty because they are worth nothing in the grand scheme of things. Your work is worth nothing because after you’re gone, someone else will come along and ruin it. Not to mention that there’s nothing satisfying about the monotony of 50 years of a career.
As I’ve mentioned before about Ecclesiastes, its whole job is to drill it deep into your heart and mind that the things on this Earth cannot and will not satisfy you or bring you joy because its goal is to point you to the only one who can: God.
Let me tell you that I did not write all this down and post it online to disenfranchise you about life to the point you decide to do nothing with yours, and neither did Solomon write Ecclesiastes for this reason. In fact, now that I’ve made the point that you can’t find joy and satisfaction in these things, I’m going to tell you to go out and do those things anyway. Because while you can’t find joy and satisfaction in them, you can find happiness.
This is about perspective. In the long term, yes, this life means very little. But in the here and now, God has given us time here to do these things. I think Solomon says it best in verses 24-26:
“There is nothing better for man than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work. I have seen that even this is from God’s hand, because who can eat and who can enjoy life apart from Him? For to the man who is pleasing in His sight, He gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy, but to the sinner He gives the task of gathering and accumulating in order to give to the one who is pleasing in God’s sight. This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.”
See, as Christians, we can have happiness in the things we do here because we have the joy of Christ in knowing that, once we’re done here, there is everlasting joy to look forward to. We can enjoy the things of this world because we are already satisfied by Christ. We will never be satisfied by the things of this world, but we can have a little fun doing the things that are not sinful. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing some of these empty things if you’re already full.