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“What does it mean that everything is meaningless?”

Today’s question comes from the NIV’s rendering of the second verse of Ecclesiastes. The NIV is one of only two English translations out of the most common 35 that has elected to go with the word “meaningless” in this context. People are far more familiar with the King James: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

The vast majority of English translations (21 of 35) follow the KJV.

A Translation Struggle

The traditional version is quite poetic, and revising Bible poetry is like trying to modernize the Lord’s Prayer or the love passage in 1 Corinthians 13. People tend to get up in arms at seemingly-arbitrary changes to familiar texts, especially those to which they have sentimental attachments. Where translators have attempted to update the language of the KJV, by far the most common replacement is “futile” (8 versions). “Pointless” (2), “useless” (1) and “nonsense” (1) also appear. The difficulty with accurately replicating the Hebrew in English is evident in the variety of words used by translators. There is certainly some overlap in meaning, but these are not all synonyms.

All these words are attempts to translate the Hebrew hebel, of which even “vanity” is no longer the most accurate English equivalent. Dictionaries show our usage of the word has changed significantly since the KJV translation of 1611.

Morphing Language

The single most common way we use the word “vanity” in modern English is in the sense of egocentricity, solipsism or self-occupation, as when we say a man is “terribly vain” because we regularly catch him staring at his reflection in passing store windows or checking out his recently manicured fingernails for stray hangnails. That was not its primary meaning when the KJV was originally translated, and it was only the seventh most common way of using the word back in 1828. It is certainly not the way Solomon is using it here. The expression has nothing to do with pride or conceit. Solomon is not saying that men have a distorted sense of their own self-importance, even if that may be a perfectly legitimate complaint well established for us in other scriptures.

Second, “vanity” here does not refer to something pointless or intrinsically self-defeating, in the sense that we are using the word when we say, “His efforts were all in vain.” That is the second most common way we use the word today (third in 1828), and it too does not accurately reflect the underlying Hebrew, though it seemed likely enough to be the intended meaning that I never thought to look it up for more than thirty years.

The Quest for Understanding

Instead, step outside in late Fall and take a look at your at the mist your breathing creates for just a second in the chilly air. That quickly-disappearing gust of condensation is as close to the image Solomon is trying for as we can probably get. The Hebrew hebel means a gentle breeze or, more frequently, an exhalation of air. As Genesius puts it, hebel is used metaphorically of anything “transitory, evanescent and frail”.

So then, Solomon is not saying that understanding the purpose for which we have been created is not worth bothering about, or that the quest for meaning in life is evidence of an exaggerated sense of self-importance on the part of the seeker. Rather, he is saying that the meaning of life is ephemeral, chimerical and exceedingly difficult to pin down. Understanding it is not an easy task.

An Insufficient Toolkit

That’s a difference worth noting. Solomon will make this argument many ways throughout Ecclesiastes: that observation, intelligence, analysis and the use of our six senses are insufficient in the quest to find purpose and meaning. If those tools are all you are able to bring to bear on the problem, you will find your search for purpose very frustrating indeed.

That is what the “Preacher” means by saying that “all is vanity”. It’s not that the quest to find meaning in life is impossible, or that there is no meaning to be found. It’s that we need something more than the input we can gather with our eyes and ears.

This is precisely what the rest of the word of God provides to us. Solomon’s little treatise, I think, is designed to whet our taste for Divine revelation. Whether that was Solomon’s intention when he wrote it or whether he was directed by the Spirit of God to assemble his observations, examples and sayings without fully comprehending their larger significance himself is something nobody can tell us.