In the Library
Ecclesiastes
Anonymous, 250 BCE
- Form
- Form Philosophy
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Moderate
- Reading time
- Reading time 25 minutes
- Translated by
- Translated by King James Version (1611)
- Chapters
- Chapters 12
- Length
- Length 6k words
£1.99
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Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
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If you like this, try
The Book of Job
Anonymous
Job does the same thing from the other side, taking the complaint straight to God and getting an answer made entirely of whirlwind and unanswerable questions.
£1.99
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius keeps the same ledger of transience, all forgotten, all returning to dust, but writes it as private discipline rather than public sermon.
£1.99
About the book
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, and he means it about everything. This is the book inside the Bible that removes every consolation the rest of it offers. A king who tried the entire menu of human life, wisdom and wine and houses and vineyards and gold and singers, reports back that none of it held: the wise man dies exactly as the fool dies, nobody remembers either, and man has no preeminence above a beast, because both go to the same dust. The race is not to the swift, and time and chance happen to them all. Then, having stripped the reader of every comfort, the Preacher offers the only one he still trusts. Eat your bread with joy, drink your wine, love the person beside you, and do whatever your hand finds to do with your might, because there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave. It closes on old age as a house falling quiet, the grinders ceasing, the grasshopper a burden, the silver cord loosed and the golden bowl broken.