The old king sat bent over in his chair. There was more to do than he had the energy with which to do it. He knew that his health was failing; he knew that his days on Earth were growing fewer and fewer. Perhaps those days could be counted in double digits rather than in years. He looks out the window at the gray, dismal, cloudy, cold day. He pulls his blanket up closer around his shoulders, fighting off a cold that seems to grow from the inside. It was very cold.He's not alone. There are courtiers, servants, and hangers-on. Manipulators and a few family members, but they all have one thing in common: what can they get from the old man before he's gone? He looks around the room, and he sees some people that are trustworthy and helpful and more than a few that are just waiting for the opportunity to advance their own cause.
He knows that when he is gone, his kingdom will pass into the hands of a son who is not ready to reign. He's more than old enough, but his fascination with trappings and trinkets, his lack of wisdom, and his tendency to trust his peers, who also lack wisdom, indicate that the kingdom will be left in hands not capable of the task. The old king knows that everything he has accomplished will be gone within a generation.
Hoping that some future generation will learn from his failure, he returns to the pages on which he has been making notes. He begins to write again. With the last burst of vitality, he warns that all is merely smoke if it isn't a faith. Hebel, hebel, everything is hebel. And so, over the course of a few days, in as much privacy as he can have at the center of court, the king pours out his thoughts, his heartache, and the gloominess of his soul. He is “the teacher," the wisest man in the kingdom, perhaps the wisest man in the world, perhaps the wisest man of all time. So he composed his last book.
Once the old king has finished writing, all there is left to do is to wait to die. His great kingdom will fracture and fall apart under incompetent leadership. His great wealth will be scattered to surrounding nations, his magnificent buildings will begin their slow and long decay, and he hopes that his last book can prevent others from chasing after smoke.
No one in our world today compares to King Solomon. Everything we value, he had in excess or extreme. But his final book is dark, brooding, and filled with regret. There is a temptation to look at heroes and their prime and want to have what they have. But Solomon says of all of those things, it's merely smoke, hebel, a vanity; it's chasing after the wind.
The Book of Ecclesiastes is 12
short chapters of searching and regret and the conclusion that it's all just a bunch of smoke. It feels like Solomon would conclude his life by saying to anyone, but especially the young, “Live a life of faith from the beginning. At the critical junctions of life, follow God. That way, when you're old and it's hard to start over again, you will not be starting over from a place of deep regret.”
It is our tendency, because we love the word of God so much, to try to project onto all the passages of scripture a positive, upbeat, and hopeful story-line. All of the scriptures are inspired by God, but the message of the Book of Ecclesiastes is different. Ecclesiastes is more of a cautionary tale of failure than it is a veiled, mysterious, but hopeful book of promise. So we turn to this, perhaps the darkest book of all the Bible, and maybe learn not to chase after smoke.
