Chapter 2 of Ecclesiastes begins to uncover Solomon’s state of mind and being.

His own account in the chapter is that his wisdom remained with him even throughout his lascivious pursuits. Borrowing this assumption as true, we learn much. Solomon made clear and keen insights into life, but his conclusions were largely run through his lens of selfish ambition and desires which led to his being literally repulsed by what he perceived as injustice since he alone would not be the sole benefactor of his work and life endeavors.

As we open the book of Ecclesiastes, we once again tack down Solomon as the author whether he was the one who compiled it into a “book” or whether it this was done at a later date.

We then spent some time with the word ‘Vanity’ which has a fundamentally different meaning in the Hebrew, but which is most often translated as ‘vanity’. We explored the other relevant nuances of the word which will help us as we continue through the book since in only 12 chapters it is mentioned 38x’s.

Finally we talked about Solomon’s outlook on life as being both fleeting and in the end meaningless. But this was largely both due to the way in which he largely wasted his life on godless pursuits and the fact that this was written in his older age looking back over those choices with regret.