Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ecclesiastes · About this commentary
Nothing New Under the Sun
Ecclesiastes 1:4-11
4 One generation goes, and another generation comes; but the earth remains forever. · WEB
Three natural cycles are described as tireless and pointless, and the human parallel is that nobody will remember this either.
Verse 4 sets the proportion. Generations go and come; the earth remains forever. The permanent thing is the stage, not the actors.
Then three cycles, each described in a way that emphasizes motion without arrival. The sun rises, sets, and hurries to its place where it rises — the labor is in the returning. The wind circles south to north and returns again to its courses. The rivers all run to the sea, yet the sea is not full, and back they come.
None of the three is presented as beautiful. The cycles are exhausting to watch: all things are full of weariness beyond uttering.
Verse 8 turns the observation inward with two organs that never close: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. Appetite is described as structurally unsatisfiable, which is the same finding the book will make about silver Ecclesiastes 5:10.
Verse 9 states the conclusion — there is no new thing under the sun — and verse 10 answers the objection before it is made: whatever looks new has been long ago.
And verse 11 supplies the reason the illusion of novelty survives, which is the sharpest thing in the passage. There is no memory of the former. Things seem new because the record is lost, not because they have not happened. And the clause is turned forward: neither will there be memory of what is coming. The observer is inside the forgetting he is describing.
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