Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ecclesiastes · About this commentary
I Made Myself Great Works
Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
1 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure;” and behold, this also was vanity. · WEB
The largest inventory of achievement in Scripture is entered as laboratory evidence, and the verdict on all of it is one sentence.
The experiment in verse 1 is pleasure, and it is conducted deliberately: I will test you with mirth. Verse 3 is careful about the controls — he cheered his flesh with wine my heart yet guiding me with wisdom. This is not a man losing himself; it is a man taking notes.
Then the inventory, and its scale is the point. Houses, vineyards, gardens, parks, orchards of every fruit, irrigation pools, male and female servants and servants born in the house, herds and flocks beyond anyone before him, silver and gold, the treasure of kings and provinces, singers, and instruments of all sorts Ecclesiastes 2:4–8.
Every clause begins I made myself or I got myself. Eight verses in which the pronoun never changes, and the repetition is doing the work.
Verse 10 records that he withheld nothing — whatever my eyes desired, I didn't keep from them — and, importantly, that the enjoyment was real: my heart rejoiced because of all my labor. The book does not claim the pleasure failed to arrive.
Then verse 11, one sentence of accounting after eight verses of acquisition. I looked at all the works that my hands had worked... and behold, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was no profit under the sun.
The verb looked is the hinge. The problem was not in the having but in the turning around to survey it. And the word for profit is the commercial term from the book's third verse — the question asked at the outset is now answered, and the answer is nothing left over.
settled What this mark means