Meaningless, meaningless? Maybe Not.
Our preacher (who, by the way, has started his own blog here) often teaches me something I didn't already know. Last week he mentioned that the Hebrew word hebel literally means "vapor" or "a breath."
Hebel appears 38 times in Ecclesiastes, more than the rest of the Old Testament books together; and when hebel appears in Ecclesiastes, it's usually translated as "meaningless." That, as my twelve-year-old pointed out yesterday, makes Ecclesiastes one heck of a depressing book.
But what if the speaker of Ecclesiastes is not saying life is meaningless, but that life is fleeting? It utterly changes the tone of that book. It suddenly makes sense that the speaker turns right around and advises us how best to live, because life is not meaningless, but brief, and we must therefore make the most of it.
Hebel appears 38 times in Ecclesiastes, more than the rest of the Old Testament books together; and when hebel appears in Ecclesiastes, it's usually translated as "meaningless." That, as my twelve-year-old pointed out yesterday, makes Ecclesiastes one heck of a depressing book.
But what if the speaker of Ecclesiastes is not saying life is meaningless, but that life is fleeting? It utterly changes the tone of that book. It suddenly makes sense that the speaker turns right around and advises us how best to live, because life is not meaningless, but brief, and we must therefore make the most of it.
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