Ecclesiastes

About the Book of Ecclesiastes

We do not know who wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes. He was a king and some people think that he was King Solomon. He calls himself ‘the Teacher’. He was a wise man but he realized that wisdom did not give all the answers about life. Many people try to find reasons for all the things that happen in life. But they cannot always find reasons that they can understand. He tells us what this is like. It is like somebody who tries to catch the wind. He means that it is not possible to find all the answers to life.
When the Teacher uses the words ‘on the earth’, it means that he is leaving God out of his thoughts. Things that happen ‘on the earth’ seem to have no purpose if we do not believe that God rules from above.
The Teacher uses the words ‘wise’ and ‘wisdom’ many times. If people want to be really wise, they need to know how God sees things. We will still have questions about our life on the earth. Some of them are questions that nobody can answer. At the end of the book, the Teacher says that we need to know what God wants. We need to listen to him and obey him. He gave us life. When our life ends, we will have to explain to him how we have lived.