Ecclesiastes 1:9 - Meaning and Application

Two things often give people great pleasure and make them feel important in the world: the newness of their work, and the idea that their work will be remembered. Solomon shows that both hopes are mistaken.

First, people value novelty, the idea that something has never been known before. We like to think that our age has made special progress in knowledge, skill, business, or the way we enjoy wealth. Old ideas are often brushed aside, and people boast about new fashions, new theories, new methods, and new phrases. But this is a mistake. “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The verse repeats the point in question form, almost as if it asks, “Can anyone point to something and say with wonder, ‘See, this is new’?” It challenges those who praise modern learning above the learning of earlier times.

If someone names something they think is new, we may not be able to prove from records that it already existed before. But we still have good reason to think it has been here long ago, before us. In the world of nature, what seems new to us is not truly new. God finished his works at the foundation of the world (Hebrews 4:3). The heavens are old, the earth remains, and the powers of nature still work by the same links and causes they always have.

In the world of providence, that is, in God’s ordering of human affairs, the pattern is not always as steady as nature. Yet, in general, it is still the same thing happening again and again. Human hearts, and the sin in them, remain the same. People’s desires, plans, and complaints are the same too. What God does in dealing with people also follows familiar patterns, so much of life is repetition. Things that surprise us need not surprise us, because there have been the same kinds of sudden gains, losses, reversals, and changes before. The troubles of human life have always been much the same, and people keep walking in the same circle, like the sun and wind that seem always to return to where they were.

The point is to show how foolish people are when they chase after new things, think they have discovered them, and then take pride in them. We grow tired of old things and long for something fresh. Israel grew weary of manna, and the Athenians loved to hear and tell of some new thing. Yet what we praise as new is usually only something that has been before. Tatianus the Assyrian said to the Greeks that the arts they boasted of came from nations they called uncivilized. His point was clear: do not call inventions what are really only imitations.

This teaching also turns us away from expecting lasting happiness in created things. Why should we look for it there, when no one before us has found it there? Why should we think the world will treat us better than it treated those before us, when it has nothing new to offer? Our fathers ate manna, yet they died (John 6:49). The same lesson appears in John 8:8-9.

Second, people are pleased by the thought that their achievements will be remembered. They hope their names will live on, that later generations will praise what they did, what honors they won, and what wealth they built up. They imagine their houses will last forever (Psalm 49:11). But this too is a false hope. How many people and things once looked very great in their day, and now no one remembers them at all? They have been buried in forgetfulness.

Sometimes one striking person or event meets a careful historian and gets written down, while many others, just as remarkable, are left out. So we should expect that even things people hope will be remembered later may be lost or ignored.