Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today we started Ecclesiastes, which is part of the wisdom literature in scripture, and tomorrow

we'll finish it. It's written by someone called the preacher or the teacher, and that

may or may not be Solomon, but many people believe it points to the life of Solomon, regardless

of who wrote it. This book is ultimately about a grand experiment that the main character sets up.

He has lots of resources at his disposal, and he wants to find out how to live the best, most

joyful kind of life. Then he unpacks everything he learns so that we lots of resources at his disposal, and he wants to find out how to live the best, most joyful

kind of life. Then he unpacks everything he learns so that we don't have to go through this

experiment for ourselves. He basically buys every single thing on Amazon and writes a concise

12-chapter reviews sharing all his data with us, to let us know what's worth our time and energy

and money. Right out of the gate in verse two, we get an idea of how he feels about it all.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, he says.

The word he uses for vanity here is hevel, which means vapor or smoke.

But it also carries the connotation of something that's hard to grasp.

He uses this word 38 times

in this book, so it's definitely part of his overarching theme. Here are some of the things he learns

through his observations. He starts out addressing work. All hard work is eventually negated by death.

You and I see this all the time. Buildings decay, technology is outdated, and even our

income is diminished by taxes. It's just a reminder of the futility of work. Not only that,

but our names will be forgotten when we die. And even amassing knowledge doesn't enhance the

preacher's life. He basically says ignorance is bliss. 118 says, in much wisdom is much vexation,

and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. He's worked hard, he's learned a lot, and he still

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