Ecclesiastes 1
Study Guide Questions for Ch. 1-2
If you are looking for the beginning of the study for Ecclesiastes then you can go HERE for a brief introduction. At the bottom of the introduction you will find the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. If you would like to see the growing list of book studies available for free on this site you can go HERE. Enjoy!
Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)
Despair, Happiness
Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)
What did the Preacher say “remains forever?”
What did the Preacher say to anyone who would say “See, this is new?”
According to the Preacher what does the gaining of “much wisdom” do for a person?
What did the Preacher call “an unhappy business?”
What are at least three things which the Preacher did as he sought out “what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life?”
What did the Preacher do in regard to “whatever [his] eyes desired?”
According to the Preacher, what is equally true of both the wise and the fool?
What did the Preacher realize would become of all the things for which he toiled “under the sun?”
Concerning what did the Preacher say there is “nothing better for a person” to do?
Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)
The Preacher wrote, “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.” What point is he trying to make in stating all of these things?
Why is the Preacher pointing out how quickly mankind forgets what has been? What does this short term memory of the past affect?
Why did the Preacher think there is a correlation between the increase of wisdom and the increase of vexation? What might account for a growing frustration as one understands more things?
Why did the Preacher think all of his achievements were “vanity” despite the fact that he had become “great and surpassed all who were before [him] in Jerusalem?”
The Preacher wrote, “I hated all my toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me…” What might we infer from this about part of why the Preacher seems so unhappy and dissatisfied with his life?
The Preacher states that apart from God “who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God.” Why does the Preacher think God is necessary for enjoyment in life? How might these verses provide a kind of interpretive key for everything else Solomon says in this book?
Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)
The Preacher stresses the circularity of life by talking about the natural cycles of the wind, water, and sun and he also stresses that nothing really new ever happens, but that men just recycle the old things as if they were new in each generation. Further he makes the point that part of the reason we call things new is simply because we have no remembrance of what has happened in the past. How might a person look at this same information and say something positive about it, rather than something so despairing as “it is all vanity” (or it is all meaningless)? In what ways might we consider the regularity of these natural processes a good thing? In what way might we consider the rediscovery of the old as if it were something new, a positive rather than a negative? What accounts for the difference in how one looks upon the same set of information while drawing a positive or negative conclusion about it?
Do you agree with the thesis “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow?”
Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)
The preacher wrote, “This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God.” Compare and contrast this with Jesus’ teaching in Luke 19:11-27. What should we take away as the lesson from these two passages?
Proverbs 1:7 states, “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” How might we reconcile what Solomon said here with his now far more melancholy view of wisdom towards the end of his life?
The Preacher states in Ecclesiastes that “what happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” How does Solomon’s own words in Proverbs 22:3 address this very idea?