“Completely illusory!”

The first words of today’s Scriptures are dramatic and unusual, their repetition emphatic: “Completely illusory! Everything is just an illusion.”

Here translated as “illusion,” and by others as “vanity” or “meaninglessness,” the Hebrew word hevel is a primary theme of the Book of Ecclesiastes, occurring no fewer than 38 times. According to biblical studies scholar Elaine Phillips, hevel is “an ambiguous and enigmatic word that carries connotations of nothingness, ephemerality, and even absurdity” (The IVP Women’s Bible Commentary, 244). For theologian Micah Kiel, it “evokes a puff of smoke or a vapor” and connotes “something brief, fleeting, and indeterminate.” With today’s first reading coming at the very beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes, Kiel writes, “Starting with hevel sets an immediate agenda: when scrutinized, life appears to be little more than an abridged vapor” (Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The Old Testament and Apocrypha, 629).

The author of Ecclesiastes, who gives himself the title Qohelet, wrote during a time of rupture, upheaval, and foreign rule for the Jews, likely between 300 and 200 BCE. Scholars describe an epoch marked by increasing wealth disparities, the dissolution of traditional support networks, and a rise in materialism as the newfound if tenuous possibility of social mobility coexisted with the ever-present and growing threat of staggering debt (Ceresko, Kiel). According to Old Testament scholar Anthony Ceresko, “In the face of this political and economic confusion under an oppressive rule, Qoheleth and many of his fellow Jews would have felt a sense of powerlessness and inability to change things for the better” (Introduction to Old Testament Wisdom: A Spirituality for Liberation, 93).

This analysis from professor of homiletics, Alyce McKenzie, is especially insightful and apropos in its relevance to our modern context:

“In Qohelet’s competitive economic culture people are driven by envy to strive for success and cannot seem to be satisfied (4:4-8). Those suffering from injustice have no one on their side (4:1-3). The evil of human greed is portrayed in terms of a gaping mouth (6:7-9). There are people willing to do anything in order to get ahead, and the rich are circumventing the law at the expense of others (8:11-14). The ordinary citizen is at the mercy of rich and powerful proprietors, provincial judges and other officials, and the government with its hosts of spies (10:20)” (Preaching Biblical Wisdom in a Self-Help Society, 150).

Observing the signs of his times, Qohelet found the traditional sources of Jewish wisdom to be lacking. Where these sources spoke of a God who rewarded the just and punished the wicked, looking around, Qohelet saw a world where the quality of one’s work, the goodness of one’s deeds, and the depths of one’s wisdom had little bearing on their state of life. He observed a society where, just as often as not, the good suffered while the wicked rejoiced, and where all were ultimately met with the same fate – death. “What do I gain for all my sweat and struggle under the sun?” he lamented. “What about the daily struggles, the strain of official duties, the anxiety in the dead of night?”

“This, too, is hevel.” 

We toil all our lives, and for what? Just to die in the end. And with nothing close to a guarantee that all of our hard work, good deeds, and well-earned wisdom will be rewarded in the meantime.

How, then, shall we live?

For McKenzie, Qohelet’s answer has two parts: “First, we face the facts of life we would much prefer to ignore.” We embrace the hevel, as today’s first reading calls us to do. We own up to just how much – about God, about ourselves, about society – is out of our control and beyond our understanding.

“Only then,” McKenzie continues, “can we do part two, which is to live each present moment aware of our human limitations and the precious, if precarious joy an unscrutable God has granted us as our portion in this unpredictable life” (153). 

“Completely illusory!”

Perhaps the refrain of today’s first reading is not merely a protest against the nature of reality, though it is surely that: “more illusion, another miscarriage of justice” (2:21). Even as we shake our fists at the sky after another day’s news cycle leaves us feeling bewildered and powerless, might our protest itself beget an invitation? We’ll explore this further in the next section of our reflection.

Pádraig Ó Tuama’s affinity for the Book of Ecclesiastes is apparent in his poem, “The Facts of Life,” which offers consolation and perspective to the soul made weary by life’s vicissitudes without seeking to resolve life’s unpredictability. He writes,

That life isn’t fair.

That life is sometimes good

and sometimes even better than good.

That life is often not so good.

That life is real

and if you can survive it, well,

survive it well

with love

and art

and meaning given

where meaning’s scarce.

[…]

That you must accept change

before you die

but you will die anyway.

So you might as well live

and you might as well love.

Read Pádraig Ó Tuama’s full poem, “The Facts of Life,” and listen to the author read it at https://onbeing.org/poetry/the-facts-of-life/.

Qohelet observed that traditional wisdom often failed to match lived reality. What aspects of conventional religious or cultural wisdom feel inadequate when confronted with today’s injustices? How might this inadequacy itself become a doorway to deeper faith?

How do you cultivate gratitude for life’s gifts while refusing to look away from realities like the detention of Imam Soliman or the forced disappearance and deportation of Andry Romero? What does it mean to hold both simultaneously?

How might embracing the idea of hevel and its implication that much is beyond our control paradoxically free us to act more boldly for justice rather than less?

Etty Hillesum was a Dutch Jewish woman whose journals document her spiritual awakening, which unfolded alongside the rise of Nazi occupation. Her journals embody Qohelet’s two-part prescription for living a good life that we identified with the help of McKenzie in the “Explore” section of today’s reflection: “First, we face the facts of life we would much prefer to ignore. Only then can we do part two, which is to live each present moment aware of our human limitations and the precious, if precarious, joy an unscrutable God has granted us as our portion in this unpredictable life” (153).

Consider this diary entry from before Etty was deported to the labor camp Westerbork:

“I went to bed early last night and from my bed I stared out through the large open window. And it was once more as if life with all its mysteries was close to me, as if I could touch it. I had the feeling that I was resting against the naked breast of life, and could feel her gentle and regular heartbeat. I felt safe and protected. And I thought: how strange. It is wartime. There are concentration camps. I can say of so many of the houses I pass: here the son has been thrown into prison, there the father has been taken hostage, and an 18-year-old boy in that house over there has been sentenced to death. And these streets and houses are all so close to my own. I know how very nervous people are, I know about the mounting human suffering. I know the persecution and oppression and despotism and the impotent fury and the terrible sadism. I know it all.

And yet – at unguarded moments, when left to myself, I suddenly lie against the naked breast of life and her arms round me are so gentle and so protective and my own heartbeat is difficult to describe: so slow and so regular and so soft, almost muffled, but so constant as if it would never stop.

That is also my attitude to life and I believe that neither war nor any other senseless human atrocity will ever be able to change it” (An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941–1943; and Letters from Westerbork, 135-136).

Later, from Westerbork, she wrote, “Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, 

my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude” (332). 

Etty did not look away from the suffering that surrounded her, nor did she flee it – she had opportunities to escape before being deported, but remained out of a sense that her presence could offer something to others suffering. Despite her steadily worsening circumstances, she received the gift of abundant spiritual consolation throughout her final years of life. She was killed at the age of 29 at Auschwitz, along with her mother, father, and brother. She flung a postcard from aboard the train that carried her from Westerbork to Auschwitz, which was later found by a farmer. It read, “We left the camp singing” (360).