Old Testament · The Five Scrolls · World English Bible
Ecclesiastes
"Go your way—eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works."
— Ecclesiastes 9:7 
The Reading LensEvery verse pulled to the top of a book is chosen by three questions: Where is God’s heart here? Who is He protecting? Who is being saved by the action? It marks the place where those answers come into clearest focus — a “look at this, in this book.”
About the Book
The Hebrew name is Qoheleth — a title rather than a name, rendered as the Preacher, the Teacher, or the Assembler. One of the Five Scrolls, read at Sukkot.
The word translated “vanity” is hevel — vapour, breath, mist. Not so much worthless as impossible to hold onto. Carrying that image through every occurrence changes the book from a complaint into an observation.
Its method is to test every proposed meaning — pleasure, work, wisdom, wealth, legacy — and report that none of them holds. But the conclusion it keeps returning to is not despair. Seven times it lands in the same place: eat your bread, drink your wine, do the work in front of you, and take the day you were actually given.
12 Chapters
Vapour
The thesis stated at once. Generations come and go, the sun repeats its circuit, the rivers run to a sea that never fills. He applies his mind to everything done under the sun and finds it chasing wind.
Everything Tried
Pleasure, building, vineyards, pools, wealth, singers, and finally wisdom itself — each tested, each found not to hold, because the wise man and the fool meet the same end and neither is remembered afterward.
A Time for Everything
The poem of seasons, and the harder line beneath it: God has set eternity in their hearts, and still no one can find out the work he does from beginning to end.
Oppression, and Company
The tears of the oppressed with no one to comfort them. Rivalry named as the engine of most labour. Then the turn — two are better than one, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Before God
Guard your step at the house of God, and let your words be few. Wealth does not satisfy the one who loves it, and no one carries anything out in his hand.
The Man Who Cannot Enjoy It
Riches, honour, and no power to enjoy any of it. A stillborn child, he says, is better off than a man who has everything and gets no good from it.
Wisdom and Its Limits
Better the house of mourning than the house of feasting. Do not be overly righteous; do not be overly wicked. Wisdom strengthens the wise, and still there is no one who does good and never sins.
Under Authority
Keeping the king’s command, the delay between a sentence and its execution, and the flat observation that the righteous sometimes get what the wicked deserve and the wicked what the righteous deserve.
One Event to All
The same end comes to everyone — and therefore the book’s clearest instruction: eat, drink, do what your hand finds, because God has already accepted your works. Time and chance happen to all, and the poor wise man who saved the city is forgotten by morning.
Small Things
Dead flies spoil the perfumer’s ointment. The pit you dug yourself, the serpent that bites before it is charmed, the wall that falls on the one breaking through it, and the land whose king is a child.
Cast Your Bread
Send it out on the waters. You do not know which will prosper, so sow in the morning and in the evening both. Rejoice, young man, in your youth — and know you will be brought into account for it.
Remember
The poem of old age, image by image, until the silver cord snaps and the pitcher breaks at the spring. Then the epilogue, the whole duty, and the weary note that of making many books there is no end.