What Is the Meaning of “Vanity” in Ecclesiastes?

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Even people unfamiliar with the Bible have heard the expression “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity,” the exclamation that frames the book of Ecclesiastes in the KJV (Eccl 1:2; 12:8). The Hebrew term that appears in these strategic locations in Ecclesiastes, and a total of thirty-eight times, is הֶ֫בֶל (hevel).¹ It is clearly the prominent theme in this book.

But when we examine the evidence carefully, we learn that hevel in Ecclesiastes can mean several things. In a general sense, it is best translated as “enigmatic” or “puzzling.”

The root meaning of hevel

Used in a literal sense, hevel refers to a breath. It is used with this meaning only five times in the Old Testament, in Job 7:16, Psalm 62:9[10], Psalm 144:4, Proverbs 21:6, and Isaiah 57:13. Later Jewish texts in Mishnaic Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac confirm its meaning as a “breath” or “breeze.”²

It is also the name of Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, in Genesis 4. Russell Meek argues from three echoes of Genesis in the book of Ecclesiastes that hevel is a thematic word that refers to the inconsistency of life epitomized in Abel.³ The echoes he adduces, however, are quite faint, so they do not prove what is the meaning of hevel in Ecclesiastes.

The meaning of hevel in the Old Testament

The word hevel is used thirty-five times in Old Testament books other than Ecclesiastes, and in almost every case it has a metaphorical sense.

Sometimes it refers to things that are transitory, such as physical beauty (Prov 31:30) and the lifespan of humans (Job 7:16; Pss 39:5–6[6–7], 11[12]; 78:33; 144:4).
It can also refer to things that are unreliable, such as military help from foreign nations (Isa 30:7; Lam 4:17) and idols (Deut 32:21; Ps 31:6[7]; Jer 2:5).
In several cases, it speaks of matters that are useless or fruitless (Job 21:34; Prov 13:11).

A Logos Bible Word Study open to the Hebrew word hevel.

Conduct a word study of hevel using Logos’s Bible Word Study guide.

How Bible translations render hevel in Ecclesiastes

From ancient times to the present day, translations of the Bible have rendered hevel in a variety of ways.

The Septuagint translated the Hebrew term in Ecclesiastes into Greek as ματαιότης (“vanity, purposelessness”),⁴
Aquila, however, translated hevel with the literal term ἀτμός, “steam, vapor, cloud,” and this reading was accepted as well by Symmachus and Theodotian.⁵
When Jerome translated the book of Ecclesiastes into Latin for the Vulgate, he rendered hevel as vanitas.
The KJV would choose to maintain a strong connection with the Vulgate by using “vanity,” the English derivative of vanitas, which in the seventeenth century suggested not self-admiration but a lack of value.⁶
Because in English “vanity” has the connotation of something that is hollow, empty, pointless, or trivial, many translations in English reflect that sense when they render the initial phrase of Ecclesiastes 1:2 as “vanity of vanities” (KJV, NKJV, ESV, NASB95, RSV, ASV).
Other translations intensify their renderings to “everything is meaningless” (NLT), “utterly meaningless” (NIV), “futile, futile” (NET), “futility of futilities” (NASB20), or “absolute futility” (CSB).

Compare translations of hevel with Logos’s Text Comparison tool.

One or several meanings of hevel in Ecclesiastes?

Writers will often repeat a word when they want to reinforce the same point. This occurs frequently in the Bible. For example, in Psalm 121 the psalmist repeats the Hebrew verb שׁמר six times to emphasize that the Lord is his protector. Similarly, in Psalm 150 forms of the verb הלל are featured thirteen times, as the Psalter concludes with a resounding call to everyone in every place by every means to praise the Lord.

However, at other times, writers may use the same word with different meanings, exploiting its semantic range to make a special effect.

Recognizing semantic range

In English, most words have a range of meanings. For example, if someone is told to “put the trunk in the trunk,” that could mean anything from put the suitcase in the back of the car, to put the elephant’s nose in a hollow tree, to put the torso of a body in a suitcase, among other possibilities.

Most words in the primary biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek, also have ranges of meaning. This is evidenced in Psalm 67, when in v. 6[7] the people of Israel thank God for a good harvest by saying, “The earth [ארץ] has yielded its increase,” and then in v. 7[8], they pray, “God shall bless us; let all the ends of the earth [ארץ] fear him!” The first use of ארץ speaks of the cultivated land, but the second use refers to the planet on which all humans dwell. By using the same word with two different meanings, the psalmist draws a strong link between God’s blessing on the agriculture of Israel and his plan to bring all nations to worship him.

Does Ecclesiastes employ hevel‘s semantic range?

Several scholars argue that hevel is used with the same meaning throughout Ecclesiastes. For instance, Fredericks reasons,

When one acknowledges the obvious intention in the speech to ascribe a consistent thematic conclusion to its several observations, it becomes clear that there should also be a consistent interpretation as one, singular meaning in all similar contexts.⁷

He regards this meaning as “temporary.” Fox is just as adamant that hevel has a singular meaning in Ecclesiastes, yet he insists that it refers to “absurdity.”⁸

By contrast, other scholars point out that the author of Ecclesiastes does not refer to the same sort of issue in every case he describes as hevel. Looking at the variety of uses of the term outside of Ecclesiastes, Weeks concludes that

the biblical evidence suggests that, on the whole, it remained very much a live metaphor, through which writers could use the figure of breath or vapour to convey, separately or simultaneously, a variety of ideas.⁹

Based on his detailed study of the uses of hevel in Ecclesiastes, Richard Fuhr explains that the foundational symbol of vapor or breath is used metaphorically to refer to four aspects of the world observed by Qohelet:¹⁰ The world is characterized by transience, vanity, irony, and frustration. From this evidence, Fuhr reasons,

A proper understanding of הבל will not seek to draw distinct lines of separation between these various nuances; while in certain contexts one nuance may rise to a place of prominence, the others are not too far from the scope of intention.¹¹

4 proposals for the meaning of hevel in Ecclesiastes

1. Hevel as futility

There are a few places in the Old Testament outside Ecclesiastes in which hevel may have the sense of “futility” or “meaninglessness” (e.g., Job 9:29; Isa 30:7; 49:4; Jer 2:5). The Septuagint’s rendering of hevel as ματαιότης prompted Gregory of Nyssa in his Homilies on Ecclesiastes to reflect on the futility of life,

The pointlessness of things done earnestly to no purpose, like the sandcastles children build, and shooting arrows at stars, and chasing the winds, and racing against one’s own shadow and trying to step on its head, and anything else of the same kind which we find done pointless. All these activities are included in the meaning of “futility.”¹²

This nuance is reflected in the renderings of hevel as “useless, futile, meaningless” in many contemporary translations and commentaries. This sense does seem to be prominent in several places in Ecclesiastes,

For example, Ecclesiastes 2:23 states, “For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is [hevel].”
Similarly, in Ecclesiastes 8:10 Qohelet states, “Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is [hevel].”

However, this nuance does not seem to fit other uses.

Consider Ecclesiastes 6:4, when the miscarried child “comes in [hevel] and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered.”
Or see Ecclesiastes 9:9, when Qohelet exhorts, “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your [hevel] life that he has given you under the sun.”

2. Hevel as absurdity

Recently, Fox has argued vigorously that the best English equivalent for hevel is “absurdity,” in the sense used by the twentieth-century existentialist author Albert Camus. Fox contends, “The absurd is irrational, an affront to reason, in the broad sense of the human faculty that seeks and discovers order in the world about us,”¹³ but is frustrated when there is no observable cause-effect relationship between actions and consequences. Thus the world in which we live is irrational and meaningless.

Mark Sneed, however, calls Fox’s thesis into question, because unlike modern existentialism, Qohelet’s thinking does not reject belief in God. Moreover, the nuance of hevel as absurd is not attested in any of its Old Testament uses outside of Ecclesiastes, so it appears to be imported by Fox into the biblical text rather than emerging from it.¹⁴

3. Hevel as ephemerality

Building upon attested uses of hevel in Psalm 78:33, Psalm 144:4, Proverbs 31:30, and elsewhere, Fredericks champions the singular meaning of hevel in Ecclesiastes as “temporary” or “fleeting.” He concludes his analysis by declaring that “the brevities in life are a main concern of Qohelet, whereas any vanity or absurdity in life is not a significant focus.”¹⁵ This sense fits several passages in Ecclesiastes.

See Ecclesiastes 6:12, “For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his [hevel] life, which he passes like a shadow?”
And Ecclesiastes 11:10, “Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are [hevel].”

Thomas Krüger has suggested that Paul’s allusion to Ecclesiastes in Romans 8:20, when he says that creation is subject to ματαιότης, can have the sense of ephemerality when it is connected with the next verse, which speaks of the hope of its final liberation by God.¹⁶ However, in some cases such as in Ecclesiastes 4:7–8, hevel does seem to speak of futility, and that argues against a singular meaning of ephemerality in the book.

4. Hevel as enigmatic

If rendering hevel with a singular meaning, either as futility, absurdity, or ephemerality, cannot account for all its uses in Ecclesiastes, then perhaps we should try another approach.

We have seen in the Old Testament outside the book of Ecclesiastes the semantic range of hevel includes the metaphorical nuances of transitory, unreliable, and useless. Similarly, within the book of Ecclesiastes there are a variety of metaphorical nuances, and all of these can fit within the general category of what is incomprehensible, puzzling, and enigmatic.

Some matters in life are enigmatic because God does not seem to differentiate between the righteous and the wicked (Eccl 8:14).
Other circumstances are enigmatic because there seems to be so much pointless repetition in life (Eccl 1:4–11).¹⁷
The brevity of life is also enigmatic, for life passes quickly and it seems to leave little evidence behind it (Eccl 11:10).

The overall message of Ecclesiastes is not that life is absurd, or that it is temporary, but that humans must live with many questions that they cannot answer. Ogden reasons well that Ecclesiastes

conveys the notion that life is enigmatic, and mysterious; that there are many unanswered and unanswerable questions. The person of faith recognizes this fact but moves forward positively to claim and enjoy the life and the work which God apportions.¹⁸

What makes the world so enigmatic to humans is their limited ability to see and to understand how God has structured his world. In their attempts to live meaningfully in the world, again and again they find that they are thwarted by factors in life that are puzzling, because they seem to be unjust or pointless or transient. Taken together, they lead Qohelet to exclaim, “Totally enigmatic, all is enigmatic.”

But even here we are faced with the challenge that the English term “enigmatic” does not span the precise semantic range as the Hebrew term hevel, and in particular its emotive connotations. So Robert McCabe helpfully suggests that it may have the nuance of “frustrating enigma.”¹⁹

A search in Logos for each instance of the word hevel in Ecclesiastes.

Use Logos to search and explore each instance of hevel in Ecclesiastes.

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The message of hevel in Ecclesiastes

In Ecclesiastes 1:3, the sage poses a question, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” To answer this programmatic question, he conducts a thought experiment by which he endeavors to find gain (יִתְרוֹן), an accounting term that speaks of a profit.

Throughout Ecclesiastes 1:4–12:8, he embarks on an extensive observation of life, finding again and again that various areas of human activity and achievement may provide good things, but that when the costs are subtracted from the benefits there is no profit in them. They do not yield a positive bottom line.

It is important to notice that his search is conducted “under the sun” (e.g., Eccl 1:14). In doing this, the sage tries to leave God, who is above the sun, out of consideration. Similarly, he does not bring into the search anything that comes after death, which is beyond the sun. He limits his investigation to what humans can accomplish by their efforts alone in the here and now.

What he finds is that under the sun all human toil leads only to hevel. So he concludes in Ecclesiastes 12:8 with the same framing statement with which he began in Ecclesiastes 1:2. In his search, he has found overwhelming evidence that everything is totally enigmatic; it is thoroughly puzzling. He concludes with the bad news that humans cannot secure a profit (יִתְרוֹן) by their efforts.

But he does have some good news for us. At the end of the first three rounds of observations in Ecclesiastes 2:24–26, 5:18–20, and 8:15, as well as in Ecclesiastes 2:10, 3:22, 9:6, and 9:9, he says that God has sprinkled into life his portions (חֵ֫לֶק). These are blessings that God intends humans to accept and enjoy as his gracious gifts to them.²⁰

The epilogue in Ecclesiastes 12:9–14 describes the writer as a wise man who has carefully investigated his subject and expertly crafted his words. Leaving the under-the-sun perspective, he brings God and what occurs after death into the picture. When he does that, he concludes with what humans must do as they live in a world that is full of puzzles, unanswerable questions, and enigmas. They must “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccl 12:13–14).

The application of hevel today

The book of Ecclesiastes strikes a responsive chord in many people today. Even though it is an ancient text, it has a relevant contemporary message. When people read it today, they find themselves nodding in agreement: “This is what I have seen. That is how I feel. I am troubled by that, too.”

We live in a culture that seems obsessed with success. We are told that with enough hard work, if we can dream it then we can do it. However, again and again we are stymied by results that disappoint and discourage and disillusion us. Like Qohelet, we find ourselves thinking, “It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up. It is over all too quickly. All I have are questions.” In other words, “Totally enigmatic; all is a puzzle.” For people today, hevel is all too familiar.

How does the book of Ecclesiastes speak to people who feel the force of hevel in their lives, and how can we use it to minister to them?

1. Ecclesiastes supplements Proverbs’s wisdom

Ecclesiastes supplements the message of Proverbs as it teaches God’s wisdom for life.

The major teaching in Proverbs is that following the path of wisdom—that is, living in the fear of the Lord—leads to life in all of its dimensions. In contrast, following the path of folly—that is, rejecting God’s way—leads to death in all of its dimensions.

However, within the book of Proverbs it is also taught that life is more complicated than that (Prov 20:24; 21:31), and that strand of teaching is taken up and explored in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. To learn God’s wisdom, we need to know both the general pattern found in Proverbs, and also how wisdom is expressed when life does not seem to fit the general pattern.

2. Ecclesiastes provides a cautionary tale

Ecclesiastes cautions against trying to secure our success without including God in the picture. We see that even our best efforts “under the sun” cannot achieve a genuine profit (יִתְרוֹן). The sage shows that even Solomon with all his special advantages could not gain the profit he sought so diligently, so he is a cautionary tale for anyone today who attempts it. That approach to life will lead only to problems and puzzles.

3. Ecclesiastes encourages the pursuit of joy

Ecclesiastes encourages us to savor the joys God has given to us today. We do not have to wait until the sweet by and by, because God has given us his portions (חֵ֫לֶק) to enjoy in the sour here and now.

Threaded throughout the book of Ecclesiastes are exhortations to eat, to drink, to work, to celebrate, all in grateful appreciation for the gifts God has sprinkled into our lives (see Eccl 2:24; 3:12–13; 5:18–20; 8:15; 9:7–10; 11:9–10). Yes, there are many things in life that we cannot understand or control, but they must not blind us to the joys that God wants us to enjoy today. They are like Christmas presents that our loving Father has wrapped and placed under the tree, because he wants us to open them and delight in what he has selected for us.