One of my favorite folk songs growing up was a 1960s hit by The Byrds called “Turn! Turn! Turn!” eventually popularized by Peter, Paul and Mary. I can still hear the melody in my head: “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn…” What I didn’t know as a kid humming along was that these weren’t just poetic lyrics dreamed up by a songwriter. They came straight from the book of Ecclesiastes. In fact, one year, in my late teens, I recall reading through Ecclesiastes for the first time and literally saying out loud, “Oh my gosh! I’ve heard those lines before!”
So you can imagine how thrilled I was to hear that Rabbi Elie Mischel was launching a new set of video courses on Bible Plus about Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes doesn’t sugarcoat life. It gives us King Solomon—the wisest, wealthiest, most powerful man who ever lived—standing before us and essentially saying: “I tried it all. I tested every pleasure, built everything imaginable, pursued wisdom until I couldn’t learn anymore. And here’s what I discovered: it’s all hevel.”
Most English translations render hevel as “vanity.” But that’s not quite right. Rabbi Mischel explains: “Hevel means breath or vapor, right? Like a mist when you exhale outside during the cold winter months. And you can see that mist coming out of your mouth. It’s there for a brief second and then it’s gone. It dissipates. That is Solomon’s verdict on all of human achievement.”
So here’s the question that cuts to the heart of modern life: If everything we build eventually disappears like vapor, how do we find meaning that lasts?
Solomon had unlimited resources to run this experiment. He built a palace that made Versailles look modest. He imported peacocks and apes from distant lands. He assembled the greatest orchestra the ancient world had ever heard. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He was positioned like no one else in history to test whether wealth, wisdom, and pleasure could satisfy the human soul.
His conclusion?
That phrase “under the sun” is critical. Rabbi Mischel points out that this means “everything here is being evaluated from a purely human perspective under the sun, not in the heavens above the sun, but rather beneath the sun. Everything that which is under nature, the rule of nature, the sun means without God, without some sort of higher, deeper perspective.”
From that vantage point—life evaluated without God—everything crumbles. The wise person dies just like the fool. Great empires fall apart. Even memories fade.
This pattern repeats through history.
But Ecclesiastes doesn’t stop at despair. The book takes us on a journey through that despair to something on the other side.
We read Ecclesiastes every year on Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles—the most joyful holiday on the Jewish calendar. Why pair this somber book with our happiest celebration? Because Sukkot requires us to leave our secure homes and dwell in temporary huts for seven days. The sukkah is deliberately fragile. Rain falls through its roof. Wind shakes its walls.
When we read Ecclesiastes while sitting in the sukkah, we’re reading about impermanence while physically experiencing it. The sukkah doesn’t project false permanence like a palace does. It admits the truth: we’re all just passing through. But here’s the paradox—that temporary hut is also a holy commandment. Every fleeting moment we sit in it carries deep meaning. Life’s brevity doesn’t make it meaningless. It makes it precious.
As Rabbi Mischel beautifully explains: “When all the physical illusions are stripped away, just as Solomon learned, he tried all the physical pleasures and the fancy homes and all of that. When you get rid of all of that as Solomon did, when you get rid of fake joy, then we can discover the real and true joy that is rooted in God rather than in possessions or fame or wisdom. All the only true joy is rooted in God because everything is fleeting. That’s the only thing that’s permanent.”
Solomon concludes:
The journey through Ecclesiastes strips away every false source of meaning until only one foundation remains. When we build our lives on God rather than on things that pass like vapor, we find what endures.
Want to go deeper into the wisdom of Ecclesiastes? Bible Plus offers over 200 courses taught by expert teachers in Israel—think of it as your Biblical Streaming Platform. Prices as low as 9.99, billed annually. Well? What are you waiting for? Sign up for Bible Plus, Today!
