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PDF FormatIf we are to make sense of this challenging text, we must read it another way. We should approach it as a text that is part of, and speaks to, a broader biblical tradition. Indeed, to the assembled Israelites of the First Temple period, Kohelet’s famous opening line—“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”—would have been instantly recognizable as an allusion to another text in their unique intellectual heritage: The story of Cain and Abel from the book of Genesis. The most important clue to the mystery of Ecclesiastes, therefore, is found in the striking reference it makes to the Bible’s first book.
The central message of Ecclesiastes may be encapsulated in a single word: Hevel, usually translated as “vanity.”17 The word appears 38 times in the text, and it is clearly critical to understanding the book’s message. It is most commonly understood to mean futility or meaninglessness, or the idea that anything we do is in vain. Yet Hevel is also the Hebrew name of Abel, Cain’s brother, the son of Adam and Eve. Therefore we must first remind ourselves of the original text in Genesis to which Kohelet is referring. For the sake of clarity, we will render it using the Hebrew name for Abel:
Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have acquired a man from the Lord.” Then she bore again, this time his brother Hevel. Now Hevel was a pastor of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Hevel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord heeded Hevel and his offering, but he did not heed Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you better, you will transcend. And if you do not better, sin lies at the door. And its desire is toward you, and you will be its master.” Now Cain said to Hevel—and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Hevel his brother and killed him.18
In light of Kohelet’s preoccupation with death, his reference to Abel is striking. Abel is the first human being to die. Just two verses after humankind was denied the tree of eternal life, his story becomes the embodiment of human mortality. It is in this context that we may reread the verses of Ecclesiastes: “Man sets out for his eternal abode, with mourners all around in the street.… And the dust returns to the ground as it was, and the lifebreath returns to God who bestowed it. Hevel havalim, says Kohelet. All is hevel.”19
However, Abel’s representation of death is only one side of the story. He is also the first human being to offer a sacrifice that God accepts. This is no trifle. A far cry from the guilt of Adam, Eve, and Cain, all of whom were rebuked by God, Abel was the first human whom God clearly likes. Before him, we did not even know it was possible. When we read that “the Lord heeded Hevel and his offering,” the verb “heeded,” vayisha, carries a powerful overtone of deliverance as well as acceptance. Isaiah, for example, declares, “Israel shall be delivered (nosha) in the Lord, an eternal salvation (teshuat).”20 Moses, in his very last words on earth, proclaims: “O happy Israel! Who is like you, a people delivered (nosha) in the Lord.…”21 Furthermore, God is deliberately accepting, or as the Hebrew connotes, “delivering,” not only the offering, but Abel himself. Not until Abraham do we find such unqualified approval by God. Not until the crowning moment of Exodus, as God forged his eternal bond with the people of Israel, is the cognate word for “deliverance,” yeshua, used again.22
In fact, Abel’s deliverance is not restricted to that of a single person, either. Through Abel, God offers his first universal explanation of life’s calling. By heeding the offering of Abel and not of Cain, God teaches humanity a fundamental law of divine justice, in his response to Cain’s vexation: “If you better, you will transcend.”23 Life is not a game of chance.
And yet, who was this man whom God affirmed? Abel’s life was too short to allow for the attainment of material success. Nor can he be credited with any innovation: Even the idea of sacrifice was Cain’s.24 Above all, Abel was childless. His life, therefore, left no trace. He walked without footprints.
If we translate Abel’s name, hevel, as “vanity,” as readers of Ecclesiastes have long been accustomed, it is impossible to reconcile the term with Abel’s acceptance by God. Indeed, the story of Abel teaches the exact opposite—the possibility of salvation despite the fleeting nature of life. Precisely because of the tragic nature of Abel’s interrupted life, we learn its deepest message: In turning one’s life into an offering, one is not dependent on any life circumstance, or on any achievements in the material world.
Abel, moreover, carries an additional symbol that works most strongly against a pejorative reading of his name. He is, after all, the paradigmatic shepherd. This is a vivid marker to anyone familiar with the Bible’s greatest heroes: Abraham, Isaac, Rachel, and Jacob, as well as Moses and David, are all shepherds. Shepherds are ever mobile, and their presence in the Bible symbolizes the idea of life as a journey, and spirituality as an ongoing quest. In fact, in Ecclesiastes and elsewhere, the image of the shepherd is extended to God, and in the Song of Songs, also attributed to Solomon, the author reserves the role of shepherd for himself. The idea of the roving shepherd has ultimately come to represent the Jewish people as a whole: When, for example, Joseph alludes to the metaphysical divide between the worldviews of Egypt and Israel, he tells his brothers that “all shepherds are abhorrent to Egyptians,”25 meaning that the Egyptians disdained the spiritual freedom and “unattachment” which shepherds represent, in favor of a Cain-like materialism. The brothers, in turn, proudly tell Pharaoh, “We your servants are shepherds, as were also our fathers.”26 Our fathers, that is, all the way back to Abel. Like the nomadic Abraham, who left behind all that he knew in Ur to establish a new nation in Canaan, our self-identity as a nation of shepherds symbolizes our dynamic historic mission. As such, Abel is the forerunner of this spiritual lineage, and his transient life the inspiration for all those on a quest for enlightenment.27
A better reading of hevel, then, and one that provides us with an extremely important tool for understanding both Genesis and Ecclesiastes, takes us back to the root meaning of the word: Vapor or mist. What is important about the life of Abel is not its futility, but its transience. It was as fleeting as a puff of air, yet his life’s calling was nonetheless fulfilled.28
This, too, is the meaning of hevel in Ecclesiastes: Not the dismissive “vanity,” but the more objective “transience,” referring strictly to mortality and the fleeting nature of human life.29 “Fleeting transience (hevel havalim),” says Kohelet, “All is fleeting.”30 Or, read another way: Abel is every man. Without the negative connotations of “vanity,” we discover in Kohelet a man who is tormented not by the meaninglessness of life, but by how swiftly it comes to an end. Life is gone so very quickly, and likewise man’s worldly deeds. We now understand the significance of Kohelet’s opening proclamation that “all is hevel.” He seeks to confront his listeners with man’s own mortality—the underlying premise of any inquiry into the meaning of life in this world.31
The reading of hevel as “vanity” is not only misleading, but in some cases it makes the text impossible to read. Perhaps the most striking example can be found in the book’s ninth chapter, where Kohelet discusses the value of love in one’s life. “View life with a woman you have come to love—all the days of your transitory life (kol yemei hayei hevlecha) which he has gifted you under the sun—every fleeting day. For this is your share in life.…”32 Read the traditional way, the verse is difficult to parse. It would sound something like, “Live joyfully... all the days of your vain life.” Life is vanity, so enjoy love? The verse makes far better sense if hevel is translated as “fleeting,” focusing on life’s brevity: Cherish your time together, for life is fleeting, and therefore precious. Then is your love that much more meaningful.
Understanding hevel in this sense is also crucial to understanding the passage, in the book’s eighth chapter, which deals with the concept of injustice in the world. Read the traditional way, Kohelet explains, “Then I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of holiness, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done. This,” he concludes, “is vanity.”33 Again, this is a difficult read: Why is it considered vanity if evildoers are forgotten? The verse makes far more sense if we understand it to relate to the illusory, temporary nature of evil’s success: Kohelet reassures us that setbacks to justice are transient, and that evil will not prevail in the final round: “It is of the fleeting nature of the world, that some righteous receive what befits the acts of evildoers, while some evildoers receive what befits the righteous; this too, I say, is only temporary.34
