Ecclesiastes 1:9 and 11 …There is no new thing…there is no remembrance…
Last week I toured the Key West home of Ernest Hemingway, the famous American novelist. He is a man who seemed to have tried about everything. He was a man’s man, enjoyed luxury in life, yet he seems to have come up empty, having taken his own life in Idaho many years after he lived in Key West, Florida. I thought about Hemingway today as I read Ecclesiastes 1 for two reasons. First, the title of his first novel of note is taken from Ecclesiastes 1:5 where it says, “The sun also ariseth,” speaking of the seemingly eternal nature of the world. The sun rises and sets, the rivers flow to the oceans as they always have, one generation comes, and one generation goes, but the earth continues and abides.
I also thought about Hemingway because of the seeming futility of life to so many people including, I believe, Hemingway. As I toured his home in Key West, I was surrounded by people, many of whom seemed as if they were trying to forget. On my way out of town I actually passed Sloppy Joe’s Tavern, the very place where Hemingway frequented when he lived in Key West. The bar was full of people who were drinking and trying to enjoy life, yet trying to forget.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 and 11 gives us two interesting phrases. In verse 9, King Solomon says, “There is no new thing under the sun.” Solomon had tried everything. He tried wisdom, wealth, power, and pleasure, and he says “There is no new thing under the sun.” Everything that could be tried has been tried.
Then in verse 11 he says, “There is no remembrance.” You know, everything is new to people who do not remember. Everything is new to people who do not pay attention to history. In verse 13, Solomon says, “And I gave my heart to seek and search.” He is saying, “The world continues and I continue to search for some source of satisfaction in life.” In Ecclesiastes 2:1 he says that he enjoyed pleasure. In verse 4 he says, “I made me great works.” In verse 7 he says, “I got…,” and in verse 8, “I gathered…”
Yet, Solomon comes to the conclusion in verse 14 that no matter what he had done or what he knew, one event, death, happens to all, whether a wise person or a foolish person. His conclusion was what is the point of trying to gain money, wisdom, or pleasure if nothing ever changes? Verse 16 says, “For there is no remembrance of the wise more than the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.” What more can one do? He was basically saying, “I as the king tried everything. What can anyone do that I haven’t tried?”
The Bible certainly has answers to these perplexities of life, but the place you have to begin is to realize that everything is new to people who do not remember. If I think, “Wealth didn’t make Hemingway happy, but perhaps it will make me happy. Marriages didn’t make Hemingway happy, but perhaps they will make me happy. Wealth and wisdom didn’t make Solomon happy, but perhaps they will make me happy,” then I am just retreading the same steps of those who have gone before. Those before me are perhaps wiser and more talented than I would ever be, yet did not find satisfaction from those things. Everything is new to people who don’t pay attention to history, to people who don’t remember.
Today, may God give us the wisdom to be deliberate about our life, to realize that everything that could be tried has already been tried. Whatever the answer is, it is an answer that we can only find from a God Who transcends this life and transcends our perceptions of it.