Ecclesiastes 2:11

"Thus. considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which. had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun."all my activities…all was vanity" -A lesser man would have argued otherwise. "A less exacting mind than Qoheleth's would have found. great to report with satisfaction. The achievements had been brilliant. On the material level, the farmer's perennial ambition to make (in our phrase) 'two blades of grass grow where one had grown before' had been overwhelming fulfilled; while aesthetically he had produced. connoisseur's paradise. If 'a thing of beauty is. joy for ever', he had not searched in vain for what is timeless and absolute. So we tend to think. Qoheleth will have none of it. To call such things eternal is no more than rhetoric…In the brutal colloquial terms of Today's English Version, his report is, 'I realized that it didn't mean. thing'" (Kidner p. 32).

Solomon really looked at what he had accomplished and honestly realized that none of this had given him what he was really looking for---lasting happiness, real satisfaction, true meaning and purpose for his existence. The answer was clear, there is no real and enduring happiness to be found in things "under the sun". Nothing here, in this life can satisfy the needs of our soul, our true selves. But how many people ignore what Solomon said? Ignore the plain and clear sign which is positioned on the roads which Solomon traveled? The sign that reads "dead end".

Kidner is right, lesser men try to bluff and pretend that they are really happy and that they really have accomplished something that will last forever. But Solomon won't allow us to pretend and "play" at being alive.

Solomon was honest! Solomon is giving us insight into the world of the rich and famous. He is saying, "Those people may look happy, but many of them are empty, miserable and depressed. The person who lives in that mansion, or just passed you in that fancy car might be less fulfilled then you are!" "People put up. good front, but here is. picture of what is really going on inside!"