At the start of this section, a question is asked not to be answered but to highlight the key words or phrases in the book that were already hinted at in previous verses: 1. “Profit”: the word originally means profit in trade; it is repeated 13 times throughout the work. 2. “Efforts”: this refers to the hard side of life, meaning tiring work (cf. Dt 26:7); it appears 33 times in the book. 3. “Under the sun”: refers to what belongs to human experience and the meaning of life. It is equivalent to “during your lifetime” (Ecl 11:8), and this phrase is not found anywhere else in the Bible.
The theme of observing everyday life is then developed: everything is a cycle of coming and going without anything being truly new. It appears to be divided into two parts (4-7; 8-11) by a question that already contains its own answer. The first part covers generations, the cycle of the sun— which, for the ancients, was seen as a flat disc revolving around the Earth— the aimless turns of the wind, and the constant flow of rivers. It then shifts focus to historical events in general.
Qohelet diverges from traditional wisdom from the start, where humans could know all things and express them (Is 42:9; Jr 31:22, 31; Ezk 11:19; 36:26), and also separates from those who, forgetting the past (Sir 44:8f; 1 Kgs 10:4f; 5:9f), believed that modernity was the same as progress. It does not suggest that everything is an eternal pessimistic cycle but instead highlights life’s monotony and the fact that the essentials have already been achieved.
The reflection takes shape. The conviction that everything is “pure illusion” becomes clear to the author in that nothing in human experience is extraordinary. Sooner or later, events repeat themselves, whether natural, social, or of another kind.