The Preterist View of Ecclesiastes Chapter 1

 The Preterist View of Ecclesiastes Chapter 1 

1:1 — The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 

Solomon, the preacher-king, speaks not merely as a monarch, but as a weary soul bound to a system that promised much but delivered little—apart from the shadows of what was to come in Christ.

1:2 — "Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher; "vanity of vanities! All is vanity." 

All that the Old Covenant offered—rituals, sacrifices, temple glories, and kingdom wealth—proved empty when severed from the reality they only foreshadowed. Solomon, immersed in the earthly kingdom, recognizes its futility apart from the eternal promises fulfilled in Christ.

1:3 — What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? 

The labors under the Law, bound by temple worship and Levitical duties, could never perfect the conscience. They were shadows. Now, in the age of fulfillment, we see that the toiling "under the sun" is striving within an obsolete system.

1:4–7 — The cycles of nature reflect the unchanging routine of the Old Covenant age. 

Generations come and go, yet nothing truly transforms. This echoes Paul's view in Romans 8, where creation groans—not for another law, but for the revelation of the sons of God in the new creation.

1:8 — All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 

The Law brought weariness—it exposed sin but could not remove it. Solomon’s dissatisfaction mirrors humanity’s deeper need for true righteousness apart from the Law, as Paul writes in Romans 3:21.

1:9–11 — There is nothing new under the sun... 

Indeed, under the Old Covenant, cycles of judgment, blessing, and failure repeated endlessly. But Christ brought the “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17)—a reality not under the sun, but in the heavenly realm, now manifest in His people.

1:12–18 — Solomon's pursuit of wisdom and knowledge led to grief, not because wisdom itself is evil, but because under the Old Covenant, it could only highlight the vanity of life under law. Paul echoes this in 1 Corinthians 1, where he says the wisdom of the world (including the Jewish system) could not lead to God. Only Christ crucified—foolishness to the world—is true wisdom.