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ECCLESIASTES CHAPTER 1
All is vanity; our labour great and unprofitable, Ecc_1:1-3. The whole course of things is always going and returning, Ecc_1:4-7. Nothing in nature is satisfied, Ecc_1:8. Nothing new; old things are forgot, Ecc_1:9-11. The search after wisdom is itself a vain labour; cannot supply our natural wants, nor satisfy our desires; but increaseth sorrow: all this the Preacher found out by experience, Ecc_1:12-18.
The Preacher; who was not only a king, but also a teacher of God's people, which he did both by words, upon some solemn occasions, and by writings; who having sinned grievously and scandalously in the eyes of all the world, justly thought himself obliged to preach or publish his true repentance for all his folly and wickedness, and to give public warning and wholesome counsels to all persons to avoid those rocks upon which he had split. The Hebrew properly signifies either gathering or gathered; and so it signifies either,
1. A preacher, as it is commonly rendered, whose office it is to gather in souls unto God or his church. Or,
2. A penitent or convert, or one gathered or brought back by true repentance to God, and to his church, from which he had so wickedly revolted. King of Jerusalem: this is added partly as a description of the person or author of this book, Solomon, who was the only man that was both
son of David, properly so called, and king of Jerusalem; and partly as an aggravation of his sin, because he was the son of David, a wise and godly father, who had given him both excellent counsel, and, for his general course, a good example: and for the evil example which he gave him in the matter of Uriah, that also, considered with his hearty and effectual repentance for it, and the dreadful punishments of it upon his person and family, was a fair warning and most powerful instruction to him to learn by his father's example, and because he was a king, not by birth, for he was not David's eldest son, but by the special favour and designation of that God whom he had now so ill requited, and that in Jerusalem, a holy city, the place of God's special presence, and of his worship, where he had daily opportunities to know and obligations to practise better things, which place he had defiled by his horrid sins, and thereby made it, and all God's people, and the true religion, and the name of the blessed God, odious and contemptible amongst all the nations round about him.