THE CRISIS OF MEANING AND THE LOGIC OF UNDER THE SUN
The Appearance of Novelty and the Reality of Recurrence
The contemporary cultural moment is often described in apocalyptic terms. Artificial intelligence, particularly in its rapidly advancing generative and decision‑making forms, is said to confront humanity with questions so unprecedented that inherited philosophical and theological frameworks can no longer address them adequately. Human beings are told that they now face a rupture in intellectual history: intelligence need no longer be embodied, creativity need no longer be human, and agency need no longer be personal. From this perspective, AI does not merely alter what we do; it destabilizes who we are. Meaning itself, it is claimed, is now in question in ways fundamentally unlike any previous era.
Yet this rhetoric of novelty obscures more than it reveals. Historically, periods of technological acceleration almost always produce the illusion of metaphysical transformation. The tools change rapidly, but the underlying philosophical assumptions change very little. What is newly visible in moments of upheaval is not a new problem, but an old problem under intensified conditions. Artificial intelligence does not generate the crisis of meaning; it precipitates the collapse of meaning structures that were already insufficient.
This is precisely the dynamic Solomon exposes in his profound tour de force that is the Book of Ecclesiastes. Long before computational systems or machine cognition, Solomon confronted the question that underlies every modern anxiety: Can human life sustain meaning when evaluated entirely within the bounds of the created order? Solomonic wisdom in the Book of Ecclesiastes is not a reaction to a particular cultural development. It is an analysis of what inevitably happens whenever meaning is sought apart from God. Its relevance to the age of artificial intelligence is therefore not incidental but deliberate. AI is simply the latest context in which the same perennial experiment is being run again.
Under the Sun as a Deliberate Philosophical Constraint
The phrase under the sun (tahat hassemes)[1] serves as the conceptual backbone of Ecclesiastes. Its recurrence is neither poetic habit nor rhetorical flourish. It marks the precise boundary of Solomon’s investigation. Everything he evaluates – wisdom, pleasure, labor, injustice, progress, mortality – is considered strictly within that inherently limited scope. Solomon avoids appeal to special revelation or explicit theological claims throughout much of the book, not because such resources are unavailable, but because in so doing he demonstrates their necessity by exhausting every epistemological alternative.
This methodological key is essential to understanding both the severity and coherence of Ecclesiastes. Solomon is not arguing that life is meaningless. He is arguing that life becomes meaningless when meaning is pursued under the sun, that is, when human existence is interpreted as a closed system of natural causes, temporal cycles, and finite horizons. In this sense, Ecclesiastes is a thorough philosophical experiment rather than an expression of despair or cynicism.
The modern equivalents of under the sun reasoning are not difficult to identify. Naturalism, materialism, and secular humanism all share the same basic commitment, that reality is self‑contained, and whatever meaning exists must arise from within the system itself.[2] Artificial intelligence inherits and intensifies this commitment. AI does not introduce new metaphysical assumptions – it operates at the furthest reaches of existing ones. It embodies confidence in immanent explanation, autonomous intelligence, and self‑generating significance. Solomon’s insistence on evaluating life under the sun anticipates the exact conditions under which AI now appears disruptive. This apparent disruption does not arise because machines are unprecedentedly powerful, but because meaning has already been severed from any transcendent reference beyond the system.
Hebel: The Ontological Diagnosis
The evaluative term that Solomon’s diagnoses is hebel.[3] Translated traditionally as “vanity,” the word’s semantic range includes breath, vapor, mist – something that appears solid momentarily, but dissipates upon contact. The metaphor is deliberately chosen. Hebel does not imply moral worthlessness or meaninglessness in a trivial sense. Rather, it denotes ontological insubstantiality. It is something that does not endure. When Solomon declares, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,”[4] he is not making a psychological confession, but rather a metaphysical judgment. He is identifying what human projects become when they are engaged and evaluated without reference to that which transcends temporality. Wisdom, pleasure, achievement, and power may have instrumental value, but they lack durability. They cannot resist erosion by time, death, or forgetfulness. They are the inevitable victims of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.[5]
This diagnosis is especially important for understanding why artificial intelligence feels destabilizing in the present moment. AI systems promise efficiency, optimization, prediction, and control, yet none of these addresses the problem hebel names. On the contrary, by accelerating production and compressing time, AI intensifies the very transience Solomon identifies. The faster one can produce, the faster one can discard. The more efficiently systems operate, the more quickly outcomes lose significance. Artificial intelligence is therefore not a solution to hebel; it is a catalyst that makes hebel more visible. It exposes the emptiness of projects undertaken in a context that is already incapable of sustaining meaning.
Yithron and the Search for Enduring Gain
In contrast to hebel is the concept of yithron,[6] often translated profit or advantage. Solomon repeatedly asks whether any human endeavor produces lasting surplus – something that remains after time has done its work. The question is not whether activities are enjoyable or useful in the short term, but whether they generate enduring gain. Solomon’s answer, consistently, is that they do not. Knowledge increases awareness, but not permanence. Pleasure fades. Labor passes to others. Power is temporary. Even memory proves unreliable. Under the sun, there is no yithron. Every gain is provisional, every advantage short‑lived.
This question of surplus is particularly relevant in an age obsessed with productivity and optimization.[7] Artificial intelligence promises unprecedented gains in efficiency, output, and capacity. Yet, Solomon’s analysis reveals the limitation of such promises: surplus without God is an illusion. Increased capacity does not equal enduring significance. The faster the cycle of production, the more rapidly meaning erodes. Solomon shows that the problem is not that human beings cannot produce enough value, the problem is that value cannot remain value when untethered from the ontological Source that transcends the system in which all value-pursuit occurs.
THE WORLDVIEW PURSUIT OF UNDER THE SUN MEANING
Wisdom Tested from Within the System
Having established the worldview boundary of life under the sun, Solomon proceeds to test its most respected candidate for meaning: wisdom itself.[8] Unlike the pursuit of pleasure, which may appear philosophically unserious, wisdom presents itself as the highest human good. It is the pursuit most often assumed to justify human exceptionalism and dignity. If any under‑the‑sun project should succeed in producing meaning, it is the cultivation of wisdom.
Solomon’s method here is critical. He does not dismiss wisdom as worthless. On the contrary, he explicitly affirms that wisdom excels folly, just as light excels darkness.[9] Wisdom enables discernment, restraint, prudence, and effectiveness. It solves real problems and mitigates real harms. Yet Solomon’s evaluation does not stop at instrumental superiority. His question is not whether wisdom works, but whether wisdom lasts.[10]
The result is as unsettling as it is precise. Wisdom may excel folly, but wisdom does not escape the conditions that render life under the sun futile. The wise and the fool share the same destiny: death. Both are forgotten. Neither can secure remembrance or permanence.[11] Thus, Solomon poses the devastating rhetorical question: “Why then have I been extremely wise?” Wisdom, when evaluated solely within the materialistic system, ultimately fails to deliver yithron.
This conclusion anticipates the eventual exhaustion of intellectual elitism in every form. Intelligence, knowledge, and rational mastery cannot sustain meaning when the horizon remains bounded by time and mortality. Artificial intelligence intensifies this point rather than refuting it. AI systems now perform functions once thought uniquely human, such as calculation, pattern recognition, prediction, and even creative synthesis. If wisdom serves as the foundation of human value, then the possibility of non‑human wisdom destabilizes that foundation entirely. Solomon recognized this problem in principle long before its technological iteration. His resolution here is not at all to deny the value of wisdom, but to deny its ultimacy.
The Pleasure Experiment and the Illusion of Fulfillment
If wisdom cannot ground meaning, perhaps experience can. Human beings frequently retreat into pleasure when intellectual pursuits fail to satisfy. Solomon recognizes this impulse and subjects it to rigorous examination. Ecclesiastes 2 records an experiment of extraordinary scope: pleasure pursued without moral compromise, economic limitation, or social restraint. Wine, laughter, art, architecture, sensuality, entertainment, and aesthetic delight all come under scrutiny. Solomon’s evaluation here is striking in its restraint. He does not moralize pleasure or condemn enjoyment, instead, he asks a narrower and more devastating question: What does pleasure accomplish?[12] Does it satisfy the soul? Does it provide permanence? Does it deliver meaning that endures reflection? The verdict is consistent: pleasure proves to be fleeting, unstable, and ultimately trivial. Laughter is madness. Joy accomplishes nothing lasting. Even when pleasure accompanies labor, it dissipates under scrutiny. The heart may rejoice in the moment, but reflection exposes the emptiness beneath the delight. Pleasure fails not because it is evil, but because it is inadequate.[13]
This critique speaks directly into contemporary cultural conditions shaped by technology. AI has supercharged entertainment, personalization, and immediate gratification. Algorithmic systems optimize experience, curate pleasure, and eliminate friction. Yet these very efficiencies reveal the insufficiency Solomon identifies. Pleasure designed, predicted, and delivered at scale loses its claim to significance. Hedonic saturation accelerates boredom. Experience optimized without God becomes anesthetic rather than meaningful. Solomon’s insight is thus remarkably relevant: enjoyment cannot function as a substitute for purpose. Pleasure can accompany meaning, but cannot generate it. When elevated to ultimate status, experience simply collapses into distraction.
Labor, Achievement, and the Futility of Accumulation
Solomon’s inquiry then turns from experience to productivity.[14] This resonates particularly in an era of unprecedented technological advancement. Work has often been treated as the primary source of meaning in materialistic societies. One’s labor, accomplishment, and contribution are assumed to justify existence. Solomon tests this assumption with the authority of Divine revelation, and employing the greatest scope of autonomy and privilege. Once again, the conclusion is unambiguous. Labor produces, but it does not endure. What Solomon builds will be inherited by another who may lack wisdom or restraint. Accumulation fails to secure legacy. Achievement dissolves with time. Even the noblest of work cannot preserve meaning under the sun.
This critique dismantles the modern mythology of progress. Progress assumes that accumulation equals significance, that advancement produces value simply by virtue of expansion. Yet Solomon exposes the internal contradiction of this assumption: progress operates within time, but time erodes what progress produces. Without a Divine reference point, progress becomes a circular process that generates traces without meaning.
Artificial intelligence intensifies this dynamic dramatically. Automation accelerates productivity while simultaneously detaching human presence from production. As machines optimize labor, individual contribution becomes increasingly marginalized. This generates a crisis not because work has suddenly lost meaning, but because work was never capable of bearing the full weight of meaning in the first place. Solomon’s analysis shows that labor requires a significance from beyond the system to become meaningful. Without that reference, work becomes another manifestation of hebel.
The Injustice Problem and Moral Fragility
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon does not shy away from social and moral reflection. Solomon observes oppression, injustice, and the inversion of moral categories.[15] Under the sun, righteousness does not guarantee reward, and wickedness does not secure punishment. The world appears morally disordered – and even upside down – with power rather than virtue determining outcomes.[16]
This observation introduces a crucial dimension of Solomon’s critique of materialistic worldviews: the absence of true moral meaning within the system. If justice is not guaranteed, if moral action does not reliably correspond to moral outcomes, then ethical investment becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. The human impulse toward justice collides with a world that offers no assurance of moral coherence. Here Solomon does not argue against morality, but rather he exposes the inadequacy of morality grounded in naturalistic frameworks. Without judgment, ethics collapses into preference, strategy, or sentiment. Moral outrage under the sun has no ultimate resolution.
Modern discussions of AI ethics exemplify this fragility with remarkable clarity. Algorithmic decision‑making distributes power while diffusing responsibility. Systems affect lives at scale, yet accountability remains elusive. Ethical guidelines proliferate, but their authority is procedural rather than ontological. Solomon observed precisely this situation: moral concern without moral resolution, ethics without eschatology – a worldview bridge to nowhere.
Cycles, Time, and the Illusion of Novelty
Solomon reminds us of the unrelenting passage of time. Generations come and go. Natural processes repeat. “There is nothing new under the sun.”[17] This is often misunderstood as cultural pessimism or resistance to novelty. In fact, Solomon’s claim is ontological rather than technological. He does not deny innovation – he denies ontological novelty. The cycles Solomon describes, including birth and death, planting and harvesting, building and tearing down, are the inescapable rhythms of a closed system. Change occurs, but meaning does not accumulate. Time moves, but significance does not deepen. Novelty exists at the level of context, not at the level of meaning.
This insight is crucial for interpreting the current fascination with artificial intelligence. AI appears to introduce unprecedented change, yet its effects remain confined to the same ontological cycle Solomon describes. Intelligence changes form, labor changes medium, creativity changes expression, but the fundamental question remains unresolved: What endures? Without transcendence, novelty multiplies without delivering significance.
Solomon’s analysis thus dismantles the rhetoric of inevitability surrounding technological progress. Change does not equal meaning. Complexity does not equal purpose. The system remains closed.
Solomonic wisdom at this point helps us understand why under the sun theories – experiential (as in Hume), economic (as in Marx), existential (as in Nietzsche), nor expansive (as in Plato) – can never address the problem of meaning. While there may be points they correspond to truth, their proud under the sun tethering precludes even the possibility of considering a beyond the sun metaphysic, and thus obfuscates the transcendent Creator whose fingerprints can readily be seen under the sun by all who will consider Him.[18]
Philosophical Parallels: Ecclesiastes and the Humanistic Canon
The resonance between Ecclesiastes and the trajectory of human philosophy and worldview is one of the central themes developed in Life Beyond the Sun.[19] Solomon anticipates the conclusions that later thinkers will reach through more elaborate conceptual machinery. Hume’s skepticism,[20] Kant’s epistemic limits,[21] Nietzsche’s nihilism,[22] and the postmodern rejection of metanarratives[23] all rehearse Solomon’s under‑the‑sun verdict in different forms.
What distinguishes Ecclesiastes is not its despair, but its efficiency. Where philosophy often multiplies complexity before arriving at collapse, Solomon arrives at collapse through disciplined observation. He exposes these system’s limitations without illusion.
Artificial intelligence does not escape this philosophical trajectory nor Solomon’s scrutiny. It operationalizes much of what modern philosophy theorized. Empiricism becomes data science. Utilitarianism becomes optimization algorithms. Structuralism becomes computational architecture. Postmodern recombination becomes generative models. In every case, the same problem persists: the system produces functions, not meaning. Solomon’s wisdom helps us recognize that the failure is not technical but metaphysical. The system cannot supply what it does not contain.
THE RECOVERY OF MEANING: BEYOND THE SUN
Mortality as the Final Test of Under‑the‑Sun Meaning
Having examined wisdom, pleasure, labor, progress, and justice, Solomon’s investigation converges on the unavoidable reality that governs every under‑the‑sun endeavor: mortality. Death is not introduced as a peripheral concern or emotional interruption; it functions as the decisive criterion by which every claim to meaning is tested. Whatever cannot survive death cannot ultimately ground significance.
Solomon’s observations here are unflinchingly clear: death renders human distinctions provisional and collapses apparent hierarchies of value. The wise and the foolish meet the same end. The diligent laborer and the indolent inheritor share the same fate. The righteous and the wicked are subject to the same biological conclusion. Under the sun, death acts as the great equalizer, dissolving claims of permanence, superiority, and moral insulation.[24] This insight strikes at the heart of merit‑based accounts of human worth. If meaning rests on performance, intelligence, productivity, or achievement, then death exposes its fragility. Mortality is not merely an unfortunate interruption; within an under‑the‑sun worldview, it is a logical refutation. Death does not negate meaning accidentally, it reveals meaning’s structural inadequacy when grounded in immanence alone.
Artificial intelligence brings this tension into sharper relief. As machines increasingly surpass human capability in cognitive tasks, the instinctive human response is to retreat toward mortality as a final boundary: machines do not die, we tell ourselves, therefore human existence remains unique. Yet this line of defense is philosophically unstable. If dignity is grounded in capacity, death diminishes that dignity. If dignity is grounded in finitude, then fragility itself becomes the criterion of worth. Solomon anticipates this confusion and exposes it as another under the sun inversion. Mortality does not ground meaning; it exposes the necessity of grounding meaning elsewhere.[25]
The Collapse of Comparative Dignity
Ecclesiastes decisively undermines any conception of human value grounded in comparison. Wisdom is better than folly, yet wisdom does not deliver immunity. Strength is preferable to weakness, yet strength fails in the face of time. Wealth secures comfort, yet wealth cannot preserve memory. All comparative advantages produce only relative, temporary distinctions.
This observation is especially destabilizing for modern and postmodern anthropologies that equate dignity with intelligence. In such frameworks, cognitive capacity becomes the measure of moral standing. Artificial intelligence accelerates the consequences of this assumption. If intelligence confers worth, then entities that exhibit superior intelligence claim greater standing. The logic is not new, but AI renders it unavoidable.
Solomon’s refusal of comparative dignity cuts through this entire framework. Human worth is not located on a spectrum of capacity. It is not earned, optimized, or competitively secured. Under the sun comparisons inevitably collapse because the system in which comparison occurs lacks permanence – as Paul later echoes in his application of the same foundation of meaning to which Solomon appeals.[26] Solomon thereby clears conceptual ground for a radically different account of dignity, one that does not fluctuate with performance or capability.
The Problem of Memory and the Illusion of Legacy
Closely related to mortality is the problem of memory. Even if one accepts that death is inevitable, perhaps legacy can preserve meaning. Solomon tests this hope and finds it equally wanting.[27] Memory fades. Generations forget. Names disappear. What is remembered is often distorted, instrumentalized, or detached from its original significance. Legacy, like labor and wisdom, fails to produce yithron. It cannot secure meaning under the sun. History does not preserve value – it preserves artifacts. This realization dismantles the assumption that contribution alone can justify existence.
Artificial intelligence intensifies the fragility of legacy. Digital production multiplies artifacts while diluting remembrance. Content proliferates faster than attention. The record grows even as significance evaporates. In such a context, the desire to leave a mark becomes increasingly elusive. Solomon’s analysis predicts this outcome without reference to technology. Memory fails because time, not capacity, governs remembrance.
The Turn Beyond the Sun
At this point, Solomon has completed his demolition of under the sun philosophical systems.[28] Every under‑the‑sun strategy has been exposed as insufficient. Wisdom collapses. Pleasure dissipates. Labor fails. Progress cycles. Justice proves incomplete. Mortality nullifies merit. If the book ended here, nihilism would be unavoidable – but Ecclesiastes does not end here.
After relentlessly exposing the inadequacy of immanent meaning, Solomon intermittently introduces a perspective the details of which so far has been deliberately withheld: a perspective of life that extends beyond the under the sun limited metaphysic (or, as this writer references is it: the life beyond the sun perspective).[29] This transition is not gradual; it is decisive. Meaning is not incrementally recovered within the system, it is reoriented entirely. The repeated refrain that eating, drinking, and labor are “good” must now be read in light of their qualification: they are good from the hand of God.[30]
This distinction is crucial. Solomon does not reverse his earlier conclusions; he completes them. The same activities that were hebel under the sun are now re‑described as meaningful when engaged within the context of recognizing the Creator and Source who is transcendent – and at the same time, immanent and involved within His creation. The difference lies not in the activities themselves, but in their ontological reference point. Meaning is restored not by modifying human behavior, but by relocating its source.
Fear of God as Epistemological Orientation
The exhortation to “fear God and keep His commandments”[31] is frequently misunderstood as a simple behavioristic urging or moral closure. Yet, in fact, it functions as the philosophical resolution to every tension Ecclesiastes has raised. Fear denotes the resulting emotional dread that accompanies epistemic humility and recognition of our limitations as creatures in the light of His divine authority. The fear of the Lord is the proper perspective of and response to our Creator. The great ontological irony is that in the discovering of this emotional dread is also found the greatest realiziation of grace, peace, and meaning. Without a true understanding of the great fearsomeness of our Creator and our accountability to Him, we would scarcely recognize the unsurpassable magnitude of the grace extended to His creatures – that grace which provides the durability unachievable through any human endeavor engaged with an under the sun perspective.
Further, in fearing God, we acknowledge that meaning cannot be generated autonomously. It is an abandonment of the illusion of self‑grounding significance and an embracing of value as given rather than constructed. This posture directly counters confidence in human ingenuity, technological mastery, and algorithmic optimization.
In an age increasingly tempted to view artificial intelligence as either humanity’s successor or savior, the fear of God also functions as an interpretive safeguard. It reminds that meaning precedes intelligence, that value is not contingent on capability, and that dignity is conferred rather than achieved. AI, as merely and expression of human capability, cannot threaten such a framework because it never competes with the Source from which meaning flows.
Commandments, Moral Coherence, and the Recovery of Purpose
The call to keep God’s commandments follows naturally from the call to fear God. Commands, like meaning, cannot be sustained under the sun. Normativity untethered from authority degenerates into preference. Obligation without transcendence dissolves into negotiation. Solomon’s insistence on Divine command grounds moral coherence beyond social consensus or pragmatic utility. Solomon affirms this as the metaphysical reality undergirding value, teleology, and ethical responsibility. In light of this reality, the pursuit of meaning binds humanity to discover what the Creator expects of us, and to discover that design through means which He has determined and not through our own inventions.[32]
This is particularly significant in contemporary debates surrounding AI ethics. Guidelines, principles, and policy frameworks proliferate, yet their authority remains procedural rather than ontological. They function as instruments of coordination rather than sources of moral obligation.[33] Solomon’s resolution addresses this deficiency at its root. Moral obligation requires a moral Determiner who stands beyond the system.
Thus, Solomon’s reintroduction of God throughout Ecclesiastes does not negate rational inquiry nor the scientific experiments Solomon has engaged. It completes them. Meaning, morality, and purpose are not discarded, rather they are redeemed by being grounded where they belong.
Judgment and the Restoration of Moral Realism
Ecclesiastes culminates with a profound statement of the reality of judgment: “God will bring every act into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.”[34] This declaration is not appended sentimentally, rather it resolves the moral crisis Solomon has been carefully constructing. Judgment restores moral realism by affirming that actions matter beyond their immediate effects. Solomon challenges his readers to rediscover ordinary as glorious in the recognition of its value in the Creator’s axiology.
Under the sun, justice appears partial, delayed, or absent. Righteousness does not reliably lead to reward, nor wickedness to punishment. This observation, left unresolved, would justify cynicism. But Solomon refuses cynicism by refusing to legitimize the under the sun perspective. Instead, he affirms a metaphysically trustworthy model for judgment – that moral significance extends beyond temporal outcomes, and is rooted in the revealed value system of the Creator.
This aspect of Solomon’s Ecclesiastes has profound relevance in an age of artificial intelligence. As agency diffuses across networks, systems, and autonomous processes, accountability becomes increasingly unclear. The temptation is to abandon moral realism altogether in favor of pragmatic harm‑reduction. Solomon’s insistence on judgment resists this collapse. Accountability demands transcendence. Moral realism cannot survive without it.
Artificial Intelligence Revisited: Not a New Crisis, but a Clearer One
When the full arc of Solomon’s argument is taken into account, artificial intelligence appears not as an existential rupture but as a revealing pressure. AI exposes the failures of under‑the‑sun meaning with newfound force, but it does not introduce new philosophical problems. Every anxiety AI provokes about intelligence, labor, dignity, creativity, and accountability presupposes a worldview already incapable of sustaining meaning. Solomonic wisdom therefore provides not a reactionary critique of technology, but a diagnostic framework capable of interpreting it rightly. AI cannot threaten meaning grounded beyond the sun. It can only destabilize meaning that already failed to correspond to reality.
Life Beyond the Algorithm
One enduring contribution of Solomon’s life beyond the sun metaphysic lies in showing that the crisis of meaning is not a technological problem awaiting technological solution. It is a spiritual problem demanding spiritual resolution. Solomon does not instruct humanity to abandon wisdom, pleasure, or labor. Rather he instructs humanity to stop asking them to do what they cannot do.
Artificial intelligence accelerates this lesson by stripping away illusions of human exceptionalism grounded in capacity and capability. What remains is the question that Solomon presented long ago and remains relevant today: Where does meaning come from?
Solomon answers in Ecclesiastes with unrelenting clarity. Meaning is not discoverable in any under the sun metaphysic. Meaning is received from beyond. Until that answer is embraced, every advance – no matter how intelligent, autonomous, or efficient – will remain hebel.
[1] Ecclesiastes 1:3,9,14ff.
[2] Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1-6.
[3] E.g., in Ecclesiastes 1:2.
[4] Ecclesiastes 1:2.
[5] Ecclesiastes 1:4.
[6] E.g., in Ecclesiastes 1:3ff.
[7] Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (Ignatius Press, 2009), 19-42.
[8] Ecclesiastes 1:3-17.
[9] Ecclesiastes 2:13.
[10] Ecclesiastes 1:17.
[11] Ecclesiastes 2:16.
[12] Ecclesiastes 2:2.
[13] Ecclesiastes 2:11.
[14] Ecclesiastes 2:18-23.
[15] E.g., Ecclesiastes 3:16.
[16] Pascal similarly addresses this kind of inversion in Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin, 1995), §136–147.
[17] Ecclesiastes 1:9.
[18] Psalm 34:8.
[19] Christopher Cone, Life Beyond the Sun: Worldview and Philosophy Through the Lens of Ecclesiastes (Exegetica, 2016).
[20] Cone, Life Beyond the Sun, 7-10.
[21] Cone, Life Beyond the Sun, 155-160.
[22] Cone, Life Beyond the Sun, 25-28.
[23] Cone, Life Beyond the Sun, 332-345.
[24] Ecclesiastes 2:16, 3:19, 5:16.
[25] Ecclesiastes 9:5.
[26] E.g., 1 Corinthians 7:31.
[27] Ecclesiastes 2:16, 8:10, 9:5.
[28] The deceptiveness of the under the sun philosophies underscore why, in Colossians 2:8, Paul asserts without apology that philosophy of this pedigree is to be avoided.
[29] Ecclesiastes 1:13, 2:24,26, 3:10-18, 5:1-7,18-20, 6:2, 7:13-14,18,26,29, 8:2, 12,13,15,17, 9:1,7, 11:5,9, 12:7,13-14.
[30] Ecclesiastes 2:24, 3:13, 5:18, 8:15, 9:7.
[31] Ecclesiastes 12:13 (with 3:14, 5:7, 7:18, 8:12-13).
[32] Ecclesiastes 3:14.
[33] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007), 362-368ff.
[34] Ecclesiastes 12:14.
