Passage

Ecclesiastes 1.1

Book: Ecclesiastes · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

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

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. 3. What profit hath man of all his labor wherein he laboreth under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3, ASV)

WEB

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

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher; “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” 3. What does man gain from all his labor in which he labors under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3, WEB)

KJV

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

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. 3. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3, KJV)

YLT

1. Words of a preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:

Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher, Vanity of vanities: the whole [is] vanity. 3. What advantage [is] to man by all his labour that he laboureth at under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: the book's narrator, introducing the Preacher in the third person, as again at Ecclesiastes 12:9-10
Audience: readers of Israel's wisdom tradition weighing life "under the sun"
Location: Jerusalem, where the Preacher "was king over Israel" (Ecclesiastes 1:12)
Time period: traditionally c. 970-930 BC (Solomon's reign); many scholars date the book later, c. 450-200 BC

Theological reading

The superscription names the speaker by a title, not a personal name. "Preacher" translates qoheleth (H6953), related to qahal, "assembly," and so one who gathers or addresses an assembly. The Greek title Ekklesiastes, from which the English name of the book comes, is built on ekklesia, the Greek word for an assembly.

The speaker is "the son of David, king in Jerusalem." The name Solomon never appears in the book, but the description and Qohelet's later account of himself point to him: "I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem" (Ecclesiastes 1:12), with wisdom "above all that were before me in Jerusalem" (Ecclesiastes 1:16). See Solomon.

Whether Solomon wrote the book is debated. Traditional readers take the self-description at face value; many critical scholars date the language later and read the royal voice as a literary persona. The codex discusses the question in OT Authorship and Prophetic Tradition. On either view, the book presents its search for meaning through a king who had every resource a man could have, which is what makes its verdict "all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2) carry weight.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

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Quoted in

Concepts:

OT Authorship and Prophetic Tradition

Passages:

Ecclesiastes 1

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.