Ecclesiastes 8: 14-17….Do you get the meaning?

There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.
When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one’s eyes see sleep, then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.

Comment: What do you take ‘vanity’ to mean here? Often vanity seems to be ‘ghostly’, ‘misty, ‘like a passing wind’. Here used about the way good and bad don’t seem to get their just deserts, I think it means something like ‘how we behave is pointless’. I would like to ask Solomon exactly what he meant, if I get the chance, in the hereafter! I don’t think he is talking mainly to the righteous when he says enjoy life but to the genuinely righteous. who are frustrated, he says ‘Keep on being righteous, and don’t let bad things spoil your life!’ he says.

Read the second paragraph in the passage above again. Look Creation is beyond our wildest imaginings in its complexity. If I spend my waking hours and sleepless nights trying to get to the bottom of it the Universe is so great that even the wisest and most diligent will not get to understand it all. It reminds me of Werner Heisenberg who said—the first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.

Prayer: Please give me an enquiring mind but, please, give me Wisdom and Faith to handle my knowledge well!