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Commentary on Ecclesiastes 1 verses 9–11
Two things we are apt to take a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction in, and value ourselves upon, with reference to our business and enjoyments in the world, as if they helped to save them from vanity. Solomon shows us our mistake in both.
1.The novelty of the invention, that it is such as was never known before. How grateful is it to think that none ever made such advances in knowledge, and such discoveries by it, as we, that none ever made such improvements of an estate or trade, and had the art of enjoying the gains of it, as we have. Their contrivances and compositions are all despised and run down, and we boast of new fashions, new hypotheses, new methods, new expressions, which jostle out the old, and put them down. But this is all a mistake: The thing that is, and shall be, is the same with that which has been, and that which shall be done will be but the same with that which is done, for there is no new thing under the sun, Ecc 1:9. It is repeated (Ecc 1:10) by way of question, is there any thing of which it may be said, with wonder, See, this is new; there never was the like? It is an appeal to observing men, and a challenge to those that cry up modern learning above that of the ancients. Let them name any thing which they take to be new, and though perhaps we cannot make it to appear, for want of the records of former times, yet we have reason to conclude that it has been already of old time, which was before us. What is there in the kingdom of nature of which we may say, This is new? The works were finished from the foundation of the world (Heb 4:3); things which appear new to us, as they do to children, are not so in themselves. The heavens were of old; the earth abides for ever; the powers of nature and the links of natural causes are still the same that ever they were. In the kingdom of Providence, though the course and method of it have not such known and certain rules as that of nature, nor does it go always in the same track, yet, in the general, it is still the same thing over and over again. Men's hearts, and the corruptions of them, are still the same; their desires, and pursuits, and complaints, are still the same; and what God does in his dealings with men is according to the scripture, according to the manner, so that it is all repetition. What is surprising to us needs not be so, for there has been the like, the like strange advancements and disappointments, the like strange revolutions and sudden turns, sudden turns of affairs; the miseries of human life have always been much the same, and mankind tread a perpetual round, and, as the sun and wind, are but where they were. Now the design of this is, (1.) To show the folly of the children of men in affecting things that are new, in imagining that they have discovered such things, and in pleasing and priding themselves in them. We are apt to nauseate old things, and to grow weary of what we have been long used to, as Israel of the manna, and covet, with the Athenians, still to tell and hear of some new thing, and admire this and the other as new, whereas it is all what has been. Tatianus the Assyrian, showing the Grecians how all the arts which they valued themselves upon owed their original to those nations which they counted barbarous, thus reasons with them: "For shame, do not call those things eurēseis - inventions, which are but mimēseis - imitations." (2.) To take us off from expecting happiness or satisfaction in the creature. Why should we look for it there, where never any yet have found it? What reason have we to think that the world should be any kinder to us than it has been to those that have gone before us, since there is nothing in it that is new, and our predecessors have made as much of it as could be made? Your fathers did eat manna, and yet they are dead. See Joh 8:8, Joh 8:9; Joh 6:49. (3.) To quicken us to secure spiritual and eternal blessings. If we would be entertained with new things, we must acquaint ourselves with the things of God, get a new nature; then old things pass away, and all things become new, Co2 5:17. The gospel puts a new song into our mouths. In heaven all is new (Rev 21:5), all new at first, wholly unlike the present state of things, a new world indeed (Luk 20:35), and all new to eternity, always fresh, always flourishing. This consideration should make us willing to die, That in this world there is nothing but the same over and over again, and we can expect nothing from it more or better than we have had.
2.The memorableness of the achievement, that it is such as will be known and talked of hereafter. Many think they have found satisfaction enough in this, that their names shall be perpetuated, that posterity will celebrate the actions they have performed, the honours they have won, and the estates they have raised, that their houses shall continue for ever (Psa 49:11); but herein they deceive themselves. How many former things and persons were there, which in their day looked very great and made a mighty figure, and yet there is no remembrance of them; they are buried in oblivion. Here and there one person or action that was remarkable met with a kind historian, and had the good hap to be recorded, when at the same time there were others, no less remarkable, that were dropped: and therefore we may conclude that neither shall there be any remembrance of things to come, but that which we hope to be remembered by will be either lost or slighted.
It is probably in this way that, so far as our weakness allows, we shall maintain a reverent belief about God, neither asserting that his creatures were unbegotten and coeternal with him nor that he turned to the work of creation to do good when he had done nothing good before. For the saying that is written, “In wisdom you have made all things,” is a true one. And certainly if “all things have been made in wisdom,” then since wisdom has always existed, there have always existed in wisdom, by a prefiguration and preformation, those things which afterwards have received substantial existence. This is, I believe, the thought and meaning of Solomon when he says in Ecclesiastes, “What is it that has been made? The same that is to be. And what is it that has been created? The same that is destined to be created. And there is nothing fresh under the sun. If one should speak of anything and say, Behold, this is new: it already has been, in the ages that were before us.” If then particular things which are “under the sun” have already existed in the ages which were before us—since “there is nothing fresh under the sun”—then all universal categories have forever existed, and some would say even individual things; but either way, it is clear that God did not begin to create after spending a period in idleness.
We say that not then for the first time did God begin to work when he made this visible world; but as, after its destruction, there will be another world, so also we believe that others existed before the present came into being. And both of these positions will be confirmed by the authority of Holy Scripture. For that there will be another world after this is taught by Isaiah, who says, “There will be new heavens, and a new earth, which I shall make to abide in my sight, says the Lord.” And that before this world others also existed is shown by Ecclesiastes, in the words “What is that which has been? Even that which shall be. And what is that which has been created? Even this which is to be created: and there is nothing altogether new under the sun. Who shall speak and declare, Lo, this is new? It has already been in the ages which have been before us.” By these testimonies it is established both that there were ages before our own and that there will be others after it. It is not, however, to be supposed that several worlds existed at once but that, after the end of this present world, others will take their beginning.
Let no one listening to these words think that much talk and the repetition of words is vanity by the distinction between what is and what had been, for they demonstrate the difference between body and soul. Although the meaning of terms does not differ that much, the text does make a distinction to clearly manifest the difference for you. The soul existed right from the beginning; it had been purified in the past and will appear in the future. God fashioned the human body and will show the resurrection at the proper time, for that which comes after the resurrection was indeed fashioned first. The resurrection is nothing other than the restoration [apokatastasis.] of all things to their original state.
Let none of those listening think that there is a longwinded and meaningless repetition of words in the distinction between what has come to be and what has been made. The text points out in each of the expressions the difference between the soul and the flesh. The soul has come to be, and the body has been made. It is not because the words have two different meanings that the text uses this distinction of terminology for each of the things referred to. But [it does so] to enable you to reckon what is advantageous in each case. The soul came to be in the beginning the same as it will again appear hereafter, when it has been purified. The body shaped by the hands of God was made what the resurrection of the dead in due time will reveal it to be. For such as you may see it after the resurrection of the dead, just such it was made at the first. The resurrection of the dead is nothing but the complete restoration of the original state.
"The
thing that has been, it is that which will be.
And that which is done is that which shall be done. And there is no new thing under the sun." It seems to me that he now speaks generally about those
things that he enumerated above: about generation after generation, the globe
of the earth, the rising and setting of the sun, the course of rivers, the
vastness of the ocean and all things which we learn either through thought or
through sight or hearing, because there is nothing in nature that has not been
before. For from the beginning of the
world men have been born and have died, and the earth stood level above the
waters and the sun lay in its origin.
And lest I should go on to list more things, it is left to God as
creator to fly with the birds, to swim with the fish, and walk with the
creatures of the earth and slide with snakes.
And the comic [Terence Eunuchus, prol. 41.]
said something similar to this: "Nothing has been said, which has not been
said before", about which my teacher Donatus, when he was lecturing about
this verse, said: "Let them die, who have said our words before us." [Donatus Comm. in Terent. Eun.]
Then if is possible to say nothing new in discourse, how great the creation of
the world must have been, which has been complete right from the start, that
God was able to rest from his work on the seventh day! Read also in another book: "If
everything that is done under the sun has already been done is past centuries,
and man was already made when the sun was made: then man existed before he came
under the sun." [Origines peri Archon III 5, 3.] But he is excluded, because by this reasoning
even packhorses, gnats, and each insect and large animal is said to have been
made before the sky. Unless however he
should reply that talking comes from the consequences of speaking not about
other animals but about the man Ecclesiastes, for he says "there is nothing
new under the sun about which one can say 'look this is new!' But he does not speak of animals but of man
alone, because if he means animals to be new, then he refutes his own opinion
that nothing is new under the sun.
There are some people who want to twist even a famous passage in the book of Solomon, called Ecclesiastes, into a defense of these recurring cycles of universal dissolution and re-evocation of the past: “What is it that has been? The same thing that shall be. What is it that has been done? The same that shall be done. Nothing under the sun is new, neither is anyone able to say, ‘Behold, this is new,’ for it has already gone before in the ages that were before us.” But here Solomon was speaking either of things he had just been discussing—the succession of generations, the revolution of the sun, the course of rivers—or, at any rate, of those creatures in general that come to life and die. For example, there were people before us, they are with us now, and they shall come after us. And the same is true of animals and plants. Even monstrosities that are abnormal at birth, different as they are among themselves and, in certain cases, unique, nevertheless, inasmuch as they come under the heading of prodigies and monsters, have existed before and will exist again. Consequently, it is nothing new or even of recent date that a monster should be born under the sun. However, there are some who interpret the words to mean that what Solomon had in mind was that, in the predestination of God, everything is already a fact and, in that sense, there is nothing new under the sun.Far be it from us Christians, however, to believe that these words of Solomon refer to those cycles by which, as these philosophers suppose, the same periods of time and sequence of events will be repeated. For example, the philosopher Plato having taught in a certain age at the school of Athens called the Academy, even so, through innumerable ages of the past at long but definite intervals, this same Plato and the same city, the same school and the same disciples all existed and will all exist again and again through innumerable ages of the future. Far be it from us, I say, to believe this.
For Christ died once for our sins; and “having risen from the dead, dies now no more, death shall no longer have dominion over him.” And we after the resurrection “shall ever be with the Lord,” to whom we say, as the holy psalmist reminds us, “You, Oh Lord, will preserve us: and keep us from this generation forever.” And the verse that follows, I think, may be suitably applied to these philosophers: “The wicked walk round about.” These words do not mean that their life will repeatedly recur in cycle after cycle as they think but that here and now the way of their errors, that is, their false doctrine, goes around in circles.
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SUMMARY
Ecclesiastes 1:9 presents Qoheleth's foundational assertion regarding the inherent repetitiveness and cyclical nature of existence within the earthly realm. It posits that human experience, actions, and historical events are not marked by genuine novelty but rather by an endless recurrence of what has already transpired. This declaration establishes a somber, realistic tone for the book, introducing the pervasive theme of futility and the profound challenge of finding lasting meaning in a world where everything appears to return to its origin, prompting a deeper search beyond temporal confines.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Ecclesiastes 1:9 masterfully employs several potent literary devices to convey its central message of cyclical repetition and the absence of true novelty. The most prominent is Repetition, vividly illustrated by the mirroring phrases "hath been...shall be" and "is done...shall be done." This structural repetition not only emphasizes the relentless, cyclical nature of time and events but also creates a rhythmic, almost hypnotic quality that reinforces the Preacher's point about life's ceaseless patterns. Closely related is Parallelism, where the two initial clauses ("The thing that hath been..." and "that which is done...") are syntactically similar, serving to amplify and intensify the central idea of recurrence. The sweeping statement "there is no new thing under the sun" can be interpreted as a form of Hyperbole, an intentional overstatement designed to stress the profound lack of lasting innovation or true, fundamental change within the human sphere, rather than a literal denial of all minor variations or superficial advancements. Finally, the recurring phrase "under the sun" functions as a powerful Metonymy or Symbolism, representing the entire realm of human existence as observed from an earthly, finite viewpoint, distinct from any divine or eternal perspective. This phrase sets the philosophical boundaries for Qoheleth's inquiry, indicating that his conclusions apply specifically to life lived apart from transcendent revelation.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Ecclesiastes 1:9, with its stark declaration of "no new thing under the sun," serves as a profound theological challenge to human self-sufficiency and the pursuit of ultimate meaning in temporal achievements. While seemingly pessimistic, it implicitly points to the necessity of a transcendent reality for true novelty and lasting significance. The verse highlights the limitations of human wisdom and effort when confined to the earthly sphere, suggesting that genuine fulfillment cannot be found in the cyclical patterns of this world. Theologically, it underscores the human condition of finitude and the inability to break free from repetitive patterns of sin, weariness, and futility apart from divine intervention. This sets the stage for a deeper understanding of God's unique ability to act in history, to create, and to redeem, offering a hope that lies beyond the sun's dominion and the confines of human experience.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
Ecclesiastes 1:9 compels us to critically examine our own pursuits and where we seek lasting satisfaction. In a modern world obsessed with innovation, progress, and the "next big thing," Qoheleth's ancient observation remains strikingly relevant. It challenges the pervasive illusion that new technologies, social reforms, or personal achievements will fundamentally alter the human condition or provide ultimate meaning. If everything "under the sun" is merely a repetition, then our deepest longings for purpose, significance, and genuine fulfillment cannot be met by temporal advancements or cyclical experiences. This verse encourages a profound humility, prompting us to acknowledge the limits of our own efforts and to look beyond the visible, tangible world for true novelty and enduring value. It invites us to consider that genuine transformation and lasting hope must originate from a source that transcends the repetitive cycles of earthly existence, pointing us toward the divine.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Is this verse inherently pessimistic or fatalistic?
Answer: While Ecclesiastes 1:9, taken in isolation, can certainly sound pessimistic due to its emphasis on repetition and lack of novelty, it is crucial to understand it within the broader theological and literary context of the book. Qoheleth's exploration of life "under the sun" is an honest and rigorous assessment of human existence apart from a clear, revealed understanding of God's transcendent purposes. The perceived futility serves as a setup, prompting the reader to search for meaning beyond the temporal cycles. It's not fatalistic in the sense of denying human agency, but rather highlights the limits of that agency to create lasting, ultimate significance from within itself. The "pessimism" is a rhetorical device designed to lead the reader to a higher, God-centered wisdom, ultimately pointing towards the conclusion found in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14.
Does "no new thing under the sun" contradict technological progress and innovation?
Answer: No, this verse does not contradict technological or scientific progress in a superficial sense. Qoheleth's observation is not about the development of new tools, inventions, or superficial innovations. Instead, it speaks to the fundamental nature of human experience, desires, struggles, and the cyclical patterns of history. While humanity invents new devices and discovers new knowledge, the underlying human condition—our search for meaning, our capacity for joy and sorrow, our pride, our folly, our mortality—remains constant. The "new things" are merely variations on old themes, and they do not fundamentally alter the human predicament or offer lasting satisfaction. The verse points to a deeper, existential lack of novelty that transcends mere technological advancements, highlighting that true fulfillment lies beyond what human ingenuity can produce "under the sun."
What does the phrase "under the sun" specifically refer to in Ecclesiastes?
Answer: The phrase "under the sun" (Hebrew: tahat ha-shemesh) is a key interpretive lens for the book of Ecclesiastes, appearing nearly 30 times. It refers to human life and experience as observed from a purely earthly, temporal, and human-centric perspective. It signifies a viewpoint that largely excludes direct divine revelation, eternal purposes, or the supernatural. When Qoheleth says "no new thing under the sun," he is limiting his observation to what can be seen, experienced, and understood within the confines of the natural world and human history, without explicit reference to God's intervention, the afterlife, or a transcendent hope. This perspective is essential for understanding the book's often somber conclusions, which are designed to show the inadequacy of finding ultimate meaning and lasting satisfaction apart from God. The book's ultimate purpose is to demonstrate the futility of life when viewed solely from this limited, earthly perspective, thereby prompting a search for meaning in God alone, as hinted in Ecclesiastes 5:4-7.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
Ecclesiastes 1:9, with its declaration of "no new thing under the sun," sets the stage for the profound and radical "newness" brought by Jesus Christ, offering the ultimate answer to Qoheleth's lament. While the Preacher observes the endless cycles of human futility and repetition, the New Testament proclaims that in Christ, God has done a truly new thing, breaking the cycle of sin, death, and meaninglessness that characterizes life "under the sun." Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, offering a new covenant that transcends the old law and its repetitive sacrifices, providing a definitive atonement once for all. Through His sacrificial death and glorious resurrection, Christ inaugurates a new creation, where believers are made new creatures and receive a new heart and a new spirit that enables them to live according to God's will. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate "new thing," demonstrating God's power to overcome death and establish an eternal reality that is utterly distinct from the cyclical, temporal existence observed by Qoheleth. In Christ, the old has passed away, and the truly new has come, offering genuine hope, purpose, and a future where God makes all things new, fulfilling the deepest longings that life "under the sun" can never satisfy.