The Book of Ecclesiastes is known in Hebrew as the Book of Qoheleth. We could call it the Book of the Preacher for the Greek word ecclesiastes and the Hebrew word qoheleth indicates the one who speaks in the assembly. This particular “preacher” is called “son of David and king of Jerusalem.”  We know him as Solomon.

  However we should understand this mention f the author as a conventional literary device by which the actual author presents his thoughts under the name of the greatest sage of Israel. Indeed, scripture scholars identify at least two authors—the main author who is called Qoheleth and an editor whose contributions to the book were of minor importance.

  The book was written in Hebrew and perhaps by someone who lived near the seacoast north of Palestine proper. Scholars tend to date it around 300 B.C. and certainly after the Exile. The author had many experiences of life and he reflected deeply on every aspect of it. He believes in God but admits that his knowledge is very skimpy. His knowledge of human affairs is vast indeed. The book belongs to the Wisdom Books of the Bible – Job, Ecclesiasticus, Proverbs, Wisdom, Song of Songs.

  The second verse strikes the refrain that is known to all of us: “Vanity of vanities, Qoheleth says. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity!”  The phrase “vanity of vanities” is a Hebrew way of expressing a superlative, like “king of kings.”  We would say “the greatest king.” Thus Qoheleth is talking about “the greatest vanity.” By :vanity” he means something like “transient, passing, futile, empty, unreliable.” But in labeling all the realities of human life as “vain,” he is not condemning them as completely worthless although it might seem to be so. He is saying that they do not go far enough to fill a man’s cup, for in the long run, at death, they are seen to be incomplete, leaving the vast heart of man quite empty after all.

The author, too, is criticising some of the earlier Hebrew men who put forth the simple formula that the good man is automatically happy and prosperous while the sinner is miserable, poor, and frustrated. He is writing like the author of the Book of Job who also searched for a more complex answer to the problem of good and evil.

  Qoheleth admits that he does not know how God administers justice, and he does not demand that God should tell us how things are as they are. He strikes a blow for divine sovereignty and independence. His exposition of the inadequacies of the simple solution as taught by his predecessors prepares the way for a new revelation about attachment to the goods of this world which is expressed in a succinct form in the Eight Beatitudes – “Happy  are the poor.”

   In reading the Book of Ecclesiastes, one is  struck by the great number of familiar sayings like “Where the tree falls, there it lies,” “He who digs a pit may fall into it,” “Cast your bread upon the waters; after a long time you may find it again.” The first eight verses of Chapter 3 have consoled many on the sad occasion of the death of a dear one: “There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven a time for giving birth a time for dying.“

  The Song of Songs is the Hebrew way of saying “the greatest of all songs” as explained  above. The Song of Songs is a series of love poems in which lover and loved are now united, now divided, now sought, now found – characteristic of lovers then and now. The Hebrews considered these poems to be the greatest ever written on love. There are many today who would agree that the Song of Songs has never been surpassed by any poet before or since who attempted to express in words perhaps this greatest of human mysteries. St. Jerome’s translation of this book into Latin is his most beautiful written work.

Most of the great love poems of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance gather their strength, their images, even their sounds directly or indirectly from his Latin masterpiece. The Second Spring, composed for the occasion of the reestablishment  of the Catholic hierarchy in England, is filled with quotes and allusions to the Song of Songs.

  In the Hebrew Bible this was the first of the five “rolls” which were read at Passover commemorating the deliverance from captivity in Egypt when Yahweh showed His love for His own people.

  Hebrew tradition ascribes the authorship to Solomon. But it was the custom, as we have seen before in speaking of Wisdom Books, to ascribe all literature of this kind to the greatest of the Hebrew sages.

  How to interpret the Song of Songs poses the main problem. The Jewish rabbis understood it as an allegory in which the relationship of lover and beloved is that between God and Israel. Writers in the early Church for the most part, and the majority of Catholic commentators today accept this allegorical explanation with some modifications. Other scholars take the most obvious meaning of a collection of  hymns to true love sanctified by union, and since God has given His blessing to marriage, the theme is of the religious and not merely of the physical order. In any case, we are justified in applying the Song to the mutual love of Christ and His Church and of the individual soul with God. Great mystics like St. John of the Cross found that it expressed their love of God better than any other part of the Bible.