Note: For this course you need only a King James Bible and this manuscript. We will use that as a standard. All the quotes from other translations are only for comparison. When you see the initials JB that stands for Jerusalem Bible.
Ecclesiastes is one of the most elusive books in the Bible. Its message seems profound, but at the same time empty, gloomy and even full of boredom and despair. It seems to be a handbook of nihilism. The Hebrew keyword hebel, ‘meaningless,’ occurs 38 times in the book. It is the same word that is found in the verse: ‘They made me jealous by what is no God and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.’  J. Sidlow Baxter, in Exploring the Book, states about Ecclesiastes: ‘This book of Ecclesiastes has been a much misunderstood book. Pessimists have found material in it to bolster up their doleful hypotheses.
Skeptics have claimed support from it for their contention of non-survival after death. Others have quoted it as confirming the theory of soul-sleep between the death of the body and the yet future resurrection. Besides these, many sound and sincere believers have felt it to be an unspiritually minded composition , contradictory to the principles of the New Testament, and awkward to harmonize with belief in the full inspiration of the Bible. It is the more needful, therefore, that we should clearly grasp its real message, and understand its peculiarities.