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As part of the Bible and of world literature, the book of Ecclesiastes occupies a unique position. Long repudiated by modern scholarship as a product of King Solomon's hand, it presents a picture of an urbane but disillusioned individual whom nothing ruffles, or rather who permits nothing to ruffle him, and whose advice is “There is nothing better for man than he should eat, drink, and give himself ‘a good time’ (2.4), and to seek pleasure wherever he can find it. True, there is some advantage to wisdom, and life's experience may be enriched through marriage, and pleasure should be one's main objective. Nevertheless everything, however good, however beautiful, is vain and purposeless and ultimately is hebel “futility”. Everything should be taken lightly. There is really no goal for man to earnestly strive after. To use the title of a book by Morris Jastrow, Qohelet is “a gentle cynic”. The closest parrallel to him in universal literature has been adjudged to be Omar Khayyam.
While on the surface of things nothing disturbs him, psychoanalytic study provides a key to something significant in his personality. In chapter 12 of the book of Qohelet (Ecclesiastes), there is a poignant description of an old man and his declining, failing powers. The whole description is interwoven with high poetic imagery which certainly at the conclusion and most likely through the rest is sexually symbolic. I give the passage with some preliminary elucidation:
Remember then thy Creator (error in the Hebrew for “thy health”) in the days of thy youth while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou salt say, I have no pleasure in them
While the sun, or the light or the moon or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain;
In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble (figuratively for the arms), and the strong men shall bow themselves (the legs), and the grinders shall cease because they are few (the teeth), and those that look out of the windows b