If a simple shepherd had written these things, we might suppose that there were many pleasures and experiences to which he had no access, but this preacher was Solomon, ‘the son of David, king in Jerusalem’. He had vast wealth. He had every opportunity to indulge himself to his heart’s desire. And this he did, exploring every available facet of science, craft, and pleasure. Before his conversion to God he tried every imaginable recipe for happiness, experimenting with almost anything that excited him mentally and bodily, including even mindless folly. But later, he looked back over the years and pronounced this verdict on it all – ‘Vanity of vanities!’
The honour given to Solomon and his great reputation for wisdom would have meant that this book was treated with the utmost respect in spite of the difficulty of understanding its enigmatic sayings. The godly would have patiently persisted, concluding that, if they could not at first grasp its meaning, the deficiency lay in them and not in the words of a man to whom God had given unique and notable wisdom.