Catholic Commentary
The Final Refrain: Vanity of Vanities
8“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher. “All is vanity!”
Ecclesiastes 12:8 concludes the Preacher's central argument by repeating the opening declaration that everything under the sun is hebel—a Hebrew term meaning breath or vapor, referring to the transient and ultimately meaningless nature of human endeavor. This verse forms a literary bookend with Ecclesiastes 1:2, enclosing the entire work and emphasizing that despite pursuing wisdom, pleasure, wealth, and labor, all vanish without lasting substance.
Vanity is not despair—it's the honest diagnosis that every human substitute for God turns to vapor, clearing the space where only God can rest.
Catholic tradition has never read Ecclesiastes as a book of despair but as a work of purifying wisdom. St. Jerome, who translated Qoheleth into the Vulgate with particular care, wrote in his Commentary on Ecclesiastes that the book's purpose is "to show that all things in the world are vain, and to invite the soul to seek the one true good." Jerome understood hebel not as nihilism but as an ascetic truth: the creature cannot satisfy the heart made for the Creator.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 2), uses Ecclesiastes' logic implicitly: no finite good — wealth, honor, pleasure, power — can constitute the beatitudo of a rational creature, because the will has an appetite proportioned only to universal Good, i.e., God himself. Qoheleth's exhaustive catalogue of disappointments is, in Thomistic terms, the via negativa of moral philosophy.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§ 1718) echoes this precisely: "The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it." The cry of hebel is the inverse of the Beatitudes — both point to the same truth from opposite directions.
Pope Benedict XVI, in Spe Salvi (§ 11–12), describes how partial, finite goods cannot anchor hope, and that only a hope founded in God can sustain human life. Ecclesiastes 12:8 is the existential pressure that makes the theology of Spe Salvi felt, not merely understood. The "vanity of vanities" is the wound; the Resurrection is the cure.
For a contemporary Catholic, Ecclesiastes 12:8 arrives with peculiar force in a culture that has perfected the machinery of distraction. Social media, consumer culture, and the relentless optimization of experience are the modern equivalents of Qoheleth's vineyards and harems — sophisticated systems for producing satisfaction that always defers its arrival. The verse is not an invitation to disengage from life but to disengage from idolatry of life.
A practical application: use this verse as an Examen prompt. At the end of a day, ask not "was I productive?" but "in what did I seek the permanent through the temporary?" Qoheleth is not against joy — he celebrates it repeatedly (2:24, 9:7–9) — but against joy that forgets its Source. The Catholic practitioner can receive this verse as permission to stop performing contentment with things that do not finally satisfy, and to let that honest ache drive them toward Eucharist, toward prayer, toward the God who alone is not hebel.
Commentary
Ecclesiastes 12:8 — "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher"
The Hebrew word rendered "vanity" is hebel (הֶבֶל), literally "breath" or "vapor" — something visible for a moment and then gone without a trace. The superlative construction "vanity of vanities" (as in "Song of Songs" or "Holy of Holies") marks this as the most complete, most thoroughgoing expression of the concept: not merely some things, but the totality of human experience sub sole ("under the sun") is hebel. It is the same phrase that opens the book in 1:2, and its repetition here is no accident. The editorial hand (most scholars identify vv. 9–14 as a secondary epilogue) places this verse as the hinge between Qoheleth's own words and the epilogist's final summary, suggesting that the compiler understood 12:8 as the master-key to the entire composition.
The word Qoheleth (translated "Preacher" or "Teacher") derives from qahal, the assembly or congregation. Qoheleth is thus not a private philosopher muttering to himself but a speaker before the community, which gives the declaration weight and gravity. He is not confessing personal despair — he is pronouncing a truth meant for all Israel.
Structurally, 12:8 functions as the closing bracket of an inclusio that spans all twelve chapters. The opening salvo in 1:2 ("Vanity of vanities! All is vanity") is now answered, not refuted, after the Preacher has exhausted every avenue of human flourishing: wisdom (1:12–18), pleasure (2:1–11), labor (2:18–26), wealth (5:10–6:9), fame, and even religious observance done without heart. He has seen royal courts, vineyards, and the grave. None of it holds. The literary effect is that the reader is trapped — there is no exit from this verdict except upward.
The typological sense reaches forward to Christ. If hebel is "breath," then the entire economy of fallen human striving cries out for the one who is himself the Breath of God, the divine Logos who makes meaning permanent. The Fathers read Ecclesiastes as a great apophatic preparation for the Gospel: by systematically demolishing every finite idol, Qoheleth clears the interior space that only the Infinite can fill. The "vanity" is not a counsel of despair but a diagnosis that makes the medicine intelligible.
The anagogical sense points to eschatological completion: what is hebel in this age is transfigured in the resurrection. The vapor does not vanish into nothing but is, as it were, condensed into the glory of the world to come. Every good desire obscured by in the present life finds its permanent form in God.