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Solomon Tried Everything and Isaiah Finished the Sentence

Solomon chased every pleasure under the sun and called it vanity. Kohelet Rabbah says he was waiting for Isaiah to finish the sentence he could not.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The king who tested both sides
  2. The queen who came to test a different kind of wisdom
  3. The light that was sweeter than the sun
  4. Isaiah comes in and finishes it

The king who tested both sides

He did not fall into excess the way ordinary kings fall, by accident and appetite. Solomon went into it deliberately. When he writes "I will experiment in joy" in the second chapter of Ecclesiastes, the Hebrew verb he uses is anasekha, and the rabbis who built Kohelet Rabbah in Palestine around the eighth century heard a double dare in it.

Rabbi Pinhas, citing Rabbi Simon bar Zavdi, said Solomon tried Torah first. He lived inside its boundaries and tested what that felt like. Then he stepped outside. He tried heresy, examined it from the inside, measured its satisfactions, and came back running. Then, in a move that must have confused everyone watching, he looked at the goodness he had just returned to and called even that vanity.

Not a dismissal. A comparison. The Torah that human beings study and forget and relearn every week is genuinely good. But it is not the same Torah as the one God promises in Jeremiah 31, where the law will be written inside the heart itself. No memorization. No forgetting. No Tuesday slippage. A Torah that is not learned but simply known, the way the blood knows where to go.

Solomon called present Torah vanity the way a traveler, returned from a long journey, calls a comfortable inn "not home." Accurate. Not insulting. Specific.

The queen who came to test a different kind of wisdom

The Queen of Sheba enters Kohelet Rabbah not as a political visit but as an intellectual one. She had heard something about Solomon. She came to find out if what she heard was true.

The version in Kohelet Rabbah preserves a riddle game between them, and the riddles are not ornamental. They are tests of the same faculty Solomon had been pushing to its limits all his life: the ability to see beneath the surface of a thing to its actual nature. She put images before him and asked him to find what was alive and what was dead, what was real and what was imitation. He answered correctly each time.

What she concluded from this was not that Solomon was clever. She concluded that he was the real thing. The wisdom she had been told about was not reputation. It was actually present in the man. She said so, directly, and went home.

The midrash preserves this scene inside a commentary on the verse about the light of wisdom being sweeter than the sun, because the Queen of Sheba's journey is the working demonstration. She traveled farther than the sun's reach to test something she had only heard about, and what she found was worth the trip.

The light that was sweeter than the sun

Kohelet Rabbah stops at Ecclesiastes 11:7, "sweet is the light, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun," and reads it as a statement about Torah. The light that is sweet is not the physical light. It is the light of learning.

The rabbis gave this an image. A man walking in the dark keeps stumbling over stones, over holes, over the edges of things he cannot see. Give him a lamp and he stops stumbling. The lamp does not change the road. The road has the same stones in the same places. The lamp changes what he knows about them in time to act differently.

Solomon had the lamp his whole life. The problem Solomon describes in Ecclesiastes is not that he could not see. It is that he could see everything, including the gap between the light he had and the light that would eventually be available. He could see, by the lamp of Torah, that there was a brighter light coming. He just could not carry it yet.

Isaiah comes in and finishes it

The midrash puts Isaiah before Solomon in a vision, and the scene it imagines is brief. Solomon has been trying for years to articulate what he is reaching toward. Vapor of vapors, he keeps saying. Nothing under the sun satisfies, he keeps writing. He is circling something he cannot name.

Isaiah names it.

The verse from Isaiah that the midrash brings is chapter 60:19: "The sun shall no more be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory." Sun replaced. Moon replaced. The source of light stops being external and becomes the One who is the source of everything.

Solomon had been writing around that verse his whole life. He had been saying "not the sun, not the moon, not the wine, not the women, not the wisdom" and he could not get to the positive statement. Isaiah gave him the positive statement. Hevel havalim, vapor of vapors, is finally legible once you know what it is that is not vapor. Solomon called everything vanity as a way of pointing to the one thing that was not. He just needed a prophet who had seen it directly to finish the sentence.

Midrash RabbahKoheletSolomonTorah
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Kohelet Rabbah 1:1Kohelet Rabbah

That feeling isn't new. In fact, the book of Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet in Hebrew, wrestles with it head-on. "I said in my heart: Come now, I will experiment in joy, and see goodness; and, behold, it too is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 2:1). It's a verse that gets right to the heart of our search for meaning.

What does it mean, exactly? The rabbis of old, in Kohelet Rabbah, a Midrashic (rabbinic interpretive commentary) commentary on Ecclesiastes, dove deep into unpacking this statement.

Rabbi Pinḥas and Rabbi Ḥizkiyya, both quoting Rabbi Simon bar Zavdi, offer fascinating interpretations. Rabbi Pinḥas takes the phrase "I will experiment" (anasekha) and cleverly plays with the Hebrew. He suggests it means, "I will experiment with this, and I will experiment." He sees Kohelet as saying, "I will try matters of Torah, and I will try matters of heresy." It's as if Kohelet is deliberately exploring both paths, ultimately fleeing from the emptiness of heresy to the goodness of Torah. "And see goodness," Rabbi Pinḥas says, referring specifically to "the goodness of Torah." But then… "And, behold, it too is vanity."

Why "vanity" when Kohelet said "joy"? That’s the question! Rabbi Ḥizkiyya, also in the name of Rabbi Simon bar Zavdi, offers a powerful idea: all the Torah that you study in this world, as precious as it is, is nothing compared to the Torah in the World to Come. In this world, we struggle, we learn, and yes, we forget. It's a constant process of remembering and relearning. But in the World to Come? (Jeremiah 31:32) tells us, "I placed My Torah in their midst." It’s inherent, internal, a part of our very being.

And the Rabbis say, continuing on this line of thought, that even the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, will melt before the good inclination in that future world. They cleverly interpret *anasekha to mean "will melt" (yinatekh). The internal struggle we face here and now will simply cease to exist.

Rabbi Yona, again citing Rabbi Simon bar Zevid, takes it a step further, focusing on serenity. Any peace, any contentment, any sense of well-being we find in this world is fleeting, transient, "vanity" compared to the serenity of the World to Come. Why? Because in this world, as Rabbi Yona points out, we die and leave our serenity, our prosperity, our comfort, to someone else. But in the World to Come, as (Isaiah 65:22) promises, "They will not build and another inhabit." The fruits of our labor, the peace we create, will be ours to enjoy eternally.

So, what's the takeaway? Is Kohelet just a pessimist, telling us everything is meaningless? Not at all. It's an invitation to look beyond the immediate, to recognize that true and lasting fulfillment isn't found in fleeting pleasures or even in the accumulation of worldly knowledge. It's a glimpse into a future where our struggles cease, where Torah is internalized, and where serenity is not borrowed or fleeting, but an eternal inheritance. It's a reminder that the pursuit of joy, while valid, should ultimately lead us toward something deeper, something more enduring.

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Kohelet Rabbah 7:1Kohelet Rabbah

Uplifting, even.

The book of Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet as we know it in Hebrew, captures this feeling perfectly: "The light is sweet, and it is good for the eyes to behold the sun." (Ecclesiastes 11:7). But what kind of light are we really talking about here?

Well, in Kohelet Rabbah, a fascinating collection of rabbinic interpretations on Ecclesiastes, the rabbis suggest a beautiful idea: that the "light" isn't just about the physical sun. It's about the light of Torah. It’s a powerful image, isn't it? When we explore Torah, when we wrestle with its teachings and stories, doesn’t it feel like a light is being switched on inside us? Doesn't learning offer a new perspective, a clearer understanding, a path forward?

The text continues, "Happy is he whose learning illuminates for him like the sun." What a blessing – to have your understanding, your very life, lit up by the wisdom of Torah!

But the rabbis don't stop there. Rabbi Aḥa offers another layer to this radiant image. He suggests that the "light" Ecclesiastes speaks of is actually the light of the World to Come – Olam Ha-Ba (the World to Come). That ultimate, unimaginable reality that awaits us.

Think about the implications. If even a glimpse of earthly sunlight brings us joy, how much more glorious must the light of the World to Come be?

Rabbi Aḥa says: "The light of the World to Come is sweet. Happy is he who will merit to see that light." He then points us to the prophet Isaiah (30:26), who paints a vivid picture of that future time: "The light of the moon will be like the light of the sun…"

Imagine a world where even the moonlight is as bright as sunshine! A world bathed in such intense, unadulterated light. It's a breathtaking vision.

So, the next time you feel the sun on your face, remember this teaching. Remember that the light we see is just a hint, a whisper, of the greater lights that are available to us. The light of Torah, illuminating our minds and hearts. And the ultimate light of the World to Come, beckoning us towards an eternity of joy and understanding.

What kind of light are you seeking today?

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Kohelet Rabbah 7:7Kohelet Rabbah

The ancient rabbis grappled with it too. In fact, the book of Kohelet, or Ecclesiastes, dives headfirst into the cyclical nature of existence. And Kohelet Rabbah, a rabbinic commentary on Kohelet, takes it even further.

One particular passage in Kohelet Rabbah 7 uses the image of rivers flowing into the sea to illustrate this very idea. "All the rivers go to the sea," it says, "all the dead enter only the grave, but the grave is never filled." It's a stark image, isn’t it? An endless stream of people flowing into the earth. And it echoes (Proverbs 27:20), which tells us that "The grave and oblivion are not sated…"

It first appears that's it. End of story. We die, we're buried, and that's that. But the text doesn't stop there. It anticipates this very doubt. "You might say that once they die in this world they do not live again in the World to Come," the text acknowledges. But then it offers a powerful rebuttal: "To the place that the rivers go, they go there again."

What does that mean?

It means that just as the water that flows into the sea eventually returns as rain, so too, those who die will return to the World to Come. They return! And what's even more amazing? They are destined to "recite songs in the messianic era." Imagine that: joining in a chorus of joyful praise, celebrating a new era of peace and redemption.

Where does this idea come from? The text points us to the prophet Isaiah. "From the ends of the earth we have heard songs" (Isaiah 24:16), and "your dead will live, my corpses shall arise" (Isaiah 26:19). Isaiah! So, there is hope in the return.

So, the next time you feel caught in the seemingly endless cycles of life, remember the rivers flowing to the sea. Remember that even in death, there is the promise of return, the hope of singing songs in a future filled with joy. It's a powerful message, a reminder that even in the face of mortality, there is always the potential for renewal and redemption. What do you think?

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