The Sum of All Fears
“Utter futility!—said Koheleth—Utter futility! All is futile!” Ecclesiastes 1:2 JPS
Utter futility! – Tom Clancy isn’t correct. The sum of all fears is not nuclear holocaust. That possibility might make some sense given the enormity of human evil, the insatiable quest for power, and the technological ability to exterminate. But when you read the novel, or watched the movie, you already knew that good guys would prevail, human avarice would be thwarted by compassion and wits, and life would continue for homo sapiens. After all, fiction has to make sense. No, the real sum of all fears was first penned by an ancient public speaker, Koheleth. What is this foreboding summation? Ah, it is havel havalim—utter futility. But perhaps we need to have a greater understanding of this doubled Hebrew word before we decide it’s all just air.
Havel havalim can be translated “utter futility” (JPS), but Michael Fox suggests another rendering that captures the idea with a bit more punch—“senseless absurdity.” Alternatives might be: amounts to nothing, without purpose, illusory, completely frustrating, incomprehensible. The King James version, “vanity of vanities,” is not about pride (sorry, Jane Austin), but rather about the fruitlessness of everything under the sun. In the end, death takes it all—ubiquitously and equally. No one escapes and nothing ultimately matters. Fox provides a reason why “senseless absurdity” seems best. “hevel means ‘senseless’ or ‘absurd,’ not in the sense of ludicrous but in the sense of counter-rational, a violation of reason . . . This violates Koheleth’s sense of fairness and reason.”
As Fox says, “Ecclesiastes is the closest the Bible comes to philosophy, which is the intellectual, rational contemplation of fundamental human issues, with no recourse to revelation or tradition. . . It is the belief that the individual can and should proceed toward truth by means of his own powers of perception and reasoning; . . .”[1] And, of course, that’s what we have been trained to believe—rational progress toward truth. In the West we idolize those who by sheer mental power produce arguments for truth, even if they are cloaked in religious garb. For example, Evidence that Demands a Verdict or The Case for Christ are really exercises in Greek rationality. “Just look at the facts!” they claim, as though we could read from the “facts” alone the truth of these assertions. Koheleth tried with all his power. In the end, after all the facts, he concluded that life is senseless absurdity. Let me put it this way: So what if the facts lead to the conclusion that Jesus rose from the dead? [Oh, by the way, McDowell doesn’t conclude Jesus just rose from the dead. He concludes Jesus is God.] What does it matter if, in the end, we all die and all that we did is swept away by the sands of time? The Greeks understood this perfectly. It isn’t the size of the universe that makes us feel insignificant. It’s the length of eternity. In the end we are all forgotten. That’s the bottom line of rational philosophy. Without a message from outside the box (revelation), the evidence leads only to the conclusion, “So what?” Koheleth arrived at this place long before McDowell and Strobel attempted to rescue us from oblivion. Maybe we need to pay more attention to the most distressing book in the Bible. Maybe it’s really about us.
Topical Index: futility, senseless, havel havalim, Koheleth, Ecclesiastes 1:2
[1] Michael V. Fox, The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes (JPS, 2004), p. xi.
