What happensPermalink
The Preacher tests whether pleasure can provide lasting satisfaction, pursuing laughter, wine, great building projects, wealth, entertainment, and sexual indulgence. He enjoys his labor, yet afterward finds no enduring gain. Wisdom remains better than folly, but both the wise and the foolish die and are eventually forgotten. He therefore hates life and despairs over leaving everything he has achieved to an unknown successor. He concludes that people should eat, drink, and enjoy their work as gifts from God.
Why it mattersPermalink
His experiment succeeds materially: he obtains pleasure, achievement, wealth, and wisdom, yet none can overcome death or secure a lasting legacy. These goods have real but temporary value, too little to bear the weight of ultimate satisfaction. Joy cannot be seized and stored. It must be received from God within mortal limits, while accumulation pursued as an end merely passes its fruits to someone else.
Key versePermalink
There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.