Hard to capture a rainbow.
"Utter futility!" is the way the Jewish Tanakh translation begins the book of Ecclesiastes. This seems to capture the meaning of the author better than the more traditional "Vanity of vanities!" The Hebrew word literally means "breath" or "vapor." The author uses it 38 times in this short book to express how ephemeral, incomprehensible, and unreliable life is.
The entire book is a perfect companion to Jesus' parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:16-21. Ecclesiastes looks at various things in life and each time laments "Utter futility!" To me the book shows how empty a life is without any consideration of God. The author really doesn't lead us to this conclusion, or to any other conclusion, for that matter.
The book seems cynical enough to have been written yesterday.
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