Life Is Like Smoke

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV).

The book of Ecclesiastes offers profound reflections on life and its meaning. The author introduces the Hebrew word hevel (or hebel), which means vapor or smoke. For him, life is hevel.

Some Bible versions translate it as “vanity,” implying life is illusory or useless—where all human achievements are ultimately pointless. “A chasing after the wind” (verse 14).

Other translators interpret hevel as referring to life’s fleeting and unstable nature, like vapor that lacks weight and vanishes quickly. This second perspective gives a broader and more balanced understanding of Ecclesiastes. Life isn’t necessarily meaningless—after all, the book ends by urging us to fear God (Ecclesiastes 12:13)—but it is fragile, brief, and unpredictable. This understanding is more coherent if we consider the book in its entirety.

Unstable, brief, and passing

It’s a painful reality: life is short, fragile, and seemingly elusive. Like smoke, it’s ungraspable—we can't hold on to it or control it. And like smoke, it clouds our vision—we don’t know what tomorrow may bring:

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” (James 4:13-14 NIV).

Conclusion

If life is this unstable, brief, and uncertain, is there any hope? Is there anything in the smoke that gives meaning to our fragile existence? Let’s find out together.