Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
All Commentaries on Ecclesiastes 1:2 Go To Ecclesiastes 1
Gregory of Nyssa
AD 394
The insubstantial is deemed “futile,” that which has existence only in the utterance of the word. No substantial object is simultaneously indicated when the term is used, but it is a kind of idle and empty sound, expressed by syllables in the form of a word, striking the ear at random without meaning, the sort of word people make up for a joke but which means nothing. This then is one sort of futility. Another sense of “futility” is the pointlessness of things done earnestly to no purpose, like the sandcastles children build, and shooting arrows at stars, and chasing the winds, and racing against one’s own shadow and trying to step on its head, and anything else of the same kind which we find done pointlessly. All these activities are included in the meaning of “futility.” … [And] so also “futility of futilities” indicates the absolute extreme of what is futile.
