the Teacher names God as the giver of this joy. Against the backdrop of the vanity of human endeavors “under the sun,” the Teacher’s message for Israel is to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. We can do justice to both of these themes by subordinating the theme of “vanity” to the theme of “enjoy.” The textual theme, then, can be formulated as follows, “Since all human endeavors ‘under the sun’ are vanity, find enjoyment in God’s daily gifts of food, drink, and toil.” For the sake of clarity,
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