a chasing after: the reaching for something that cannot be caught, used only in the Ecclesiastes phrase "a chasing after wind".
This word never stands alone. All seven times it appears, in Ecclesiastes and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, it is bound to the word for "wind", and the two together make one phrase: this or that, the writer says, is "a chasing after wind". Wind can be felt and heard, and it can never be gathered into a hand, so the effort spent going after it is the whole point.
Six of the seven are the book's refrain. The writer looks back over a stretch of human effort, the building projects, the pleasure, the wisdom, even the rivalry that drives good work, and closes the account the same way every time: it is vapor, and a chasing after wind. The seventh, Ecclesiastes 4:6, puts the phrase to different work. There it is not a verdict passed afterward but part of what is being weighed, since one handful held quietly is set against two handfuls of toil and chasing after wind.
Ecclesiastes keeps this word in fixed company. הֶבֶל is the vapor word, the judgment that a thing has no substance, and עָמָל is the grinding labor that wears a person down. This word names the third angle, the reaching that set the labor going in the first place. Its masculine partner רַעְיוֹן fills the same wind phrase twice more in the book.
Where the word came from is still argued, and the answer changes the picture. Most scholars now trace it to a family of Aramaic words meaning "to want" or "to will", which fits the fact that the very same word means a king's "pleasure" in the Aramaic parts of Ezra (רְעוּ); on that reading the phrase means the pursuit of wind. An older line derived it instead from the ordinary verb for pasturing a flock (רָעָה), which yields "feeding on wind" or "herding wind", with Hosea 12:1, where Ephraim feeds on wind, as its parallel.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the noun derives from an Aramaic root meaning "to will, to desire", yielding "pursuit of wind", or from the common Hebrew verb "to pasture", yielding "feeding on wind".
- majorityA word from the Aramaic root for willing and desiring, so the phrase names futile human aspiration rather than a pastoral image.; HALOT, s.v. רְעוּת; BDB, s.v. רְעוּת (root רעה III); Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 18th ed., ed. Rudolf Meyer, Herbert Donner et al. (Springer, 1987-2010), s.v. רַעְיוֹן; Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, 1999), 42-47; Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes, Anchor Bible 18C (Doubleday, 1997), 121-122; Antoon Schoors, The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words: A Study of the Language of Qoheleth, Part 2, OLA 143 (Peeters, 2004), 439-444
- minorityA native Hebrew formation from the verb for pasturing, so the phrase pictures feeding on or herding the wind, on the analogy of Hosea 12:1, where Ephraim feeds on wind.; Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, trans. M. G. Easton (T. & T. Clark, 1891), on Ecclesiastes 1:14; R. N. Whybray, Ecclesiastes, New Century Bible (Eerdmans, 1989), on Ecclesiastes 1:14; Graham S. Ogden, Qoheleth, 2nd ed., Readings (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007)
Whether רְעוּת in Qohelet is a borrowing from Aramaic or a native Hebrew formation, a question that carries weight for dating the book. It is disputed more evenly than the parallel question about רַעְיוֹן, which is widely conceded to be an Aramaism.
- contestedAn Aramaism, matching the unambiguous Aramaic רְעוּת of Ezra 5:17 and 7:18 and belonging with the other Aramaic features that place Qohelet in the Persian or early Hellenistic period.; Choon-Leong Seow, "Linguistic Evidence and the Dating of Qohelet", Journal of Biblical Literature 115 (1996): 643-666; Charles F. Whitley, Koheleth: His Language and Thought, BZAW 148 (de Gruyter, 1979); Antoon Schoors, The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words: A Study of the Language of Qoheleth, Part 2, OLA 143 (Peeters, 2004), 439-444; Nili Samet, "Qohelet's Idiolect and Its Cultural Context", Harvard Theological Review 114 (2021)
- contestedA native Hebrew abstract noun whose form is ordinary Hebrew, so its Aramaic look proves nothing on its own and it carries little weight for dating.; Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, trans. M. G. Easton (T. & T. Clark, 1891), on Ecclesiastes 1:14; Robert Gordis, Koheleth: The Man and His World, 3rd ed. (Schocken, 1968), 210-212; Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, 1999), 42-47