Saying
Nothing new under the sun
A biblical saying: where "Nothing new under the sun" comes from (Ecclesiastes 1:9), what it meant there, and how the everyday phrase compares.
Nothing new under the sun
Life seen only under the sun goes round, not forward.
Ecclesiastes opens with "The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem" (Ecclesiastes 1:1) and his theme: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). He asks what profit a man has from all his labor "under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:3), and he looks at the world for an answer.
What he sees is repetition. Generations come and go while the earth stays. The sun rises, sets and hurries back to where it rises. The wind goes round in its circuits. The rivers run into the sea, and the sea is never full. The eye and the ear are never satisfied. Then he sums it up: "That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Even what looks new "hath been long ago"; it only seems new because "There is no remembrance of the former generations" (Ecclesiastes 1:10-11).
Under the sun is the Preacher's own phrase: it comes 29 times in the ASV, every one of them in Ecclesiastes. It describes life as seen from inside this world — what can be watched, measured and worked for. The word he keeps using for what he finds, vanity (Hebrew hevel), is literally a vapour or a breath: something there one moment and gone the next.
Seen that way, human life does not move forward; it goes round. The Preacher is not denying that people make new things. He is saying that the human story — work, desire, loss, forgetting — repeats itself, and that nothing done under the sun can satisfy the heart or break the circle. The book ends by looking beyond the sun: "Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13).
"There's nothing new under the sun" is now said with a shrug when a supposedly fresh idea, fashion or scandal turns out to be an old one. That is close to the Preacher's words: people do repeat themselves, and what we have forgotten we mistake for new (Ecclesiastes 1:10-11). The ASV's own wording is "there is no new thing under the sun"; the everyday form rewords the same verse.
What the idiom usually leaves out is the weight of the observation. For the Preacher it was not a clever remark but part of a sober search for meaning, and the limit "under the sun" matters. The rest of Scripture does not say that God never does anything new: "Behold, I will do a new thing" (Isaiah 43:19); "if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature" (2 Corinthians 5:17); "Behold, I make all things new" (Revelation 21:5). The saying is faithful when it humbles our pride in novelty; it goes beyond the Preacher when it is used to say that nothing can ever change.
under the sun
life seen from within this world; the Preacher's recurring phrase
new
vanity of vanities
"breath of breaths": hevel is a vapour or breath, something fleeting
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
The Preacher's verdict on everything done under the sun.
That which is hath been long ago; and that which is to be hath long ago been: and God seeketh again that which is passed away.
The same thought again: what is to be "hath long ago been" — but "God seeketh again that which is passed away."
This is the end of the matter; all hath been heard: Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.
Where the search ends: fear God and keep his commandments.
It is of Jehovah’s lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.
What is new every morning: God's compassions.
Behold, I will do a new thing; now shall it spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
God's own promise: "Behold, I will do a new thing".
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.
In Christ, "a new creature".
And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true.
The last word on newness: "Behold, I make all things new."