Solomon takes a cynical look at the deaths of crooks, we could apply this to our own politicians, who despite pilfering their constituents for years and engaging in corruption, because they are politicians, they get these grandiose state funerals.  

Here’s what Solomon sounds out for us: 

Ecc 8:10  And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this is also vanity.

Solomon is telling us, I watched crooks get nice funerals, they were crooks but they went to church and proclaimed their own righteousness.  But despite their crimes, their self righteousness, their living a life of lies, they are buried and then soon forgotten.  

Solomon concludes with a word that is often used in Ecclesiastes; vanity, or meaningless. Saying what’s the point of all that bravado?  We celebrate their lives and their deaths but miss the opportunity in pointing out their double standards.  

It’s like when an important person dies, they get a much larger funeral than a regular-Joe.  But like the regular Joe, they are eventually forgotten.  

This might be a controversial take, but look at Kennedy and Oswald.  Both died on the same weekend in the same city; Kennedy had the most massive funeral on record, meanwhile Oswald had maybe 3 people show up at his, but at the end of the day, they are both in the ground and chances are, in two generation, no one will remember either of them. 

A sobering reminder not to take this life too seriously, but the next life, the eternal one, is the one that counts and the only way to the Father is through The Son.