“pointless.” The Hebrew word is hebel (#01892 הֶבֶל), and it has the basic idea of being a vapor or breath. In that, hebel combines different meanings, including that of being “futile, pointless, meaningless” and also “temporary, transitory, short-lived.” This makes hebel somewhat difficult to translate in Ecclesiastes because sometimes the primary emphasis is “pointless; futile,” but at other times the primary emphasis of hebel is “temporary, transitory,” with the undertone being “pointless; futile.”