Solomon’s own Example

v. 1. I said in mine heart, in considering carefully the possibility of enjoyment, Go to, now, I will prove thee with mirth, to find out whether he would feel happy and contented in enjoyment of the senses; therefore enjoy pleasure, sensual delights of every kind; and, behold, this also is vanity, it affords no true happiness.

v. 2. I said of laughter, of the joy and cheerfulness which he madly attempted to reach, It is mad, foolish, it affords no real satisfaction; and of mirth, What doeth it? It accomplishes nothing of value, it avails nothing in the attainment of real, lasting good.

v. 3. I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, to comfort himself by its use, either with the object of nourishing the body or to have the sensual pleasure afforded by the exhilaration produced by the stimulant, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom, that is, to keep wisdom and discretion as the guiding principles of his life; and to lay hold on folly, to seize and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, to find out whether they would satisfy, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, what course they had best pursue in going through life, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. Solomon did what so many people have tried out since his time; instead of accepting the statements of God’s Word concerning that which is good and beneficial to them, they determine to try out for themselves what is good and so are obliged to learn through many bitter and painful experiences. Solomon, having the means, took every opportunity for his experiment.

v. 4. I made me great works, building magnificent structures and piling up evidences of wealth on every hand; I builded me houses, 1 Kings 7-10; I planted me vineyards, Son 8:11;

v. 5. I made me gardens and orchards, pleasure-grounds near his various residences, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits, in rich variety, including many from foreign countries;

v. 6. I made me pools of water, artificial lakes for purposes of irrigation, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees, this being necessary on account of the extent and the magnificence of his parks;

v. 7. I got me servants and maidens, slaves of both sexes, and had servants born in my house, such slaves usually being distinguished for loyalty to their master; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me, as God had promised him, 2Ch 1:12;

v. 8. I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces, 1Ki 9:28; 1Ki 10:24-29; I gat me men singers and women singers, such as were common at Oriental courts for the entertainment of the court and of the royal guests, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts, in great abundance, as befitted his station and wealth.

v. 9. So I was great, possessed of riches and power, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem, as the historical accounts fully substantiate, 1 Kings 9-11; also my wisdom remained with me, it stood by him in all his experimenting to find happiness, it never left his side, for he was honestly concerned about finding true satisfaction in this life, if possible.

v. 10. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy, he tried them all out to see whether he could obtain true profit from any of them; for my heart rejoiced in all my labor, it was an agreeable pursuit, he felt that he would surely find what he was seeking; and this was my portion of all my labor, he found this a recompense for all his troubles and sorrows.

v. 11. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, he carefully surveyed the results of his experiment, and on the labor that I had labored to do, which he had planned and carried out with so much pains; and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, there was no lasting satisfaction in the possession and enjoyment of all earthly goods and pleasures, and there was no profit under the sun.

v. 12. And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly, to compare them, to consider their relative value, 1:17; for what can the man do that cometh after the king? Solomon surely had the best chance to make his experiment in happiness, and if he had not succeeded, any one else would have still smaller chance of success. Even that which hath been already done, the same foolish mistakes having been made by men from the beginning.

v. 13. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly as far as light excelleth darkness, he recognized the absolute worth of wisdom, he found that the one excluded the other, that folly is vain, empty, and unsubstantial.

v. 14. The wise man’s eyes are in his head, he uses them with proper observation and understanding; but the fool walketh in darkness, deliberately closing his eyes and his understanding to the advantages of true spiritual knowledge; and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all, they are all subject to death and decay.

v. 15. Then said I in my heart, in considering this apparent puzzle, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me, literally, “I also, it will happen to me”; and why was I then more wise? The possession of great knowledge in itself, without being placed into service, is of little value. Then I said in my heart that this also is vanity, namely, that so far as death in itself is concerned, the same fate awaits them both.

v. 16. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever, people forget the one as rapidly as the other; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten, that is ordinarily and generally the case, the few exceptions tending to confirm the rule. And how dieth the wise man? As the fool, they must both yield up the spirit in the same manner.

v. 17. Therefore I hated life, he was filled with weariness and loathing toward all that this life has to offer; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me, the contemplation of it all fills the observer with a sense of oppression; for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

v. 18. Yea, I hated, regarded with disgust and aversion, all my labor which I had taken under the sun, with which he had exerted himself; because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me, his successor thus reaping the fruit for which he had labored, a fact which, for the moment, made his own work appear so useless.

v. 19. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? since so much depends upon the attitude of men. Solomon himself, having disregarded his father’s dying charge, was filled with misgivings concerning the manner in which Rehoboam, his son by an idolatrous Ammonitess, Naamah, would conduct himself, a foreboding which was only too fully justified. Yet shall he have rule over all my labor wherein I have labored, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity. There is a serious suggestion here for all Christian parents to discard all selfishness and sentimentality and to train their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Ecc 2:1-11

Section 2. Vanity of striving after pleasure and wealth.

Ecc 2:1

Dissatisfied with the result of the pursuit of wisdom, Koheleth embarks on a course of sensual pleasure, if so be this may yield some effect more substantial and permanent. I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth. The heart is addressed as the seat of the emotions and affections. The Vulgate misses the direct address to the heart, which the words, rightly interpreted, imply, translating, Vadam et offluam delieiis. The Septuagint correctly gives, . It is like the rich fool’s language in Christ’s parable, “I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry” (Luk 12:10). Therefore enjoy pleasure; literally, see good (Ecc 6:6). “To see” is often used figuratively in the sense of “to experience, or enjoy.” Wright compares the expressions, “see death” (Luk 2:26), “see life” (Joh 3:36). We may find the like in Psa 34:13; Jer 29:32; Oba 1:13 (comp. Ecc 9:9). The king now tries to find the summum bonum in pleasure, in selfish enjoyment without thought of others. Commentators, as they saw Stoicism in the first chapter, so read Epieureanism into this. We shall have occasion to refer to this idea further on (see on Ecc 3:22). Of this new experiment the result was the same as before. Behold, this also is vanity. This experience is confirmed in the next verse.

Ecc 2:2

I said of laughter, It is mad. Laughter and mirth are personified, hence treated as masculine. He uses the term “mad” in reference to the statement in Ecc 1:17, “I gave my heart to know madness and folly.” Septuagint, “I said to laughter, Error ();” Vulgate, Risum reputavi errorem. Neither of these is as accurate as the Authorized Version. Of mirth, What doeth it? What does it effect towards real happiness and contentment? How does it help to fill the void, to give lasting satisfaction? So we have in Pro 14:13, “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of mirth is heaviness;” though the context is different. The Vulgate renders loosely, Quid frustra deeiperis?

Ecc 2:3

I sought in mine heart; literally, I spied out (as Ecc 1:13) in my heart. Having proved the fruitlessness of some sort of sensual pleasure, he made another experiment in a philosophical spirit. To give myself unto wine; literally, to draw (mashak) my flesh with wine; i.e. to use the attraction of the pleasures of the table. Yet acquainting my heart with wisdom. This is a parenthetical clause, which Wright translates, “While my heart was acting [guiding] with wisdom.” That is, while, as it were, experimenting with pleasure, he still retained sufficient control over his passions as not to be wholly given over to vice; he was in the position of one who is being carried down an impetuous stream, yet has the power of stopping his headlong course before it becomes fatal to him. Such control was given by wisdom. Deliberately to enter upon a course of self-indulgence, even with a possibly good intention, must be a most perilous trial, and one which would leave indelible marks upon the soul; and not one person in a hundred would be able to stop short of ruin, The historical Solomon, by his experiment, suffered infinite loss, which nothing could compensate. The Septuagint renders not very successfully, “I examined whether my heart would draw () my flesh as wine; and my heart guided me in wisdom.” The Vulgate gives a sense entirely contrary to the writer’s intention; “I thought in my heart to withdraw my flesh from wine, that I might transfer my mind to wisdom.” And to lay hold on folly. These words are dependent upon “I sought in my heart,” and refer to the sensual pleasures in which he indulged for a certain object. “Dulce est desipere in loco,” says Horace (‘Canto.,’ 4.12. 28); . Till I might see. His purpose was to discover if there was in these things any real good which might satisfy men’s cravings, and be a worthy object for them to pursue all the days of their life.

Ecc 2:4

This commences a new experience in the pursuit of his object. Leaving this life of self-indulgence, he takes to art and culture, the details being drawn from the accounts of the historical Solomon. I made me great works; literally, I made great my works; Septuagint, per; Vulgate, Magnificavi opera mea. Among these works the temple, with all its wonderful structural preparations, is not specially mentioned, perhaps because no one could think of Solomon without connecting his name with this magnificent building, and it was superfluous to call attention to it; or else because the religious aspect of his operations is not here in question, but only his taste and pursuit of beauty. But the omission tells strongly against the Solomonic authorship of the book. I builded me houses. Solomon had a passion for erecting magnificent buildings. We have various accounts of his works of this nature in 1Ki 7:1-51. and 9.; 2Ch 8:1-18. There was the huge palace for himself, which occupied thirteen years in building; there was the “house of the forest of Lebanon,” a splendid hall constructed with pillars of cedar; the porch of pillars; the hall of judgment; the harem for the daughter of Pharaoh. Then there were fortresses, store-cities, chariot-towns, national works of great importance; cities in distant lands which he founded, such as Tadmor in the wilderness. I planted me vineyards. David had vineyards and olive yards (1Ch 27:27, 1Ch 27:28), which passed into the possession of his son; and we read in So 2Ch 8:11 of a vineyard that Solomon had in Baal-hamon, which some identify with Belamon (Judith 8:3), a place near Shunem, in the Plain of Esdraelon.

Ecc 2:5

I made me gardens and orchards. Solomon’s love of gardens appears throughout the Canticles (So Son 6:2, etc.). He had a king’s garden on the slope of the hills south of the city (2Ki 25:4); and Beth-hacchemm, “the House of the Vine,” at Ain Karim, about six miles east of Jerusalem (Jer 6:1); and at Baal-hamon another extensive vineyard (So Son 8:11). The word rendered “orchard” (parder) occurs also in So Son 4:13 and Neh 2:8. It is a Persian word, and passed into the Greek form (Xenophon, ‘Anab.,’ 1.2.7), meaning “a park” planted with forest and fruit trees, and containing herds of animals. It is probably derived from the Zend oairidaeza,” an enclosure.” (For the trees in such parks, see So Neh 4:13, Neh 4:14; and for an estimate of Solomon’s works, Josephus, ‘Ant.,’ 8.7. 3.)

Ecc 2:6

Pools of water. Great care was exercised by Solomon to provide his capital with water, and vast operations were undertaken for this purpose. “The king’s pool,” mentioned in Neh 2:14, may have been constructed by him (Josephus, ‘Bell. Jud.,’ 5.4. 2); but the most celebrated work ascribed to him is the water-supply at Etham, southwest of Bethlehem, and the aqueduct leading from thence to Jerusalem. Most modern travelers have described these pools. They are three in number, and, according to Robinson’s measurement, are of immense size. The first, to the east, is 582 feet long, 207 wide, and 50 deep; the second, 432 by 250, and 39 feet deep; the third, 380 by 236, and 25 feet deep. They are all, however, narrower at the upper end, and widen out gradually, flowing one into the other. There is a copious spring led into the uppermost pool from the north-east, but this supply is augmented by other sources now choked and ruined. The water from the pools was conveyed round the ridge on which Bethlehem stands in earthen pipes to Jerusalem. Dr. Thomson says, “Near that city it was carried along the west side of the Valley of Gihon to the north-western end of the lower Pool of Gihon, where it crossed to the east side, and, winding round the southern declivity of Zion below Neby Dd, finally entered the south-eastern corner of the temple area, where the water was employed in the various services of the sanctuary.” Etham is, with good reason, identified with the beautiful valley of Urtas, which lies southwest of Bethlehem, in the immediate neighborhood of the pools of Solomon. The fountain near the present village watered the gardens and orchards which were planted here, the terraced hills around were covered with vines, figs, and olives, and the prospect must have been delightful and refreshing in that thirsty land. To water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees; Revised Version, to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared; literally, in order to irrigate a wood sprouting forth trees; i.e. a nursery of saplings. So we read how the Garden of Eden was watered (Gen 2:10; Gen 13:10)a most necessary feature in Eastern countries, where streams and pools are not constructed for picturesque reasons, but for material uses.

Ecc 2:7

I got meI bought, procuredservants and maidens. These are distinct from those mentioned immediately afterwards, servants born in my house; Septuagint, : called in the Hebrew, “sons of the house” (Gen 15:3). They were much more esteemed by their masters, and showed a much closer attachment to the family than the bought slaves or the conquered aboriginals, who were often reduced to this state (1Ki 9:20, 1Ki 9:21). The number of Solomon’s attendants excited the wonder of the Queen of Sheba (1Ki 4:26, etc.; 1Ki 10:5), and with good reason, if Josephus’s account is to be believed. This writer asserts that the king had some thousand or more chariots, and twenty thousand horses. The drivers and riders were young men of comely aspect, tall and well-made; they had long flowing hair, and wore tunics of Tyrian purple, and powdered their hair with gold dust, which glittered in the rays of the sun (‘Ant.,’ 8.7. 3). Attended by a cavalcade thus arrayed, Solomon used to betake himself to his “paradise” at Etham, to enjoy the refreshing coolness of its trees and pools. Great and small cattle; oxen and sheep. The enormous amount of Solomon’s herds and flocks is proved by the extraordinary multitude of the sacrifices at the consecration of the temple (1Ki 8:63), and the lavish provision made daily for the wants of his table (1Ki 4:22, 1Ki 4:23). The cattle of David were very numerous, and required special overlookers (1Ch 27:29-31). Job (Job 1:3) had, before his troubles, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and these items were all doubled at the return of his prosperity. Among Solomon’s possessions, horses are not here mentioned, though they formed no inconsiderable portion of his live stock, and added greatly to his magnificence. Koheleth, perhaps, avoided boasting of this extravagance in consideration of the religious sentiment which was strongly opposed to such a feature. That were in Jerusalem before me (so verse 9; see Ecc 1:16). But the reference here may not necessarily be to kings, but to chieftains and rich men, who were celebrated for the extent of their possessions.

Ecc 2:8

I gathered me also silver and gold. Much is said of the wealth of the historical Solomon, who had all his vessels of gold, armed his body-guard with golden shields, sat on an ivory throne overlaid with gold, received tribute and presents of gold from all quarters, sent his navies to distant lands to import precious metals, and made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones (see 1Ki 9:28; 1Ki 10:14-27; 2Ch 1:15; 2Ch 9:20-27). The peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces. The word rendered “the provinces” (hammedinoth), in spite of the article, seems to mean, not the twelve districts into which Solomon divided his kingdom for fiscal and economical purposes (1Ki 4:7, etc.), but countries generally exterior to Palestine, with which he had commercial or political relations, and which sent to him the productions for which they were each most celebrated. So the districts of the Persian empire were required to furnish the monarch with a certain portion of their chief commodities. His friendship with Hiram of Tyro brought him into connection with the Phoeni-clans, the greatest commercial nation of antiquity, and through them he accumulated riches and stores from distant and various lands beyond the limits of the Mediterranean Sea. The word (medinah) occurs again in Ecc 5:7 and in 1Ki 20:14, etc.; but is found elsewhere only in exilian or post-exilian books (e.g. Lam 1:1; Est 1:1, etc.; Dan 2:48, etc.). The “kings” may be the tributary monarchs, such as those of Arabia (1Ki 4:21, 1Ki 4:24; 1Ki 10:15); or the expression in the text may imply simply such treasure as only kings, and not private persons, could possess. Men-singers and women-singers. These, of course, are not the choir of the temple, of which women formed no part, bur. musicians introduced at banquets and social festivals, to enhance the pleasures of the scene. They are mentioned in David’s days (2Sa 19:35) and later (see Isa 5:12; Amo 6:5; Ecclesiasticus 35:5; 49:1). The females who took part in these performances were generally of an abandoned class; hence the, warning of Ben-Sira, “Use not much the company of a woman that is a singer, lest thou be taken with her attempts” (Ecclesiasticus 9:4). Such exhibitions were usually accompanied with dancing, the character of which in Eastern countries is well known. The Jews, as time went on, learned to tolerate many customs and practices, imported often from other lands, which tended to lower morality and self-respect. And the delights of the sons of men; the sensual pleasures that men enjoy. The expression is euphemistic (comp. So 1Ki 7:6). Musical instruments, and that of all sorts (shiddah veshiddoth). The word (given here first in the singular number and then in the plural emphatically to express multitude) occurs nowhere else, and has, therefore, been subjected to various interpretations. The Septuagint gives, , “a male cupbearer and female cupbearers;” and so the Syrian and. Vulgate, Scyphos et urceos in ministerio ad vina fundendawhich introduces rather a bathos into the description. After the clause immediately preceding, one might expect mention of Solomon’s numerous harem (1Ki 11:3; So 1Ki 6:8), and most modern commentators consider the word to mean “concubine,” the whole expression denoting multiplicity, “wife and wives.” The Authorized Version is not very probable, though somewhat supported by Kimchi, Luther, etc; and the Greek Venetian, which has, , a musical term signifying “combination of tones,” or harmony. Other interpretations are “captives,” “litters,” “coaches,” “baths,” “treasures,” “chests,” “demons.” Ewald, followed by Motais and others, suggests that the word implies a strong or high degree of a quality, so that, connecting the two clauses together, we should render, “And in a word, all the delights of the sons of men in abundance.” This seems a more appropriate termination to the catalogue than any specification of further sources of pleasure; but there is no very strong etymological reason to recommend it; and we can hardly suppose that, in the enumeration of Solomon’s prodigalities, his multitudinous seraglio would be omitted. Rather it comes in here naturally as the climax and completion of his pursuit of earthly delight.

Ecc 2:9

So I was great (see on Ecc 1:16). This refers to the magnificence and extent of his possessions and luxury, as the former passage to the surpassing excellence of his wisdom. We may compare the mention of Abraham (Gen 26:13), “The man waxed great, and grew more and more until he became very great” (sc. Job 1:3). Also my wisdom remained with me; perseveravit mecum (Vulgate); . In accordance with the purpose mentioned in Ecc 2:3, he retained command of himself, studying philosophically the effects and nature of the pleasures of which he partook, and keeping ever in view the object of his pursuit. Voluptuousness was not the end which he sought, but one of the means to obtain the end; and what he calls his wisdom is not pure Divine wisdom that comes from above, but an earthly prudence and self-restraint.

Ecc 2:10

Whatsoever mine eyes desired. The lust of the eyes (1Jn 2:16), all that he saw and desired, he took measures to obtain. He denied himself no gratification, however foolish (Ecc 2:3). For my heart rejoiced in all my labor; i.e. found joy in what my labor procured for it (comp. Pro 5:18). This was the reason why he withheld not his heart from any joy; kept it, as it were, ready to taste any pleasure which his exertions might obtain. This was my portion of all my labor. Such joy was that which he won from his labor, he had his reward, such as it was (Mat 6:2; Luk 16:25). This term “portion” (cheleq) recurs often (e.g. Ecc 2:21; Ecc 3:22; Ecc 5:18, etc.; so Wis. 2:9) in the sense of the result obtained by labor or con-duet. And what a meagre and unsatisfying result it was which he gained! Contrast the apostle’s teaching, “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vain-glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever” (1Jn 2:16, 1Jn 2:17).

Ecc 2:11

Then I looked onI turned to contemplateall the works which my hands had wrought. He examined carefully the effects of the conduct and proceedings mentioned in Ecc 2:1-10, and he now gives his matured judgment concerning them. They had contributed nothing to his anxious inquiry for man’s real good. His sorrowful conclusion again is that all was vanity, a hunting of wind; in all the pursuits and labors that men undertake there is no real profit (Ecc 1:3), no lasting happiness, nothing to satisfy the cravings of the spirit.

Ecc 2:12-26

Section 3. Vanity of wisdom, in view of the fate that awaits the wise man equally with the fool, and the uncertainty of the future of his labors, especially as man is not master of his own fate.

Ecc 2:12

And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly (Ecc 1:17). He studied the three in their mutual connection and relation, comparing them in their results and effects on man’s nature and life, and deducing thence their real value. On one side he set wisdom, on the other the action, and habits which he rightly terms “madness and folly,” and examined them calmly and critically. For what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been already done. Both the Authorized Version and Revised Version render the passage thus, though the latter, in the margin, gives two alternative renderings of the second clause, viz. even him whom they made king long ago, and, as in the Authorized Version margin, in those things which have been already done. The LXX; following a different reading, gives, “For what man is there who will follow after counsel in whatsoever things he employed it?” Vulgate, “What is man, said I, that he should be able to follow the King, his Maker?” Wright, Delitzsch, Nowack, etc; “For what is the man that is to come after the king whom they made so long ago?” i.e. who can have greater experience than Solomon made king in old time amid universal acclamation (1Ch 29:22)? or, who can hope to equal his fame?which does not seem quite suitable, as it is the abnormal opportunities of investigation given by his unique position which would be the point of the query. The Authorized Version gives a fairly satisfactory (and grammatically unobjectionable) meaningWhat can any one effect who tries the same experiment as the king did? He could not do so under more favorable conditions, and will only repeat the same process and reach the same result. But the passage is obscure, and every interpretation has its own difficulty. If the ki with which the second portion of the passage begins (“for what,” etc.) assigns the reason or motive of the first portion, shows what was the design of Koheleth in contrasting wisdom and folly, the rendering of the Authorized Version is not inappropriate. Many critics consider that Solomon is here speaking of his successor, asking what kind of man he will be who comes after himthe man whom some have already chosen? And certainly there is some ground for this interpretation in Ecc 2:18, Ecc 2:19, where the complaint is that all the king’s greatness and glory will be left to an unworthy successor. But this view requires the Solomonic authorship of the book, and makes him to refer to Rehoboam or some illegitimate usurper. The wording of the text is too general to admit of this explanation; nor does it exactly suit the immediate context, or duly connect the two clauses of the verse. It seems best to take the successor, not as one who comes to the kingdom, but as one who pursues similar investigations, repeats Koheleth’s experiments.

Ecc 2:13

Then (and) I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness; or, there is profit, advantage to wisdom over folly, as the advantage of light over darkness. This result, at any rate, was obtainedhe learned that wisdom had a certain value, that it was as much superior to folly, in its effects on men, as light is more beneficial than darkness. It is a natural metaphor to represent spiritual and intellectual development as light, and mental and moral depravity as darkness (comp. Eph 5:8; 1Th 5:5).

Ecc 2:14

The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh ‘in darkness. This clause is closely connected with the preceding verse, showing how wisdom excelleth folly. The wise man has the eyes of his heart or understanding enlightened (Eph 1:18); he looks into the nature of things, fixes his regard on what is most important, sees where to go; while the fool’s eyes are in the ends of the earth (Pro 17:24); he walks on still in darkness, stumbling as he goes, knowing not whither his road shall take him. And I myself also (I even I) perceived that one event happeneth to them all. “Event” (mikreh); ; interitus (Vulgate); not chance, But death, the final event. The word is translated “hap” in Rth 2:3, and “chance” in 1Sa 6:9; but the connection here points to a definite termination; nor would it be consistent with Koheleth’s religion to refer this termination to fate or accident. With all his experience, he could only conclude that in one important aspect the observed superiority of wisdom to folly was illusory and vain. He saw with his own eyes, and needed no instructor to teach, that both wise and fool must succumb to death, the universal leveler. Horace, in many passages, sings of this: thus ‘Carm.,’ 2.3. 21

“Divesne prisco natus ab Inacho,
Nil interest, an pauper et infima
De gente sub dive moreris,
Victima nil miserantis Orci.”

(Comp, ibid, 1.28. 15, etc.; 2.14. 9, etc.) Plato refers to a passage in ‘Telephus,’ a lost play of 2 Eschylus, which is restored thus

.

“A single path leads all unto the grave.”

Ecc 2:15

Then (and) said I in my heart (Ecc 1:16), As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me. He applies the general statement of Ecc 2:14 to his own case. The end that overtakes the fool will ere long overtake him; and he proceeds, Why was I then more wise? “Then” (), may be understood either logically, i.e. in this ease, since such is the fate of wise and foolish; or temporally, at the hour of death regarded as past. He puts the questionTo what end, with what design, has he been so excessively wise, or, as it may be, wise overmuch (Ecc 7:16)? His wisdom has, as it were, recoiled upon himselfit taught him much, but not content; it made him keen-sighted in seeing the emptiness of human things, but it satisfied not his cravings. Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. This similarity of fate for philosopher and fool makes life vain and worthless; or rather, the meaning may be, if the superiority of wisdom over folly conduces to no other end than this, that superiority is a vanity. The LXX. has glossed the passage, followed herein by the Syriac, “Moreover, I spake in my heart that indeed this is also vanity, because the fool speaks out of his abundance”Ecc 2:16 giving the substance of the fool’s thoughts. Vulgate, Locutusque cum mente mea, animadverti quod hoc quoque esset vanitas. Our Hebrew text does not confirm this interpretation or addition.

Ecc 2:16

For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool forever; Revised Version, more emphatically, for of the wise man, even as of the fool, there is no remembrance forever. This, of course, is not absolutely true. There are men whose names are history, and will endure as long as the world lasts; but speaking generally, oblivion is the portion of all; posterity soon forgets the wisdom of one and the folly of another. Where the belief in the future life was not a strong and animating motive, posthumous fame exercised a potent attraction for many minds. To be the founder of a long line of descendants, or to leave a record which should be fresh in the minds of future generations, these were objects of intense ambition, and valued as worthy of highest aspirations and best efforts. The words of classical poets will occur to our memory; e.g. Horace, ‘Carm.,’ 3.30.

“Exegi monumentum aere perennius
Non omnis metier, multaque pars mei
Vitabit Libitinam.”

Ovid, ‘Amor.,’ 1.15. 4

“Ergo etiam, cum me supremus adederit ignis,
Vivam, parsquc mei multa supersteserit.”

But Koheleth shows the vanity of all such hopes; they are based on sounds which experience proves to be unsubstantial. Though Solomon’s own fame gives the lie to the statement received without limitation (comp. Wis. 8:13), yet his reflections might well have taken this turn, and the writer is quite justified in putting the thought into his mouth, as the king could not know how subsequent ages would regard his wisdom and attainments. Seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. The clause has been variously translated. Septuagint, “Forasmuch as the coming days, even all the things, are forgotten;” Vulgate, “And future times shall cover all things equally with oblivion.” Modern editors give, “Since in the days that are to come they are all forgotten;” “As in time past, so in days to come, all will be forgotten . In the days which are coming [it will be said by-and-by], The whole of them are long ago forgotten.'” This is a specimen of the uncertainty of exact interpretation, where the intended meaning is well ascertained. “All“ () may refer either to wise and foolish, or to the circumstances of their lives. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool. Better taken as one sentence, with an exclamation, How doth the wise man die with (even as) the fool I (For “with” (ira), equivalent to “as,” comp. Ecc 7:11; Job 9:26; Psa 106:6.) “How” () is sarcastic, as Isa 14:4, or sorrowful, as 2Sa 1:19. The same complaint falls from a psalmist’s lips, “He seeth that wise men die; the fool and the brutish together perish“ (Psa 49:10). So David laments the death of the murdered leader, “Should Abner die as a fool dieth?” (2Sa 3:33). Plumptre considers that the author of the Book of Wisdom expands this view with the design of exposing its fallacy, and introducing a better hope (Ecc 2:1-9). But that writer would not have designated Solomon’s sentiments as those of “the ungodly” (), nor foisted these utterances of sensualists and materialists upon so honored a source. At the same time, it is only as being victims, nil miserantis Opel, the prey of the pitiless and indiscriminating grave, that the wise and foolish are placed in the same category. There is the widest difference between the death-beds of the two, as the experience of any one who has watched them will testify, the one happy with the consciousness of duty done honestly, however imperfectly, and bright with the hope of immortality; the other darkened by vain regrets and shrinking despair, or listless in brutish insensibility.

Ecc 2:17

Therefore I hated life; et idcirce taeduit me vitae meae. Be a man wise or foolish, his life leads only to one end and is soon forgotten; hence life itself is burdensome and hateful. The bitter complaint of Job (Job 3:20, etc.; Job 6:8, Job 6:9) is here echoed, though the words do not point to suicide as the solution of the riddle. It is the ennui and unprofitableness of all life and action in view of the inevitable conclusion, which is here lamented. Because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me; literally, for evil unto me (Est 3:9) is the work which is done under the sun. The toil and exertions of men pressed upon him like a burden too heavy for him to bear. Symmachus, ; Septuagint, …. He repeats the expression, “under the sun,” as if to show that he was regarding human labor only in its earthly aspect, undertaken and executed for temporal and selfish considerations alone. The apostle teaches a ‘better lesson, and the worker who adopts his rule is saved from this crushing disappointment: “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the recompense of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ” (Col 3:23, Col 3:24). For all is vanity. He comes back to the same miserable refrain; it is all emptiness, striving after wind.

Ecc 2:18

Such had been his general view of men’s actions; he now brings the thought home to his own case, which makes his distress more poignant. Yea (and), I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun. He is disgusted to reflect upon all the trouble he has taken in life, when he thinks of what will become of the productions of his genius and the treasures which he has amassed. Because I should leave it (my labor, i.e. its results) unto the man that shall be after me. It is impossible that Solomon could thus have spoken of Rehoboam; and to suppose that he wrote thus after Jeroboam’s attempt (1Ki 2:26, etc.), and in contemplation of a possible usurper, is not warranted by any historical statement, the absolute security of the succession being all along expected, and the growing discontent being perfectly unknown to, or contemptuously disregarded by, the king. The sentiment is general, and recurs more than once; e.g. Ecc 4:8; Ecc 5:14; Ecc 6:2. Thus Horace, ‘Epist.,’ 2.2. 175

“Sic quia perpetuus nulli datur usus, et heres
Heredem alterius velut unda supervenit undam,
Quid vici prosunt aut horrea?”

Ecc 2:19

Who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? The bitter feeling that he has to leave the fruits of his lifelong labor to another is aggravated by the thought that he knows not the character of this successor, whether he will be worthy or not. As the psalmist says, “He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them” (Psa 39:6). Again in the parable, “The things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be?” (Luk 12:20; comp. Ecclesiasticus 11:18, 19). Yet shall he have rule, etc. Whatever may be his character, he will have free use and control of all that I have gathered by my labor directed by prudence and wisdom. Vulgate, Domina-bitur in laboribus meis quibus desudavi et sollicitus fui.

Ecc 2:20

Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair; . “I turned” in order to examine more closely. So in Ecc 2:12 we had, “I turned myself,” though the verbs are not the same in the two passages, and in the former the LXX. has . I turned from my late course of action to give myself up to despair. I lost all hope in labor; it had no longer any charm or future for me. Septuagint, …

Ecc 2:21

For there is a man whose labor is in wisdom. “In,” , “with,” directed and performed with wisdom. The author speaks of himself objectively, as St. Paul (2Co 12:2) says, “I know a man in Christ,” etc. His complaint now is, not that his successor may misuse his inheritance (Ecc 2:19), but that this person shall have that on which he has bestowed no skill or toil, shall enjoy what modern phraseology terms “unearned increment.” This, which was set forth as One of the blessings of the promised land (Deu 6:10, Deu 6:11), Koheleth cannot bear to contemplate where it touches himselfnot from envy or grudging, but from the feeling of dissatisfaction and want of energy which it generates. In (with) knowledge and in (with) equity. Kishron, translated “equity” in the Authorized Version; “manliness,” in the Septuagint: and sollicitudine in the Vulgate, seems rather here to signify “skill” or “success.” It occurs also in Ecc 4:4 and Ecc 5:10, and there only in the Old Testament.

Ecc 2:22

What hath man of all his labor? i.e. what is to be the result to man? ;; Quidenim proderit homini? (Vulgate). There is, indeed, the pleasure that accompanies the pursuit of objects, and the successful accomplishment of enterprise; but this is poor and unsubstantial and embittered. And of the vexation of his heart; the striving, the effort of his mind to direct his labor to great ends. What does all this produce? The answer intended is,” Nothing.” This striving, with all its wisdom and knowledge and skill (Ecc 2:21), is for the laborer fruitless.

Ecc 2:23

All his days are sorrow, and his travail grief (comp. Ecc 5:16, Ecc 5:17). These are the real results of his lifelong efforts. All his days are pains and sorrows, bring trouble with them, and all his labor ends in grief. “Sorrows” and “grief” are pretreated respectively of “days” and “travail.” Abstract nouns are often so used. Thus Ecc 10:12, “The words of a wise man’s mouth are grace.” The free-thinkers in Wis. 2:1 complain that life is short and tedious (). Yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. He cannot sleep for thinking over his plans and hopes and disappointments. Not for him is the sweet sleep of the laboring man, who does his day’s work, earns his repose, and frets not about the future. On the one hand care, on the ether satiety, murder sleep, and make the night torment.

Ecc 2:21-26

From what has been said, Koheleth concludes that man may indeed enjoy the good things which he has provided, and find a certain happiness therein, but only according to God’s will and permission; and to expect to win pleasure at one’s own caprice is vain.

Ecc 2:24

There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink. The Vulgate makes the sentence interrogative, which the Hebrew does not sanction, Nonne melius est comedere et bibere? Septuagint , “There is naught good to a man to eat or drink;” St. Jerome and others insert misi, “except for a man to eat,” etc. This and the Authorized Version, which are more or less approved by most critics, make the writer enunciate a kind of modified Epicureanism, quotations in confirmation of which will be found set forth by Plumptre. It is not pretended that the present Hebrew text admits this exposition, and critics have agreed to modify the original in order to express the sense which they give to the passage. As it stands, the sentence runs, “It is not good in () man that he should eat,” etc. This is supposed to clash with later statements; e.g. Ecc 3:12,Ecc 3:13; Ecc 8:15; and to condemn all bodily pleasure even in its simplest form. Hence commentators insert (“than”) before , supposing that the initial mere has dropped out after the terminal of the preceding word, adam (comp. Ecc 3:22). This solution of a difficulty might be allowed were the Hebrew otherwise incapable of explanation without doing violence to the sentiments elsewhere expressed. But this is not the case. As Metals has seen, the great point lies in the preposition , and what is stated is that it does not depend on man, it is not in his power, he is not at liberty to eat and drink and enjoy himself simply at his own will; his power and ability proceed wholly from God. A higher authority than his decides the matter. The phrase, “to eat and drink,” is merely a periphrasis for living in comfort, peace, and affluence. St. Gregory, who holds that here and in other places Koheleth seems to contradict himself, makes a remark which is of general application, “He who looks to the text, and does not acquaint himself with the sense of the Holy Word, is not so much furnishing himself with instruction as bewildering himself in uncertainty, in that the literal words sometimes contradict themselves; but whilst by their oppositeness they stand at variance with themselves, they direct the reader to a truth that is to be understood” (‘Moral.,’ 4.1). They who read Epicureanism into the text fall into the error here denounced. They take the expression, “eat and drink,” in the narrowest sense of bodily pleasure, whereas it was by no means so confined in the mind of a Hebrew. To eat bread in the kingdom of God, to take a place at the heavenly banquet, represents the highest bliss of glorified man (Luk 14:15; Rev 19:9, etc.). In a lower degree it signifies earthly prosperity, as in Jer 22:15, “Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice? then it was well with him.” So in our passage we find only the humiliating truth that man in himself is powerless to make his life happy or his labors successful. There is no Epicurean-ism, even in a modified form, in the Hebrew text as it has come down to us. With other supposed traces of this philosophy we shall have to deal subsequently (see on Ecc 3:12; Ecc 6:2). And that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor; i.e. taste the enjoyment of his labor, get pleasure as the reward of all his exertions, or find it in the actual pursuit. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. This is the pointthe power of enjoyment depends on the will of God. The next verse substantiates this assertion.

Ecc 2:25

For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I? This is the translation of the received text. “Eat” means enjoy one’s self, as in the preceding verse; “hasten hereunto” implies eager pursuit of pleasure; and Koheleth asksWho had better opportunity than he for verifying the principle that all depends upon the gift of God? Vulgate, Quis ita devorabit, et deliciis affluet ut ego? The Septuagint had a different reading, which obtains also in the Syriac and Arabic versions, and has been adopted by many modern critics. Instead of , they read , “without him,” i.e. except from God. “For who shall eat or who shall drink without him ( )?“ This merely repeats the thought of the last verse, in agreement with the saying of St. James (Jas 1:17), “Every good gift and every perfect boon is from above, coming down from the Father’ of lights.” But the received reading, if it admits the rendering of the Authorized Version (which is somewhat doubtful), stands in close connection with the personal remark just preceding, “This also I saw,” etc; and is a more sensible confirmation thereof than a tautological observation can be. The next verse carries on the thought that substantial enjoyment is entirely the gift of God, and granted by him as the moral Governor of the world.

Ecc 2:26

For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight. The subject “God” is not, in the Hebrew, an omission which is supposed to justify its virtual insertion in Ecc 2:25. The Vulgate boldly supplies it here, Homini bone in conspectu sue dedit Deus. To the man that finds favor in God’s sight (1Sa 29:6; Neh 2:5), i.e. who pleases him, ha gives blessings, while he withholds them or takes them away from the man who displeases him. The blessings specified are wisdom, and knowledge, and joy. The only true wisdom which is not grief, the only true knowledge which is not sorrow (Ecc 1:18), and the only joy in life, are the gifts of God to those whom he regards as good. But to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up. The sinner takes great pains, expends continuous labor, that he may amass wealth, but it passes into other. (more worthy) hands. Horace, ‘Carm.,’ Ecc 2:14. 25

“Absumet heres Caecuba dignior Servata centum clavibus.”

The moral government of God is here recognized, as below, Ecc 3:15, Ecc 3:17, etc; and a further thought is added on the subject of retribution: That he may give to him that is good before God. This idea is found in Pro 28:8, “He that augmenteth his substance by usury and increase, gathereth it for him that hath pity upon the poor;” and Ecclesiastes 13:22, “The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the righteous” (comp. Job 27:16, Job 27:17). So in the parable of the talents, the talent of the unprofitable servant is given unto him who had made best use of his money (Mat 25:28). This also is vanity. It is a question what is the reference here. Delitzsch considers it to be the striving after pleasure in and from labor (verse 24); Knobel, the arbitrary distribution of the good things of this life; but, put thus baldly, this could hardly be termed a “feeding on wind;” nor could that expression be applied to the “gifts of God” to which Bullock confines the reference. Wright, Hengstenberg, Gratz, and others deem that what is meant is the collecting and heaping up of riches by the sinner, which has already been decided to be vanity (verses 11, 17, 18); and this Would limit the general conclusion to a particular instance. Taking the view contained in verse 24 as the central idea of the passage, we see that Koheleth feels that the restriction upon man’s enjoyment of labor imposed by God’s moral government makes that toil vain because its issue is not in men’s hands, and it is a striving for or a feeding on wind because the result is unsatisfying and vanishes in the grasp.

HOMILETICS

Est 2:1-11

The vanity of pleasure-an experiment in three stages.

I. THE WAY OF SENSUOUS ENJOYMENT. (Est 2:1, Est 2:2.) In this first stage Solomon, whether the real or the personated king, may be viewed as the representative of mankind in general, who, when they cast aside the teachings and restraints of religion, exclude from their minds the thought of a Divine Being, erase from their bosoms all convictions of duty, and refuse to look into the future, commonly addict themselves to pleasure, saying, “Enjoyment, be thou my god;” prescribing to themselves as the foremost task of their lives to minister to their own gratification, and adopting as their creed the well-known maxim, “Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die” (1Co 15:32).

1. The investigation was vigorously conducted. The Preacher was in earnest, not merely thinking in his heart, but addressing it, rather like the rich farmer in the parable (Luk 12:19) than like the singer in the psalm (Psa 16:2), and stirring it up as the brick makers of Babel did one another: “Go to now!” (Gen 11:3, Gen 11:4). That the investigation was so conducted by the real Solomon may be inferred from the preserved details of his history (1Ki 10:5; 1Ki 11:1, 1Ki 11:3); that it has often been so conducted since, not merely in fiction, as by Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ but in actual life, as by ‘Abelard and Heloise’ in the eleventh century, admits of demonstration; that it is being at present so conducted by many whose principal aim in life is not to obey the soul’s noblest impulses, but to hamper the body’s lower appetite, is palpable without demonstration.

2. The result has been clearly recorded. The Preacher found the way of pleasure as little fitted to conduct to felicity as that of wisdom; discovered, in fact, that laughter occasioned by indulgence in sensual delights was only a species of insanity, a kind of delirious intoxication which stupefied the reason and overthrew the judgment, if it did not lead to self-destruction, and that no solid happiness ever came out of it, but only vanity and striving after wind. So has every one who has sought his chief good in such enjoyment found. They who live in pleasure are dead while they live (1Ti 5:6)dead to all the soul’s higher aspirations; are self-deceived (Tit 3:3); and will in the end have a rude awakening, when they find that their short-lived pleasures (Heb 11:25) have only been nourishing them for slaughter (Jas 5:5).

II. THE WAY OF BANQUETING AND REVELRY. (Est 2:3.) In this second stage of the experiment, neither Solomon nor the Preacher (if he was different) stood alone. The path on which the ancient investigator now depicts himself as entering had been and still is:

1. Much traveled. The number of those who abandon themselves to wine and wassail, drunkenness and dissipation, chambering and wantonness, may not be so great as that of those who join in the pursuit of pleasure, many of whom would disdain to partake of the intoxicating cup; but still it is sufficiently large to justify the epithet employed.

2. Appallingly fatal. Apart altogether from the rightness or the wrongness of total abstinence, which the Preacher is not commending or even thinking of, this much is evident, that no one need hope to secure true happiness by surrendering himself without restraint to the appetite of intemperance. Nor is the issue different when the experiment is conducted with moderation, i.e. without losing one’s self-control, or abandoning the search for wisdom. Solomon and the Preacher found that the result was, as before vanity, and a striving after wind.

3. Perfectly avoidable. One requires not to tread in this way in order to perceive whither it leads. One has only to observe the experiment, as others are unfortunately conducting it, to discern that its goal is not felicity.

III. THE WAY OF CULTURE AND REFINEMENT. (Est 2:4-11.) In the third stage of this experiment the picture is drawn from the experiences of Solomonwhether by Solomon himself or by the Preacher is immaterial, so far as didactic purposes are concerned. Solomon is introduced as telling his own story.

1. His magnificence had been most resplendent.

(1) His works were great. He had prepared for himself buildings of architectural beauty, such as “the house of the forest of Lebanon, the pillared hall [porch], the hall of judgment, the palace intended for himself and the daughter of Pharaoh” (1Ki 7:1-12); he had strengthened his kingdom by the erection of such towns as Tadmor in the wilderness, the store-cities of Hamath and Baalath, with the two fortresses of Beth-heron the Upper and Beth-heron the Nether (2Ch 8:3-6); he had planted vineyards, of which Baal-hamon, with its choicest wine, was one (So Est 8:11), and perhaps those of Engedi (So Est 1:14) others; he had caused to be constructed, no doubt in connection with his palaces, gardens and orchards, with all kinds of fruit trees, and “pools of water to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared” (So Est 4:13; Est 6:2).

(2) His possessions were varied. In addition to those above mentioned, he had slaves, male and female, purchased with money (Gen 37:28), and born in his house (Gen 15:3; Gen 17:12), with great possessions of flocks and herds. The number of the former was so large as to excite the Queen of Sheba’s astonishment (1Ki 10:5), while the abundance of the latter was proved both by the daily provision for Solomon’s household (1Ki 4:22, 1Ki 4:23), and by the hecatombs sacrificed at the consecration of the temple (1Ki 8:63).

(3) His wealth was enormous. Of silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of the kings and of the provinces, he had amassed a heap. The ships of Hiram had fetched him from Ophir four hundred and twenty talents of gold (1Ki 9:28); the Queen of Sheba presented him with one hundred and twenty talents of gold (1Ki 10:10); the weight of gold which came to him in one year was six hundred and sixty-six talents (1Ki 10:14); while as for silver “the king made it to be in Jerusalem as stones” (1Ki 10:27). “The peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces” may either signify such rare and precious jewels as were prized by foreign sovereigns and states and presented to him as tribute; or describe Solomon’s wealth as royal and. public, in contradistinction from that of private citizens.

(4) His pleasures were delicious. He had singing-men and singing-women to regale his jaded senses with music at court banquets, after the manner of Oriental sovereigns; while over and above he had “the delights of the sons of men,” or “concubines very many “”a love and loves” (Wright), “mistress and mistresses” (Delitzsch). Clearly Solomon had conducted the experiment of extracting happiness from worldly glory under the most favorable circumstances; hence special interest attaches to the result he obtained. What was it?

2. His misery was most pronounced. Although he had had every gratification that eye could desire, heart wish, or hand procure, he had found to his chagrin that true happiness eluded him like a phantom; that all was vanity and a striving after wind; that, in fact, there was no profit of a lasting kind to be derived from pleasure in its highest any more than in its lowest forms.

Learn:

1. The way of pleasure, however inviting, is not the way of safety or the way of peace.

2. While it cannot impart happiness to any, it may lead to everlasting misery and shame.

3. The pursuit of pleasure is not only incompatible with religion, but even at the best its sweets are not to be compared with religion’s joys.

Est 2:12-16

Wisdom and folly.

I. FOLLY AS GOOD AS WISDOM. Three things seemed to proclaim this,

1. The chances of life. These appeared to be as favorable to the fool as to the wise man. The experiences of both were much alike; the lot of each little different. “I perceived,” said he, “that one event happeneth to them all’ (Est 2:14). “As it happeneth to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and why was I then more wise?” (Est 2:15). This observation apparently had struck him with much force, as he refers to it more than once (Ecc 8:14; Ecc 9:2). It was not an original observation, as long before Job had remarked upon the seeming indifference with which providential allotments were made to the righteous and the wicked (Job 9:22; Job 21:7). Nevertheless, it was and is a true observation that, so far as purely external circumstances are concerned, it may be doubtful if the wise man fares better than the fool.

2. The onrush of oblivion. With pitiless maw this devours the wise and the fool alike (verse 16). If the human heart craves after one thing more than another, it is an assurance that name and memory shall not quite perish from the earth when one himself is gone. Such as are indifferent to a personal immortality beyond the grave in a realm of heavenly felicity, are often found to be supremely desirous of this lesser immortality which men call posthumous fame. For this the Egyptian Pharaohs erected pyramids, temples, mausoleums; for this men strive to set themselves on pinnacles of power, fame, wealth, or wisdom before they die; yet the number of those who are remembered many weeks beyond the circle of their immediate friends is small. Even of the so-called great who have flourished upon the earth, how few are rescued from oblivion!

“Their memory and their name are gone,
Alike unknowing and unknown.”

Who beyond a few scholars knows anything of the Pharaohs who built the pyramids, or of Assurbanipal, the patron of learning in Assyria, of Homer, of Socrates, or of Plato? If one thinks of it, the amount of remembrance accorded to almost all the leaders of mankind consists in thisthat their names will be found in dictionaries.

3. The descent of death. The wise man might have derived consolation from the fact,had it been a factthat though after death his fate would be hardly distinguishable from that of the fool, nevertheless before and at death, or in the manner of dying, there would be a wide distinction. But even this poor scrap of comfort is denied him, according to the Preacher. “How doth the wise man die? as the fool!” (verse 16). To appearance, at least, it is so, because in reality a difference wide asunder as the poles separates the dying of him who is driven away in his wickedness, and him who has hope in his death” (Pro 14:32). But contemplating death from the outside, as a purely natural phenomenon, it is the same exactly in the experience of the wise man as in that of the fool. In both the process culminates in the loosening of the silver cord and the breaking of the golden bowl (Ecc 12:6).

II. WISDOM SUPERIOR TO FOLLY. As light excelleth darkness, so wisdom excels folly. Three grounds of superiority.

1. The path of wisdom a way of light; that of folly a way of darkness. That the latter is essentially a way of darkness, and therefore of uncertainty, difficulty, and danger, had been declared by Solomon (Pro 2:13; Pro 4:19). The Preacher adds an explanation by likening the foolish man to a person walking backwards, or “with his eyes behind;” so that he knows neither whither he is going, nor at what he is stumbling, nor the peril into which he is advancing. Had the Preacher said nothing more than this, he would have been entitled to special thanks. Thousands live in the delusion that the way of pleasure, frivolity, dissipation, extravagance, prodigality, is the way of light, wisdom, safety, felicitywhich, it. is not. The traveler who would journey in comfort and security must walk with his eyes to the front, considering the direction in which he moves, pondering the paths of his feet, and turning neither to the right hand nor to the left (Pro 4:25-27). In other words, the wise man’s eyes must be in his head, exercising at once forethought, circumspection, and attention.

2. The source of wisdom from above; that of folly from beneath. As the light descends from the pure regions of the upper air, so this wisdom of which the Preacher speaks, like that to which Job (Job 28:23), David (Psa 51:6), Solomon (Pro 2:6), Daniel (Dan 2:23), Paul (1Co 1:30), and James (Jas 1:5; Jas 3:15) allude, comes from God (verse 26). As the darkness may be said to spring from the earth, so folly has its birthplace in the heart. The individual that turns away from the light of wisdom presented to him in the moral intuitions of the heart, the revelations of scripture, or the teachings of nature, bay that act condemns his spirit to dwell in darkness.

3. The end of wisdom, safety; that of folly, destruction. The light of wisdom illuminates the path of duty for the individual; the darkness of folly covers it with gloom. Specially true of heavenly wisdom as contrasted with wickedness and sin. Even with regard to ordinary wisdom, its superiority over folly is not to be denied. The wise man has at least the satisfaction of knowing whither he is going, and of realizing the unsatisfactory character of the course he is pursuing. It may not be a great advantage which the wise man has over the fool, that whereas the fool is a madman and knows it not, the wise man cannot follow after wisdom (in itself and for itself) without discovering that it is vanity; but still it is an advantagean advantage like that which a man has who walks straight before him, with his eyes in his head and directed to the front, over him who either puts out his eyes, or blindfolds himself, or turns his eyes backward before he begins to travel.

LESSONS.

1. Get wisdom, especially the best.

2. Eschew folly, more particularly that which is irreligious.

3. Learn to discriminate between the two; much evil will thereby be avoided.

Est 2:17-20

The vanity of toil.

I. THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS LIES NOT IN BUSINESS. Granting that one applies himself to business, and succeeds through ability, perseverance, and skill in building up a fortune, if he looks for felicity either in his labor or in his riches, he will find himself mistaken. Three things are fatal to a man’s chances of finding happiness in the riches that come from business success.

1. Sorrow in the getting of them. Toiling and moiling, laboring and striving, drudging and slaving, planning and plotting, scheming and contriving, rising up early and lying down late, hurrying and worryingby these means for the most part are fortunes built up. How expressive is the Preacher’s language concerning the successful man of business, that “all his days are sorrows, and his travail is grief,” or “all his days are pains, and trouble is his occupation,” “yea, even in the night his heart taketh no rest” (Est 2:23)!

2. Sorrow in the keeping of them. A constant anxiety besets the rich man, night and day, lest the riches he has amassed should suddenly take wings and flee away; by day looking out for safe investments, and by night wondering if his ventures will prove good, if the money he has painfully collected may not some day disappear and leave him in the lurch. And even should this not happen, how often is it seen that when a man has made his fortune, he finds there is nothing in it; that success has been too long in coming, and that now, when he has wealth, he wants the power to enjoy it (Est 2:22; cf. Ecc 6:2); as the duke says to Claudio in the prison

“And when thou art old and rich,

Thou hast neither heat. affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant.”

(‘Measure for Measure,’ act 3. sc. 1.)

3. Sorrow in the parting with them. The results of all his labor he must leave to the man who shall be after him, without knowing whether that successor shall be a wise man or a fool (Est 2:18, Est 2:19; cf. Ecc 5:15); and though this does not greatly trouble the Christian, who knows there is laid up for him a better and more enduring substance in heaven, yet for the worldly or insincerely religious man it is an agitating thought. Mazarin, the cardinal, and first minister of Louis XIV; was accustomed, as he walked through the galleries of his palace, to whisper to himself, “I must quit all this;” and Frederick William IV. of Prussia on one occasion, as he stood upon the Potsdam terrace, turned to Chevalier Bunsen beside him, and remarked, as they looked out together on the garden,” This too I must leave behind me” (see Plumptre, in loco).

II. BUSINESS MAY MINISTER TO MAN‘S ENJOYMENT. The Preacher does not wish to teach that happiness lies beyond man’s reach, but rather that it is attainable, if sought in the right way. He recognizes:

1. That there is nothing wrong in seeking after happiness, or even earthly enjoyment. He admits there is nothing better, more permissible or desirable, among men than that one “should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labor” (verse 24). He even allows that this is from the hand of God, which makes it plain that he is not now alluding to sinful indulgence of the bodily appetite, but speaking of that moderate enjoyment of the good things of life God has so richly provided for man’s support and entertainment. It is not God’s wish, he says, that man should be debarred or should debar himself from all enjoyment. Rather it is his earnest desire that man should eat and drink and enjoy what has been furnished for his entertainment, should not make of himself an ascetic, under pretence of religion denying himself of lawful pleasures and gratifications, but should so use them as to contribute to his highest welfare.

2. That no man can make a good use of life‘s provisions unless in connection with the thought of God. “Who can eat or have enjoyment, apart from him [i.e. God]?”: This corrective thought the Preacher lays before his readers, that while the world’s good things cannot impart happiness by themselves and apart from God, they can if enjoyed in conjunction with him, i.e. if recognized as coming from him (1Ch 29:14; 1Ti 6:17; Jas 1:17), and used for his glory (1Co 10:31). The last passages show that this was the New Testament ideal of life (1Ti 4:4).

3. That he who seeks happiness in this way will succeed. “For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight [or, ‘that pleaseth him’] wisdom, and knowledge, and joy” (verse 26). So far from pronouncing felicity a dream, an unattainable good, a shadow without a substance, the Preacher believes that if a man will take God and religion with him into the world, and, remembering both the shortness of time and the certainty of a future life, will enjoy the world’s good things in moderation and with thankfulness, he will derive therefrom, if not absolute and unmixed happiness, as near an approximation to it as man can expect to reach on earth. God will graciously assist such a man to gather the best fruits of wisdom and knowledge, both human and Divine, and will inspire him with a joy the world can neither give nor take away (Job 22:21; Psa 16:8, Psa 16:9; Psa 112:1, Psa 112:7, Psa 112:8; Joh 16:22). This, if not happiness, is at least a lot immensely superior to that God assigns to the sinner, i.e. to the man who excludes God, religion, and immortality from his life. The lot of such a man is often as the Preacher describes, to toil away in making money, to heap it up till it becomes a pile, and then to die and leave it to be scattered to the winds, enjoyed by he knows not whom, and not infrequently by the good men he has despised (Job 27:16, Job 27:17; Pro 13:22; Pro 28:8).

LESSONS.

1. Be diligent in business (Rom 12:11). “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,” etc. (Ecc 9:10).

2. But be “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord” (Rom 12:11).

3. Seek happiness in God himself rather than in his gilts (Psa 4:7; Psa 9:2; Psa 40:16; Luk 1:47; Php 3:1).

HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS

Est 2:1-11

The vanity of wealth, pleasure, and greatness.

There is certainly a strange reversal here of the order of experience which is usual and expected. Men, disappointed with earthly possessions and satiated with sensual pleasures, sometimes turn to the pursuit of some engrossing study, to the cultivation of intellectual tastes, But the case described in the text is different. Here we have a man, convinced by experience of the futility and disappointing character of scientific and literary pursuits, applying himself to the world, and seeking satisfaction in its pleasures and distractions. Such experience as is here described is possible only to one in a station of eminence; and if Solomon is depicted as disappointed with the result of his experiment, there is no great encouragement for others, less favorably situated, to hope for better results from similar endeavors.

I. THE WORLDLY MAN‘S AIM. This is to learn what the human heart and life can derive from the gifts and enjoyments of this world. Man’s nature is impulsive, acquisitive, yearning, aspiring. He is ever seeking satisfaction for his wants and desires. He turns now hither and now thither, seeking in every direction that which he never finds in anything earthly, in anything termed “real.”

II. THE WORLDLY MAN‘S MEANS TO THIS END. How shall satisfaction be found? The world presents itself in answer to this question, and invites its votary to acquisition and appropriation of its gifts. This passage in Ecclesiastes offers a remarkable and exhaustive catalogue of the emoluments and pleasures, the interests and occupations, with which the world pretends to satisfy the yearning spirit of man. There are enumerated:

1. Bodily pleasure, especially the pleasure of abundance of choice wine.

2. Feminine society,

3. Riches, consisting of silver and gold, of flocks and herds.

4. Great works, as palaces, parks, etc.

5. Household magnificence.

6. Treasures of art, and especially musical entertainments.

7. Study and wisdom, associated with all diversions and distractions of every kind.

It seems scarcely credible that one man could be the possessor of so many means of enjoyment, and it is not to be wondered at that “Solomon in all his glory” should be mentioned as the most amazing example of this world’s greatness and delights. It needed a many-sided nature to appreciate so vast a variety of possessions and occupations; the largeness of heart which is ascribed to the Hebrew monarch must have found abundant scope in the palaces of Jerusalem. It is instructive that Holy Writ, which presents so just a view of human nature, should record a position so exalted and opulent and a career so splendid as those of Solomon.

III. THE WORLDLY MAN‘S FAILURE TO SECURE THE END BY THE USE OF THE MEANS DESCRIBED.

1. All such gratifications as are here enumerated are in themselves insufficient to satisfy man’s spiritual nature. There is a disproportion between the soul of man and the pleasures of sense and the gifts of fortune. Even could the wealth and luxury, the delights and splendor, of an Oriental monarch be enjoyed, the result would not be the satisfaction expected. There would still be “the aching void the world can never fill.”

2. It must also be remembered that, by a law of our constitution, even pleasure is not best obtained when consciously and deliberately sought. To seek pleasure is to miss it, whilst it often comes unsought in the path of ordinary duty.

3. When regarded as the supreme good, worldly possessions and enjoyments may hide God from the soul. They obscure the shining of the Divine countenance, as the clouds conceal the sun that shines behind them. The works of God’s hand sometimes absorb the interest and attention which are due to their Creator; the bounty and beneficence of the Giver are sometimes lost sight of by those who partake of his gifts.

4. The good things of earth may legitimately be accepted and enjoyed when received as God’s gifts, and held submissively and gratefully “with a light hand.”

5. Earth’s enjoyments may be a true blessing if, failing to satisfy the soul, they induce the soul to turn from them to God, in whose favor is life.

Est 2:12-17

The comparison between wisdom and folly.

To the ordinary observer the contrast between men’s condition and circumstances is more expressive than that ‘between their character. The senses are attracted, the imagination is excited, by the spectacle of wealth side by side with squalid poverty, of grandeur and power side by side with obscurity and helplessness. But to the reflecting and reasonable there is far more interest and instruction in the distinction between the nature and life of the fool, impelled by his passions or by the influence of his associations; and the nature and life of the man who considers, deliberates, and judges, and, as becomes a rational being, acts in accordance with nature and well-weighed convictions. Very noble are the words which the poet puts into the lips of Philip van Artevelde

“All my life long

Have I beheld with most respect the man
Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him;
And from amongst them chose deliberately,
And with clear foresight, not with blindfold courage;
And having chosen, with a steadfast mind
Pursued his purposes.”

I. THE NATURAL CONTRAST BETWEEN WISDOM AND FOLLY.

1. The distinction is one founded in the very nature of things, and is similar to that which, in the physical world, exists between light and darkness. This is as much as to say that God himself is the All-wise, and that reasonable beings, in so far as they participate in his nature and character, are distinguished by true wisdom; whilst, on the other hand, departure from God is the same thing as abandonment to folly.

2. The distinction is brought out by the just exercise or the culpable misuse of human faculty. “The wise man’s eyes are in his head,” which is a proverbial and figurative way of saying that the wise man uses the powers of observation and judgment with which he is endowed. The position and the endowments of the organs of vision is a plain indication that they were intended to guide the steps; the man who looks before him will not miss his way or fall into danger. Similarly, the faculties of the understanding and reason which are bestowed upon man are intended for the purpose of directing the voluntary actions, which, becoming habitual, constitute man’s moral life. The wise man is he who not only possesses such powers, but makes a right use of them, and orders his way aright. The fool, on the contrary, “walketh in darkness;” i.e. he is as one who, having eyes, makes no use of themshuts his eyes, or walks blindfold. The natural consequence is that he wanders from the path, and probably falls into perils and into destruction.

II. THE APPARENT EQUALITY OF THE LOT OF THE WISE MAN AND THAT OF THE FOOL. The writer of this Book of Ecclesiastes was impressed with the fact that in this world men do not meet with their deserts; that, if there is retribution, it is of a very incomplete character; that the fortune of men is not determined by their moral character. This is a mystery which has oppressed the minds of observant and reflecting men in every age, and has been to some the occasion of falling into skepticism and even atheism.

1. The wise man and the fool in many cases meet with the same fortune here upon earth: “One event happeneth to them all.” Wisdom does not always meet with its reward in earthly prosperity, nor does folly always bring down upon the fool the penalty of poverty, suffering, and shame. A man may be ignorant, unthinking, and wicked; yet by the exercise of shrewdness and cunning he may advance himself. A wise man may be indifferent to worldly ends, and may neglect the means by which prosperity may be secured. Moral means secure moral ends; but there may be spiritual prosperity which is not crowned by worldly greatness and wealth.

2. The wise man and the fool are alike forgotten after death. “All shall be forgotten;” “There is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever.” All men have some sensitiveness to the reputation which shall survive them: the writer of this book seems to have been particularly sensitive upon this point. He was impressed by the fact that no sooner has a wise and good man departed this life than straightway men proceed to forget him. A few years past, and the memory of the dead itself dies, and good and bad alike are forgotten by a generation interested only in its own affairs. A common oblivion overtakes us all such considerations led the author of this book into distress and disheartenment. He was tempted to hate life; it was grievous unto him, and all was vanity and vexation of spirit. A voice within, plausible and seductive, urgesWhy trouble as to the moral principles by which you are guided? Whether you are wise or foolish, will it not soon be all the same? Nay, is it not all the same even now?

III. THE REAL SUPERIORITY OF WISDOM OVER POLLY, If we were to look at some verses of this book only, we might infer that the author’s mind was quite unhinged by the spectacle of human-life; that he really doubted the superintendence of Divine providence; that he did not care to make aright for truth, righteousness, and goodness. But although he had doubts, and difficulties, though he passed through moods of a pessimistic character, it appears plain that when he came to state his deliberate and reasoned convictions, he showed himself to be a believer in God, and not in fate; in resolute and self-denying virtue, and not in self-indulgence and cynicism. In this passage are brought together facts which occasion most men perplexity, which bring some men into skepticism. Yet the deliberate conclusion to which the author comes is this: “I saw that wisdom excelleth folly.” He had, as we all should have, a better and higher standard of judgment, and a better and higher law of conduct, than the phenomena of this world can supply. It is not by temporal and earthly results that we are to form our judgments upon morality and religion; we have a nobler and a truer standard, even our own reason and conscience, the voice of Heaven to which to listen, the candle of the Lord by which to guide our steps. Judged as God judges, judged by the Law and the Word of God, “wisdom excelleth folly.” Let the wise and good man be afflicted in his body, let him be plunged into adversity, let him be deserted by his friends, let him be calumniated or forgotten; still he has chosen the better part, and need not envy the good fortune of the fool. Even the ancient Stoics maintained this. How much more the followers of Christ, who himself incurred the malice and derision of men; who was despised and rejected and crucified, but who, nevertheless, was approved and accepted of God the All-wise, and was exalted to everlasting dominion! Wisdom is justified of her children.” The wise man is not to be shaken either by the storms of adversity or by the taunts of the foolish. His is the right path, and ha will persevere in it; and he is not only sustained by the approbation of his conscience, he is satisfied with the fellowship of his Master, Christ.T.

Est 2:18-23

Concern for posterity.

It is distinctive of man that he is a being that looks before and after; he cannot be satisfied to regard only the present; he investigates the former days, and the ancestry from which he has derived life and circumstances; he speculates as to the days to come, and “all the wonder yet to be.” It appeared to the “Preacher” of Jerusalem that too great solicitude regarding our posterity is an element in the “vanity“ which is characteristic of this life.

I. IT IS NATURAL THAT MEN SHOULD ANTICIPATE THEIR POSTERITY WITH INTEREST AND SOLICITUDE. Family life is so natural to man that there is nothing strange in the anxiety which most men feel with regard to their children, and even their children’s children. Men do not like the prospect of their posterity sinking in the social scale. Prosperous men find a pleasure and satisfaction in “founding a family,” in perpetuating their name, preserving their estates and possessions to their descendants, and in the prospect of being remembered with gratitude and pride by generations yet unborn. In the case of kings and nobles such sentiments and anticipations are especially powerful.

II. IT IS A MATTER OF FACT THAT IN MANY INSTANCES MEN‘S ANTICIPATIONS REGARDING POSTERITY ARE DISAPPOINTED. The wide and accurate observations of the author of Ecclesiastes convinced him that such is the case.

1. The rich man’s descendants scatter the wealth which he has accumulated by means of labor and self-denial. It need not be proved, for the fact is patent to all, that it is the same in this respect in our own days as it was in the Hebrew state. In fact, we have an English proverb, “One generation makes money; the second keeps it; the third spends it.”

2. The wise man’s descendant proves to be a fool. Notwithstanding what has been maintained to be a law of “hereditary genius,” the fact is unquestionable that there are many instances in which the learned, the accomplished, the intellectually great, are succeeded by those bearing their name, but by no means inheriting their ability. And the contrast is one painful to witness, and humiliating to those to whose disadvantage it is drawn.

3. The descendants of the great in many instances fall into obscurity and contempt. History affords us many examples of such descent; tells of the posterity of the noble, titled, and powerful working with their hands for daily bread, etc.

III. THE PROSPECT OF AN UNFORTUNATE POSTERITY OFTEN DISTRESSES AND TROUBLES MEN, ESPECIALLY THE GREAT. The “wise man” knew what it was to brood over such a prospect as opened up to his foreseeing mind. He came to hate his labor, and to cause his heart to despair; all his days were sorrow, and his travail grief; his heart took not rest in the night; and life seemed only vanity to him. Why should I toil, and take heed, and care, and deny myself? is the question which many a man puts to himself in the sessions of silent thought. My children or my children’s children may squander my fiches, alienate my estates, sully my reputation; my work may be undone, and my fond hopes may be mocked. What is human life but hollowness, vanity, wind?

IV. THE TRUE CONSOLATION BENEATH THE PRESSURE OF SUCH FOREBODINGS. It is vain to attempt to comfort ourselves by denying facts or by cherishing unfounded and unreasonable hopes. What we have to do is to place all our confidence in a wise and gracious God, and to leave the future to his providential care; and at the same time to do our own duty, not concerning ourselves overmuch as to the conduct of others, of those who shall come after us. It is for us to “rest in the Lord,” who has not promised to order and overrule all things for our glory or happiness, but who will surely order and overrule them for the advancement of his kingdom and the honor of his Name.T.

Verse 24

All good is from God.

Revelation ever presents to man a standard of conduct equally removed from selfish gratification and from proud asceticism. It condemns the habit, too common with the prosperous and fortunate, of seeking all saris-faction in the pleasures and luxuries of the world, in the enjoyments of sense; and it at the same time condemns the tendency to despise the body and the things of time and sense, as if such independence of earth were of necessity the means to spiritual enrichment and blessing. On the one hand, we are invited to partake freely and gladly of the gifts of Divine providence; on the other hand, we are admonished to receive all things as “from the hand of God.”

I. GOD‘S BOUNTY PROVIDES THE FAVORS BY WHICH MAN‘S EARTHLY LIFE IS ENRICHED. Food and drink are mentioned here as examples of the good gifts of the Eternal Father, who “openeth his hand, and supplieth the wants of every living thing.” Manifold is the provision of the Divine beneficence. The whole material world is an apparatus by which the bounty of the Creator ministers to the wants of his creatures. And all God’s gifts have a meaning and value beyond themselves; they reveal the Divine character, they symbolize the Divine goodness. To despise them is to despise the Giver.

II. GOD‘S KINDNESS BESTOWS FACULTIES ADAPTED TO THE ENJOYMENT OF HIS GIFTS. The adaptation is obvious and instructive between the bounties of God’s providence, and the bodily constitution in virtue of which man is able to appropriate and enjoy what God bestows. Food and drink presuppose the power to partake of them, and to use them for the continued life, health, and vigor of the body. The correspondence may be traced throughout the whole of our physical nature; between the eye and light, between hearing and sound, between the lungs and the atmospherein fact, between the organism and the environment.

III. GOD EXPECTS THAT WE SHOULD USE HIS GIFTS AS HE COMMANDS, AND FOR HIS GLORY. All Divine bestowments are a kind of test and trial for man, who does not of necessity follow appetite, but who can exercise his reason and his will in dealing with the circumstances of his being, with the provisions of God’s bounty. All are susceptible of use and of abuse. The Preacher gives us the key to a right use of providential bounties, when he reminds us that all is “from the hand of God.” The man who sees the Giver in the gift, who partakes with gratitude of that which is bestowed, recognizing its spiritual significance, and using it as the means to spiritual improvement,such a man fulfils his probation aright, and does not live the earthly life in vain.

IV. UPON COMPLIANCE WITH OR NEGLECT OF THE DIVINE REQUIREMENT DEPENDS THE EFFECT OF GOD‘S GIFTS UPON US, WHETHER THEY SHALL BE A BLESSING OR A CURSE. It would be very easy to read amiss the teaching of this Book of Ecclesiastes. Let a man read it when under the influence of a hedonistic and optimistic temper of mind, and he may be encouraged to abandon himself to the pleasures of life, to the joys of sense, to seek his welfare and satisfaction in what this world can give. Let a man read the book when passing through bitter experience of the ills and woes and disappointments of life, in a pessimistic mood, and he may be encouraged to dejection, despondency, and cynicism. But the true lesson of the book is this: Life is a Divine discipline, and its purpose should never be lost sight of; the gifts of Providence are intended for our enjoyment, our grateful appropriation, but not for the satisfaction of the spiritual nature; Divine wisdom summons us to the reverential service of the Eternal himself; we should then receive with joy what God bestows, and give up without undue mourning what God takes away, for all of life is “from the hand of God.”T.

Verse 26

Retribution.

Here at length the Preacher propounds the doctrine of God’s moral government, which in the earlier part of the book has been kept in abeyance. It is one thing to treat of human life, and another thing to treat of theology. The first may, and does to the thoughtful mind, suggest the second; but there are many who never take the step from the one to the other. The author of this book has recorded his experience, with such generalizations and obvious lessons as such experience naturally suggests; he has drawn such conclusions as an observant and reflecting student could scarcely avoid. But hitherto he has refrained from the province of faith, of insight, of revelation. Now, however, he boldly affirms the fact that the world is the scene of Divine retribution; that behind all natural law there is a law which is supernatural; that the Judge of all the earth doeth right.

I. GOD IS INTERESTED IN HUMAN CHARACTER AND LIFE. The ancient Epicurean notions that the gods were above all care for the concerns of men is not extinct; for many even now deem it derogatory to the Deity that he should be considered to interest himself either in the experiences or in the character of men. This passage in Ecclesiastes justly assumes that what men are and what they pass through are matters of real concern to the Creator and Lord of all.

II. GOD ALLOWS IN HUMAN LIFE SCOPE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEN‘S MORAL CHARACTER. He endows man with a constitution properly supernatural, with capacities and faculties higher than those which are amenable to physical law. Interesting as is the necessary development of the universe under the control of natural forces, far more interesting is the unfolding of the moral character of men. This, indeed, is for us the most significant and momentous of all things that exist. Man is made not merely to enjoy or to suffer, but to form character, to acquire habits of virtue and piety; to become assimilated, in moral disposition and purpose, to the Divine Author of his being. To this end all circumstances may conduce; for experience shows us that there is no condition of human life, no range of human experience, which may not minister to spiritual improvement and welfare.

III. GOD IS THE RIGHTFUL RULER AND JUDGE OF MEN. All human relationships fail adequately to set forth the character and offices of the Eternal; yet many such relationships serve to afford us some glimpse into the excellences of him who is judicially and morally the Supreme. There is no incompatibility between the representation that God is a Father, and that which attributes to him the functions of a Judge. The human relationships are based upon the Divine, and it is unjust to regard the human as simply figures of the Divine. Having all power, God is able to apportion the lot of the creature; being infinitely righteous, such apportionment on his part must be beyond all criticism and censure. The life of man should be lived under a constant sense of the Divine observation and judgment; for thus the probationer of earth will secure the advantage of the loftiest standard of righteousness, and the motive to rectitude and to progress which the Divine government is fitted to supply. Distributive justiceto use the expression familiar in moral philosophyis the function of the Supreme.

IV. GOD HIMSELF DETERMINES THE MEASURE IN WHICH RETRIBUTION SHALL BE CARRIED OUT IN THIS EARTHLY LIFE. The passage now under consideration lays stress upon the earthly reward and penalty, though it does not represent these as exhaustive and complete. “God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy.” This is something very different from what is termed “poetical justice;” these are gifts which are consistent with adversity and affliction. In fact, the lesson seems to be conveyed that moral goodness meets with moral recompense, as distinct from the doctrine of children’s story-books, which teach that “virtue will be rewarded with a coach-and-six”! And the sinner is warned that he will receive the reward of his sin in travail, disappointment, and dissatisfaction. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” A man must be blind who does not see in the constitution of human nature and human society the traces of a righteous Lawgiver and Administrator; and at the same time, the man must be short-sighted who does not detect indications of incompleteness in these judicial arrangements.

V. GOD GIVES US IN THE PARTIAL RETRIBUTION OF THE PRESENT A SUGGESTION OF A LIFE TO COME, IN WHICH HIS GOVERNMENT SHALL BE COMPLETED AND VINDICATED. That the convictions and expectations of the ancient Hebrews with regard to a future existence were as developed and decisive as those of Christians, none would contend. But this and other books afford indications that the enlightened Jews had an anticipation of judgment to come. If this world were all, vanity and vexation of spirit would have been the only impression produced by the experience and contemplation of human life. But it was seen, even if dimly, that this earthly state requires, in order to its completeness, an immortality which is the scene of Divine judgment and of human retribution.T.

HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON

Est 2:1-11

The trial of pleasure.

We have to consider

I. THE CONSTANT QUESTION OF THE HUMAN HEART. In what shall we find the good which will make our life precious to us? What is there that will meet the cravings of the human heart, and cover our whole life with the sunshine of success and of contentment?

II. A VERY NATURAL RESORT. We have recourse to some kind of excitement. It may be that which acts upon the senses (Est 2:3, Est 2:8). Or it may be that which gratifies the mind; the sense of possession and of power (Est 2:7-9). Or it may be found in agreeable and inviting activities (Est 2:4-6).

III. ITS TEMPORARY SUCCESS. “My heart rejoiced” (Est 2:10). It would be simply false to contend that there is no delight, no satisfaction, in these sources of good. There is, for a while. There is a space during which they fill the heart as the wine fills the cup into which it is poured. The heart rejoices; it utters its joy in song; it declares itself to be completely happy. It “sits in the sun;” it rolls the sweet morsel between its teeth. It flatters itself that it has found its fortune, while the angels of God weep over its present folly and its coming doom.

IV. ITS ACTUAL AND UTTER INSUFFICIENCY. (Est 2:11.) Pleasure may be coarse and condemnable; it may go down to fleshly gratifications (Est 2:3, Est 2:8); it may be refined and chaste, may expend itself in designs and executions; it may be moderated and regulated with the finest calculation, so as to have the largest measure spread over the longest possible period; it may “guide itself with wisdom” (Est 2:3). But it will be a failure; it will break down; it will end in a dreary exclamation of “Vanity!” Three things condemn it as a solution of the great quest after human good.

1. Experience. This proves, always and everywhere, that the deliberate and systematic pursuit of pleasure fails to secure its end. Pleasure is not a harvest, to be sedulously sown and reaped; it is a plant that grows, unsought and uncultivated, all along the path of duty and of service. To seek it and to labor for it is to miss it. All human experience shows that it soon palls upon the taste, that it fades fast in the hands of its devotee; that there is no company of men so utterly weary and so wretched as the tired hunters after pleasurable excitement.

2. Philosophy. This teaches us that a being made for something so much higher than pleasure can never be satisfied with anything so low; surely we cannot expect that the heart which is capable of worship, of service, of holy love, of heroic consecration, of spiritual nobility, will be filled and satisfied with “the delights of the sons of men.”

3. Religion. For this introduces the sovereign claims of the Supreme One; it places man in the presence of God; it shows a life of frivolity to be a life of culpable selfishness, of sin, of shame. It summons to a purer and a wiser search, to a worthier and a nobler course; it promises the peace which waits on rectitude; it offers the joy which only God can give, and which no man can take away.C.

Est 2:12-14

Sagacity and stupidity

The “wisdom” and the “folly” of the text are perhaps best represented by the words “sagacity” and “stupidity.” The distinction is one of the head rather than of the heart; of the understanding rather than of the entire spirit. We are invited, therefore, to consider

I. THE WORTH OF SAGACITY.

1. It stands much lower down than heavenly wisdom; that is the direct product of the Spirit of God, and makes men blessed with a good which cannot be taken away. It places them above the reach of adversity, and makes them invulnerable to the darts of death itself (see Est 2:14).

2. It has its own distinct advantages. “The wise man’s eyes are in his head;” he sees whither he is going; he does not delude himself with the idea that he can violate all the laws of his nature with impunity. He knows that the wages of sin is death, that if he sows to the flesh he will reap corruption; he understands that, if he would enjoy the esteem of men and the favor of God, he must subdue his spirit, control his passions, regulate his life according to the standards of truth and virtue. This sagacity of the wise will therefore

(1) save him from some of the most egregious and fatal blunders;

(2) keep him sufficiently near to the path of virtue to be saved from the darker excesses and more crushing sorrows of life;

(3) secure for himself and his family some measure of comfort and respect, and place some of the purer pleasures within his reach;

(4) keep him within hearing of the truth of God, where he is more likely to find his way into the kingdom of God.

II. THE PITIFULNESS OF STUPIDITY. “The fool walketh blindly.”

1. He has no eye to see the fair and the beautiful around him, no heart to appreciate the nobility that might be within him or the glories that are above him.

2. He fails to discern the real wretchedness of his present conditionhis destitution, his condemnation, his exile.

3. He does not shrink from the evil which impends. He is walking toward the precipice, below which is utter ruin, eternal death. Truly “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to depart from evil, that is understanding”C.

Est 2:18 -24

The complaint of the successful.

The man who labors and who fails to acquire may be pitied, and if he finds his life to have a large measure of vanity he may be excused for complaining; but here is

I. THE COMPLAINT OF THE SUCCESSFUL. The speaker (of the text) is made (or makes himself) miserable because he has gained much by the expenditure of time and strength, and he has to leave it behind him when he dies; he has to leave it to one who “has not labored” (Est 2:21), and possibly to a man who is not as wise as himself, bat is “a fool” (Est 2:19), and he may scatter or misuse it. And the thought of the insecurity of life, together with the certainty of leaving all behind to the man who comes after, whoever or whatever he may be, makes day and night wretched (Est 2:23).

II. WHEREIN IT IS SOUND. It is quite right that a man should ask himself what will become of his acquisition. To be satisfied with present pleasure is ignoble; to be careless of what is coming after us”Apres moi le deluge”is shamefully selfish. It becomes every man to consider what the long results of his labor will be, whether satisfactory or unfruitful.

III. WHEREIN IT IS UNSOUND.

1. There is nothing painful in the thought of parting with our treasure. We inherited much from those who went before us, and we may be well content to hand down all we have to those who come after us. We spent no labor on that which we inherited: why should we be aggrieved because our heirs will have spent none on what they take from us?

2. If we did not hoard our treasures, but distributed them while we lived, putting them into the hands of the wise; or if (again) we chose our heirs according to their spiritual rather than their fleshly affinities, we should be spared the misery of accumulating the substance which a fool will scatter. But let us look at a stilt better aspect of the subject.

IV. THE LEGACY AND THE HOPE OF THE WISE.

1. His best legacy. We may and we should so spend our time and our strength that what we leave behind us is not wealth that can be dissipated or stolen, but worth that cannot fail to blessDivine truth lodged in many minds, good principles planted in many hearts, a pure and noble character built up in many souls. This is what no fool can divert or destroy; this is that which will live on, and multiply and bless, when we are far from all mortal scenes. Immeasurably better is the legacy of holy influence than that of “uncertain riches;” the former must be a lasting blessing, the latter may be an incalculable curse.

2. His best and purest hope. What if the dying man feels that his grasp on earthly gain is about to be finally relaxed? is he not about to open his hand in a heavenly sphere, where the Divine Father will enrich him with a heavenly heritage, which will make all material treasures seem poor indeed?C.

Verse 24

(See homily on Ecc 3:12, Ecc 3:13, Ecc 3:22.)C.

Verse 26

Piety and impiety; recompense and penalty.

We ask and answer the twofold question, viz. what is

I. OUR EXPECTATION. We should certainly expect two things, judging antecedently.

1. That piety would be richly rewarded; for who would not expect that the bountiful, just, and resourceful Father would give liberally, in many ways, to those who sought his favor, and were “good in his sight”?

2. That impiety would bear plain marks of Divine disapproval; for who would suppose that men would defy their Maker, break his laws, injure his children, spoil his holy and benignant purpose, and not suffer marked and manifold evils as the just penalty of their presumption and their guilt? We naturally look for much happiness and prosperity for the former, much misery and defeat for the latter.

II. OUR EXPERIENCE. What do we find?

1. That God does reward his servants. The Preacher mentions three good gifts of his hand; they are not exhaustive, though they include or suggest much of the righteous man’s heritage.

(1) Knowledge. Most of all and best of all, the knowledge of God himself; and to know God is the very essence and substance of true human life. Beside this, the knowledge of man. It is, in truth, only the good man who understands human nature. Vice, iniquity, flatters itself that it has this knowledge. But it is mistaken; its conception of mankind is distorted, erroneous, fatally mistaken. It does not know what it is in man to be and to do and to become. “Only the good discern the good,” and only they have a knowledge of our race which is profoundly true.

(2) Wisdom. An enlightened conception of human life, so that its beauty and its blessedness are appreciated and pursued, so that, on the other hand, its ugliness and its evil are recognized and shunned. The wisdom of the wise includes also that practical good sense which keeps its disciples from the mistakes and entanglements that lead to destitution, which also leads its possessors to heights of honor and well-being.

(3) Joy. In the worship of Christ, in the service of man, in the culture of our own character, in walking along the path of sacred duty and holy usefulness, is abounding and abiding joy.

2. That sin is visited with penalty. Do we find that God giveth “to the sinner travail, to gather and to heap up”? We do.

(1) Sin necessitates the worst of all bad laborsthat of deliberately and persistently breaking down the walls of conscience, of breaking through the fences which the God of righteousness and love has put up to guard his children from moral evil.

(2) Sin includes much hurtful and damaging struggle against the will and against the laws of the wise and good. Bad men have to encounter and to contest the opposition of the upright.

(3) Sin frequently means low and degrading toil. The “sinner” is brought down so low that he is fain to “go into the fields to feed swine;” to do that from which he would once have indignantly recoiled.

(4) Sin constantly condemns the toiler to labor on in utter discontent, if not positive wretchedness of soul. Life without the light of heavenly truth and the song of sacred service proves an intolerable burden.C.

HOMILIES BY J. WILLCOCK

Est 2:1-3

An experiment: riotous mirth.

Solomon had found that wisdom and knowledge are not the means by which the search after happiness is brought to a successful issue. He then resolved to try if indulgence in sensual delights would yield any lasting satisfaction. This, as he saw, was a course on which many entered, who like him desired happiness, and he would discover for himself whether or not they were any nearer the goal than he was. And so he resolved to enjoy pleasure”to give his heart to wine,” and “to lay hold of folly.” Like the rich man in the parable, who said to his soul, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry,” so did he address his heart, “Come, I will prove thee with mirth.” He had tried wisdom, and found it fruitless for his purpose, and now would try folly. He lays aside the character and pursuits of a student, and enters the company of fools, to join in their revelry and mirth. The conviction that his learning was useless, either to satisfy his own cravings or to remedy the evils that exist in the world, made it easy for him to cast away, for a time at any rate, the intellectual employments in which he had engaged, and to live as others do who give themselves up to sensual pleasures. Wearied of the toil of thought, sickened of its illusions and of its fruitlessness, he would find tranquility and health of mind in frivolous gaiety and mirth. This was not an attempt to stifle his cravings after the highest good, for he deliberately determined to analyze his experience at every point, in order to discover whether any permanent gain resulted from his search in this new quarter. “I sought,” he says, “in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life.” For the sake of others as well as for himself, he would try this pathway and see whither it would lead. But the experiment failed. In a very short time he discovered that vanity was here too. The laughter of fools was, as he says elsewhere (Ecc 7:6), like the crackling of burning thorns; the blaze lasted but for a moment, and the gloom that followed was but the deeper and more enduring. Where the fire of jovial revelry and boisterous mirth had been, there remained but cold, gray ashes. The mood of reckless enjoyment was followed by that of cynical satiety and bitter disappointment. He said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of mirth, “What doeth it?” In his moments of calm reflection, when he communed with his own heart, he recognized the utter folly of his experiment, and felt that from his own dear-bought experience he could emphatically warn all in time to come against seeking satisfaction for the soul in sensual pleasures. Not in this way can the hunger and thirst with which the spirit of man is consumed be allayed. At most, a short period of oblivion can be secured, from which the awakening is all the more terrible. The sense of personal responsibility, the feeling that we are called to seek the highest good and are doomed to unrest and misery until we find it, the conviction that our failures only make ultimate success the more doubtful, is not to be quenched by any such coarse anodyne. Various reasons may be found to explain why this kind of experiment failed and must fail.

I. In the first place, it consisted in AN ABUSE OF NATURAL FACULTIES AND APPETITES. Some measure of joy and pleasure is needed for health of mind and body. Innocent gaiety, enjoyment of the gifts God has bestowed upon us, reasonable satisfaction of the appetites implanted in us, have all a rightful place in our life. But over-indulgence in any one of them violates the harmony of our nature. They were never intended to rule us, but to be under our control and to minister to our happiness, and we cannot allow them to govern us without throwing our whole life into disorder.

II. In the second place, THE PLEASURE EXCITED IS ONLY TRANSITORY. From the very nature of things it cannot be kept up for any long time by mere effort of will; the brain grows weary and the bodily powers become exhausted. A jest-book is proverbially very tiresome reading. At first it may amuse, but the attention soon begins to flag, and after a little the most brilliant specimen of wit can scarcely evoke a smile. The drunkard and the glutton find that they can only carry the pleasures of the table up to a certain point; after that has been reached the bodily organism refuses to be still further stimulated.

III. In the third place, SUCH PLEASURE CAN ONLY BE GRATIFIED BY SELF–DEGRADATION. It is inconsistent with the full exercise of the intellectual faculties which distinguish man from the brute, and destructive of those higher and more spiritual faculties by which God is apprehended, served, and enjoyed. Self-indulgence in the gross pleasures of which we are speaking actually reduces man below the level of the beasts that perish, for they are preserved from such folly by the natural instincts with which they are endowed.

IV. In the fourth place, THE INEVITABLE RESULT OF SUCH AN EXPERIMENT IS A DEEPER AND MORE ENDURING GLOOM. Self-reproach, enfeeblement of mind and body, satiety and disgust, come on when the mad fit is past, and, what is still worse, the apprehension of evils yet to comethe knowledge that the passions excited and indulged will refuse to die down; that they have a life and power of their own, and will stimulate and almost compel their slave to enter again on the evil courses which he first tried of his own free will and with a light heart. The prospect before him is that of bondage to habits which he knows will yield him no lasting pleasure, and very little of the fleeting kind, and must involve the enfeeblement and destruction of all his powers. Mirth and laughter and wine did not banish Solomon’s melancholy; but after the feverish excitement they produced had passed away, they left him in a deeper gloom than ever. “Like phosphorus on a dead man’s lace, he felt that it was all a trick, a lie; and like the laugh of a hyena among the tombs, he found that the worldling’s frolic can never reanimate the joys which guilt has slain and buried.” “I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?’ The well-known story of the melancholy patient being advised by a doctor to go and see Grimaldi, and answering, “I am Grimaldi,” and that of George Fox being recommended by a minister whom he consulted to dispel the anxieties which his spiritual fears and doubts and aspirations had excited within him, by “drinking beer and dancing with the girls” (Carlyle, ‘Sartor Resartus,’ Est 3:1), may be used to illustrate the teaching of our text. Some stanzas, too, of Byron’s last poem give a pathetic expression to the feelings of satiety and disappointment which are the retribution of sensuality

“My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone!

“The fire that on my bosom preys

Is lone as some volcanic isle;

No torch is kindled at its blaze

A funeral pile.

“The hope, the fear, the jealous care,

The exalted portion of the pain

And power of love I cannot share,

But wear the chain.”

J.W.

Est 2:4-11

Another experiment: refined voluptuousness.

Riotous mirth having failed miserably to give him the settled happiness after which he sought, our author records another and more promising experiment which he made, the search for happiness in a life of culture”the pursuit of beauty and magnificence in art.” More promising it was, because it brought into play higher and purer emotions than those to which ordinary sensuality appeals; it cultivated the side of the nature which adjoins, and almost merges into, the spiritual. The Law of Moses, forbidding as it did the making of images or representations of natural objects or of living creatures for purposes of worship, had prevented much advance being made in sculpture and painting; but there were still extensive fields of artistic development left for cultivation. Architecture and gardening afforded abundant scope for the exhibition and gratification of a refined taste. And so Solomon built splendid palaces, and planted vineyards, and laid out parks and gardens, and filled them with the choicest fruit trees, and dug pools for the irrigation of his plantations in the time of summer drought. Nothing was omitted that could minister to his sense of the beautiful, or that could enhance his splendor and dignity. A large household, great flocks of cattle, heaps of silver and gold, precious treasures from distant lands, the pleasures of music and of the harem are all enumerated as being procured by his wealth and power, and employed for his gratification. All that the eye could rest on with delight, all that the heart could desire, was brought within his reach. And all the time wisdom was with him, guiding him in the pursuit of pleasure, and not abandoning him in the enjoyment of it. Nothing occurred to prevent the experiment being carried through to the very end. The delights he enumerates were in themselves lawful, and therefore were indulged in without any uneasy sensation of transgressing against the Law of God or the dictates of conscience. Nay, the very fact that he had a moral end in view when he began the experiment seemed to give a high sanction to it. He was not interrupted by the intrusion of other thoughts and cares. No foreign enemy disturbed his peace; sickness did not incapacitate him; his wealth was not exhausted by the large demands made upon it for the support of his magnificence and luxury. And so he went to the utmost bounds of refined enjoyment, and found much that for a time amply rewarded him for the efforts he put forth. “My heart,” he says, “rejoiced in all my labor” (Est 2:10). His busy mind was kept occupied; his senses were charmed by the beauty and richness of the treasures he had gathered together, and of the great works which gave such abundant evidence of his taste and wealth. His experiment was not quite fruitless, therefore. Present gratification he found in the course of his labors; but when they were completed, the pleasure they had yielded passed away. The charm of novelty was gone. Possession did not yield the joy and delight which acquisition had done. When the palaces were finished, the gardens planted, the gems and rarities accumulated, the luxurious household established, and nothing left to do but to rest in the happiness that these things had been expected to secure, the sense of defeat and disappointment again fell upon the king. “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.” He does not try to explain the cause of his failure, but simply records the fact that he did fail. “He does not moralize, still less preach; he just paints the picture of his soul’s sad wanderings, of the baffled effort of a human heart, and passes on.” But we may find it highly profitable to inquire what were the causes why the life of culturewhich, without harshness, may be called a refined voluptuousnessfails to give satisfaction to the human soul.

I. In the first place, IT IS A LIFE OF ISOLATION FROM GOD. As Solomon represents the course he followed, we see that the thought of God was excluded from his mind. The Divine gifts were enjoyed, the love of the beautiful which is implanted in the soul of man was gratified, every exquisite sensation of which we are capable was indulged, but the one thing needed to sanctify the happiness obtained and render it perfect was omitted. “God,” says St. Augustine, “has made us for himself, and we cannot rest until we rest in him.” Emotions of gratitude, adoration, humility, and self-consecration to His service cannot be suppressed without great lossthe loss even of that security and tranquility of spirit which are essential to true happiness. All the resources upon which Solomon drew may furnish helps to happiness, but none of them, nor all of them together, could, apart from God, secure it. Compare with the failure of Solomon the success of those who have often, in circumstances of extreme discomfort and suffering, enjoyed the peace of God that passeth all understanding. The sixty-third psalm, written by David in the time of exile and hardship, illustrates the truth that in communion with God the soul enjoys a happiness which cannot be found elsewhere. “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” Apart from the favor of God and the service of God, the richest possessions and the most skilful employment of them can secure no lasting satisfaction. For we are so constituted as creatures that our life is not complete if we are dissevered from our Creator.

II. In the second place, IT IS A SELFISH LIFE. All that Solomon describes are his efforts to secure certain durable results for himself; to indulge his love for the beautiful in nature and art, and to surround himself with luxury and splendor. He would have been more successful in his search for happiness if he had endeavored to relieve the wants of othersto clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to comfort the afflicted, and to instruct the ignorant. Self-denial and self-sacrifice for the sake of others would have brought him nearer the gem of his desire. The penalty of his selfish pursuit fell heavily upon him. He could not live at a height above mankind, in the enjoyment of his own felicity, for long; “the riddle of the painful earth” filled him with thoughts of self-loathing and despair, which shattered all his happiness. Do what he might, old age, disease, and death were foes he could not conquer, and all about him in human society he could discern moral evils and inequalities which he could not set right nor’ even explain. Such selfish isolation as that into which for a time he had withdrawn himself failed to secure the object he had in view, for he could not really dissever his lot from that of his fellows, or escape the evils which afflicted them. The idea of a life of luxurious ease, undisturbed by the sight or thought of the miseries and hardships of life, was a vain dream, from which he soon awoke. In his poem, ‘The Palace of Art,’ Tennyson has given a most luminous and suggestive commentary upon this portion of the Book of Ecclesiastes. In it he represents the soul as seeking forgiveness for the sin of selfish isolation by penitence, prayer, and self-renunciation, and as anticipating a resumption of all the joys of culture and art in companionship with others. In communion with God, in fellowship with others, all things that are noble and pure and lovely are taken into holy keeping, and form a lasting source of joy and happiness.J.W.

Est 2:12-17

The value and the futility of wisdom.

Solomon had now made many experiments to try and discover something that was good in itself, that was an end for which one might labor, a goal for which one might make, a resting-place for the soul. The acquisition of knowledge had first of all attracted him, but after a long course of study, in which he traversed the whole field of learning and reached the limits of human thought, the futility of his labors dawned upon him. Then he turned to sensual enjoyments, and gave himself up to them for a time, with the deliberate purpose of seeking to discover if there were in this quarter any permanent gain; if it were possible so to prolong the pleasures of life as to silence, if not to satisfy, the cravings of the soul. The experiment was but a short one; he soon found out that pleasure is short-lived, and that mirth and laughter are followed by weariness and melancholy. His resources were not, however, yet exhausted. A new course was open to him, and one which his richly endowed nature qualified him for trying, and his kingly power and wealth laid open to him. This was the cultivation of those arts by which human life is beautified; the gratification of those tastes that distinguish man from the lower creatures, and that have something in them that is noble and pure. He built stately palaces, planted gardens and forests; he surrounded himself with all the luxury and pageantry of an Oriental court; he accumulated treasures such as kings only could afford to procure; music and song, and whatever could delight a refined taste, and a love of the beautiful were sedulously cultivated. But all in vain; aesthetieism proved as fruitless as the pursuit of knowledge, or the indulgence of the coarser appetites, to give rest to the soul. And now in sober meditation he reviewed all his experience; having come to the end of his resources, he inquires into actual results attained, and pronounces upon them. First of all, he is convinced that he has given a fair trial to all the various means by which men seek for the highest good. He had failed to find that satisfaction, but it was not because he had been ill equipped for carrying on the search. No one that came after him (Est 2:12) could surpass him by a more complete and thorough investigation. God had given him “a wise and understanding heart,” and had endowed him with wealth and power; and in both particulars he excelled all his fellows. Accordingly, he has no hesitation in laying down great general principles drawn from careful observation of the phenomena of human life.

I. THE GREAT ADVANTAGE WHICH WISDOM HAS OVER FOLLY. The wise man walks in light, and has the use of his eyes; the fool is blind, and walks in darkness. The wisdom here praised is not that holy, spiritual faculty which springs from the fear of God and obedience to his will (Job 28:28; Deu 4:6; Psa 111:10), and which is so strikingly personified, almost deified, in the Book of Proverbs and in that of Job (Pro 8:1-36; Pro 9:1-18.; Job 28:12-28); but is ordinary science, knowledge of the laws of nature, and of the powers and limitations of human life. This wisdom can only be acquired by long and painful labor, and though by it we cannot discover God or find out the way of winning and retaining his favor, or provide for the wants of the soul, it has, in its sphere, high value. It gives some pleasure; it affords some guidance and direction to its possessor. It enables him to acquire some good; it teaches him to avoid some evils. Progress in civilization is only possible by the cultivation of this wisdom. Wider acquaintance with the laws of health, for example, has enabled men to stamp out certain forms of disease, or, at any rate, to prevent their frequent recurrence, and to alleviate the sufferings caused by others. Consider the immense benefit to the race the progress of medical science has secured. The inventions that we owe to the cultivation of natural knowledge are beyond number, and by them incalculable benefits have been brought within our reachbetter cultivation of the soil, less exhausting labor, discovery of the uses of the metals stored up in the bowels of the earth, more rapid distribution of the productions of nature and of human industry, swifter means of communication between one part of the world and another. “The improvement of natural knowledge,” says a great authority, “whatever direction it has taken, and however low the aims of those who may have commenced it, has not only conferred practical benefits on men, but in so doing has effected a revolution in their conceptions of the universe and of themselves, and has profoundly altered their modes of thinking and their views of right and wrong” (Huxley, ‘Lay Sermons’). Does not this amply justify Solomon’s assertion that “wisdom excels folly, as light darkness; that the wise man hath the use of his eyes, the fool is blind”?

II. THE FUTILITY OF WISDOM. All the delight in the charms of wisdom is quenched by the thought of the leveling power of death, which overwhelms both the wise and the foolish indiscriminately (verses 14b17). For a brief space there is a distinction between themthe one endowed with priceless gifts, the other ignorant and poor. But what, after all, was the use of the short-lived superiority? Like an extinguished torch, the wisdom of the sage is blown out by death, and the very memory of his attainments and triumphs is buried in oblivion. For a time, perhaps, he is missed, but the gap is soon filled up, the busy world goes on its way, and in a very short time it forgets all about him. Thus even the posthumous fame, after which the purest and noblest minds have longed, to secure which they have been content to endure poverty, hardship, and neglect in their lifetime, is denied to the vast majority, even of those who have richly deserved it. There were wise men before Solomon (1Ki 4:31), but no memorial survives of them but their names; no illustrations of their wisdom are given to explain their reputation. And how faint is the impression which the wisdom of Solomon himself makes upon the actual life of the present world! Enshrined though it is in the sacred volume, it seems foreign to our modes of thought; its voice is not heard in our schools of philosophy. The fact of death is a certainty both to the wise and to the fool; the manner of it may be similar; the doubts and fears and anxieties concerning the life to come may perplex both. What can we suggest to relieve the sad picture, or to counteract the paralyzing effect which the spectacle of the futility of wisdom and effort is calculated to produce? The conviction that this life is not all, that there is a life beyond the grave, is the great corrective to the gloom in which otherwise every thinking mind would be enwrapped. This present life is a state of infancy, of probation, in which we receive education for eternity. And to ask in melancholy tones what is the use of acquiring wisdom if death is so soon to cut short our career here, is as foolish as to ask what is the use of a sapling growing vigorously in a nursery garden if it is to be afterwards transplanted. The place from which it was taken may soon know it no more. But the loss is slight; the tree itself lives and flourishes still under the eye and care of the almighty Husbandman. No fruitless regrets over the brevity and uncertainty of human fame need interfere with present effort. We may soon be forgotten on earth, but no attainments in wisdom or holiness we have made will have been in vain; they will have qualified us for a higher service and a truer enjoyment of God than we could otherwise have known.J.W.

Est 2:18-23

Riches, though obtained by much toil, are vanity.

The thought of death, which sweeps away the wise man as well as the fool, and of the eternal oblivion which swallows up the memory of them both, was very depressing; but a new cause for deeper dejection of spirit is round in the reflection that the man who has toiled in the accumulation of wealth must leave it all to another, of whom he knows nothing, and who wilt perhaps dissipate it in a very brief time.

I. The first mortifying thought isHE BUT GATHERS FOR A SUCCESSOR. (Est 2:18.) He himself, when the moment of death comes, must leave his possessions and depart into the world of shadows as naked as he was when he entered upon life. The fact that such a reflection should be bitter proves how deeply the soul is corroded by covetous and selfish aggrandizement. The heart is absorbed in the things of the present, and the anticipation of heavenly and spiritual joys grows faint and dies away. To be torn from the wealth and possessions acquired upon earth is regarded as losing everything; to be forced to leave them to another, even to a son, is almost as bad as being plundered of them by a thief. This feeling of bitter regret at having to give up all they possess at the call of death, has often been experienced by those who have found their chief occupation and happiness in life in the acquisition of earthly treasures. “Mazarin walks through the galleries of his palace and says to himself, ‘Il taut quitter tout cela.’ Frederick William IV. of Prussia turns to his friend Bunsen, as they stand on the terrace at Potsdam, and says as they look out on the garden, ‘Das auch, das soil ich lassen’ (‘This too! must leave behind me’)” (Plumptre).

II. The second mortifying thought isTHAT IT IS QUITE UNCERTAIN WHAT CHARACTER THE SUCCESSOR WILL BE OF, AND WHAT USE HE WILL MAKE OF HIS INHERITANCE. (Est 2:19.) He may be a wise man, or he may be a fool; he may make a prudent use of his inheritance, or he may in a very short time scatter it to the winds. The very change in his circumstances, the novelty of his new situation, may turn his head and lead him into courses of folly which otherwise he might have avoided. Some have thought that the character of the youthful Rehoboam was already so far developed as to suggest this mortifying reflection to Solomon. But this is quite conjectural. The early career of the headstrong, arrogant sovereign whose folly broke up the kingdom of Israel is an illustration of the truth of this general statement, and may have been in the thoughts of the writer, if he were not Solomon but some later sage. The special reference to this one historical example of an inheritance dissipated by an unworthy son need not be pressed. For, unfortunately, in every generation there are only too many instances of a like kind. So frequent are they, indeed, as to suggest very humiliating reflections to every one who has spent his life in acquiring riches or collecting treasures of art. As he sees fortunes squandered and collections of rarities broken up, the thought must recur to his mind whose are to be the things which he has treasured up so carefully (Psa 39:6; Luk 12:20).

III. The third mortifying thought isTHAT THE CHARACTER OF THE SUCCESSOR MAY NOT BE A MATTER OF DOUBT; he may be a man of a positively foolish and vicious disposition (Est 2:21). The case presents itself of a man who has labored in wisdom and knowledge and equity having to leave to another who is devoid of these virtues, who has never sought to acquire them, all that his prudence and diligence have enabled him to acquire. There is thus a climax in the thoughts of the writer. First of all, there is some matter for irritation, especially to a selfish mind, in the idea of giving up to another what one has spent years of laborious toil m gathering together. Then there is the torturing doubt as to the possible character of the new owner, and the use he will make of what is left to him. But worst of all is the conviction that he is both foolish and vicious. This is enough to poison all present enjoyment, and to paralyze all further effort. Why should a man spend laborious days and sleepless nights, if this is to be the end of it all? What has he left to show for all his exertions? What but weariness and exhaustion, and the bitter reflection that all has been in vain? Yet a little time after he has been forced by death to part with his possessions, and they will be made to minister to the frivolity and vice of one who has never labored for them, and ultimately will be scattered like chaff before the wind. Thus a final discovery of the vanity of all earthly employments is made. The acquisition of wisdom and knowledge,, the gratification of the pleasures of sense, the cultivation and indulgence of artistic tastes, had all been tried as possible avenues to lasting happiness, and tried in vain. To these must now be added the accumulation by prudent and lawful means, of great wealth. This, too, was discovered to be vanity. It could only be accomplished by years of toil, and brought with it fresh cares; and in the end all that had been gained must be given up to another. Mortifying though the experiments had turned out to be, they had at least been of negative value. Though they had not revealed where happiness was to be found, they had revealed where it was not to be found. The last disappointment, the discovery of the vanity of riches, taught the great truth which might become a clue to lead to the much-desired happiness, that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luk 12:15).J.W.

Verses 24-26

The condition of pure enjoyment.

Up to this point the thoughts of our author have been gloomy and despairing. Wisdom is better, he declares, than folly, but death sweeps away both the wise and the foolish. The learning of the sage, the fortune accumulated by the successful worker, represent the labors of a lifetime; but at the end, what are they worth? The results are twofold, partly internal and partly external. The student or worker acquires skill in the use of his faculties, he develops his strength, he becomes, as his life goes on, more proficient in his profession or craft; but death quenches .all these attainments. He leaves to those who are perhaps unworthy of them all the external results of his labors, and perhaps in a very little time it will be difficult to find anything to remind one of him. We who have the light of Christian truth may have much to console us and give us strength, even when we are brought face to face with the dark and dreary facts upon which our author dwells. We may think of this life as a preparation for a new and higher existence in the world to come, and believe that every effort we make to use rightly the faculties God has given us will tend to equip us better for service of him in another state of being. But to our author’s mind the thought of a future life is not vivid enough to be the source of consolation and strength. What then? Does he find no escape from the gloomy labyrinth of withering doubt, and decide that happiness is a boon for which one may sigh in vain? No; strangely enough, at the very moment when the depression is deepest, light breaks upon him from an unexpected quarter. Simple joys, moderate hopes, contentment with one’s lot, thankful acceptance of the gifts of God, may yield a peace and satisfaction unknown to those who are consumed by ambition, who make riches, state, luxury, the object of their desires. The darkness of night will soon close upon our live. Our tenure of our possessions is precarious in the extreme, but some measure of joy is within the reach of us all. In few but suggestive words the Preacher describes

I. THE NATURE OF A HAPPY LIFE. (Verse 24,) “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor.” At first one might think the judgment here expressed somewhat poor and gross, and unworthy of the reputation of the wise king to whom it is ascribed, not to say of the Word of God in which we find it. But when we look more closely into is, these impressions disappear. It is not an idle, useless life of self-enjoyment that is here commended to us, but one in which useful labor is seasoned by healthy pleasures. The man eats and drinks, and makes his soul enjoy good in his labor. The enjoyment is not such as to waste and exhaust the energies of the soul, otherwise it would be very short-lived. The risk of abusing the counsel in the first part of the sentence is avoided by attending to the safeguard implied in the concluding words. It is not the decision of the Sensualist, “Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die” (1Co 15:32), but the admonition of one who perceives that a thankful participation of the good things of life is compatible with the sincerest piety. Eating and drinking mean satisfying the natural appetites, and not ministering to artificial and self-created cravings; and overindulgence in so doing is tacitly forbidden. The words suggest to us the simple healthy life and habits of the industrious peasant or workman, who takes pleasure in his daily employment, and finds in the innocent joys which sweeten his lot a happiness which. mere wealth cannot buy.

“The shepherd’s homely curds,

His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,
His wonted sleep under a fresh tree’s shade,
All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,
Is far beyond a prince’s delicates,
His viands sparkling in a golden cup,
His body couched in a curious bed,
When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him.”

(‘Henry VI.,’ Part III; act it. so. 5.)

II. In the second place, our author tells us THE SOURCE OF THIS HAPPINESSIT IS THE GIFT OF GOD. (Verse 24b.) “This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. For who can eat or who can have enjoyment apart from him?”. These words are quite sufficient to convince us that a low Epicureanism is far from the writer’s thoughts when he speaks of there being nothing better for a man than “to eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labor.” One thing is necessary for the accomplishment of this end, and that is the Divine blessing. Saris-faction in work and in pleasure is a gift bestowed by him upon those who deserve it. “What we get here is the recognition of what we have learnt to call the moral government of God in the distribution of happiness. It is found to depend, not on outward but inward condition, and the chief inward condition is the character that God approves. The Preacher practically confesses that the life of the pleasure-seeker, or the ambitious, or the philosopher, seeking wisdom as an end, was not good before God, and therefore failed to bring contentment” (Plumptre). The source, then, of happiness in life is in obedience to the Divine will. To the gifts of his providence God adds the temper in which to enjoy them; from his hand both must be sought. Those who seek to be independent of him find that all they may acquire is insufficient to satisfy them; those who place all their confidence in him are contented with even the hardest lot (Php 4:11-13). “Wisdom, knowledge, and joy” are the portion of the good, whether they be poor or non m tins world s wealth; but the sinner has only the fruitless labor from which he can derive no satisfaction (Est 2:21). And over again the Preacher writes the dreary sentence, “This also is vanity and vexation of spirit,” upon the life in which God is not.J.W.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Ecc 2:1-26.

1. The vanity of practical wisdom in itself, proved by the example of Solomon

(Ecc 2:1-19).

1I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and behold, this also is vanity. 2I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it? 3I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. 4I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: 5I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits. 6I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: 7I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: 8I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings, and of the provinces: I gat me men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments and that of all sorts. 9So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. 10And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour. 11Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. 12And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what can the man 13do that cometh after the king ? even that which hath been already done. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness. 14The wise mans eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all. 15Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I 16said in my heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is, in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man as the fool. 17Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. 18Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun; because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. 19And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.

2. The aim of life to be attained in consideration of the empirical vanity of practical wisdom

Ecc 2:20-26.

20Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun. 21For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil. 22For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? 23For all his days are sorrow, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh 24not rest in the night. This is also vanity. There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. 25For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto more than I? 26For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.

[Ecc 2:1.. A particle of address or appeal, come on now, sometimes of entreaty. Here it denotes another trial with an ironical intimation of its failure. The address is to his heat, and the strong entreaty, or emotion, is shown in the paragogic in , O let me try thee again!T. L.]

[Ecc 2:3.. See Exeget. and Notes. is sometimes used to denote paucity, as Num 9:20; Gen 34:30; Psa 105:12, &c. Here the whole phrase may be rendered numbered days, i.e., few days. See Metrical Version.T. L.]

[Ecc 2:5.. See Exeget. and note to Introduction, p. 32.T. L.]

[Ecc 2:8.. Int. Ap., p. 34, ,. See Exeget. and Note; also Int. to Metrical Version.T. L.]

[Ecc 2:10. rendered denied, but more properly withold from, primary sense to separate, place by itself, Gen 27:36.T. L.]

[Ecc 2:13. denotes more properly here the judgment of the mind than seeing stated as a fact. I thought, I judged. Such a sense is a very common one in the Arabic root, and in the Rabbinical usage. It occurs also in the oldest Hebrew, as in the language Gen 2:19, He brought them unto Adam, , for Adam to see (judge) what name he should give them. It is only an opinion expressed here. See Metrical Version.T. L.]

[Ecc 2:14.. See Exeget. and Note, p. 58T. L.]

[Ecc 2:16.. The full form would be . For an examination of such words, and the manner in which they have become abbreviated, whether in later or earlier Hebrew, or as a mere matter of orthography, see text note to Gen 6:3 [].T. L.]

[Ecc 2:20.. See Exeget. and Note.T. L.]

[Ecc 2:21.. One of the words relied upon to prove the late date; but it is most parely Hebrew, and a noun of the same root, and the same sense, is found in that old composition Psa 68:7 : prosperity, very wrongly rendered chains in E. V., as though from . See Huppeld.T. L.]

[Ecc 2:24.. See Exeget. and Note.T. L.]

[Ecc 2:25. . Literally hasten beyond, go fathermore without. There is the figure of a race. See Matrical Version; also the Exeget. and Note, p. 55T. L.]

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Of the two divisions of this chapter, the first, (Ecc 2:1-19), treats of the vanity of the practical efforts of men, and thus supplements the description of the vanity of the theoretical strivings after wisdom, whilst the second division (Ecc 2:20-26) is of a more general character, and deduces a provisional result from the nature of human strivings after wisdom as therein set forth. Each of the two divisions contains two subdivisions or strophes within itself, of which, naturally, that of the first longer division (the one of nine, the other of eight verses) is especially comprehensive, and is, in addition to this, provided with a short introductory proposition (Ecc 2:1-2). The complete scheme of the contents of this chapter is therefore as follows:I. Division. The vanity of practical wisdom aiming at sensual enjoyment and magnificent enterprises, proved by the example of Solomon: a. (proposition, Ecc 2:1-2), in general; b. (first strophe, Ecc 2:3-11), in reference to that seeking after enjoyment and extensive activity; c. (second strophe, Ecc 2:12-19) in reference to the uncertain and deceptive success of the efforts alluded to.II. Division: The aim of life to be attained in consideration of the empirical vanity of practical wisdom; a. (first strophe, Ecc 2:20-23): Negative proof of the same, as not consisting in grasping after earthly and selfish wisdom, and after external worldly success; b. (second strophe, Ecc 2:24-26): Positive showing of the life aim of the wise man, as consisting in the cheerful enjoyment of worldly benefits offered by God to those in whom he delights.

2. First Division. Proposition or general Introduction: Ecc 2:1-2.I said in my heart. with is essentially pleonastic, as also in Ecc 1:16; Ecc 2:11; Ecc 2:14; Ecc 2:18; Ecc 3:17, etc., for it is in no wise apparent that a special significance is in these passages to be given to the subject speaking (Hengstenberg), and pleonasms of all varieties are very characteristic in the somewhat broad and circumstantial style of the author. Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, i.e., I will try whether thou wilt feel contented and happy in this new object of thy experience, namely, in cheerful sensual enjoyment, whether, on this path of pleasure and joy thou canst become a (Ecc 9:7). For the address to his own heart (or own soul) comp. Psa 16:2; Psa 42:5; Psa 43:5; Luk 12:18-19; for the construction, to prove one with something 1Ki 10:1.Therefore enjoy pleasure. (Lit. Ger., behold pleasure).This beholding, is here considered as connected with an enjoyable appropriation of the object beheld, which sense the preposition strongly expresses by virtue of its reference to the conception of lingering with the beheld object; comp. in Gen 21:16 : Job 3:9; and therewith the simple in the expression Ecc 6:6, or in Ecclesiastes 9 : and in Ecc 8:10, etc. Ecc 2:2. I said of laughter, It is mad. Of laughter, does not mean as much as in reference to laughter (Knobel, Vaih., etc.): but the laughter, i. e., the unrestrained cheerfulness attending sensual enjoyment, seems here to be personified, just as mirth in the next clause. Part. Poal, as in Psa 102:9, means really one void of sense, one infatuated, and might more properly be considered masculine, than as neuter (with Vaih., Hitzig, etc.), so that Luthers translation: Thou art mad, apart from the address, seems substantially justified. See Hengstenberg, who strikingly compares with it Luk 12:20, and justly finds in this passage the germ of the Parable of the Rich Man, Luk 12:16-21. And of mirth, what doeth it? i. e., what does it accomplish, what fruit does it bring forth (comp. ) Luther, in imitation of the Sept. Vulg., etc., considers the question as an address to mirth (what doest thou)? but it is rather, as the word shows, a bitterly contemptuous exclamation addressed to some third person, and an answer is not expected. For the form fit instead of comp. Ecc 5:15; Ecc 7:23, 1Ki 6:19. Some exegetists, especially of the rationalistic period, have unjustly desired to find a contradiction in the fact that Koheleth here despises cheerful sensual enjoyment, whilst in conclusion (Ecc 2:24, f.) he vaunts it as the principal aim of life.1 What he here blames and condemns as foolish, is clearly only that empty merriment which accompanies the wild exhilaration of sensual enjoyment, or sensual pleasure, as only end and aim of human effort, not a thankfully cheerful enjoyment of the benefits bestowed by God. Comp. Luther on this passage, and see the ho-miletical hints.

3. First division, first strophe: Ecc 2:3-11.I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine. (Lit. Ger., to comfort my flesh with wine). of the sensual joy indicated in the first verse, a special kind is hero named, by which the preacher first sought to obtain satisfaction, and then follow, to the sixth verse inclusive, still other such separate means of sensual enjoyment. The word therefore, recommences the account where the Ecc 2:1, had begun it, and is in substance synonymous with that verb.2 Comp. Num 13:18; Num 15:39; etc., where is always used in the sense of trying, experimenting, and not in that of thinking, re fleeting. (Elster). is most justly explained by Gesenius, Hitzig, Hengstenberg etc., as to nourish the body, i. e., to keep it in action or condition, to make it lasting and strong so that the expression: bread which strengtheneth mans heart (Psa 104:15), seems parallel with it. Others explain it differently, as Knobel and Vaihinger: To keep my sensual natur with wine; Ewald, Elster: to attach m; sense to wine; Herzfeld: to entice my body b; wine, etc. Yet acquainting mine hear with wisdom. (Lit. Ger., my heart led me wit] wisdom), a parenthetical clause that clearly indicates what the inner man of the preacher did whilst his flesh rioted in pleasures and enjoyments. The sense is therefore: I did not plunge headlong into coarse, fleshly gratifications, but true to the warning counsel in Pro 31:4, f. I tested with calm reflection, and in a compose way, whether real contentment was to be secure by means of sensual joys. The exposition o Ewald and Elsteb, which allies with the Aramaic to sigh, and the correspond ing Arabic verb, in the sense of experiercing disgust with something (whilst my heart was weary with wisdom), is too far-fetched, an contradicts what is said in Ecc 9:13; ff., which confirms our conception of the passage.3 for in the sense of guiding, leading, comp. Isa 11:6; 1Ch 13:7; 2Sa 6:8, etc.And to lay hold on folly, or also to seize folly.With folly () cannot here naturally be meant as an exclusive contrast with wisdom; therefore not folly in the absolute sense, but mainly that foolish, sensual pleasure, which is referred to in Ecc 2:2, or even that mentioned in Ecc 2:3, comforting the flesh with wine; therefore a disposition which gives the reins to pleasure, and lives thoughtlessly in accordance with the assertion of Horace: Dulce est desipere in loco. Koheleth, from the beginning, recognizes this sentiment as folly, and thus designates it in contempt. But nevertheless he will prove it, and try whether it may not be relatively best for man, better than cold, fruitless, and wearisome wisdom, which when gained produces sorrow, and with which he was disgusted according to chapter first. (Elster).Till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, etc. Comp. Ecc 7:19.Which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. There is in these words a kind of mournful resignation. Short as is the period of human life on earth, oven for this little span of time it is not always clear to man what is really good and beneficial for him; and many, and mostly bitter and painful experiences, are needed to bring him to this knowledge.

Ecc 2:4. I made me great works; I builded me houses. We are here certainly to understand the structures of Solomon in a general sense (1Ki 7:1, ff.; 1Ki 9:19; Ecc 10:18, ff., but hardly a special allusion to the temple, which Solomon could not have counted among his houses.I planted me vineyards The Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes 8 :II, mentions one of these; and that Solomon had more of them, and had not overrated his wealth arbitrarily, and in violation of historic truth, (as Knobel supposes), is satisfactorily proved by the several vineyards of David enumerated in 1 Chron. 28:27.

Ecc 2:5. I made me gardens and orchards,in the environs of these houses or palaces, (comp. 1Ki 21:2; Jer. 62:7; also the Son 1:16, f.). For the etymology of the See Int. to the Song, 3, obs. 2.And I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits; therefore not merely one of one kind, but many of many kinds of fruit trees. The emphasis does not rest on as if it would declare the Kings object to be to raise trees affording delightful and delicate enjoyment (Knobel), but on whereby the rich variety of fruit trees is pointed out.

Ecc 2:6.I made me pools of water; perhaps those mentioned in the Song (Ecc 7:4), as at Heshbon; perhaps also the kings pool at Jerusalem, mentioned in Neh 2:14, which a later tradition, at least, marked as a work of Solomon. (Josephus, b. Jdg 5:4; Jdg 5:2); and certainly those situated in Wadi Urts, near Bethlehem and Erham, Pools of Solomon, mentioned in the exposition of the Song of Solomon, and which are doubtless here principally meant.To water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees, intransitive4 as in Pro 24:31; Isa 5:6; Isa 34:15. The object of these pools as artificial basins for irrigating the extensive orchards of the king, testify to the magnificence and expense of these grounds. Ecc 2:7. I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house. (Lit., were to me, as in Ecc 2:10), namely, from the marriages of the men and maid servants in my house. Gen 15:2, or Gen. 12:27; Jer 2:14, are slaves born in the house (vern, ), and on account of their natural fidelity and affection a very valuable possession; here, however, named mainly because their presence was the sign and necessary result of numerous servants, and, consequently, of a large and flourishing household.Also I had great possessions, of great and small cattle. After the wealth in men and maid servants, as in Gen 12:16; Gen 30:43, directly follow the great possessions of cattle, and then comes his wealth in unproductive treasures, silver and gold, as Gen 13:2. The historical books of the Old Testament mention not only David (1Ch 27:29, f.), but also his son and heir Solomon (1Ki 5:3; 1Ki 8:63), as wealthy possessors of herds. For the concluding words of this verse: above all that were in Jerusalem before me, see remarks on Ecc 1:16.

Ecc 2:8. I gathered me also silver and gold. lit., I heaped up, that is in treasuries, as in the gorgeous apartments of my palace. The result of this unceasing activity of Solomon in collecting treasures, is depicted in 2Ch 1:15; 2Ch 9:27; 1Ki 10:27 : Silver and gold at Jerusalem were as plenteous as stories.And the peculiar treasure of kings, and of the provinces. For province, district, comp. Int. 4, obs. 2. lit. property, is here and in 1Ch 29:3, equivalent to wealth, treasures. By kings are naturally first meant those tributary rulers of the neighboring lands treated of in 1Ki 5:1; 1Ki 10:15; but farther on those friendly rulers, who, as the Queen of Sheba, 1Ki 10:2 ff., brought voluntary gifts, or even sent them, (as through the ships of Ophir, 1Ki 9:28; 1Ki 10:11; 1Ki 10:14; 1Ki 10:22; 2 Chron. 8:28). The provinces are those twelve districts into which Solomon divided the land for the purpose of taxation, 1Ki 4:7 if.I gat me men-singers and women-singers;the latter doubtless belonging to the women used for courtly display, mentioned in the Song of Solomon under the name of Daughters of Jerusalem, or Virgins without number, (Ecc 6:8); the former were of course not singers of the temple (as in 1Ki 10:12; 1Ch 25:1 ff.; 2Ch 5:12), but singers of lively, worldly songs, as kept by David according to 2Sa 19:36, and afterwards certainly by Solomon for enhancing the pleasures of the table, (comp. Isa 5:12; Amo 6:5).For to get, to keep, comp. 2Sa 15:1; 1Ki 1:6.And the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts (Zckleb has rendered die Hulle und Fulle, in great abundance.T. L.

The words are most probably to be translated according to the Arabic by multitude and multitudes, or also by heap and heaps (Ewald, Elster, etc.), whereby a very great abundance is meant, and indeed of i. e., of caresses, of enjoyments and pleasures of sexual love, to which Solomon was too much given according to 1Ki 9:3; Son 6:8. J. d. Michaelis, Rosenmueller, Herzfeld, Knobel, Hitzig, etc., translate mistress and mistresses, or woman and women, a signification which they seek to justify etymo-logically in various ways from the Arabic, but which can no more be considered certain than the explanation resting on the Chaldaic to pour, which ancient translators turn into cupbearers, male and female5 (Sept. , Hieronymus, ministros vini et ministras). Ecc 2:9. So I was great and increased. (Lit. I became great and added thereto ( as Ecc 1:16). This is meant, of course, in the sense of possessions and riches, consequently in the sense of Gen 26:13; Job 1:3.Also my wisdom remained with me: Lit. (It stood by me), it remained at my side, left me not, notwithstanding the fact that my outward man yielded to these follies and vanities. Thus must it be rendered according to Ecc 2:3, and not My wisdom served me,” (Ewald), or sustained me, Elster. (Comp. the Vulg. persevcravitmecum).

Ecc 2:10. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them. That is, I possessed not only an abundance of all earthly goods, but I sought also to enjoy them; I withheld from me no object of my pleasure. Concerning the eyes as seat and organ of sensual desire, consult Psa 145:15; 1Ki 20:6; 1Jn 2:166 I withheld not my heart from any joy. Koheleth does not mean thereby that he enjoyed every imaginable pleasure, but only that I lie kept his heart open for every pleasure that i presented itself to him, and profited by every one; i that he avoided no pleasure that presented itself to him, (comp. Hitzig). That this is the sense is proved by the following: For my heart rejoiced in all my labour; and this was my portion of all my labours. Koheleth allowed himself, therefore, those pleasures and enjoyments which resulted from his continued exertion and labor, which formed agreeable resting places in the midst of his painful and fatiguing life; he sought and found in the hours of cheerful enjoyment, that interrupted his mainly painful existence, a recompense for his troubles and sorrows,a recompense, it is true, that was only of a transitory nature (consequently no lasting, but simply an apparent, and which thus, just as the toil and labor, belonged to that vexation of spirit that formed mainly the sum and substance of his experience. For to extract joy from anything, comp. Pro 5:18; 2Ch 20:27. In opposition to the explanation of Hahn et al.my heart rejoiced after all my labor, stands the following expression: This was my portion (i. e., my profit, my advantage), of all my labor.

Ecc 2:11. Then I looked on all the works, etc., lit.: I turned to all my works ( as Job 6:28); comp. Ecc 2:12. And on the labour that I had laboured; to do, i. e., to produce these, my toilsome works. And, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit. All, that is, the substance of all my efforts, those referring to the collecting of great riches, and the founding of a great dominion, as well as those aiming after cheerful enjoyment; in nothing of all this did I recognise a lasting a real (comp. Ecc 1:3); everything seemed to me rather as (see Ecc 1:14). In how far and why this formed the result of his experience, is shown in the sequel (Ecc 2:12-19); there only does this general conclusion: there is no profit under the sun, as here expressed in anticipation, find its full justification.

4. First Division, second strophe: Ecc 2:12-19. That there is no profit under the sun, appears above all clearly from the fact that the wise man, with reference to his final destiny, and the end of his life, has no advantage over the fool, in so as he meets the same death as the latter through a necessity of nature, and is obliged to eave the fruits of his labor often enough to foolish heirs and successors.

Ecc 2:12. And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly; i. e., to observe them in their relation to each other, and consider their relative value; comp. Ecc 1:17. Hitzigs conception that madness and folly are correlatives is altogether too artificial; he holding that by these the result of the consideration of wisdom is expressed, and that a connective (and, behold, it was) has been omitted. For what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been already done. This, “that has already been done, consists naturally in a foolish and perverted beginning, even in the destruction of what has been done by a wise predecessor, and in the dispersion of the treasures and goods collected by him, (comp. for this negative, or rather catachrestic sense of the verb to do, Mat 17:12). J. D. Michaelis, Knobel, and Hengstenberg, substantially coincide with this explanation of the somewhat obscure and difficult words; it is confirmed as well by the context as by the masoretic punctuation. Nearest allied to this is the conception of Ko-senmueller: “For who is the man who can come after the king? Answer: For what has been he will do. Thus also De Rougement: Who is the man who could hope to be more fortunate in following after him (King Solomon) on this false path? We can try it, but it will be with us as it has been with all before us. Hitzig reads in the concluding line ) instead of and therefore translates: What will the successor of the king do? That which he hath already done. Luther, Vaihinger, as also the Septuagint and the Vulgate, only translating more concretely,, do not take as an independent, responsive clause, but as a relative clause: What will the man be who will come after the king, who has already been chosen? (Luther, whom they have already made). Hahn also says: What is the man who will come after the king, in respect to that which has already been done; and Ewald and Elster: How will the man be who follows the king, compared with him whom they chose long ago, i.e., with his predecessor? Some Rabbinic exegetists, whom even Drusius is inclined to follow, have referred to God as active subject, which is here expressed as a plurality (trinity): with the One (or beside the One) who has made him; for which sense they refer to Psa 149:2 : Job 35:10; Isa 54:1, etc.

Ecc 2:13. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.The poet recognizes the absolute worth of wisdom, just as in the first clause of Ecc 2:14 he more clearly describes its profit for the individual. For the comparison of wisdom and folly with light and darkness, comp. Pro 4:23; Mat 6:33 f.; Joh 8:12, etc. As light is a creative power that bears within itself an independent life, and produces life wherever it penetrates, and darkness, on the contrary, is a negation of light, a numb and dead element,so is the real strength of life in wisdom alone, whilst folly is vain, empty, and unsubstantial (Elster).

Ecc 2:14. The wise mans eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness.An assumed syllogism, in which the conclusion is wanting: therefore, it stumbles and falls; comp. Joh 9:10. By the eyes which the wise man carries in his head, i. e., in the right place, are meant, of course, the eyes of the understanding (Eph 1:18), the inward organ of spiritual knowledge, the eye of the spirit (Pro 20:27; Mat 6:28, etc.), Comp. Cicero, deNatura Deorum, 2, 64. Totam licet animis tamqttam oculis lustrare terram.And I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all. adversative, as Ecc 3:13; Ecc 4:8; Ecc 4:16. literal: occurrence, accident or chance; comp. Ecc 2:15; Ecc 3:19, etc., which here clearly designate death, the physical end of man, the return to dust of one born of dust, as a destiny resting on the Divine curse (Gen 3:19).7

Ecc 2:15. As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me.The general assertion of the latter clause of Ecc 2:14 is now specially applied to the person of Koheleth, as belonging to the class of wise men. literally: I also, it will happen to me. The person being made prominent by the isolated pronoun in the nominative, placed at the beginning, as in Gen 24:27; Eze 33:17; 2Ch 28:10.And why was I then more Wise?That is, what profits me now my great wisdom? what advantage does it afford me compared with the fool? For this expression comp. 1Co 15:30; Gal 5:11. now, therefore, if such is the case, is said in view of the dying hour, from which the author looks back on the whole of his past life. a participle used substantively, synonymous with advantage, profit, here an adverb, excessively, too much, comp. Ecc 7:16That this also is vanity.This, namely, the arrangement that the wise man dies as the fool, that the same night of death awaits them both. Observe that Koheleth does not declare this disposition an injustice, but only as vanity, for a new phase of that fullness of vain, empty appearances which his experience in life has made him acquainted with, here signifies, as at the end of Ecc 2:19 (also Ecc 8:10; Ecc 8:14), something objectively vain, in contrast to the vanity of subjective Human thoughts, knowledge and efforts hitherto indicated by it. It means the same objective of this lower world, derived from the fall, of which Paul, Rom 8:20, says, that the entire earthly creature, like man himself, is subjected to it.

Ver.16. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool foreveri. e., as is the fool, so is the wise man forgotten after his death; posterity thinks of the one as little as of the other. This assertion is, of course, to be relatively understood, like the similar one in Ecc 1:11; not all posthumous fame of men is denied; it is simply asserted to be ordinarily and most generally the case, that posterity retains no special remembrance of those who have previously lived, which, in reference to the great majority8 of individuals is certainly wholly true. lit., with the fool, is equivalent to as the fool; comp. Ecc 7:10; Job 9:26; Job 37:18. belongs in conception with no remembrance for eternity, the same as, no eternal remembrance, no lasting recollection.Seeing that which is now in the days to come shall all be forgotten. is the accusative of time, comp. Isa 27:6; Jer 28:16. is to be connected with the verb, as also chap, Ecc 9:6, and is therefore to be rendered: because every thing will have long been forgotten ( the future past).And how dieth the wise man? as the fool!(A simple exclamation in the Ger.). A painful cry of lamentation, 9) which, by an appeal to the experience of the reader, is to represent what is asserted as incontestable.

Ecc 2:17. Therefore I hated life. does not indicate the strong effect of actual hatred or hostile feeling, but the feeling of disgust, weariness, antipathy towards a thing. Comp. the Vulg.: tseduit me vilse mess, and also for this same milder sense of the verb, Isa 14:1; Amo 5:13; Mal 1:3.Because the work That is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me.-That is, the view of every thing occurring under the sun bore painfully upon me, tortured me with an oppressive feeling; comp. Ewald, Manual, 217, i. y.; comp. also Ecc 1:14.

Ecc 2:18.Yea, I hated all my labor, etc.-Not simply the doings of men in general, but also his own exertions, appeared hateful to the Preacher, because they were vain and fruitless.Because I should leave it to the man that shall be after me-that is, to my successor, heir; comp. Ecc 2:12. He must leave to his heirs not the labor itself, but what he had acquired thereby, its fruit, its result, and this grieves him-why, the following verse tells.-For the form Imp. Hiph. from comp. Ewald, 122, e.

Ecc 2:19 heightens the thought of Ecc 2:18, and thereby leads back definitively to Ecc 2:12, as the starting point of the present reflection on the uncertainty and transitory nature of all earthly possessions (for wise men as well as for fools)Wherein I have labored, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. lit., which I have obtained by trouble, and in which I have employed wisdom. A zeugma for: by whose wearisome acquirement I have showed myself wise.

5. Second Division, first strophe.

Ecc 2:20-23. On account of the painful truth of what has just been demonstrated, one must despair of all external earthly success of this earthly life, as does the Preacher at the evening of his life.Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair.(Lit. Ger., turned around). different from Ecc 2:12, does not mean to turn in order to sec any thing, but a turning around in order to do something, comp. Ecc 7:25; 1Sa 22:17-18. The idea of turning from a former occupation is also included.10-The Piel to permit to despair, to give up to despair, is only found here in the O. T.; the Niph. desperavit is more usual (or also the neuter participle: desperatum est), whilst the Kal does not occur.

Ecc 2:21. For there is a man whose labor is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity.Lit., whose labor is with wisdom, etc. ( ), or also: whose labor has been, etc.; for the verb supplemented to , can express both a present and a perfect sense. Wisdom is not here designated as the aim of labor, as Ewald supposes (whose labor aims after wisdom), but as the means whereby the aim of , the fruit of human Exertion shall be attained. Besides wisdom, knowledge and equity are also named as means to this end. ( comp. Ecc 1:16; Ecc 1:18; Ecc 2:26); for this is what here means, not success, favorable result, as Ecc 5:9. The Sept. is also correct, , and substantially so also the Vulg (sollicitudo), and Luther (ability, capability).- Yet to a man who has not labored thereir shall he leave it for his portion. for refers to tho principal thought of the preceding clause, and not to . For , to labor for a thing; comp. Jon 4:10 The suffix in also refers to , and is a second object: he gives it to him as him portion, his share

Ecc 2:22. For what hatl man of all his labor, lit.: falls to, falls suddenly down upon (Job 37:6); in the late Chaldaic style, to happen, to become, to be ap pointed to; comp. Ecc 11:2; Neh 6:6.And of the vexation of his heart.-Herewith are principally, if not exclusively, meant these there synonyms: Wisdom, knowledge and equity, ver 21. The aspiration of the heart is the essence of the plans and designs which form the motiv of the labor and exertion of man, and give t them their direction and definite aim.

Ecc 2:22 Wherein he hath labored under the sun.The relative refers to as well as to

Ecc 2:23. For all his days ar sorrows and his travail grief. (comp. Ecc 1:13) bears here again the meaning of daily labor (Hitzig, Elster, Vaihinger, etc.), a stronger expression that would remind us of Psa 42:3 Comp. also Psa 90:10.Yea, his heal taketh not rest in the night-that is, it n maineth awake, troubled by anxious thoughts and plans, or tortured by unquiet dreams; comp Ecc 5:12; Son 5:2.

6. Second Division, second strophe.

Ecc 2:24-26. We are not always to remain in this abandonment of hope of external happiness, but to seek the necessary contentment of the heart in the cheerful and grateful enjoyment of the blessings of life, which God bestows on those of His children who find favor in His sight; and even this enjoyment is something vain and futile, so far as it does not stand in the power of man, but must be graciously conferred by God.There is nothing better for man than that he should eat and drink, etc.The words permit a threefold conception:1. Interrogative: Is it not better for man to eat, etc. (thus Luthher, Oetinger, Hengstenberg, and the Vulg.: Nonne melius est comedere et bibere, etc.). 2. Purely negative: There is no happiness for the man who eats, etc. (thus the Sept., M. Geier, Dathe, Knobel, Hahn). 3. On the supposition of the omission of or of before , there is no happiness for man but in eating. This last translation has the most to recommend it,11 because the interrogative and the unconditional negative conception do not so well comport with the context, and because this latter especially would be in contradiction with the passages of Ecc 3:12; Ecc 3:22; Ecc 5:18 ff; Ecc 7:14; Ecc 8:15; Ecc 9:7-9, which recommend serene enjoyment of life as a means of acquiring happiness and contentment. And because, further, the ancient Aramaic translations confirm the omission of (compare Ecc 3:22)before an omission which, on account of the in . and the like ending, might so easily take place, and finally because the idea of in with the sense of , consequently in a sense designating an object, is confirmed by Ecc 3:12; Ecc 10:17; and the instrumental conception of this attempted by Geier and Knobel, is therefore unnecessary12 To eat and drink, and let ones soul be merry, is therefore the triad of sensual life, which is sometimes used in a bad sense-, of vicious excess and indulgence, and again in a good or morally unpreju-dicial sense. The former is found in Exo 32:6; Pro 23:7-8; Jdt 12:13; 1Co 10:17,etc., the latter in this passage, and in Ecc 3:13; Ecc 5:17; Ecc 8:15; and also in 1Sa 30:16; Isa 65:13; Son 5:1, etc. Comp. Zckler, Theologia Naturalis, p. 651 f., where are also produced from the classics many parallels of this combination of ideas in eating, drinking, and being merry; (e.g., Euripides, Alcest., 783; Arrian, Anab., II. 5,4; Plautus, Mil. glor., III., 1, 83).That these maxims, to eat, drink, and be merry, are not here meant in the Epicurean sense of 1Co 15:32, is proved by the important addition in his labor, in his toil, on which a special emphasis rests, and which excludes every thought of idle debauchery and luxurious enjoyment. See Int. 5, and especially p. 24.This also I saw, that it was from the hand of Grod. That is, not: I observed that as all else, so also this comes from the hand of God, but, at the same time with that truth, that eating, drinking, etc., is the best for man, I perceived also that only the hand of God can bestow such cheerfulness in toil, and such a joyous and contented feeling in the midst of the fatigues of worldly avocations.

Ecc 2:25.For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto more than I? Lit. Ger., and who enjoy, except from Him? lit., to make merry, to pass a life in carousing, deliciis afflaere (Vulg.) hence to enjoy, to delight, not drink, tipple (Sept. Syr., Ewald).Instead of we must read with the Sept., Syr., Hieronymus and eight manuscripts except from Him. For ia the comparative sense, except me, or just as I, does not afford a thought in accordance with the text, and would not harmonize with the and (see Vulg. Luther, etc.). But the translation of Hahn: for who shall eat and who shall pine for food, is beyond me, is beyond my power, is insufferably harsh. On the contrary, from Him (comp. the preposition 2Sa 3:37; 1Ki 20:33), accords admirably with the connection, and furnishes that thought reminding us of Jam 1:17, which we here above all things need. And, moreover, the reading appears to coincide with the equally faulty for of the preceding verse. See Hitzia on this passage.13

Ecc 2:26. For to the man that is good in his sight, that is, to the just and God-fearing (comp. Neh 2:5; 1Sa 29:6), the opposite of . The idea of the retributive justice of God, meets us here for the first time in this book, but not yet so thoroughly developed as subsequently, e. g., Ecc 3:17; Ecc 11:8; Ecc 12:14.But to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up. stands absolute and is not to be supplemented by a new (like the of the first clause of the verse), as if the sense were, to the one who is. offensive to Him, who isa sinner in His sight. That he may give to him that is good before God. The object of is not the travail of the sinner, but the goods gathered by him through toil and travail, the treasures heaped up by him, but finally falling to the just. The same thought occurs in Pro 13:22; Pro 28:8; Job 27:17.This also is vanity and vexation of spirit, namely, that one seeks his happiness in the cheerful enjoyment of sensual blessings, (according to the maxim in verse 24). This is also vanity, because the acquisition of goods and pleasures in this life, is by no means in the power of man, but depends solely on the free grace of God, which gives to its beloved while sleeping, (Psa 127:2); but permits the wicked, instead of pleasures, to heap up vain wrath against the day of judgment, (Rom 2:5; Jam 5:3). Others consider the heaping up of travail on the part of the wicked, as the subject of the phrase (Elster and Hengstenberg), or that it designates the arbitrary distribution of the blessings of life on the part of God as vanity and vexation (Knobel), but thereby they depart equally far from the true train of thought which the author maintains since verse 24.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL.

(With Homiklical Hints.)

The transition of Koheletii in the beginning of the chapter, especially in vers.18, from the striving after wisdom and knowledge to enjoyment, and from that to action, to the organizing and artificially producing deed (Ecc 2:4-8) presents a certain similarity with the progress of Goethes Faust from knowledge to enjoyment, and from that (in the sec. act) to the more serious duty of laboring and producing. For the magnificent undertakings, structures, and extension of possessions and acquirements described in Ecc 2:4-8, can scarcely be considered as mere means of sensual enjoyment in the sense of Ko-heleth (as in Elster, p. 55). He expressly confesses to have connected therewith a certain ideal object, if not of a religious, at least of an ethical aad human character; this lies in the repeated assertion (Ecc 2:3; Ecc 2:9), that in the midst of these eudemonistic and practical efforts, wisdom remained the ruler of his heart. But the great difference between Faust and the Preacher, consists in the final solution of the grand enigma of earthly life, which in the former ends in an obscure, sentimental, and philosophical mysticism, whilst the latter returns from his wanderings in the sphere of effort after earthly wisdom, enjoyment and acquisition, into the safe haven of a clearly conscious, modestly practical, and filially pious faith in Gods gracious and just government of the world. It is the humble, confidently trusting, and gratefully contented reliance on Gods gracious hand, which, at the close of his vivid and almost startling description of the vanity of all earthly things, he recommends as the only true aim for the life and labors of man, (Ecc 2:21-26). That all human exertions are vanity, even that modest striving after cheerful enjoyment and serene employment described in Ecc 2:21, is firmly fixed in his mind, (according to Ecc 2:26). But the acknowledgment of this fact does not impel him to a sullen despair of all happiness and peace, but father leads from such a feeling of discontent and discouragement into the blissful repose of a heart wholly given to God, and thankfully enjoying the good and perfect gifts dispensed by Him. Not the indolent man of enjoyment, but the industrious, cheerful laborer; not the greedily grasping misanthropic miser, but the friend of humanity delighting in God, and well-pleasing to Him; not the sinner, but the pious child of God, strong in the faith, forms the ideal that he presents at the close of his observations on the vanity of human life, which, though agitated and complaining indeed, nowhere extend to despairing grief or frivolous scepticism.

A comprehensive homileticar consideration of the whole chapter, would, therefore, be able to present as its theme: The vanity of all earthly things, and the consoling power of a faithful reliance on God; or, in order to show more clearly the feature distinguishing this chapter from the preceding: The wrong and the right way to seek ones happiness on earth; or: Divine grace as tile bestowcr of that happiness of men, vainly sought after by their own power and with earthly means,(comp. the following passages in the N. T: Joh 6:65; Joh 15:5; Eph 2:8; Jam 1:17, etc.). The principal divisions for a discourse on these contents would be: 1. No earthly enjoyment or possession leads to genuine happiness, (111); 2. Even the happiest and wisest man remains subject to the curse of death, common to all the sons of men, (1219); 3,Genuine and lasting happiness (surviving this life) can only be obtained for man by a childlike, contented, and grateful reliance on Gods gracious and paternal hand, (2026).

HOMILIETICAL HINTS TO SEPERATE PASSAGES

Ecc 2:1-2. Luther: Many a one arranges all his matters with much toil and trouble, that he may have repose and peace in his old age, but God disposes otherwise, so that he comes into affairs that cause his unrest then to commence. Many a one seeks his joy in lust and licentiousness, and his life is embittered ever after. Therefore, if God does not give joy and pleasure, but we strive after it, and endeavor to create it of ourselves, no good will come of it, but it is, as Solomon says, all vanity. The best gladness and delight are those which one does not seek (for a fly may easily fall into our broth), but that which God gives to our hand.

Staeke: The joy of the world is so constituted that it entails repentance, mortification, and grief (1Jn 2:17; Luk 16:19; Luk 16:23); but the pleasure that the faithful find fh God, is spiritual, constant, satisfying, and inexpressible, (Isa 35:10; Joh 16:22).

Staeke: Ecc 2:3 ff.: Every natural man seeks, in his way, his heaven in sensual delights. But he too often sins thereby, and misuses the gifts of God (Wisdom 2, 6 ff.). God grants to man what is necessary to his body, as well as that which tends to his comfort. But how many forget God thereby!

Geier: It is allowable to possess riches if they have been righteously acquired. But bo-ware of avarice as well as extravagance.

Wohlfakth: He who thinks to find the aim of his life in the highest measure of sensual enjoyment, is the victim of an error which will demand of him a fearful revenge in proportion as he tears himself from God, strives simply after false treasures, and neglects and despises the treasures of a higher world; he heaps upon himself a weighty responsibility on account of the misuse of his time, the wasting of his powers, and the evil administration of the goods confided to him by God, and by all this excludes himself, unconditionally, from the kingdom of God.

Hansen:-911. The things of this world belong to the preservation, delight and convenience of external, sensual life. One may arrange them, therefore, with as much pomp, majesty and beauty as is possible; they can never, according to their nature, do more than delight our senses.-If we estimate their worth too high, they can take from us in inward ease of mind much more than they grant us in sensual delights and convenience, and become to us then a genuine scourge of the spirit.

Staeke:If the children of the world are not without vexation and trouble in the accomplishment of their sinful lusts, the children of God should be less surprised, if they in their work in the Lord must experience various disappointments and vexations.

Hamann (Ecc 2:10):We here find a trace of Divine goodness, which, notwithstanding the vanity of all our works, has placed in labor, and especially in useful occupations, which strike the eye and gain our approbation as well as that of others, a species of joy, a spice of pleasure which delights us more than the work itself, because we often do not esteem that which was so agreeable to us in the process of production.

Luther:

Ecc 2:12-19. (To Ecc 2:15). Therefore it is better to commend the highest government of all things to the God who made us. Let every one perform his duty with all diligence, and execute what God places to his hand; if things do not always turn out as we expected, let us commend them to God. What God gives, that accept; and again, what He prevents, that accept also as good. What we are able to do, that we ought to do; what we cannot do, we must leave undone. The stone that thou art not able to lift, thou must leave lying.

Gerlach (to Ecc 2:17):If God has disappeared from the efforts of men, a disgust of life appears sooner or later (Joh 4:8 ff..).Geier (to Ecc 2:18-19):It is hard for flesh and blood to leave the fruits of its toil to others; but a Christian arms himself against this with the reflection that every thing that he has or does is given to him by God, 1Co 4:7.

Wohlfarth (Ecc 2:13-19):-What must we feel it our duty to do, -on perceiving that the earth can afford no perfect satisfaction to our demand for happiness ?The wise man is pained on perceiving that all earthly things are vain and unsatisfactory; his eye indeed becomes serious, and his expression reflective. But for that very reason, he hears not only the cry of the grave, but also the words of consolation: Lift up thy eye, citizen of heaven in the garb of a pilgrim; true as it is, that the world with all its treasures cannot satisfy thy longing for what is lasting and perfect, so foolish is it to seek therein peace and perfect satisfaction.

Zeyss (Ecc 2:20-23):This life is full of trouble throughout, with all men and all classes. Why should we not, therefore, ardently long for a better life ? (Php 3:14).Starke:The travail of soul, by which one obtains salvation through fear and trembling, is therein different from worldly toil, in bearing its profit unto eternal life.

Osiander (Ecc 2:24-26):It is pleasing to God that we should cheerfully enjoy our labor in His fear, so much as our calling may permit it, Psa 128:1-2.

Joachim Langb:According as man is virtuous or vicious, even his eating and drinking is good or evil. Because the natural man lives either in a state of fleshly security or of servitude, and there is nothing really good in him that avails with God and satisfies the conscience.

Starke (Ecc 2:26):Seek above all things to please God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; else, with all external happiness, thou art still unhappy. The wicked often have worldly goods, and seek in every way to increase them; but tney do not have real profit and lasting fruit from them, because their works do not proceed from the faith. He, on the contrary, who possesses the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22) and is faithful therein, is ever favored by God with greater mercy (Mat 5:28-29).

Hansen (Ecc 2:26):-If we examine it closely, the want of genuine wisdom and pure knowledge is the reason why many do not prosper in the blessings which they possess in the world. Men of impure and confused conceptions, who are fettered by dazzling imaginations, must suffer with all their abundance, and lead a miserable life.

Hamann (Ecc 2:26).:All the vanity, all the toilings of men after wisdom, happiness and rest, which in so many ways lead men to the grave, where ceases all the distinction which they strive to obtain on earth, are not allotted to the pious man by God; they are a curse which sin has laid upon man, but which God will make a blessing to His chosen ones. For these busy, restless creatures gather and heap up for those who are good in Gods eyes. And these latter shall gratuitously receive by the sinners labor what he (the sinner) seeks and finds not, what ho labors for and cannot enjoy: wisdom, knowledge, joy.-What is the Divine word, and whence are taken this wisdom, knowledge and joy that in it exist ? Are they not honey made by bees in the slain beast? What are the stories that they tell us but examples of sinners toil, of the vanity and folly into which men have fallen?

Hengstenberg (Ecc 2:26):It is manifest that the expression: This also is vanity is not meant in the sense of an accusation of God, but as a cry of warning to human perverseness, that seeks its happiness only there where, according to Gods will, it should not be sought.

[For reflections on this and other parts of the book, the reader is referred to Matthew Henry. In no commentary is there to be found a richer treasure of most choice, discriminating and highly spiritual apothegms, rendered most pleasing and ornate by what may be styled a holy humor, or a sanctified wit. They are unsurpassed by any thing in the devout German writers here quoted, but the ready access to the work, for all English readers, renders it unnecessary that the volume should be swelled by inserting them. Besides, among such rich materials, it would not be easy to make a limited selection. Much also of a very rich homiletical character may be obtained from Wordsworth.T. L.].

Footnotes:

[1][There is no contradiction, real or apparent, to be reconciled, if Ecc 2:24 is only rightly rendered as it simply stands in the Hebrew, without any addition. See Note on that passage.T. L.]

[2][ , is very emphatic here. It denotes a deep and earnest search. The primary sense to go about, hence, investigate, appears very strong, Ecc 7:25 : I went round about (), I and my heart, to know and to explore (), and to seek out wisdom, etc. It is the word used of the spies sent out to search the land, Num 13:2; Num 13:16-17; Num 13:21; Num 13:25; Num 13:32; Num 14:6-7, etc., also of travelling merchants, peregrinators (2Ch 9:14; 1Ki 10:15) seeking for precious merchandize. not, with my heart as an instrument, but in my heart as the dark place to be explored. He resolves to act as a spy upon himself, or, to use the quaint language of Halliburton in detailing his religious experience, to see what his heart was doing in the darklike those whom Ezekiel saw in the chambers of imageryor to find out how it might be possible in this interior chamber of the soul, to reconcile a devoted pursuit of pleasure, and, at the same time, a true pursuit of wisdom. The language implies a most intense study, as well as effort, to solve a difficult problem.T. L.]

[3]

[Ecc 2:3, . This passage and word have given much trouble. Zcklers view, though substantially that of Gesenius and Hengstenberg, is unsatisfactory. It is very remotely derived, if it can be derived at all, from the ordinary sense of , to draw, draw out, and is supported by little or no analogy in language. The Latin tracto, from traho, never has the sense curare, which would come the nearest to it. The Syriac with which Gesenius compares it. is a very rate and doubtful word, given by Castell without any examples, and nowhere found, either in the Syriac Scriptures, or in any well known Syriac writings. Knobel gives the sense of holding fast, which would have done very well had he attached to it the idea of restraining, holding back, and made flesh the object, instead of the contrary, of retaining, not remitting (the use of wine). Heiligstedts trahere, attrahere, attract, is inconsistent with the preposition in . Michaelis, sense of protracting is wholly unsuited to , flesh, as its object. Ewalds an den Wein zu heften meine Sinne, to fasten on the wine, etc., gives hardly any sense at all, and what little there is, is opposed to the evident context. The same may be said of Herzfeld: anzulocken meinen Leib; the flesh needs no alluring or drawing to the wine; besides the preposition is here also inconsistent with such a meaning. The LXX , wholly inverts the idea. The Syriac delight my flesh, is a mere accommodating guess. The Vulgate abstrahere, a vino carnem mcam, suits very well with , but would require the preposition ( instead of ). Our English version, to give myself to wine, is as safe a guess as any, but it leaves out the important word my flesh, unless it is intended to have its meaning conveyed in the word myself, as though it were equivalent to . This, however, is without warrant in the Scriptures. Besides, it destroys the contrast evidently intended between and , the body and the mind, which more generally means (comp. Pro 7:7; Pro 17:7, with most of the places where it occurs in that book and this), or the soul generally, as in Psa 73:25, where it is in contrast with my flesh and heartbody and soul.

The ordinary Hebrew meaning of is to draw out. Closely allied to it is the sense of the Arabic to hold, lay hold of, which runs through all the Arabic conjugations. This is the primary, and the sense most likely intended here: to lay hold of, hold back my flesh, that is, to govern, check, restrain it. The unusual style of the language shows that there is a figure here, and what that figure is is suggested by the word in the following clause.

The ordinary, and, we think, the primary sense of this word is egit agitavit. Hence it is applied to the driving of flocks, Gen 31:18; Exo 3:1; Psa 80:2, but more especially and significantly, to the driving or guiding of horses and chariots, as 2Sa 6:3; 2Ki 9:20, where the noun is most graphically used to describe the mad driving of Jehu. From this use in the Scriptures, the Rabbins have, very naturally, and according to the analogy of secondary senses as they spring up in other languages, employed it, with an ethical and philosophical meaning, to denote a course, of thinking, conduct (ductus) or as a rule for the guidance of life. Thus viewed it strikingly suggests some such figure as seems hinted in though there the metaphor may be said to lie concealed: all the more impressive, however, when seen, on account of its inobtrusiveness. It is noticed by Hitzig, who sees the figure, yet misapplies it, or falls back, after all, to the other idea of supporting, sustaining generally: to draw with wine my flesh, that is, die Maschine damit im Gange zu erhalten, to keep the machine going, parallel with the expression to support the life with bread. Here he seems to drop the metaphor, yet takes it up again when he says, the wine here is compared to a draught horse, or as we say of one who drinks on the way, he hath taken a relay. This is a vulgar view of the comparison, resembling some common Americanisms beneath the dignity of the real figure. And then he interprets what follows, of wisdom guiding, by comparing it to the coachman sitting on the box. Stuart follows him in this, but both may be said to err in making wine the unruly horse that needs guidance, instead of the flesh (). On the whole, says Stuart, there can be no doubt that the sense thus given by Hitzig is significant; the main difficulty is the seeming strangeness of the figurative representation. With a little change, however, it is the same with Platos more full and ornate comparison in the Phdrus 54 F, or as it may be called, the myth of the charioteer and his two horses. The body (the flesh with its lusts, its appetites) is the wild horse so graphically described as , . , ., strong-necked, black, with bloodshot furious eyes, full of violence, coarse, shaggyeared, deaf, hard-yielding, either to the whip or the spur. The gentle horse is the pure feeling, the Platonic love, or celestial Eros, and the charioteer is the , or Reason, the Hebrew guiding or driving with . If it seems strange to interpret Koheleth by Plato, it may be said that the figure is, in itself, very easy and natural, coming directly from primary analogies, and in accordance with the whole train of the preachers thought: I sought diligently, when my flesh was furiously driving on in wine, or pleasure ( here not denoting the instrument, or figurative chariot, but the state or condition) to draw it, to restrain it, to bridle it, to keep it, in the path of temperance. On this account we have rendered it in the Metrical Version, to rein my flesh in wine, and this is in harmony with the figure, as we find it so deeply grounded in language generallya fact which makes its use by Koheleth so little strange when properly considered. It is frequent in the Latin, both in prose and poetry. Comp. Hor. Carmina Ecc 4:15-16, evaganti frena licenti injecit, Sat. II. 7, 74. Jam vaga prosiliet frenis natura remotis; Ep. I. 263, hunc (animum) frenis hunc tu compesce catena, Liv. 34:2, date frenos impotenti natur; Juv, 8:88, pone ir frena modumque, Seneca, Ep. 23. voluptates tenere sub freno; etc., etc. So the phrases dare frena and dare habenaslaxis habenis, etc. In the same way the Greek and . Its use is common in English, whether derived from classical examples or, as is more likely, having a spontaneous origin: To give the reins to appetite (the very expression that Zckler unconsciously uses, der Lust die Zgel schiessen lassen) or the contraryto lay the reins upon the neck of pleasure,with the idea of the unruly horse. if, after all, it should be said that this is not in the ordinary Hebrew style, it may be replied that neither is Koheleth in the style of other Hebrew books, and, therefore, that kind of criticism, so assuming, but, offtimes, so superficial, cannot, with certainty, be applied to it.T. L.]

[4][Although a participle in form, , has rather the force of an adjective denoting fulness, luxuriance, (see Metrical version); not bringing forth trees, as our English version has it, but blooming, luxuriant with, or in trees.T. L.]

[5][ . There is no need of going to the Arabic for this word. A great many different views have been taken of it, but the best commentators seem agreed that it refers to Solomons many wives and concubines. This is the opinion of Aben Ezra, who thinks that it would have been very strange if such luxuries had been omitted from this list. He, however, would make it from , with the sense of female captives, taken as the spoil in war. Others who render it wives, like Hitzig, Stuart, etc., make it from the Arabic to lean upon, Infin. 3. conj. to embrace. But there is a nearer Hebrew derivation from mamma, the breast. The feminine form is used as more voluptuous. the swelling breast, mamm sororiantes. The plural after the singular is intensive to denote the vast number of these luxuries that Solomon possessed. The dagesh is easily accounted for without making it from , or the Arabic By the addition there is a sharpening of the first syllable, which requires dagesh and the shortening of the vowel from patach to chirek. See Introduction to Metrical Version, p. 180. The Syriac has corresponding nearly to the LXX , cup-bearers, or wine-pourers. Zcklers rendering has but little or no support. The late Arabic translation of Dr. Vandyke well renders it ladies, mistresses; though from a different root, it comes to the same thing with the Hebrew.T. L.

[6]For a most impressive statement of this, revealing the whole philosophy of will and choice (the will following the sense, or the sense in subjection to the will) see Jobs declaration, Job 31:27, : If my heart, (the seat of moral power) hath gone after mine eyes (the sense generally), then, etc. It is an emphatic denial that he had permitted sense to govern him.T. L.]

[7][The word , though it may be rendered chance, does not denote that which happens without a cause, but simply that which oc-curs. The same may be said of the Greek . The Hebrew word, however, may be better compared with the Homeric , which it resembles in having the same radical consonants ( ), though doubtless, etymologically, different [in this respect it agrees better with ]. It carries rather the sense of the inevitable, or of doom, like the Greek , , which, with , are used to denote death as the great doom of our race. So the Latin fatum, and so of all those old words. The earlier we go up in language, the less do we find in these or similar words any thought of chance or fate, in the atheistic sense, but rather the contrarynamely, that of decree (fatum), destiny fixed by an intellectual power. So Koheleth seems to use here and the verb . They is, in the whole context, a recognition of something more than a debt of nature an atheistical kind of language which our Christianity does not prevent us from using. The whole aspect of the passage favors the idea of an inevitable doom (decree, sentence) fixed upon the race, from which no wisdom, no virtue exempts. Death hath passed upon all men for that all have sinned. To one who views them in their true and earliest character, these old Greek words above mentioned are the very echo of such a sentence. There are all used for death, and often, in Homer and elsewhere, may be so rendered. The epithets joined with them show the same idea, as something inconsistent with the thought of chance, or blind physical law.T. L.]

[8][The emphasis here is on the word , and it is asserted, whether hyperbolically or not, of all. No memory lasts forever, or for the world. The greatest fame, at last, goes out. In this respect, or in comparison with , the differences of time, in human fame, are regarded by the philosophical Seer as of no moment. A remembrance ever lost is equal to oblivion.T. L.

[9]Ecc 2:16. And O, how is it? It is an exclamatory burst of irrepressible feeling, laying open the very heart of the writer. It is the great mystery that so perplexes him, but for which he knows there is some cause consistent with the Divine wisdom and justice. Some great doom [ like the Greek , ] has come upon all the race, the wise, the foolish, the just, the unjust, the unholy, the comparatively pure (see Ecc 9:2), and for some fundamental moral reason applicable to them all alike,as a race rather than as individuals. O, why is it? It is no scepticism in regard to Gods righteous government, no denial of essential moral distinctions; it is not an assertion of Epicurean recklessness on the one hand, nor of a stoical fatality on the other, but a cry of anguish at a spectacle ever passing before his eyes, and which he fails clearly to comprehend. It is as though he were arguing with the Sovereign Omnipotence. Like the language of Job and Habakkuk, in similar seasons of despondency, it seems to manifest, almost, a querulous tone of interrogatory: Why is there no difference? Why dost thou make men as the fishes of the sea? [Hab 1:14, and comp. Ecc 9:12]; why dealest thou thus with us? What shall I do unto thee, O thou Watcher of men? [Job 7:20]. It seems almost irreverent, and yet there is no cant about it, no suppression of the honest feeling of surprise, no artificial humility imposing on itself in the use of any formal language of resignation. Koheleth here appears like one complaining,not in anger, but in grief. He seems to say, as Job said, Suffer me to plead with thee. It is that sublime style of expostulation which so strikes us, and, sometimes, almost terrifies us, in the grand Old Testament men of God. Our English Version is very tame: and how dieth, etc. The conjunction has, in fact, an interjectional force, making more marked the exclamation , by showing an emotional rather than a logical connection; as though it were something suddenly springing up, or irrepressibly prompted by the previous sohloquizing utterance [see remarks on Job 28, and on the particle , in the Introduction to Metrical Version, p. 177]: Since the days come when all is forgotten; but O how is it (as it should be rendered instead of and, since the conjunction is rather disjunctive than merely copulative, and, therefore, the more suggestive of emotion]: Alas, how is it, that the wise should die as dies the fool See the Metrical Version. It does not mean that the wise man dieth in the same manner as the foolthat is, recklessly, stupidly, or despairingly, but rather that he dies as well as the fool; he, no more than the other, escapes the universal sentence that hath passed upon all men for the reasons given Gen 3:19; Rom 5:12. In truth , [literally, with the fool can hardly mean, wie der Thor, in like manner as the fool, as Zckler holdsbut rather, in company with the fool. It is companionship, rather than other resemblance; and so, too, does the preposition keep its original sense in Ecc 7:11; Job 9:26; Job 37:18, the places to which Zckler refers.T. L.].

[10][It may be rather said that , here, is simply intensive of . It means to turn round and roundindicating perplexity, wanderings, or evolutions of mindI revolved. See Metrical Version.T. L.]

[11] [This supposition that would supply or before , is a very old one, for it is referred to, although not fully endorsed, by Rashi and Aben Ezra, and is also mentioned by the grammarian Jona Ben Gannach (Abul Walid) in Sect. 26, on Ellipsis. It is admitted, however, that there is not a trace of it in any ancient manuscript, or in any various reading. It is maintained solely on the ground of a supposed exigentia loci. There is wanted, it is thought, the sense that such an insertion would give, to bring it in harmony with some other passages, as they are mentioned by Zckler, and especially Ecc 9:7-9. Now in respect to these it may be said, that if there were a real or seeming variance, such a fact would present no exegetical difficulty to one who takes the right view of this book as a series of meditations in which the writer, or utterer, to use his own expression, revolves ( Ecc 2:20), goes round and round, trying and testing different views of human life, talking to his heart [ ], now taking up one supposition, then turning again to another now desponding, then again so sure that he says , I know,at another time indulging what is evidently a sorrowing irony, such as especially characterizes Ecc 9:7-9, as compared with Ecc 9:9 (see the Exeget, and notes on these, and especially the two latter, in their respective places). The mere variance, therefore, whether seeming or real, is not sufficient to warrant so bold an Interpolation into the text, unless there is a failure in obtaining any good sense at all from the passage as it stands. But this surely cannot be pretended. What better thought, and, at the same time, more literal as a version, than that given by the LXX., , . . .: it is not good for man, or the good is not for man what he eats, or that he eat, etc., which is favored by Dathe, Knobel and Hahn. Or perhaps, still better than this, if we regard the context, is the translation of Martin Geier, which he gives from Junius, non est bonum penes hominem ut edat, bibat, etc.: the good is not in the power of man that he should eat and drink, etc., for this I saw is from the hand of God himself. Thus, says Geier, all things remain in their native sense, and there is no need of any ellipsis. It might be rendered, perhaps, it is not the good for man (his summum bonum) to eat and drink; or if that is regarded as too philosophical for Koheleth, and also as demanding the article, it may be rendered simply, it is not good, or, there is no good in it (of itself). Tremellius translates in the same way, non est bonum penes hominem, etc. The general sense then would be this: whatever good there may be in eating and drinking, etc., it is not in mans power to secure it, or to find enjoyment in it (make his soul see good in it); and this is in such admirable harmony with the context: it is the gift of God. The preposition in , has this sense, as may be shown in many passages, and it corresponds exactly to our own most natural mode of speech: it is not in him. Even the power to enjoy comes from God. It is not strange that Rationalist Commentators should seek to give an Epicurean aspect to the passage, but it is matter of surprise that others called Evangelical should go out of their way to follow them. The interpretation thus given, as the most literal one, is also in perfect harmony with other passages, or rather, we might say, that the positive unqualified commendation of the gross Epicurean sentiment which the interpretation would give is in direct contradiction to the many declarations of vanity and worthlessness in respect to all mere wealth and pleasure-seeking, which are elsewhere found. This might be set off against the other assertion of variance, if either can be regarded as a right mode of exegesis in this book.

At all events, the literal rendering is all sufficient herewhilst the fair interpretation of other seemingly Epicurean passages only shows, as we think, a difference of aspect under which the great question is considered, but no contradiction to that doctrine which the writer is throughout most earnest to put forth as one of the fundamental ideas of his book, namely, that all good is from God, and that nothing is good without Him. See the Metrical Version: The consciousness of this, not eating, etc., is the highest good.

Rashi interprets the as meaning that the good is not simply that man should eat, etc., or it is not in eating alone; as much as to say, he should give his heart to do judgment and righteousness, together with his eating and drinking; and then he proceeds to give historical illustration.

Aben Ezra suggests the supplying (in the mind) of some such particle as , meaning, not the only good, or that it is not good, in man, or for man, that he should only eat and drink, etc. Again, he seems to lay emphasis on the word (in his till), giving it as the general sense of the text, as it stands, that this toil, with its weariness, finds no other good (no higher good) than to eat and drink,thus shutting out any Epicurean idea and making it a depreciation of human effort rather than a commendation of sensual pleasure, in itself, as the best thing in life.

The Syriac inserts , unless, without any thing to correspond to it in the Hebrew, and having very much the appearance of an accommodation to some later view, since it will not answer as a rendering of comparative (), or or , as proposed. Besides this, it would not give the bald Epicurean idea of our translation that eating is the best thing for man, but only that there is no good in mans power (or as proposed in human toil), unless it be this,a sense which would resemble that of Aben Ezra.

So also the Targum has , unless that he eat, etc., but this version is of little or no authority, on account of its later date, and the paraphrastic absurdity of its midrashin. The sense given by it, however, is quite different from that given in E. V., or by Zckler: There is nothing that is fair among men, unless to eat, etc.; and then it goes on to say that they may do the commandments of the Lord, and walk in his ways. If it be said that there is nothing in the Hebrew text to warrant this, it may be replied that so, also, is there nothing to warrant the insertion of (unless), by which he supports this paraphrastic sense. It all seems evidently done to get a middle way between two views deemed untenable or inconsistent,one asserting, or seeming to assent, that there was no good at all in eating, etc., and the other that it was the highest and only good.

A strong argument for the literal rendering is derived from the context. The particle has an adversative and accumulative force; it denotes a rising in the thought. It connects itself here especially with the last part of what precedes: that he should make his soul see good (or find enjoyment in it): The good is not in the power of man that he should eat, etc., and make his soul see good (or so that he make his soul see good in it, taken as a collective object); yea, what is more [], this too [ emphatic] I saw was the gift of God, the power of enjoyment as well as the means. If there is any good in them (such is the implication), it comes from above. This clearly denotes that there is a higher good, even the consciousness and recognition of the truth thus stated. It is therefore in logical opposition to the idea that there is nothing better for man than eating and drinking thus unqualifiedly asserted. Every reader must feel that there is something disjoined in our common English Version. It does not bring out the contrast, nor the climax. The other is not only the plainer and more literal translation of the Hebrew, as it stands, but the assertion may be ventured that there is no obtaining any other sense out of it.T. L.]

[12][The sense given to by Geier, Junius, and Tremellius, is not only more common, but far more easy and natural. The references to Ecc 3:12; Ecc 10:17, do not confirm the rendering given by Zckler. in Ecc 3:12, more properly refers to the works of men taken collectively, above; or if it refers to men, it means there, as here, in them,in their power.T. L.]

[13][We cannot agree with Zckler and Hitzig here. The sense they would give to is found nowhere else in the Hebrew, unless it is thrust into this place. Everywhere else, 1Sa 20:38; Deu 32:35; Psa 119:60; Hab. 1:18; Ps. 20:20; 38:23; 40:14; 70:26; 71:12; Job 20:2; Isa 5:19; Isa 60:22, etc., etc.; it means simply to hasten, and there is no need of going to the Arabic or Syriac , which in form would correspond rather to . Besides, it requires a change in the text from to which has no marginal keri to support it, and gives, moreover a very farfetched sense. See Text Note and Metrical Version Nothing could be more fitting than the sense which corresponds to the Hebrew as it stands.T, L.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

In this Chapter the Preacher prosecutes still further the doctrine of the emptiness of creatures, to give happiness. Having in the former Chapter stated the subject in general, he here enters into particulars, in proof that all is vanity.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. (2) I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? (3) I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. (4) I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: (5) I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits: (6) I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: (7) I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: (8) I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. (9) So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. (10) And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour. (11) Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

Here is a very faithful account of those things in which carnal men place their chief good. Mirth, and wine; and houses of vermillion and cedar, silver and gold; men servants, and maid servants; horses, and equipage; music, and no doubt dancing, also; with, in short, everything that might gratify the flesh with its affections and lusts. Reader! pause, I beseech you, over this account; and then take a look, if it be but a short one, of the present state of things around; and say, if Solomon had drawn this representation not for himself, but for the world, in this nineteenth century of Christianity, could the picture have been more accurate? Would it not excite the pity of an angel could he be supposed to be looking on, to see the multitude of those who call themselves the followers of the humble Redeemer, so deeply engaged in the reverse of what his blessed gospel teacheth. The Man of Uz hath drawn a similar picture of the carnal in his day. Job 21:7-15 . And Asaph, hath taught us, what effect such characters have in the exercises of the faithful. Psa 73:3-13 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Ecc 2:4

He who watches winds that blow

May too long neglect to sow;

He who waits lest clouds should rain

Harvest never shall obtain.

Signs and tokens false may prove;

Trust thou in a Saviour’s love,

In His sacrifice for sin,

And His Spirit’s power within.

Faith in God, if such be thine,

Shall be found thy safest sign,

And obedience to His will

Prove the best of tokens still.

Bernard Barton. Ecc 2:4-6 ; Ecc 2:8 ; Ecc 2:11 .

If any resemblance with Tennyson’s poetry is to be found in Ecclesiastes, it should be with the ‘Palace of Art’.

Sir Alfred Lyall.

See Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, canto I. iv. vi., for the description of the dull satiety that follows self-indulgence.

Reference. II. 4-11. J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor (1st (Series), vol. x. p. 313.

Ecc 2:10

He rushed through life…. He desired too much; he wished strongly and greedily to taste life in one draught, thoroughly; he did not glean or taste it, he tore it off like a bunch of grapes, pressing it, crushing it, twisting it; and he remained with stained hands, just as thirsty as before. Then broke forth sobs which found an echo in all hearts.

Taine on Alfred de Musset.

Ecc 2:11

All is vanity; that is the low cry of the tired heart when the buoyant strength of youth dies away, and when the brave shows of the glittering world, the harsh inspiriting music of affairs, the ambition to speak and strive, to sway heart and minds or destinies, fade into the darkness of the end. Against the assaults of this nameless fear men hold out what shields they can; the shield of honour, the shield of labour, and, best of all, the shield of faith. But there are some who have found no armour to help them, and who can but sink to the ground, covering their face beneath the open eye of heaven, and say with Fitz Gerald, ‘It is He that hath made us,’ resigning the mystery into the hands of the power that formed us and bade us be. For behind the loud and confident voice of work and politics and creeds there must still lurk the thought that whatever aims we propose to ourselves, though they be hallowed with centuries of endeavour and consecration, we cannot know what awaits us or what we shall be.

A. C. Benson.

Reference. II. 12-23. T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 49.

Ecc 2:17

Mr. Arthur Symons, discussing Villiers, the French decadent, in his Symbolist Movement in Literature (pp. 56 f.), quotes the poet thus: ‘”As at the play, in a central stall, one sits out, so as not to disturb one’s neighbours out of courtesy, in a word some play written in a wearisome style, and of which one does not like the subject, so I lived, out of politeness”: je vivais par politesse . In this haughtiness towards life, in this disdain of ordinary human motives and ordinary human beings, there is at once the distinction and the weakness of Villiers.’

See Quarles’s Emblems, book i. 6, and Religio Medici, ii. sec. xiv. (close).

Ecc 2:19

In Cromwell’s fourth speech to the Parliament of 1655, he discusses, towards the end, the pressing question of the government in relation to his own family. He declares that he has been ever opposed to making his office hereditary. ‘I am speaking as to my judgment against making government hereditary. To have men chosen for their love to God, and to truth and justice; and not to have it hereditary. For as it is in the Ecclesiastes: “Who knoweth whether he may beget a fool or a wise man?” Honest or not honest, whatever they be, they must come in, on that plan; because the government is made a patrimony.’

Ecc 2:22

What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the better part of life in! in scattering compliments, tendering visits, gathering and venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter-love in a dark corner.

Ben Jonson.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

The Vanity of Pleasure

Ecc 2

By reading the two chapters together we get a good notion of Coheleth’s world, and of the world which is possible to any man who has abundant leisure and plenty of money. Coheleth tried to shape out a world which would be approved by wisdom that is, by information and understanding of things; and he soon found that it was bounded on the one hand by the Unknowable, and on the other by the Impossible. Then he would try what money could do, and the result of his money-spending he gives in this chapter. He would not spend it in a foolish way, but lay it out to the best advantage. He would constitute himself into a kind of Board of Works, and do things on a large and commanding scale. Alongside with this he would enjoy all possible personal pleasure, and make life as far as possible at once ornamental and useful. Coheleth girds himself together for a great and final task, and the result of that task, as well as the process of its accomplishment, we have now to consider.

“I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity” ( Ecc 2:1 ).

Coheleth made a set business of this profit-finding. This was no hasty, ill-methodised scheme, but something done by a regular programme and carried out with systematic discipline. Other people had made snatches at pleasure and profit, and their foolish lives had been a useless game, displaying much energy and resulting in nothing; but he determined to make a business of it, and to humble the proud and mocking world. This determination, backed by large resources, ought to end in something good, if any good was possible. Coheleth was the rich man in the Gospel before his time, the man who said, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.”

“I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life” ( Ecc 2:2-3 ).

He would drink a good deal and study a good deal. He tried intoxication for the body and inspiration for the mind. “I resolved to draw my flesh with wine;” I will not live a cold, starved, shivering life, but will deal generously with myself. “He who drinks water thinks water.” I will mingle strong wine; and as good jewels should have good setting, I will quaff the glowing liquor out of goblets gold inside and out, and chased by cunning hands. I will spur the laggardly flesh, and make it keep up in the hot race with my aspiring and persistent mind. I will give my mind to meditation, and answer the riddles which have vexed the aphorists and psalmists, the seers and sages of Israel. The king will write his proud name under every enigma, and by the breath of his genius he will dispel the cloud which settles on all human thinking. How keen was his tone! How resolute is this kingly temper! Judgment had been pronounced upon this process before, but the judgment might have been pronounced upon a series of accidents, rather than upon a skilfully-devised and resolutely-executed plan. The former judgment was: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” That judgment said, interrogatively and affirmatively: “Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” This might have been a partial judgment in the view of Coheleth. So we reason about the follies and disasters of other men: we think that if the whole matter had been planned out beforehand regularly and definitely, and if all the lines had been kept in their places, a very different issue might have been eventuated. So Coheleth will give himself to wine and to wisdom; he will not drink like a fool, but like a philosopher; and at the end we shall see whether the wine or the wisdom was the stronger force.

“I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me” ( Ecc 2:4-9 ).

Coheleth begins by driving idleness off the premises, and therein he begins wisely. No idle man can be happy. No late riser sees the beauties of the morning. The sun will not allow the dew to wait the coming of the sluggard. Industry is God’s medicine, God’s blessing, God’s preventive of a thousand mischiefs. So Coheleth would live a busy life and make other people as busy as himself. “I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards.” So the happy programme of industry unfolds its long and energetic scroll. Then see Coheleth in his sanctum with many papers before him, plans of gardens, plans of reservoirs, plans of fountains, plans of vineyards: money no object; distance no consideration: he will build a heaven in his own grounds, and shut out the devil with bricks well burnt and well laid. See the king “going out early in the morning from Jerusalem to the famed rocks of Etam, a fertile region delightful with paradises and running springs: thither the king in robes of white rode in his chariot, escorted by a troop of mounted archers, chosen for their youth and stature and clad in Tyrian purple, whose long hair, powdered with gold-dust, sparkled in the sun.” And away they went to find heaven, or to make it if they found it not. What could stand before them? The greatest of kings, the strongest of archers, the fleetest of horses! they must get all they want though they have to pluck it from the very stars, or raise it from below the bed of the rocks. “I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.” How merrily the story runs! There are no breaks or crooks in all the flowing strain; there is no halting here, no limping, no failure. The story is not, “I wanted to do it; I wished to do it; I tried to do it;” but “I did it!” I blew a blast on the king’s trumpet, and people came pouring down the hills and surging up the valleys to do the king’s pleasure. I touched the mountains of difficulty, and they fled away in smoke; I stamped my foot, and rivers parted to let me through dryshod; I waved my hand, and the threatening clouds broke up in smiles. My horses covered the whole breadth of the road, and if any man saw me coming he fled in reverence, and made haste to clear the way for the king. I was determined to make all things beautiful, to throw verdure over the bare rocks, to trim the unkempt paths, and to make the earth rich with the jewellery of flowers. And lovely was Jerusalem, the city of the great king! Silver was nothing counted of, and the cedar was more plentiful than the pine, and the air was full of odours that made men glad. Yet there was something wanting. Everything was quiet, too quiet, quiet even to sadness; so I bethought me what was wanting, and asked the wise men to say what had been left out; and lo! the thing we had forgotten was music. So I gat me men singers and women singers, and musical instruments of every sort: at night the city was lulled to slumber by the tender lute, and in the morning was awakened by the clash of cymbals, and all day long the movement was rhythmic under the tone of clanging trumpets and the throb of resonant drums, lightened and vitalised by human voices full of music, rich and thrilling. The dwellers upon the mountains caught the cadence and danced with ecstasy; yea, the enemy heard it and fled from the city of the Lord. Nor was I yet content. “Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy.” Wherever there was a niche I enriched it with a statue. Wherever there was a corner I planted a tree. I caused the willing water to run everywhere to please the eye and make the hidden roots glad in the time of drought. I filled up the outline utterly to the very last point, nor did I hesitate to add gold to gold and beauty to beauty, until for richness and loveliness Jerusalem was the joy of the whole earth. “And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen: and he had a thousand and four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, whom he bestowed in the cities for chariots, and with the king at Jerusalem…. And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn.” “She gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones: neither was there any such spice as the queen of Sheba gave king Solomon.”

Now let us hear what Coheleth says of the whole mountain of his greatness.

“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun” ( Ecc 2:11 ).

But nothing would have convinced him or this beforehand. Every man must do his own wickedness. Every man must break his own head. Every man must burn his own fingers. We cannot believe one another. We are told that the way of transgressors is hard, but this does not deter a solitary soul from transgression; every man thinks that it will not be hard in his particular case, just as “all men think all men mortal but themselves.” What is it, then, that Coheleth contributes to human experience in this history? He shows that it is not in the power of houses, vineyards, gardens, orchards, trees, and pools of water to satisfy the heart: of man. In one word, the material can never satisfy the spiritual. Build your fine houses, put on gold where you have now laid on gilt, put musical instruments in every room, make your beds of down and carpets of embroidered silk, and sit down in the midst of it on a chair of ivory, and one pang of heart-hunger will turn the whole glittering scene into ghastly mockery. You sigh for something better; for the child dead years ago; for the heart that always knew you best; for the footfall which means companionship and sympathy.

It is exactly at this point that the best results of science fail to touch the life of the heart. Science gets no further than Coheleth got Science indeed would seem to be the modern Coheleth. Its programme is ample; its industry is indomitable; it spares no money, no time, no toil. Science may say: “I made me great works; I builded me houses; I sent out my messengers afar; I searched the garden and the orchard, and dug deeply into mines far down in darkness; I chartered ships to sail in dangerous seas; I fitted out expeditions to coasts unknown, but supposed to be rich in spoil; I set men to watch the stars, to break the rocks, to study the flowers, and to pass all nature through chemic process and trial; and I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit.” The heart cannot be satisfied with ashes. The mind cannot be satisfied with its own conquests. There is an aching void; there is an outgoing of desire; there is a cry of the heart which demands some better answer than its own echo.

This testimony of Coheleth should correct the discontent of men who think that if they had more they would be happier. How to eradicate this fallacy from the human heart is the great problem of all wise teachers. Man is determined to live in his circumstances and to regulate his happiness by his possessions. “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” This is frankly admitted to be true, yet that which is admitted in theory is continually contradicted in practice: another house, and we would be satisfied; another field, and the estate would be complete, and the heart would say, This is enough; an income just doubled, and behold all would be peace and sunshine. The testimony of Coheleth is before us, and it will be read as an exercise in rhetoric, but never applied as a doctrine in practical morals. How wonderfully the testimony of the king confirms the word of Jesus Christ! “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” What is the supreme lesson of Christian experience as bearing upon this matter of worldly satisfaction? It is this: “Godliness with contentment is great gain…. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.” “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” The testimony of Coheleth should excite the inquiry, Is there not something more something better than we see in this world? It is worth while passing through all the painful experience of the king to have this inquiry solemnly excited in the heart. Our quest is not to end in bitterness and disappointment, but is to show that this world is not complete in itself, and that other worlds lie within the possible conquest of man. Discontent may thus be turned to spiritual advantage; when ambition is dead the spirit of prayer may begin to awaken. When all the garden shows that it is but a decorated tomb, the soul may begin to ask itself whether there is not something beyond which faith may realise, a glorious heaven which the spirit may enjoy.

Trace human life, and see how man lays down one world after another, discontented and anxious, and looking for a better portion: the infant’s world of toys is soon abandoned; so is the boy’s world of games, amusements, and educational preparations; so is the youth’s world of plans, schemes, enterprises, and dreams of progress and wealth, each world becomes exhausted in due time. Nothing but exhaustion will ever teach man that heaven is not on earth. He may be told this as a doctrine, and he may not intellectually dissent from the teaching, but with an incurable and unintelligible perversity he persists in digging in the earth, as if he could find some subterranean passage to celestial satisfaction and quietude. Is not our common daily life a religious parable, of which the heart; should know the meaning? What is the meaning of that heart-tug? What is the meaning of that long lingering look over the hills, as if you expected an angel to appear in the solemn cloud and fill up what is wanting in life? Think! What we want is the Son of God; the comfort of God’s grace; the love of God’s truth; and the sweet contentment of repose on the arm that is almighty, and the love that cannot die. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” This appeal can have no effect upon man until he has exhausted all the lower fountains and gardens of pleasure. When the younger son had spent all that he had he said he would arise and go to his father. It would appear as if we too must make away with everything we hold in possession before we can arise and claim the bread of heaven. “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich.” “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” God complains of a double iniquity on the part of his chosen ones: “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” All the disappointments of life its bitter hunger, its intolerable darkness, its inevitable grave should drive us to seize the holy promise: “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.” This is the great Gospel, the good tidings, the deep meaning of all that was done for the human race by the Son of God.

“And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been already done” ( Ecc 2:12 ).

The man that cometh after the king can only do what the king has done, though probably on a much meaner scale. What building can be more durable than the pyramids? What can be richer than the palaces of kings? The great thing that Coheleth did for human experience was to carry a certain line of it to its uttermost extent. Suppose a man has sailed over all seas, and made special notes and charts of his voyages; suppose the whole action to have been done by the most scientific men of the time, assisted by the finest instruments, no seaman could afford to be ignorant of the researches of such voyagings and calculations. Coheleth did something like this for mankind. He tasted every cup, and wrote a label upon each: he made money do its very uttermost, and then plainly told what that uttermost was “vanity and vexation of spirit”! This is a great contribution to have made to human history, and if people would but believe it they would be spared infinite trouble and disappointment. But every man thinks he can improve upon what Coheleth did; and so generation after generation goes on, and each rolls over the precipice unwarned by the one which went over last. Our irrationalism is more seen in morals than in anything else. In legislation we have precedents, and we consult them with critical care; in commerce we have authorities from whom we dissent only with extreme reluctance; so in navigation, in architecture, and many other pursuits; but in morals we run straight in the face of every precedent, and where on the moral chart there are marked rocks, shoals, or whirlpools, we take our life-vessel straight upon them, and so enlarge the grave of the fool and the suicide. Morally, man is insane. Intellectually, he may be a philosopher; morally, he is a madman. We often say of some people, Take him off his own particular line of reading or work, and he is almost contemptibly weak. This is true of the human race in a profound sense: we are clever, sharp, able, ingenious, thrifty, and successful; but let us go into the region of morals, and we seem not to know the right hand from the left. We will not believe Coheleth; otherwise we should say, It has been proved that happiness does not come as the result of mere possession; the money game has been played out, and is a failure; eating and drinking, display and recreation, merry dance and agile trick, have all passed on and left behind them nothing but sick hearts and wasted lives; bodily appetites have been sated, and the man has died under the glut of his unrestrained desires. This would be so; but instead of this every man goes over the same ground for himself, and though one sends messages from perdition to his surviving brethren, they heed not his burning words, but go to him in a gallop, laughing as they run down the steep and fall into the last abyss.

“Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness” ( Ecc 2:13 ).

Wisdom sees the true dimensions of things. Wisdom knows their value. Folly walks in the darkness, and stumbles step after step. Wisdom has resources of its own: it can live in the past; it can dream of the future; it can people solitude with sweet companionship, and fill the wilderness with corn, and wine, and fruitful fields. Folly has no inner self, no music at home, no storehouse of reflection, no harp of joy. It must go out for everything. It pays the highest price for its immediate satisfaction, and drinks the killing liquor on the premises, without laying up aught for the days that are to come. Beautiful figure this “as far as light excelleth darkness”! How far is that? Can we lay a measuring line on that vast space? Look at the mountains in the deepening twilight of evening: what are they but gigantic shadows? and in an hour more they will be but parts of the darkness itself. But look at them in the morning how lofty, how solemn, how august! Look where the sun turns them into polished silver, and where the coming shadow cools and modifies the far-spreading radiance: see the bald rock at the top; the stray pine a little lower down; yonder a rill threading its timid way, and little patches of verdure here and there; birds now and lambs low down on the greener slopes, and round the whole a mighty, tender, gladdening light. This is wisdom as compared with folly. “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” The light has always been claimed by the divine. “Walk as children of the day.” It is promised that a time of intellectual discrimination shall come upon the Church: “Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.” The great gift of God to the Church is a gift of light: “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.” Paul said that he had been brought into a “marvellous light.” It is notable that the whole inner life of man is divided into two sections only, and these are respectively described as wisdom and folly. It would seem as if there were no medium position to be occupied. The ten virgins were equally divided into wise and foolish. This principle of dual division in intellectual life and in moral character seems to run throughout the whole Biblical revelation.

Now comes a mystery which was a trouble to the mind and heart of Coheleth:

“Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool” ( Ecc 2:15-16 ).

So it would seem. There is enough in society to confound the wise man’s wisdom and to trouble the good man’s peace. Things are not all straight, and smooth, and simple, and easy. To the browsing cattle all landscapes are alike. The dog in his kennel knows not one star from another. The unconscious bird will sing in your house whether there be a child born or a child dead. But thinking man is stunned by many collisions, bewildered by many mysteries, and prayer is struck from his pleading lips by appearances which seem to say, God there is none, and righteousness is a fool’s dream. The wise man dies and the fool dies, and nature makes no difference as to their burial. No angel is seen to hover over the wise man’s grave more than over the fool’s, and but for tolling bell and surpliced priest it might be but a beast that is laid down, and not the singing Milton or the dreaming Bunyan. And all is soon forgotten. The hot tears will evaporate, the sigh will mingle with the wind, the bent tree will straighten again when the storm ceases. This was the mystery which puzzled Coheleth and which puzzles us. The wise man and the fool die, and perhaps the fool has the better tombstone of the two. The fool leaves an estate, and the wise man leaves only an example. The fool leaves a will to be read, and the wise man leaves a character to be studied. But who cares to study it? Who would study a character if thereby he ran the risk of missing a train! Then this question was forced upon Coheleth: What is the good.? what is the use? what does it all come to? A man strives after wisdom, and dies on the doorstep of her lofty habitation. A fool runs after madness, and has a short life and a merry one. A man reads many books, studies many subjects, passes many examinations, takes many prizes, and just when he is going to reap the best results of his toil he topples into the grave, and a sod is thrown on his quiet heart. Coheleth says in effect: There is no guarantee for the wise man’s life more than for the fool’s. No man has a life-lease which he can count upon and force to a literal fulfilment. Uncertainty is marked upon everything, and no man knows whether he will draw a blank or a prize from the fickle lottery. “There is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever.” In all ages men have been stunned by the apparent confusion of wise and foolish which has occurred in the order and progress of divine providence. The prophet says, “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart.” The psalmist says, “For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others.” So the confusion is not on the human side only, but on the side which we have consented to describe as divine. The mystery lies there and presses upon life with the weight of a grievous burden. It is God who smites; it is God who drives men to premature graves; it is God who has taught the mystery of death to the opening mind of childhood. Why should these things be? This question will trouble the ages until God himself shall answer it.

“Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity. Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun. For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil. For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity” ( Ecc 2:17-23 ).

The voice of a man who is utterly sated with life. He thought that something would have come of it, but nothing came. He said, “I will make these dead stones live,” and behold, when his genius and art had done their utmost, the stones were but statues. He said, “I will turn this water into wine,” but lo! when his magic had played its little trick, it was found that the conjuror had only changed the colour, not the quality, of the liquid. He said, “I will find heaven on earth;” and behold, after all his searching, and devising, and construction, he confessed that he had only found a grave. “Therefore,” says Coheleth, “I hated life.” I found, too, that I was only working for the man who was to come after me. I was making a chair for him to sit upon, and stocking a wardrobe to clothe him with rare raiment. I could take nothing away with me. Nor is this the worst of it. I know not whether my successor will be a wise man or a fool; yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. How can I tell what the man will do who cometh after me? He may cut down my choice trees; he may fill up the pools and destroy the fountains which sent up their sparkling dew all day long; he may turn my favourite rooms into kennels for his dogs; he may handle my most sacred relic with irreverent hands, and venture with commercial mind to set a price upon it. Oh, sad, sad!, He will not consult my memory, he will not honour my name; surveying all that I have gathered together for my pleasure and enjoyment, he may call the whole the king’s folly. Therefore I despaired of life, for a busy seedtime brought next to nothing of a harvest, and what little I did put into the garner I left for my unknown successor. A man writes books, and his successor sells them for waste-paper. A man plants a tree, and his successor fells it to make a gate-post. “This also is vanity and a great evil.” And there is no rest. Even sleep is a species of discontentment. It is not a benediction, but a refuge; it is not peace, it is only silence. The world is a failure, and it is full of lies and mockery and sadness. We have found Moses complaining that life became too great a burden to him: “And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness.” The prophet Jeremiah was overwhelmed with the same thought, asking this poignant question: “Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?” The student has said: “In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” The king could not sleep in his palace in the days of Daniel; even palaces cannot guarantee the sleep which God giveth to his beloved. So it must be confessed that Providence is a daily mystery, and often a daily torment, even to the most reverently studious minds. The suggestion of the whole of this contemplation of human tumult is that surely there must come a time of explanation and reconcilement. Surely there is something beyond all this wind and rain, and all this bitterness of soul. It is impossible that such a life as ours can have been created for this end only. Reason and instinct both arise to suggest that a time of explanation is beyond, and that in immortality we shall see the full meaning of time.

“There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God” ( Ecc 2:24 ).

A short and easy rule would be, Eat it up; consume it; eat and drink to-day, and to-morrow die. This is what comes of endeavouring to fill the infinite with the finite, and to feed the soul through the medium of the body. Coheleth was perfectly right within given limits; it is because his limits were too narrow that his whole philosophy was defective, and his moral tone without spiritual dignity. Many men who are in error are not wrong for want either of intelligence or sincerity, but simply for want of enlargement of definition, and true perspective in proportion and colour. Coheleth overlooked the fact that goodness is self-rewarding. The heaven is in the action itself. Even if men were to die to-morrow, the heaven which comes of doing a good action to-day never can be taken from the honest heart. It is a profound and criminal mistake to suppose that because a man must die to-morrow he need not trouble himself to do good to-day. He who assists honest poverty, leads a blind man across a busy thoroughfare, helps a child to open the door of life and advance in honourable business, dries the tears of helpless sorrow, has a heaven in the very action itself, even supposing that death should be the end of all things, and there should be neither mourning nor joy beyond the last struggle. Then Coheleth forgot that goodness does not cease with the life of the good man. Even excluding the common interpretation of immortality, we cannot deny the immortality of holy influence shed by a lofty and noble example. When men die in the body they do not die as to recollection; their names may be inspirations in which great battles are fought, and great sacrifices endured with heroic patience. We cannot get rid of immortality in one form or another. When, by a daring imagination, we have closed the city of the New Jerusalem, destroyed its gates of pearl, silenced its harps of gold, dried up its fountains of water, and, in short, made an end of the whole dream of the celestial world, there remains the immortality of recollection, thought, love, and grateful honour. Our contention, therefore, must always be that it is worth while to do good for its own sake, and always worth while so to live that death shall give a tenderer sanctity to every deed of our hand and every thought of our mind. Coheleth forgot, further, that results are not measurable and statable in words. Even Coheleth himself, in the midst of all his hatred of life and despair, has left the great teaching that even a king could not find satisfaction in things finite and perishing. Coheleth was impatient: he wanted things to come to hand and at once; he wanted the good man and the wise to be visibly glorified, so as to confound the fool. This is not the way of the kingdom of heaven upon earth. The kingdom of God is as a grain of mustard seed. The spiritual kingdom, once within a man, gradually educates him to see that the least things have value, and that even in things that die there are hints and seals of immortality. “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children” in the greatest sense of the word. “Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.” So in our eating and drinking to-day we may add a new sensation to the feast by remembering the poor and the hungry. “Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared.” As to the wicked man, he studies himself alone, and is content with his own aggrandisement. Argument is lost upon him, and prayer itself is hardly heard on his behalf. “Though he heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; he may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver.”

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XXVI

THE PROLOGUE AND THREE METHODS APPLIED

Ecc 1:2-5:9

“Vanity of vanities” (Ecc 1:2 ) is a Hebraism and means the most utter vanity. Compare “Holy of holies” and “Servant of servants” (Gen 9:25 ). This does not mean that all things are vanity in themselves, but that they are all vanity when put in the place of God, or made the chief end of life instead of a means to an end.

The meaning and purpose of the question in Ecc 1:3 is to inquire as to the profit of all labor and worry which we see about us as touching the chief good, but does not mean that labor is not profitable in its proper place. (Cf. Gen 2:15 ; Gen 3:19 ; Pro 14:23 ).

There is a beautiful parallel to Ecc 1:4 in modern literature, viz: “The Brook” by Tennyson. The stanza that sounds so much like this is as follows: And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.

The sun, wind, and rivers in their endless courses (Ecc 1:5-7 ) are illustrations of the meaning of the text from the material world. The monotony of all this is expressed in Ecc 1:8 , thus: “All things are full of weariness; man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”

The meaning of Ecc 1:9-10 is that there is no new source of happiness (the subject in question) which can be devised, the same round of pleasures, cares, business, and study being repeated over and over again; that in the nature of things, there is no new thing which might give us hope of attaining that satisfaction that hitherto things have not afforded.

Ecc 1:11 is an explanation of Ecc 1:9-10 and means that some things are thought to be new which are not really so because of the imperfect records of the past. This seems to hedge against the objection that there are many inventions and discoveries unknown to former ages by showing that the records do not preserve all these inventions for the present generation and therefore they are only thought to be new. The methods applied in this search for the chief good are wisdom, pleasure, great works, riches, and a golden mean. The author claims for himself in Ecc 1:12-17 that he was king over Israel in Jerusalem and that he had applied himself in search of all that was done under heaven, to find that it was a sore travail which God had permitted the sons of men to be exercised with; that he had seen all the works done under the sun and found them all vanity and a striving after wind; that he had found many crooked things and many things wanting; that he had attained to greater wisdom than all others before him in Jerusalem and had applied it to know madness and folly, to find this, too, to be a striving after wind. The final result of it all is given in Ecc 1:18 , thus: “For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”

The experiment described in Ecc 2:1-3 is the test of worldly pleasure, with the result that it, too, was vanity. Then in Ecc 2:4-11 he gives his experience in the pursuit of great works; he built houses, planted vineyards) made gardens and parks, planted trees, made pools of water, bought servants of all kinds, gathered silver and gold, provided a great orchestra for his entertainment, in fact, had everything his eyes desired and tried to find in them joy and comfort, but upon due reflection, he found this, too, a striving after the wind and to no profit under the sun.

In Ecc 2:12-17 we have his comparison between wisdom and folly, with the result that wisdom far excels folly or pleasure, yet the same thing happens to the fool and to the wise man, viz: both die and are forgotten. So he was made to hate life because his work was grievous and a striving after wind. There is ground for the hatred of labor because he must die and leave it to another (Ecc 2:18-23 ). The reference in Ecc 2:19 is to Rehoboam; Solomon evidently suspected his course. Therefore, the conclusion of Ecc 2:24 is that there is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink) and to make his soul enjoy his labor, but the thought (Ecc 2:24-25 f) that it is all from God and that it is all subject to God’s disposal, knocks it over.

In Ecc 3:1-5:9 we have the elements that limit:

I. The Divine Elements are,

1. The law of opportunes (Ecc 3:1-8 )

2. The eternity in our hearts (Ecc 3:9-11 a)

3. The finiteness of man’s nature (Ecc 3:11 b)

4. The laws of God are infrangible (Ecc 3:14 )

II. The Human Elements are,

1. Iniquity in the place of justice (Ecc 3:16 )

2. The oppression of the poor (Ecc 4:1 )

3. Labor and skill actuated only by rivalry with the neighbor (Ecc 4:4 )

4. The elements of weakness in human worship (Ecc 5:1-7 )

On the law of opportunes, will say that we have to work under this law all the days of our lives. Things must be done in their time or they are a failure.

“God hath put eternity in our hearts” (Ecc 3:11 ) is a great text. This means -that money and worldly things cannot satisfy the yearning of the human heart, which is for eternal things. Therefore, the conclusion in Ecc 3:12 is the same as in Ecc 2:24 , but the God thought knocks it over (Ecc 3:13 ): “Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness.”

Ecc 3:14-15 mean that the laws of God are infrangible, i.e., cannot be broken with impunity, and that whoever breaks the laws of the divine limitations him will God break.

It is an awful observation the author cites in Ecc 3:16 . The observation is that iniquity was in the place of justice; that unjust men in court block the way of the righteous if they appeal to them. This is like the parable of the widow and unjust judge. A modification of this thought is found in the divine element, that God will judge the righteous and the wicked (Ecc 3:17 ).

A serious question arises in Ecc 3:18-21 . This is not a proposition but a heart question: Is there a distinction between man and beast? Bunyan represents Pilgrim in this condition when he had advanced far into his pilgrimage: a darkness on either side of the road; here evil spirits would whisper to him and so impress him that he would question as to whether he did not originate the thought himself. Spurgeon found himself in this condition once. The sin of Solomon doubtless was the cause of his questioning; even so it is with us. The conclusion of Ecc 3:22 is a most natural one. If man dies like a beast and that is the end of all for him, then he can do no better than to make the most of this life.

The author records an observation in Ecc 4:1 and a question which arose therefrom. The oppression of the poor and the question arising was a temporary one, as to whether it would not be better to be dead or never to have been born (Ecc 4:2-3 ). following that is an observation with respect to labor and a question which arose from it. The observation was that a man’s labor and skill were actuated only by rivalry with hia neighbor (Ecc 4:4 ) and the question arising from it is this: Is it not better then, just to be a sluggard? (Ecc 4:5-6 ).

Then in Ecc 4:8 we have an illustration of a miserly bachelor who is never satisfied with -his acquired wealth, notwithstanding that there is no one to whom he might leave his wealth at death. I once knew a man in Austin who had no relatives and owned a great deal of Austin, yet he would go across the street to his neighbor’s to warm rather than buy coal. Ecc 4:9-12 is a contrast with the condition of the bachelor and is a wonderful gem of literature, expressing the advantages of co-operation. Two are better than one because they can be mutually helpful to each other. This is the foundation principle of all partnerships, whether for business, war or the home. “A threefold cord is not quickly broken.” In Ecc 4:13-16 we have an illustration of the same principle in the vanity of kings in acquiring great dominion to be turned over to an ungrateful son. There is doubtless a reference here to Solomon himself and his son, Rehoboam. Solomon foresaw the coming of Rehoboam and his people who would not rejoice in their heritage.

The elements of weakness in human worship as noted in Ecc 5:1-7 are lack of due consideration which results in the sacrifice of fools and rash vowing and then not paying the pledge. Here I give an observation: often let their mouths go off half-cocked and then when settlement day comes say before the messenger, “It was an error.” This principle applies in all our general work. For many years I was an agent for different phases of denominational work and handled thousands of dollars for the kingdom enterprises. On many occasions in our conventions pledges were made for some kingdom interest and when I took the matter up with the different ones for collection many of them would not even answer my letters. Then these same ones would come into the convention again and make another pledge and refuse again to pay it. This led me to go through my list of pledges when they were first made and write after each one of these the German word, nix. One would be astonished to go over these lists because of the great number on the list with nix after the name and also because certain ones are in the list whom a credulous person would not suspect. This experience of mine led me to emphasize very strongly this passage in later years: “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God.”

Another observation is recorded in Ecc 5:8-9 . This relates to the matter of injustice so often wrought in governmental affairs, but we are admonished to remember that the One who is over all regards, and that his purpose in human government is to secure equal rights to all, since the earth is for all, and all, including the king, must be fed from the field.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the meaning of “Vanity of vanities,” in Ecc 1:2 ?

2. What is the meaning and purpose of the question in Ecc 1:3 ?

3. What is parallel to Ecc 1:4 in modern literature, and what stanza especially fits the teaching here?

4. What are the illustrations of the meaning of the text from the material world?

5. How is the monotony of all this expressed in Ecc 1:8 ?

6. What is the meaning of Ecc 1:9-10 ?

7. What is the meaning of “no remembrance” in Ecc 1:11 ?

8. What are the methods applied in this search for the chief good?

9. What claims does the author make for himself in Ecc 1:12-17 and what is the result as expressed in Ecc 1:18 ?

10. What experiment described in Ecc 2:1-3 and what is the result?

11. What experiments described in Ecc 2:4-11 and what is the result?

12. What comparison is in Ecc 2:12-17 and what are the results?

13. What is his reasoning in Ecc 2:18-23 and to whom does the author refer in Ecc 2:19 ?

14. What is the conclusion of Ecc 2:24 and what is the knock over in Ecc 2:24-26 ?

15. In Ecc 3:1-5:9 we have the elements that limit. What are they?

16. What can you say of the law of opportunes?

17. What great text is here and what its meaning?

18. What is the conclusion in Ecc 3:12 and what the knock over in Ecc 3:13 ?

19. What is the meaning and application of Ecc 3:14-15 ?

20. What awful observation does the author cite in Ecc 3:16 and what is the modification in Ecc 3:17 ?

21. What question arises in Ecc 3:18-21 , what parallels to this in modern times, and what is the real cause of this questioning by Solomon?

22. What is the conclusion of Ecc 3:22 ?

23. What is the observation in Ecc 4:1 and what question arose there from?

24. What is the observation with respect to labor and what question arose from it?

25. What is the illustration given in Ecc 4:8 , what is the author’s observation illustrating this verse and what is the author’s reasoning of Ecc 4:9-12 ?

26. What is the illustration of Ecc 4:13-16 and who the persons primarily referred to?

27. What are the elements of weakness in human worship and what is the applicant?

28. What is the observation in Ecc 5:8-9 and what is the divine element that helps again?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Ecc 2:1 I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also [is] vanity.

Ver. 1. Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth. ] The merry Greeks of the world think that they have the only life of it; that there is no such happiness as to ‘laugh and be fat,’ to ‘sing care away,’ and to lie carousing and melting in sinful pleasures; yea, though they perish therein, as the Duke of Clarence did in his butt of malmsey. a But a little time will confute these fools, saith Solomon, and let them see that it is better to be preserved in brine than to rot in honey. Flies and wasps use to come to honey and sugar, and such sweet things; so doth Beelzebub, the god of flies, to the hearts of epicures and voluptuaries. Behemoth haunteth the fens. Job 40:21 Here, therefore, this wise man was utterly out, and made an ill transition from the search of wisdom to the pursuit of pleasures; from the school of Socrates, to the herd of Epicurus. For though these hogs may grunt out their “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die,” yet, if death but draw the curtain, and look in upon them, all the mirth is marred, and they put into as great an agony as Belshazzar was at the sight of the handwriting that was against him.

a A strong sweet wine, originally the product of the neighbourhood of Monemvasia (Napoli di Malvasia) in the Morea; but now obtained from Spain, the Azores, and the islands of Madeira and the Canaries, as well as from Greece.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Ecclesiastes Chapter 2

Ecc 1:12 .

After the abstract introduction the Preacher enters on an experience, so personal that one might call it autobiography, and so full that it covers all human life. This is unbroken and evident in the portion that follows.

“I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven: it is a sore travail that God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all [is] vanity and a striving after wind. [That which is] crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I have gotten me great wisdom above all that were before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart hath had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also was a striving after wind. For in much wisdom [is] much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (vers. 12-18).

“I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this – also [was] vanity. I said of laughter, [It is] mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? I searched in mine heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, mine heart yet guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what [it was] good for the sons of men that they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all [kinds of] fruit: I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest where, trees were reared; I bought men-servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of herds and flocks, above all that were before me in Jerusalem.

“I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, concubines very many.* So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them: I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced because of my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had ,wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all [was] vanity and a striving after wind, and there was no profit under the sun.

* The discrepancies in translations are here extraordinary. “Wagons and chariots” says J. Leeser; as others “wife and concubines”; the LXX. “a butler, and female cupbearers”; the Vulgate, “pitchers and vases” and so one might run on rather wearyingly.

“And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness and folly: for what [can do] the man that cometh after the king? That which hath been already done. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness. The wise man’s eyes [are] in his head, and the fool walketh in darkness: and yet I perceived that one event happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so will it happen even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also [was] vanity. For of the wise man, even as of the fool, [there is] no remembrance for ever; seeing that in the days to come all will have been already forgotten. And how doth the wise man die even as the fool! So I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun was grievous unto me: for all [is] vanity and a striving after wind.

“And I hated all my labour wherein I laboured under the sun: seeing that I must leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be wise or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have showed wisdom under the sun. This also [is] vanity. Therefore I turned about to cause my heart to despair concerning all the labour wherein I had laboured under the sun. For there is a man whose labour [is] with wisdom, and with knowledge, and with skilfulness; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also [is] vanity and a great evil. For what hath a man of all his labour, and of the striving of the heart, wherein he laboureth under the sun? For all his days [are] sorrows, and his travail is grief; yea, even in the night his heart taketh no rest. This also is vanity.

“[There] is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it [is] from the hand of God. For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? For to the man that pleaseth him God giveth wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that pleaseth God. This also [is] vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecc 2:1-26 ).

What gives peculiar point is the personal position of the Preacher. If exemption from the sense of wretchedness, in the survey of man as he is on the earth, could be the portion of any, it might have been conceived to be the lot of king Solomon. It is his appraisal in the Spirit which lies before us, that faith might profit by all he tells. It is not from lack of power, interest, or research, any more than of capability or resources. He gave his heart to seek and search out by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. The sense of its fruitlessness, and sorrow over its evil, were only the deeper In one who could best appreciate all. What he began with as a truth he only sealed as facts he had proved. “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, the whole is vanity and vexation of spirit.” Somehow death was in the pot. Crookedness was here; failure or defect there.

It was not so before sin entered into the world; on the contrary God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. When sin was there, God made the evil felt; and the consequence is here laid bare by the most conspicuous type of Him who will yet come in power and glory as well as righteousness, and bring the days of heaven upon the earth, seasons indeed of refreshing,, from the Lord’s face; not simply witness to them as now, and of things higher still for the heavens, but of prophecy fully accomplished in times of restitution of all things. The honour is reserved for Him Who is worthy, the conqueror of Satan, the effectuator of God’s will in and for the universe, the reconciler not only of us who believe, but of all things for that day and for ever. Far different is this day, when crookedness and defect abide, too great for man, and not yet the time for God; but the misery meanwhile is felt fully and expressed in detail. Solomon’s vast experience of wisdom and knowledge only probed the sore, whether on the side of wisdom to cultivate, or of madness and folly to eschew. This too he felt to be but pursuit of wind, “for in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecc 1:12-18 ).

Hence mirth is tried next, and natural alleviation for those bitter of soul, as we hear in Pro 31 . It was all in vain, and the feeling of disappointment recurs (Ecc 2:1-3 ). Might not activity in great works succeed better? This Solomon essayed and carried out with extraordinary diligence and splendour; but reviewing all this work he wrought and the toil he toiled, he could rest in none of it: the whole was vanity and vexation of spirit, and no profit under the sun (vers. 4-11). His reflections follow on wisdom and madness and folly; for he knew what it must be for the man that enters after the king: at best a repetition of the same vain pursuit of satisfaction here below. Still it is allowed that there is a profit to wisdom above folly, as in that of light above darkness: the wise has his eyes in his head, while the fool walks in darkness; yet if to all is the same result, what an irony of event! So he had found it himself; and soon all would be alike forgotten here below, the one dying as the other: so that he had a disgust of life and hated all his toil; especially as it must be left to a successor, and who knows whether he will be wise or infatuated? Yet must he have power in all that toil and fruit of wisdom under the sun. This too was vanity. A feeling of despair ensued over all his toil, as he thought of an untoiling heir. For what was there but pain and vexation in his employment, even in the night his heart forbidding rest. Was not this too vanity? (vers. 11-23.)

The conclusion come to in vers. 24-26 is to receive thankfully what comes from the hand of God, Who gives man good in His sight, wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner travail to gather and heap up, that it may be given to the good in God’s sight. And what is this but vanity and vexation of spirit?

Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Ecc 2:1-8

1I said to myself, Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself. And behold, it too was futility. 2I said of laughter, It is madness, and of pleasure, What does it accomplish?

3I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to take hold of folly, until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives. 4I enlarged my works: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself; 5I made gardens and parks for myself and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees; 6I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees. 7I bought male and female slaves and I had homeborn slaves. Also I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. 8Also, I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I provided for myself male and female singers and the pleasures of menmany concubines.

Ecc 2:1 I said to myself Chapters 1-2 form a literary unit. This is a recurrent refrain (cf. Ecc 1:16-17; Ecc 2:1; Ecc 2:15). The author is verbalizing his unspoken thoughts.

Come now There are three IMPERATIVES in this verse:

1. come – BDB 229, KB 246, Qal IMPERATIVE (a Hebrew way to introduce a new thought, e.g., Psa 34:12; Psa 46:8; Psa 66:5; Psa 66:16)

2. I will test – BDB 650, KB 702, Piel IMPERFECT used in a COHORTATIVE sense

3. enjoy yourself – BDB 906, KB 1157, Qal IMPERATIVE (literally, and look on goodness. The UBS Handbook for Translators says this can be understood as see what good there is in it? or see what pleasure can offer? (p. 52)

I will test you with pleasure The VERB test (BDB 650, KB 702, Piel COHORTATIVE) clarifies the experiment. Qoheleth is trying to ascertain if worldly, physical pleasure is the key to gain, but alas, it is not! All physical pleasure fades with the doing. It becomes routine and common (as do possessions).

Pleasure (BDB 970) is used in Ecclesiastes in two different senses:

1. gaiety, laughter (Ecc 2:1-2; Ecc 2:10; Ecc 7:4), where periods of pleasure briefly dull the mind and heart of humanity’s existential existence in a fallen world, but it does not last; it does not satisfy!

2. daily pleasure in life’s personal relationships and activities (Ecc 8:15; Ecc 9:7). Here pleasure is not the goal, but the result of a regular attitude of trust in God (cf. Ecc 2:26; Ecc 5:19) and thankfulness about common life experiences (food, drink, family, friends, work, cf. Ecc 2:24; Ecc 3:12-13; Ecc 3:22; Ecc 5:8; Eccl. 8:15,19; Ecc 9:7-9).

It is these contrasts between the proper use and attitude toward things in this world versus a me first, me at any cost, emphasis of fallen humanity that characterize this book. All things have their proper place (cf. Ecclesiastes 3).

NASBfutility

NKJV, NRSVvanity

TEVuseless

NJBfutile

See note at Ecc 1:2.

Ecc 2:2 Notice the two parallel comments about laughter and pleasure. They bring no lasting peace, joy, or hope!

Ecc 2:3 stimulate my body with wine. . .while my mind was guiding me This may refer to drunkenness, but with limits, safeguards (i.e., the wisdom of the sages). This is similar to the use of mind expanding drugs today, which have temporary pleasurable results, but long term addiction and destruction! See Special Topic following.

SPECIAL TOPIC: BIBLICAL ATTITUDES TOWARD ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOL ABUSE

folly The VERB form (BDB 698) in Aramaic means to know, to be intelligent, or to cause to understand. This connotation seems to fit the context best (cf. Ecc 1:17; Ecc 2:12-13; Ecc 7:25).

under heaven This phrase (cf. Ecc 1:13; Ecc 2:3; Ecc 3:1) is a synonym for under the sun, used twenty-nine times in Ecclesiastes. See note on the theological meaning at Ecc 1:3. See Special Topic: Heaven .

Ecc 2:4-11 These verses describe what the author attributes to King Solomon. These are things and accomplishments that he had done (a series of 23 Perfect tense verbs), but, there was no lasting peace, joy, hope, and happiness. St. Augustine said there is a God-shaped hole in every person. Nothing can fill that hole except God. Only when we know Him can physical things and life experiences have meaning (cf. chapter 3).

Ecc 2:4 I enlarged my works BDB 152, KB 178, Hiphil PERFECT.

1. houses, Ecc 2:4

2. vineyards, Ecc 2:4

3. parks, Ecc 2:5

4. orchards, Ecc 2:5

5. ponds, Ecc 2:6

6. slaves, Ecc 2:7

7. flocks and herds, Ecc 2:7

Notice the number of times myself appears in Ecc 2:4-8.

Ecc 2:5 parks This is a Persian loan word (BDB 825) describing a wealthy person’s garden.

Ecc 2:7 male and female slaves Slavery was common in the ancient world. It was not all bad! Many poor Hebrews sold themselves into slavery to another Hebrew to have a better life (cf. Deu 15:12-18)! Of course, forced slavery (military, economic) was, and is, a tragedy! There was, and is, human exploitation in this area.

larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem This clearly shows the egocentric nature of these pursuits (cf. Ecc 2:9; see note at Ecc 1:16).

Ecc 2:8 I collected (BDB 888, KB 1111, Qal PERFECT):

1. silver and gold, Ecc 2:8

2. treasure, Ecc 2:8 (taxes or tribute)

3. singers, Ecc 2:8

4. concubines, Ecc 2:8

male and female singers This (BDB 1010) possibly refers to (1) the artistic aspect of life or (2) regular festivals.

NASB, NRSVconcubines

NKJVmusical instruments of all kinds

TEVall the women a man could want

NJB, JPSOAevery human luxury, chest upon chest of it

NIVharem

REBeverything that affords delight

LXXa butler and female cupbearers

The Hebrew word (BDB 994, KB 950) is very uncertain. Obviously from the varied translations this Hebrew hapax legomenon is uncertain. The key is the Semitic root:

1. From the term for woman’s breast (BDB 994), NASB, NRSV, TEV, NIV (in apposition to the delights of men).

2. The NIV Study Bible’s footnote says that an early Egyptian letter uses a similar Canaanite term for concubines (p. 993).

3. In later Hebrew (Mishnah) it refers to a chest or coffer, NJB, JPSOA (in apposition to the treasure of kings)

4. KJV, ASV, NKJV see it as in apposition to singers (cf. NIDOTTE, vol. 4, p. 99).

5. The LXX took the meaning from the Aramaic root, to pour out (wine) (NET Bible, p. 116).

6. The REB seems to connect it to delights of men, but in the sense of luxuries (cf. Pro 19:10).

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

enjoy = look thou into.

behold. Figure of speech Asterismos.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Chapter 2

So I said in my heart, Go to now, I’m going to prove thee with [pleasure,] with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: but, behold, this was vanity ( Ecc 2:1 ).

So we read in the New Testament the epistle of John, “All that is of the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life” ( 1Jn 2:16 ), these are the aspects of the world by which man is seeking to find an answer, a fulfillment. These are the things that Solomon searched out. As you follow his search, it was in the lust of his flesh, the lust of his eyes, and the pride of life. He came to the conclusion, that these things are all empty.

First of all, the lust of the flesh. Giving myself over to pleasure. But behold, it was empty.

I said of laughter, It is mad: and of [the joy, the pleasures, the] mirth, What does it do? I sought in my heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting my heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men, that they should do under the heaven all of the days of their life ( Ecc 2:2-3 ).

So he got into the lust of the eyes.

I built me great works ( Ecc 2:4 );

Beautiful homes.

I planted vineyards: I made gardens and orchards, I planted trees with all kinds of fruits: Made pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth the trees ( Ecc 2:4-6 ):

All of these beautiful gardens and buildings and all.

And then the pride of life.

I got servants and maidens, I had servants born in my house; I also had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me ( Ecc 2:7 ):

Great abundance of cattle. Do you realize that everyday in order to feed his household, his family, and his servants, that it took ten prime beef and twenty commercial grade beef everyday? A hundred lambs a day. That’s 36,000 a year. That’s over 10,000 beef that he slaughtered just for his servants and his family needs every year. Plus all of the fowl, and the deer, and the roebuck and so forth that were killed just to take care of the appetites of his family and of his servants. You have a thousand wives; you got to feed them. And they’ve got kids, they got to be fed. And then they each have to have their servants. Thirty beef a day. So he was right when he said, “I had cattle more than anybody who was in Jerusalem before me.”

I gathered also silver and gold ( Ecc 2:8 ),

In Chronicles we read that he made silver as common as the stones in Jerusalem. Now, you that have been to Jerusalem know what a stony place that is. And he made silver as common as the stones in Jerusalem. There in Chronicles’ fourth chapter it tells about that. Second Chronicles 2Ch 9:27 is where it talks about the silver.

I brought treasures of the kings and of the provinces: I developed [choirs,] men and women singers, the delights of the sons of men, [great orchestra,] all kinds of musical instruments, of all sorts. So I was great ( Ecc 2:8-9 ),

Pride of life.

I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me ( Ecc 2:9 ).

He was a botanist, a zoologist.

And whatsoever my eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labor: and this was my portion of all my labor ( Ecc 2:10 ).

Now notice that. Who could say this? “And whatsoever my eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy.” Very few people can make that kind of a statement. You have to have really the wealth of Solomon and all to be able to say that. It seems to us there’s always that, you know, “If I only, if I only, if I only,” and we aren’t able to fulfill all of the desires of our eyes. We go down and we see a beautiful yacht, we think, “Oh, my, if I only had that yacht.” With Solomon, “Buy it.” You know, I mean, he didn’t withhold anything. Whatever he desired, whatever he wanted, he had. Very few men can say that. “Oh, I would be so happy. Oh man, I’d be so satisfied.” Was he?

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun ( Ecc 2:11 ).

No profit in any of it. It was empty. I was still empty. I was still frustrated. You see, this is life on the human level. This is the denying of the spiritual nature. It is trying to live your life apart from God. Trying to find satisfaction and meaning apart from God. You’ll never do it.

So I turned myself to behold the wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what can a man do that cometh after the king? ( Ecc 2:12 )

What can anybody do after me? I mean, I’ve done it all.

even that which hath been already done ( Ecc 2:12 ).

There’s nothing left. I did it all.

And then I saw that wisdom excels folly, as far as light excels darkness. The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walks in darkness: and I perceived also that one event happens to them all. I said in my heart, As it happens to the fool, so it happens even to me; so why am I any wiser? ( Ecc 2:13-15 )

With all of my wisdom I can’t prolong my life. With all of the understanding and knowledge that I have, I can’t prolong life. I’m going to die just like the fool out there who doesn’t know anything. He’s going to die. I’m going to die. And when we die, it’s all over. So what good is it to have all of the wisdom that I have because we’re coming towards the grave, both of us together. We’re both going to die. My wisdom isn’t going to keep me from death. How dies the wise man? As the fool. Then I said in my heart, as it happens to the fool so it happens even to me. So why am I any wiser?

Then I said in my heart, this also is emptiness. For there is no remembrance of the wise any more than the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall be forgotten. And how dies the wise man? as the fool. Therefore I hated life ( Ecc 2:15-17 );

Now, hey, wait a minute. This is the guy that has everything. This is the guy who has every kind of pleasure, every kind of possession that you could possibly hope to have. Anything under the sun, he’s got it. And what is he saying? I hated life.

because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yes, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun: because I was going to have to leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? ( Ecc 2:17-19 )

Everything that I’ve built. Everything that I’ve amassed. Everything that I’ve done, I’m going to die and going to have to leave it to some nut. And I don’t know if the guy’s going to be wise or foolish. He may just go out and look at the history. Rehoboam’s son left the throne and all to Rehoboam. What did he do? He no sooner gets on the throne than he angers the tribes of the north and they have a revolution and he loses the kingdom and starts downhill. The whole glory that Solomon had built up, his son, dumb, foolish actions, blew it. And so Solomon’s worries were not really unfounded. His son was a fool.

yet he’s going to have rule over all of my labor wherein I have labored, and wherein I have showed myself wise under the sun. So it was emptiness. Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all of the labor which I took under the sun. For there is a man whose labor is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion ( Ecc 2:19-21 ).

You do all of the work, you do all of the effort, you do all of the sacrifice, you do all of the strain, you do all of the saving, you do all of the wise prudent planning and everything else, and you die and if you can really amass a great fortune, million dollars or so, the government will come in and get seventy percent. And you know how foolishly they’re going to spend it.

This also is vanity and a great evil. For what hath man of all of his labor, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath labored under the sun? ( Ecc 2:21-22 )

What do you get for it?

For all of his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart takes no rest in the night. And this also is vanity. There is nothing better ( Ecc 2:23-24 )

Now this is the conclusion. Earthly wisdom. I’ve done it all, empty. So “there’s nothing better.”

for a man, than that he should eat and drink, that he should make his soul to enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, was from the hand of God. For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I? For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he gives travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give unto him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit ( Ecc 2:24-26 ). “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Ecc 2:1-11

THE ILLUSORY SATISFACTIONS OF PLEASURE-SEEKING

Ecc 2:1-11

“I said in my heart, Come now, I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also was vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it? I searched in my heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, my heart yet guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what it was good for the sons of men that they should do under heaven all the days of their life. I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards; I made me gardens and parks, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit; I made me pools of water, to water therefrom the forest where trees were reared; I bought men-servants and maid-servants, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of herds and flocks, above all that were before me in Jerusalem; I gathered me also silver and gold, and the treasures of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men, musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them; I withheld my heart not from any joy; for my heart rejoiced because of all my labor; and this was my portion from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do; and, behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was no profit under the sun.”

“Therefore enjoy pleasure” (Ecc 2:1). “In these verses, the king tried to find the “summum bonum” in pleasure. However, this also proved to be a futile search; and he pronounced it also as “vanity.” As Robert Burns stated it, “Pleasures are like poppies spread; You seize the stem, the bloom is shed”!

“I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it” (Ecc 2:2)? Solomon had touched on this once before. See comment on Pro 14:13 : “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of mirth is heaviness.” “The pleasure addict cannot escape `the morning after,’ nor the revulsion of satiety. “The rhetorical question at the end of this verse has negative intent. It simply means that mirth and laughter accomplish absolutely nothing.

“My heart yet guiding me with wisdom” (Ecc 2:3). This is one of many statements in Ecclesiastes which make it impossible for this writer to accept the current theory adopted by many scholars that the writer here (supposedly living centuries after Solomon’s death) was not Solomon at all but one who was placing himself in Solomon’s place and putting all these statements in Solomon’s mouth. This of course, is the old, discredited device of liberal scholars in making certain Biblical books to be the pseudepigrapha, a device that was thoroughly exploded in 1977 by John A. T. Robinson in his famous book, “Redating the New Testament.

It seems absolutely incredible that any writer, centuries after Solomon’s reprobate life had ended, could possibly have put into Solomon’s mouth the conceit that all of his debauchery was committed while he still retained his great wisdom, a notion diametrically opposed to the facts.

“By Solomon’s sensual behavior, as indicated here, he suffered infinite loss, which nothing on earth could ever compensate. So! how could any later writer, knowing all the shameful results of Solomon’s behavior, have put a falsehood like this in the mouth of any “great wise man” he was trying to impersonate? Also, see Ecc 2:16 in this same category.

“I made me great works” (Ecc 2:4). This verse and through Ecc 2:6 stresses Solomon’s effort to find earthly satisfaction as a builder, or an achiever. He would build great buildings, amass great riches, gain worldwide fame and power, etc. Many commentators go into great detail here, telling all about Solomon’s wonderful achievements; but we have already commented upon all of these things in the historical books of the Old Testament; and there is no need to rehearse it all here. Significantly, one of the greatest things Solomon ever did was to construct the Temple in Jerusalem; but true to his immeasurable conceit, he mentions here that he did it all for “ME,” not for God. In this one paragraph, Solomon used the words `I,’ `my,’ `me,’ and `mine’ 32 times!

“I made me gardens and parks” (Ecc 2:5) Scott noted that the word parks here is a Persian word; and from this and similar words, many scholars postulate a late date for Ecclesiastes, which we reject. Such Persian words might easily have crept into the text from the efforts of copyists. If one doubts that such things occur in `translations’ and `versions,’ let him compare a copy of the King James Bible published in the 1600’s with one printed today.

“I bought men-servants and maid-servants … and had great flocks and herds” (Ecc 2:7). “These slaves are mentioned in the same breath with herds of cattle, for Solomon considered such human beings as mere property. Solomon used them for forced-labor. See 1Ki 9:15-22.

“Men-singers, women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men” (Ecc 2:8). Here again, we have undeniable evidence that it is Solomon, not an impersonator, who is writing. It is impossible to imagine that any right-minded historian who, centuries later, would have skirted around the facts of Solomon’s disgraceful harem in the same manner as Solomon did here. Delights of the sons of men! What is he talking about? That godless harem, of course, with its 700 wives and 300 concubines. The scholars all agree that this is what is meant here. An authentic rendition of this is: “I provided myself with male and female singers, and with the pleasures of the flesh, concubine after concubine. Deane, Loader, ] and Delitzsch all agree that this is the meaning here.

“All that were before me in Jerusalem” (Ecc 2:9). This expression, as well as earlier uses of it in Ecclesiastes, is not restricted to `kings’ in Jerusalem, but applies to any rich persons whomsoever.

“Also my wisdom remained with me” (Ecc 2:9). This, of course, could have been said only by Solomon himself, not an impersonator. All the world knew that Solomon’s lustful, extravagant, selfish and inhuman reign was a total disaster, taking Solomon himself to the grave at an early age. His policies wrecked and eventually destroyed Israel; and it was his son’s foolish efforts to continue those policies that terminated the united Israel almost before Solomon’s body got cold in the grave. And what about all that `wisdom’? “What Solomon here called his wisdom was merely his earthly prudence. We might add that there was also very little of earthly prudence in it. Certainly it had no element of the true wisdom, the beginning of which is “the fear of the Lord.” But is not this book inspired by the Holy Spirit? Oh yes. The Holy Spirit here tells us exactly what Solomon said (and did), in the same manner that the Holy Spirit also tells us exactly what Satan said and did in Eden. The Divine endorsement of Solomon’s shameless behavior here is certainly not to be found.

“This was my portion from all my labor” (Ecc 2:10). Yes indeed, that was Solomon’s `portion,’ such as it was. It reminds us of what Abraham said to the rich man as he lifted up his eyes in hell, “Son, remember that in thy lifetime thou receivedst thy good things”! (Luk 16:25).

“All was vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecc 2:11). Many another profligate playboy has tragically discovered the same truth. “The modern playboy still dreams of finding the ultimate pleasure in `recreational sex’ and free love, only to find out that venereal disease and early old age and death turn his dream into a nightmare.

What good is there for the sons of men to do under heaven? This is the question that troubles Solomon (Ecc 1:13; Ecc 2:3). His desire to know the answer is insatiable. In his first experiment he set his mind, guided by wisdom and knowledge, to discover the causes and results of all that had been done under heaven. His experiment was successful, it just did not yield satisfaction. He discovered that his reward was mental pain and sorrow rather than the desired mental health and peace. He now considers the possibility of the answer coming from another area of research under the sun. It is pleasure that now intrigues him. He is not unlike the rest of us in his desire to experience the pleasures of life. The motivation behind Solomon is one of personal gratification. Nothing of the loving, philanthropic nature of concern colors his activities. It is indeed misanthropy. His self-centered desire is a matter of record. He states, I said to myself, Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself. The grammatical construction dative of interest (for myself) appears eight times in these eleven verses. In addition, there are thirty references to the pronouns I and my in this limited summary of his pursuit of pleasure. It is manifestly evident that if the answer to his question is to be found in this area of life, he intends to discover it.

One should not be unduly critical of Solomon. His experiments are not hedonistic. He is not sensually lusting after base and inordinate things. He wishes only to come alive to the pleasures to be received through the senses. He wants his answers to come to him within the framework of the demonstrable. He is interested in seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting, and hearing. He declares that he did not withhold any pleasure from his heart.

Although Solomon does not mention it in the text, it is a matter of record that his resources to carry out such an experiment were unlimited. It was written that . . . silver and gold were as stones in Jerusalem (1Ki 10:27). He had successfully increased his kingdom ten times beyond what he had inherited from his father. By his own declaration he proclaimed that he had increased in wealth more than all who had preceded him in Jerusalem.

Ecc 2:1 The Come now of this verse indicates a new direction. We have explained it as the exploration of sensuous pleasure. As in the other experiment, he states his conclusion at the beginning. Futility marks his pursuit. He should not have been surprised, for from his own pen had previously come the words, Even in laughter the heart may be in pain, and the end of joy may be grief (Pro 14:13). He declares the reality of this.

That which is being tested is the question concerning what is good for man in the few years he has on this earth. This appears to be the key question in the book. It was asked in Ecc 1:3 and also in Ecc 1:13. The question is clearly stated here in Ecc 2:3. Although he does not arrive at the answer in this section, he does state conclusively that he had discovered what is good for the sons of men to do during their lives as they live them under heaven. Note his conclusions:

(1) There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God (Ecc 2:24).

(2) I know there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in ones lifetime, moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor-it is the gift of God (Ecc 3:12-13).

(3) Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat to drink and enjoy oneself in all ones labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward. Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God (Ecc 5:18-19).

(4) For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun (Ecc 6:12)?

(5) So I commended pleasure, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry and this will stand by him in his toils throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun (Ecc 8:15).

(6) Go then, eat your br ead in happiness, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works (Ecc 9:7).

(7) Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life, and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun (Ecc 9:9).

As important as the theme is, it is to be understood as a minor chord which he sounds, a half step less than the major theme. The theme is recurring, appearing no less than seven times as noted above, yet it only leads man to the logical conclusion as he views life under the sun. It is in this light alone he turns to examine the evidence of his quest. The major theme speaks to the emptiness of what is thought of as a full and fruitful and enjoyable life when it is lived without the redeeming nature of grace and apart from the direction of Gods revelation. We have purposely jumped ahead of Solomon. We have read the conclusions, which at this time in his experience, he is eager to discover himself. It is important, therefore, that we realize that at this point in his experiment, he is steeped in the details of one of his most elaborate undertakings.

Ecc 2:2 Laughter is associated with pleasure. He has learned to laugh much because he has had great pleasure; but once again he admits to the superficial nature of this unrewarding experience. He labels his laughter as madness, and asks of pleasure, What does it accomplish? Laughter, madness, and pleasure should be thought of as harmless delights in this context. Neither does madness convey the idea of mental insanity, but rather boasting and foolishness. His conclusion is that there isnt any true, lasting value in the exercising of sensuous pleasure. Note this additional commentary on this subject in Ecc 7:3; Ecc 7:6 and Ecc 10:19. In like manner, Jesus taught that the presence of laughter is not necessarily a sign of genuine joy (Luk 6:25).

Ecc 2:3-8 In this section, Solomon turns to three additional categories of pleasure which he pursues. The first involves him with food and folly; secondly, he is engaged in aesthetic improvements; and finally he seeks cultural improvements and the pleasures of possessions. One is reminded of the admonition of John, Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If any one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh (food and folly) and the lust of the eyes (aesthetic improvements) and the boastful pride of life (cultural improvements and pleasures), is not from the Father, but is from the world (1Jn 2:15-16). Solomon does each of us a favor in that he comes to the same conclusion (Ecc 2:11), and thus saves us the necessity of learning this lesson the difficult way.

(1) Section one: food and folly. (Ecc 2:3)

Wine could represent all the pleasures of the table as well as just the enjoyment of wine. It would be understood as the part used for the whole. So elaborate were King Solomons tables that the Queen of Sheba was totally exhausted in her praise (1Ki 10:5). One should not understand his statement as an abandonment to strong drink. He assures us that his mind continued to guide him wisely.

Folly implies the harmless nonsense that so often accompanies the pleasure of dining with friends. We should understand this to be the lowest level of his pleasurable pursuits. The following descriptions represent those experiments which he carried out on the middle level. Solomon identifies them as the enlargements of his works.

(2) Section two: aesthetic improvements. (Ecc 2:4-6)

Although the Temple was the most important and most elaborate of Solomons contributions, no mention is made of it in this section. The reason is obvious. Solomon is discussing only those items which he planned and designed for personal satisfaction, the Temple belonged in a special way to the people as well as to the king. In reality it was Gods Temple and thus it would be out of place to mention it along with those things programmed for sensuous delights.

(a) Houses. For a detailed explanation of Solomons houses, read 1Ki 7:1-12; 1Ki 9:19. His endeavors were almost unbelievable in scope. He built numerous buildings and public works in Jerusalem. He spent thirteen years building his own palace. It included the armory and the Hall of Judgment. He built a house of Pharaohs daughter (1Ki 7:2-8). He built a citadel (1Ki 9:24; 1Ki 11:27) or huge fortress to protect the temple. He founded cities in distant lands (1Ki 9:18), built store-cities and chariot towns, national works of great importance, and rebuilt and fortified cities throughout his kingdom.

(b) Vineyards. David possessed vineyards that Solomon undoubtedly inherited (1Ch 27:27-28). It is also recorded in Son 8:10-11 that he possessed his own vineyard.

(c) Gardens. The term is synonymous with the Greek term for paradise and suggests pleasantry and beauty. There is a reference to a kings garden in 2Ki 25:4. Note also Son 4:16. A detailed description of gardens in Palestine cannot be found in the Bible although they are often mentioned. They were generally believed to be walled in-closures with winding paths and canals of running water to provide for the many shade and fruit trees. This is in harmony with the information in this section. One can almost see the sweet-smelling, aromatic blossoms inviting travelers to the cooling arbors and refreshing streams.

(d) Parks. The terms parks, gardens, and forests are used interchangeably. From the context in Neh 2:8 and corresponding references, the emphasis is on trees and forestry. Such parks also contained fruit trees and herds of animals.

(e) Ponds. Besides the aesthetic value of pools or reservoirs, they served a practical purpose. Pools supplied the water for the irrigation of the growing trees. Because of the long extended periods without rain, sometimes lasting three to four months, the ponds provided an essential and vital supply of water. Evidence of the water supply at Etham is the most celebrated of the pools ascribed to Solomon. There were three large pools ranging in length from 380 feet to 582 feet and in width from 207 feet to 250 feet. They varied in depth from 25 to 50 feet. The pools were located a distance of ten miles from Jerusalem but because of the natural contour of the Judaean hills, the water traveled nearly 15 miles to the enormous reservoir beneath the city. The origin of the aqueduct is uncertain. The history of Jerusalem has always included a struggle on the part of the people to discover and supply water for their needs. However, in Solomons description, no mention is made of the utilitarian purposes of the pools, either for Temple needs or the needs of the people. He is searching for the answer to the question: Is there any good in the beautiful?

(3) Section three: cultural improvements and pleasures of possessions. (Ecc 2:7-8)

This third and highest level upon which he experiments involves the pleasures derived from developing cultural projects and accumulating earthly wealth.

(a) Slaves. Solomon purchased some slaves, captured others and had some born in his own house (1Ki 9:20-22; 1Ki 10:4-8). Those who were born in his house were called sons of the house (Gen 15:3) and were often more desired than other slaves. Solomons interest in horses alone required literally thousands of slaves to care for his extensive holdings. It was stated that he had 40,000 stalls of horses, a similar number of chariots and 12,000 horsemen (1Ki 4:26). It was said of the Queen of Sheba, as she observed the elaborate attention given to the king by his servants, that there was no more spirit in her (1Ki 10:5). She had not believed the colorful reports; however, upon personal observation she confessed that she had not been told half of what was true!

(b) Flocks and herds. Solomons provision for one day included, among other things, . . . ten fat oxen, twenty pasture-fed oxen, a hundred sheep besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fattened fowl. Read 1Ki 4:22-23; 1Ki 8:62-63. The large number of dedicatory sacrifices offered to God at the consecration of the Temple, suggests the magnitude of his flocks and herds. He offered the Lord 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep on that one occasion. Cf. 1Ch 27:29-31.

(c) Silver and gold. The statement, I collected for myself silver and gold is more flagrant than it appears on the surface. God specifically commanded the king not to multiply gold for himself. The detailed accounts found in the Bible depicting Solomons inordinate desire for gold and silver supports his contention. In the face of the prohibition (Deu 17:17), Solomon made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones (2Ch 1:15). The following record of Solomons extensive use of gold is included here to impress the reader with the magnitude of his personal quest. It is found in 2Ch 9:13-21 and is followed immediately with the declaration, So King Solomon became greater than all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom. It reads:

Now the weight of gold which came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold, besides that which the traders and merchants brought; and all the kings of Arabia and the governors of the country brought gold and silver to Solomon. And King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold, using 600 shekels of beaten gold on each large shield. And he made 300 shields of beaten gold, using three hundred shekels of gold on each shield, and the king put them in the house of the forest of Lebanon. Moreover, the king made a great throne of ivory and overlaid it with pure gold. And there were six steps to the throne and a footstool in gold attached to the throne, and arms on each side of the seat, and two lions standing beside the arms. And twelve lions were standing there on the six steps on the one side and on the other; nothing like it was made for any other kingdom. And all King Solomons drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; silver was not considered valuable in the days of Solomon. For the king had ships which went to Tarshish with the servants of Hurum; once every three years the ships of Tarshish came bringing gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks.

(d) The treasure of kings and provinces. If the treasure is that of great wealth, Solomon qualified (1Ki 4:21; 1Ki 4:24; 1Ki 10:14-15). If it means he possessed such treasure unique to kings and not the common man, he also qualified. He controlled provinces and exacted tribute from them; these provinces boarded or neighbored his own country of Palestine and were in addition to the districts of his own country. There were twelve districts in Israel and each district provided Solomons needs for one month of the year (1Ki 4:7). Solomon reigned over all the tribes and nations between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. The promise God gave in Gen 15:18 was thus fulfilled. Solomon was a dictator. Everything depended upon his will. Although he was not a man of war as his father David had been known, he still subjected the people of his land to his every desire. In addition to Israel, he ruled the Philistines, the Moabites, the Edomites, the Amonites, the Canaanites, the Hittites and the Syrians. So vast was his wealth that he was greater than all other kings of earth. It was estimated that he provided for 10,000 people in his service.

(e) Male and female singers. From the reference out of Davids life (2Sa 19:35), singers were employed to entertain and lighten the spirit. These singers were for Solomons personal enjoyment and should not be confused with the male singers of the choir within the Temple. They were chosen solely because of the satisfaction they brought to the king.

(f) The pleasures of men. This euphemistic phrase suggests the sexual enjoyment of men. The translators of the New American Standard Version suggest that concubines represent what is meant by the pleasures of men. This is in harmony with Solomons experience as he had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1Ki 11:3).

This text, however, has been widely disputed. The Septuagint translates it a male cupbearer and a female cupbearer. Both the Syriac and Vulgate agree with this. The King James Translation renders it Musical instruments, and that of all sorts. Other translations supply a variation of ideas. Some of these are: plenty of all sorts, combination of tones, captives, litters, coaches, baths, treasures, chests, and even demons. The original Hebrew expression appears but this one time in the whole of the Bible, and thus the difficulty of determining the proper translation.

Ecc 2:9 In this verse he sets forth two ideas which qualify his experiment. The first suggests the extensive nature of his experience. He said that he excelled all who preceded him in Jerusalem. This would include David and Saul and very likely implies any of the Jebusite kings of various chieftains who ruled prior to that time. The second suggests that he was always mentally in control of his activities as elaborate as they may have been. He states, My wisdom also stood by me. He never lost sight of his objective that he stated in verse three. The type of wisdom that remained with him is not to be confused with the heavenly wisdom from above. It is the exercising of common sense and earthly propriety . . . it is the wisdom known to those who live under the sun. The words stood by me carry the idea of served me and bring into sharper focus the purpose and value of this kind of wisdom. Solomon was committed to every pleasure conceivable to the mind of man. The only criterion was that his pleasurable experience would not violate his under the sun wisdom. As we have noted, this opened the door to endless opportunities for one who had at his command the wealth and resources as the worlds richest king.

Ecc 2:10 In this verse he speaks of his reward. One would expect glowing and colorful descriptions of an exuberant heart declaring, I have found it! A lifetime of searching and millions of dollars expended would surely bring one to the end of the rainbow where the treasure would be discovered and the fortunate man who pursued it could, with the deepest satisfaction, share such fulfillment with his friends. However, no such manifestation of joy is forthcoming. There is a deficiency that manifests itself in his answer. There is a positive note, but it is the rather subdued admission that his reward was simply the fact that he did everything his heart desired. This, however, isnt what he was searching to discover. He wanted to do everything in order to find out what profit there is for the sons of men in all the activities of their days upon the earth. His heart was pleased. In other words, the earthly desires were fulfilled and thus the earthly needs were met. He had at least accomplished this.

Ecc 2:11 Solomon is after a profit. He intends to review all his labors, satisfied that he had exhausted every opportunity for some new thrill of experience. One panoramic flashback over his life brought into focus all the fruit of all his labors. He searches in his minds eye to discover something of lasting value, something that abides. He isnt interested in speaking to the empty feeling within the one who has so indulged himself, but rather to the profit that comes to one who has thus so lavishly lived. He doesnt deny the emptiness, such grief, he admits, is very much the fiber of one who lives under the sun. His conclusion is pointedly harsh: there was no profit under the sun. Men today should learn this lesson from Solomon. Who can find the time or the resources to run the course as skillfully as Solomon? Even if he does, the signpost at the end of the road points to no profit. How unlike the Christian who discovers that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col 3:2).

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Turning from the pursuit of knowledge to the pathway of pleasure, the king had given himself up to mirth, seeking the false stimulus of wine. In this also he had been disappointed, finding that mirth was madness, and all pleasure incompetent to satisfy. He next turned to his great possessions, attempting to make such use of them as to bring satisfaction not found elsewhere. He surrounded himself with every kind of luxury, gathered large possessions, gave himself over to music and to women, allowing full reign to all his desires. All this also he had found to be vanity, nothing but a striving after wind, and again he had been driven to the conclusion that there was no profit under the sun.

Once again he tried a new pathway. He turned himself from the things that were almost exclusively physical to those of the mind. These were better, and he found that “wisdom excelleth folly.” Yet he also perceived that “one event happeneth to all,” both the fool and the wise pass on to death, so that this also ended in disappointment as keen as the others. He then summarized the results of his own experience of life “under the sun” in the terrible words: “I hated life . . . I hated all my labour . . . under the sun.” The very exercise of wisdom resulted in gathering results into which the toiler did not enter, but which he left to another. Everything was vanity. The ultimate conclusion of his own experience was that there was nothing better than to eat and drink. The mental attitude to God which is not the result of direct spiritual fellowship is clearly revealed in these conclusions of the preacher. He does not deny God’s existence, but recognizes Him as an intelligent Force operating purely for His own pleasure without any reference to the satisfaction of men. Everything is vanity. To live under the sun is to decide at last that the natural thing to do is to take what comes. Materialism necessarily becomes fatalism.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

24-26, Vain Undertakings

Ecc 2:1-17

At the beginning of his search for happiness Solomon erected a splendid home and planned all kinds of delights of an artistic and sensuous nature. There were gardens, pools of crystal water, fruit trees, meadows filled with cattle, regal splendor, musicians who poured into the palace their sweet melodies. He went further, adding to architecture and art his intellectual pursuits. But when he had gone to the furthest limit, he turned from it all, with the old gnawing at his heart-Vanity of vanities!

A few days before the death of the great Cardinal Mazarin, he was heard by a friend to utter something of the same sad refrain. I was walking, says this friend, in one of the apartments of the palace, when I recognized the approach of the Cardinal by the sound of his slippered feet, which he dragged one after the other as a man suffering from a mortal malady. I concealed myself behind the tapestry and heard him say, as he looked at one picture and rare treasure after another, I must leave all these. Let us, in the light of these things, ponder again those words of Christ in Luk 12:33.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Ecc 2:2

Solomon says of the mirthful man, of the man who makes others laugh, that he is a madman. We need not suppose that all laughter is indiscriminately condemned, as though gloom marks a sane person and cheerfulness an insane. “Rejoice evermore” is a Scriptural direction, and blithe-heartedness ought to be both felt and displayed by those who know that they have God for their Guardian and Christ for their Surety. It is the laughter of the world which the wise man calls madness.

I. That conflict of which this creation is the scene, and the leading antagonists in which are Satan and God, is a conflict between falsehood and truth. And it is in consequence of this that so much criminality is everywhere in Scripture attached to a lie, and that those on whom a lie may be charged are represented as more especially obnoxious to the anger of God. Now, whilst the bold and direct falsehood gains for itself general execration, mainly perhaps because felt to militate against the general interest, there is a ready indulgence for the more sportive falsehood which is rather the playing with truth than the making a lie. Here it is that we shall find laughter which is madness, and identify with a madman him by whom the laughter is raised. The man who passes off a clever fiction, or amusingly distorts an occurrence, or dexterously misrepresents a fact, may say that he only means to be amusing; but as he can hardly fail to lower the majesty of truth in the eyes of his neighbour, there may be ample reason for assenting to the wise man’s decision, “I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?”

II. But it is not perhaps till laughter is turned upon sacred things that we have before us the madness in all its wildness and injuriousness. The man who in any way exercises his wit upon the Bible conveys undoubtedly an impression, whether he intend it or not, that he is not a believer in the inspiration of the Bible; and he may do far more mischief to the souls of his fellow-men than if he engaged openly in assaulting the great truths of Christianity.

III. The great general inference from this subject is that we ought to set a watch upon our tongues, to pray God to keep the door of our lips. “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt.”

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2532.

References: Ecc 2:4.-J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 14. Ecc 2:4-11.-J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. x., p. 313.

Ecc 2:11

The general practice of men of business, their custom of year by year taking stock, examining their books, and striking a balance to know how they stand, is a lesson of the highest value. Our everlasting salvation may turn on it. People go on dreaming that all is right when all is wrong, nor wake to the dreadful truth till they open their eyes in torment. If men take such care of their earthly fortunes, how much greater our need to see how we stand with God, and do with our spiritual what all wise merchants do with their earthly interests: review the transactions of every year.

I. In this review we should inquire what we have done for God. We have had many, daily, innumerable opportunities of serving Him, speaking for Him, working for Him, not sparing ourselves for Him who spared not His own Son for us. Yet how little have we attempted; and how much less have we done in the spirit of our Saviour’s words, “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?” It is impossible even now to review our lives without feeling that there is no hope for us out of Christ, and that the best and the busiest have been unprofitable servants.

II. In this review we should inquire what we have done for ourselves. If “the harvest is past, and the summer ended, and we are not saved,” what other verdict than “Vanity!” can conscience and truth pronounce on the years that are gone? Years are lost, but the soul is not yet lost. There is still time to be saved. Make for the city of refuge. Believe in Christ, for whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but hath everlasting life.

III. In this review we should inquire what we have done for others. Suppose that our blessed Lord, sitting down on Olivet to review the years of His busy life, had looked on all the works which His hands had wrought, what a crowd, a long procession, of miracles and mercies had passed before Him! Trying our piety by this test, what testimony does our past life bear to its character? Happy those who, at however great a distance, and in however imperfect a manner, have attempted to follow Christ!

In conclusion: (1) This review, God’s Spirit blessing it, should awaken careless sinners. (2) This review should stir up God’s people.

T. Guthrie, The Way to Life, p. 61.

References: Ecc 2:11.-J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 38. Ecc 2:12-14.-Ibid; p. 85. Ecc 2:12-23.-T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 49. Ecc 2:12-26.-J. J. S. Perowne, Expositor, 1st series, vol. xii., p. 70; G. G. Bradley, Lectures on Ecclesiastes, p. 52; R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 65; J. H. Cooke, The Preacher’s Pilgrimage, p. 22.

Ecc 2:16-23

I. The noblest renown is posthumous fame, and the most refined ambition is the desire for such fame. And of this more exalted ambition it would appear that Solomon had felt the stirrings. But even that cold comfort was entirely frozen in the thought which followed. From the lofty pinnacle to which, as a philosophic historian, he had ascended, Solomon could look down and see not only the fallibility of his coevals, but the forgetfulness of the generations following. He knew that there had often been great men in the world; but he could not hide it from himself how little these men had grown already, and how infinitesimal the greatest would become if the world should only last a few centuries longer. And so far Solomon was right.

II. But if this be the phantom for which the worldling toils and sighs, there is a posthumous fame which is no illusion. If there be no eternal remembrance of the world’s wise men any more than of its fools, it is otherwise with the wise ones of the heavenly kingdom. God has so arranged it that “the righteous shall be held in everlasting remembrance.” There is not in all the universe a holy being but God has found for it a resting-place in the love of other holy beings, and that not temporarily, but for all eternity. The only posthumous fame that is truly permanent is the memory of God; and the only deathless names are theirs for whose living persons He has found a place in His own love, and in the love of holy beings like-minded with Himself.

J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher, Lecture VII.

References: Ecc 2:24-26.-J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 106. 2-C. Bridges, An Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 26. Ecc 3:1.-H. Hayman, Rugby Sermons, p. 139. Ecc 3:1-8.-R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons, p. 92. Ecc 3:1-15.-T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 75. Ecc 3:1, Ecc 3:16-22.-J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 152.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

CHAPTER 2The Results of the Search and Different Vanities

1. His personal experience (Ecc 2:1-11)

2. Various vanities and a conclusion (Ecc 2:12-26)

Ecc 2:1-11. Here we find first of all the kings personal experience. He experimented, so to speak, with that which is the possession of the natural man, a fallen nature. In that nature are found three things: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. We can trace these three things in the opening verses. The lust of the flesh in verses 1-3; the lust of the eyes in Ecc 2:4-6, and the pride of life in Ecc 2:7-8. He said in his heart, Go to now, I will prove thee: that is, I will try now to satisfy thee, that is myself, my heart. He said to himself, enjoy pleasure. He laughed and had mirth; he tried wine, laid hold on folly. Then he made great works, built houses, planted vineyards, laid out beautiful oriental gardens with fruit trees, all kinds of shrubbery, with pools of water, springs and waterfalls–all so pleasing to the eye–the lust of the eyes. To all this he added servants and maidens, with great possessions. He gathered silver and gold and treasures such which only kings could obtain, gifts, probably from other monarchs, perhaps those which the Queen of Sheba brought. He also paid attention to music, had men singers, women singers, and an orchestra. Then, self-satisfied, he leans back and says, So I was great and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me (Ecc 2:9). Who can doubt even for a moment that all this could mean any other person but Solomon; none but he could speak thus. But to make sure, he did not leave a single desire unsatisfied, for whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy. Well, he had tried everything, every pleasure, everything that is beautiful to the eye; he was surrounded with every comfort, had all honor and glory, was wealthy and esteemed. Does he then sing and in a blessed peace of mind is he content and satisfied? Far from it. Then–then–when he had done all these things and had every desire fulfilled–then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do; and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit; and there was no profit under the sun. It is a groan instead of a song. But that sounds pessimistic. It is the pessimism into which sin has put man. Whatever man does and seeks in satisfying that old nature, whatever his pursuits, his labors and his achievements in life, if it is that and nothing else, in the end it is nothing but vanity and a chasing of the wind.

Thank God! there is One who can still the hunger and thirst of the soul, who graciously invites, if any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.

Ecc 2:12-26. He now turns in search for happiness in another direction. The old, old question, Is life worth living? after all he had stated must be answered negatively–if all is vanity and vexation of spirit and there is no profit under the sun, in anything that man enjoys, labors for and obtains, then life is not worth living. He had been disappointed in his search, but now he turns to something more ideal and not materialistic as the former things. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness. He turns philosopher, but it is of no avail, for it leads in the same road and ends with the same groan–vanity and vexation of spirit. While wisdom is superior to folly as far as light is superior to darkness, yet wisdom cannot help man, cannot give him peace nor give him happiness. There is one event which happens to the wise men and to the fool: that event is death. As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth unto me. What then was the good that I was more wise? He at once concludes this also is vanity. Death, according to the conception of the natural man, apart from revelation, plunges the wise man and the fool into oblivion, there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten and how dieth the wise man as the fool? (Ecc 2:16) Such is the reasoning of the natural man. By revelation we know that there is remembrance. But it leads Koheleth, the King, almost to despair. He hates life. If the pursuit of pleasures, the lust of eyes and the pride of life left me empty, and were found out to be nothing but vexation of spirit, so that life is not worth living, equally so, he finds out, that wisdom in itself and its possession brings the same results–vanity of spirit–I hated life! Then he speaks of labor done. He has labored to leave it all to the one who comes after him, and he may be a fool and not a wise man. Or he may have labored wisely and it is left all to one who never did anything, a sluggard. All he brands as vanity and ends by saying, For what hath a man of all his labors, and of the vexation of his heart wherein he hath labored under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief, yea his heart taketh no rest in the night. This is also vanity.

The conclusion reached is that, apart from God, man has no capacity to enjoy his labor. Ecc 2:25 has been metrically rendered as follows:

The good is not in man that he should eat and drink And find his souls enjoyment in his toil; This, too, I saw is only from the hands of God.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

said: Ecc 2:15, Ecc 1:16, Ecc 1:17, Ecc 3:17, Ecc 3:18, Psa 10:6, Psa 14:1, Psa 27:8, Psa 30:6, Psa 30:7, Luk 12:19

Go to: Gen 11:3, Gen 11:4, Gen 11:7, 2Ki 5:5, Isa 5:5, Jam 4:13, Jam 5:1

I will: Ecc 8:15, Ecc 11:9, Isa 50:5, Isa 50:11, Luk 16:19, Luk 16:23, Jam 5:5, Tit 3:3, Rev 18:7, Rev 18:8

Reciprocal: Psa 127:2 – vain Ecc 2:25 – who can Ecc 7:25 – I applied mine heart Ecc 10:19 – feast Ecc 11:8 – All that

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Ecc 2:1-2. I said in my heart Being disappointed of my hopes from knowledge, I resolved to try another course. Go to now O my soul! I will try whether I cannot make thee happy by the enjoyment of sensual delights. This also is vanity Is vain, and unable to make men happy. I said of laughter, It is mad This is an act of madness, more fit for fools who know nothing, than for wise men in this sinful, and dangerous, and deplorable state of mankind. What doth it What good doth it? Or how can it make men happy? I challenge all the epicures in the world to give me a solid answer.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Ecc 2:1. Enjoy pleasure. The first doctrine of Epicurus, whose system is here rebutted. Act 17:18.

Ecc 2:2. I said of laughter, of all forced and frantic joy, it is mad. Chaldaic, derision, insanity. Why should the culprit dance and sing the night before his execution? No charm of atheism can silence the secret voice in the heart, concerning the possibility of a future world. Who then would not prefer the sober sentiment of Joshua, I am this day going the way of all the earth.

Ecc 2:5. I made me gardens and orchards, and paradises, as in the Hebrew, with pools of water; and imported exotic plants from India. I planted trees. Dr. Lightfoot gives a curious criticism out of the Targums. I planted me all trees of spice, which the goblins and demons brought out of India. And the bound of it was from the wall that is in Jerusalem, to the bank of the waters of Siloam. See Neh 2:14; Neh 3:15. Learning was then very low in the Hebrew schools.

Ecc 2:17. Therefore I hated life; that is, as in the next verse, I hated all my labour. I ceased to survey my palaces and gardens with pleasure. I knew not for whom I was doing all this. True is the saying, He builds too low, who builds below the skies.

REFLECTIONS.

Solomon here attacks the Epicurean system, which places all happiness in sensual pleasure. His whole reign is a complete refutation of that theory. He sought happiness in pleasant company, and in a cheerful use of wine at the princely banquet, but he was disappointed, for the spirits unnaturally raised by wine, sink into depression; and intemperance satiates the soul.

He employed himself very much in the latter part of life in beautifying his plantations, walks, pools, and gardens. The opulent do the same in every age: this also is vanity. They die before they have completed their plans, and cannot tell who shall enjoy their work. Besides, the superb palace and its enchanting scenes attach the heart too much to this life, and make an invitation to the paradise above an unwelcome message, though in itself the highest of all favours. This also is vanity, for the wise man dieth as the fool; they mingle in the common dust, and in a few ages, the antiquaries cannot exactly say where the palace stood. When Solomon thought of this, he hated his works; for as he feared, so it happened; he was doing all this for a foolish son.

After this mental conflict, Solomon came to an admirable issue, that wisdom excelled folly as light excels darkness: Ecc 2:13-14. The wise mans eyes are in his head, to profit by the good which heaven bestows, and thence deduce just conclusions for the conduct of life. There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink, and labour in moderation; then he has pleasure but not pain; then he has joy but not distraction; for God gives to the good man wisdom and joy; but to the sinner he gives travail and distraction, that he may hoard up riches for the good to possess. So providence delights to strip the avaricious of wealth, and to entrust it in better hands.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Ecc 1:12 to Ecc 2:26. Qoheleths Investigations.Assuming the character of Solomon the writer tells of his search for happiness under many forms. The pursuit of wisdom (Ecc 1:12-18), absorption in pleasure (Ecc 2:1-11), the study of human nature (Ecc 2:12-17), the acquisition of wealth (Ecc 2:18-18), alike fail to yield satisfaction. After all his experience the only verdict he can reach is that there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and enjoy life as well as he can while he has it (Ecc 2:24-26).

Ecc 1:12 to Ecc 2:26. Qoheleths Investigations.Assuming the character of Solomon the writer tells of his search for happiness under many forms. The pursuit of wisdom (Ecc 1:12-18), absorption in pleasure (Ecc 2:1-11), the study of human nature (Ecc 2:12-17), the acquisition of wealth (Ecc 2:18-18), alike fail to yield satisfaction. After all his experience the only verdict he can reach is that there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and enjoy life as well as he can while he has it (Ecc 2:24-26).

Ecc 1:12; Ecc 1:16. See Introduction.

Ecc 1:13. Cf. Ecc 7:25; Ecc 8:16, and for God as a hard taskmaster Ecc 3:10.seek and search: get to the bottom of the problem and survey it on all sides.

Ecc 1:14. striving after wind: see mg., a strong phrase for aimless and futile desire.

Ecc 1:15. Life is incurably twisted and imperfect.

Ecc 1:17. Qoheleth would discover truth by the study of contraries. For madness and folly, however, LXX by a slight change of the Hebrew reads comparisons (or parables) and science. But increased knowledge only means increased perplexity (Ecc 1:18).

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

2:1 I said in my heart, Come now, I will tempt {a} thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also [is] vanity.

(a) Solomon makes this discourse with himself, as though he would try whether there was contentment in ease and pleasures.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

3. Solomon’s investigation of pleasure 2:1-11

"After having proved that secular wisdom has no superiority to folly in bringing true happiness to man, he [the writer] seeks his happiness in a different way, and gives himself up to cheerful enjoyment." [Note: Delitzsch, p. 232.]

"Solomon . . . decided to test his own heart to see how he would respond to two very common experiences of life: enjoyment (1-3) and employment (4-11)." [Note: Wiersbe, p. 487.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Pleasure produces no lasting accomplishment, either. That is, while it has some temporary, immediate value (e.g., relieving grief or boredom), it does not produce anything permanently or ultimately worthwhile. Rather, the pursuit of pleasure yields a hollow life. It is clear from Ecc 2:3 that Solomon’s investigation of pleasure was not a mindless dive into the morass of hedonism. Wisdom guided him throughout. He evidently pursued every pleasure available to an oriental monarch.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

8

FIRST SECTION

The Quest Of The Chief Good In Wisdom And In Pleasure

Ecc 1:12-18; Ecc 2:1-26

OPPRESSED by his profound sense of the vanity of the life which man lives amid the play of permanent natural forces, Coheleth sets out on the search for that true and supreme Good which it will be well for the sons of men to pursue through their brief day; the good which will sustain them under all their toils, and be “a portion” so large, and enduring as to satisfy even their vast desires.

The Quest in Wisdom. Ecc 1:12-18

1. And, as was natural in so wise a man, he turns first to Wisdom. He gives himself diligently to inquire into all the actions and toils of men. He will ascertain whether a larger acquaintance with their conditions, a deeper insight into the facts, a more just and complete estimate of their lot, will remove the depression which weighs upon his heart. He devotes himself earnestly to this Quest, and acquires a “greater wisdom than all who were before him.”

This wisdom, however, is not a scientific knowledge of facts or of social and political laws, nor is it the result of philosophical speculations on “the first good or the first fair,” or on the nature and constitution of man. It is the wisdom that is born of wide and varied experience, not of abstract study. He acquaints himself with the facts of human life, with the circumstances, thoughts, feelings, hopes, and aims of all sorts and conditions of men. He is fain to know “all that men do under the sun,” “all that is done under heaven.” Like the Arabian Caliph, “the good Haroun Alraschid,” we may suppose that Coheleth goes forth in disguise to visit all quarters of the city; to talk with barbers, druggists, calenders, porters, with merchants and mariners, husbandmen and tradesmen, mechanics and artisans; to try conclusions with travellers and with the blunt wits of home keeping men. He will look with his own eyes and learn for himself what their lives are like, how they conceive of the human lot, and what, if any, are the mysteries which sadden and perplex them. He will ascertain whether they have any key that will unlock his perplexities, any wisdom that will solve his problems or help him to bear his burden with a more cheerful heart. Because his depression was fed by every fresh contemplation of the order of the universe, he turns from nature to “the proper study of mankind.”

But this also he finds a heavy and disappointing task. After a wide and dispassionate scrutiny, when he has “seen much wisdom and knowledge,” he concludes that man has no fair reward “for all his labour that he laboureth under the sun,” that no wisdom avails to set straight that which is crooked in human affairs, or to supply that which is lacking in them. The sense of vanity bred by his contemplation of the steadfast round of nature only grows more profound and more painful as he reflects on the numberless and manifold disorders which afflict humanity. And hence, before he ventures on a new experiment, he makes a pathetic appeal to the heart which he had so earnestly applied to the search, and in which he had stored up so large and various a knowledge, and confesses that “even this is vexation of spirit,” that “in much wisdom is much sadness,” and that “to multiply knowledge is to multiply sorrow.”

And whether we consider the nature of the case or the conditions of the time in which this Book was written, we shall not be surprised at the mournful conclusion to which he comes. For the time was full of cruel oppressions and wrongs. Life was insecure. To acquire property was to court extortion. The Hebrews, and even the conquering race which ruled them, were slaves to the caprice of satraps and magistrates whose days were wasted in revelry and in the unbridled indulgence of their lusts. And to go among the various conditions of men groaning under a despotism like that of the Turk, whose foot strikes with barrenness every spot on which it treads; to see all the fair rewards of honest toil withheld, the noble degraded and the foolish exalted, the righteous trodden down by the feet of the wicked; all this was not likely to quicken cheerful thoughts in a wise mans heart: instead of solving, it could but complicate and darken the problems over which he was already brooding in despair.

And, apart from the special wrongs and oppressions of the time, it is inevitable that the thoughtful student of men and manners should become a sadder as he becomes a wiser man. To multiply knowledge, at least of this kind, is to multiply sorrow. We need not be cynics and leave our tub only to reflect on the dishonesty of our neighbours, we need only go through the world with open and observant eyes in order to learn that “in much wisdom is much sadness.” Recall the wisest of modern times, those who have had the most intimate acquaintance with man and men, Goethe and Carlyle for example; are they not all touched with a profound sadness? Do they not look with some scorn on the common life of the mass of men, with its base passions and pleasures, struggles and rewards? and, in proportion as they have the spirit of Christ, is not their very scorn kindly, springing from a pity which lies deeper than itself? Did not even the Master Himself, though full of truth and grace, share their feeling as He saw publicans growing rich by extortion, hypocrites mounting to Moses chair, subtle, cruel foxes couched on thrones, scribes hiding the key of knowledge, and the blind multitude following their blind leaders into the ditch?

Nay, if we look out on the world of today, can we say that even the majority of men are wise and pure? Is it always the swift who win the race, and the strong who carry off the honours of the battle? Do none of our “intelligent lack bread,” nor any of the learned favour? Are there no fools lifted to high places to show with how little wisdom the world is governed, and no brave and noble breasts dinted by the blows of hostile circumstances or wounded by “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”? Are all our workmen diligent, and all our masters fair? Are no false measures and balances known in our markets, and no frauds on our exchanges? Are none of our homes dungeons, with fathers and husbands for jailors? Do we never hear, as we stand without, the sound of cruel blows and the shrieks of tortured captives? Are there no hypocrites in our churches “that with devotions visage sugar oer” a corrupt heart? And do the best men always gain the highest place and honour? Are there none in our midst who have to bear-

“The whips and scorns of time,

The oppressors wrong the proud mans contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the laws delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes”?

Alas, if we think to find the true good in a wide and varied knowledge of the conditions of men, their hopes and fears, their struggles and successes, their loves and hates, their rights and wrongs, their pleasures and their pains, we shall but share the defeat of the Preacher, and repeat his bitter cry, “Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity!” For, as he himself implies at the very outset (Ecc 1:13), “this sore task,” this eternal quest of a wisdom which will solve the problems and remove the inequalities of human life, is Gods gift to the children of men, -this search for a solution they never reach. Age after age, unwarned by the failure of those who took this road before them, they renew the hopeless quest.

The Quest in Pleasure. Ecc 2:1-11

2. But if we cannot reach the object of our Quest in Wisdom, we may, perchance, find it in Pleasure. This experiment also the Preacher has tried, tried on the largest scale and under the most auspicious conditions. Wisdom failing to satisfy the large desires of his soul, or even to lift it from its depression, he turns to mirth. Once more, as he forthwith announces, he is disappointed in the result. He pronounces mirth a brief madness; in itself, like wisdom, a good, it is not the Chief Good; to make it supreme is to rob it of its natural charm.

Not content with this general verdict, however, he recounts the details of his experiment, that he may deter us from repeating it. Speaking in the person of Solomon and utilising the facts of his experience, Coheleth claims to have started in the quest with the greatest advantages; for “what can he do who cometh after the king whom they made king long ago?” He surrounded himself with all the luxuries of an Oriental prince, not out of any vulgar love of show and ostentation, nor out of any strong sensual addictions, but that he might discover wherein the secret and fascination of pleasure lay, and what it could do for a man who pursued it wisely. He built himself new, costly palaces, as the Sultan of Turkey used to do almost every year. He laid out paradises, planted them with vines and fruit trees of every sort, and large shady groves to screen off and to temper the heat of the sun. He dug great tanks and reservoirs of water, and cut channels which carried the cool vital stream through the gardens and to the roots of the trees. He bought men and maids, and surrounded himself with the retinue of servants and slaves requisite to keep his palaces and paradises in order, to serve his sumptuous tables, to swell his pomp: i.e., he gathered together such a train of ministers, attendants, domestics, indoor and outdoor slaves, as is still thought necessary to the dignity of an Oriental “lord.” His herds of flocks, a main source of Oriental wealth, were of finer strain and larger in number than had been known before. He amassed enormous treasures of silver and gold, the common Oriental hoard. He collected the peculiar treasures “of kings and of the kingdoms”; whatever special commodity was yielded by any foreign land was caught up for his use by his officers or presented to him by his allies. He hired famous musicians and singers, and gave himself to those delights of harmony which have had a peculiar charm for the Hebrews of all ages. He crowded his harem with the beauties both of his own and of foreign lands. He withheld nothing from them that his eyes desired, and kept not his heart from any pleasure. He set himself seriously and intelligently to make happiness his portion; and, while cherishing or cheering his body with pleasures, he did not rush into them with the blind eagerness “whose violent property fore does itself” and defeats its own ends. His “mind guided him wisely” amid his delights; his “wisdom helped him” to select, and combine, and vary them, to enhance and prolong, their sweetness by a certain art and temperance in the enjoyment of them.

“He built his soul a lordly pleasure house,

Wherein at ease for aye to dwell:

He said Oh, Soul, make merry and carouse,

Dear Soul, for all is well!”

Alas, all was not well, though he took much pains to make and think it well. Even his choice delights soon palled upon his taste, and brought on conclusions of disgust. Even in his lordly pleasure house he was haunted by the grim, menacing spectres which troubled him before it was built. In the harem, in the paradise he had planted, under the groves, beside the fountains, at the sumptuous banquet, -a bursting bubble, a falling leaf, an empty wine cup, a passing blush, sufficed to bring back the thought of the brevity and the emptiness of life. When he had run the full career of pleasure, and turned to contemplate his delights and the labour they had cost him, he found that these also were vanity and vexation of spirit, that there was no “profit” in them, that they could not satisfy the deep, incessant craving of the soul for a true and lasting Good.

Is not his sad verdict as true as it is sad? We have not his wealth of resources. Nevertheless there may have been a time when our hearts were as intent on pleasure as was his. We may have pursued whatever sensuous, intellectual, or aesthetic excitements were open to us with a growing eagerness till we have lived in a whirl of craving and stimulating desire and indulgence, in which the claims of duty have been neglected and the rebukes of conscience unheeded. And if we have passed through this experience, if we have been carried for a time into this giddying round, have we not come out of it jaded, exhausted, despising ourselves for our folly, disgusted with what once seemed the very top and crown of delight? Do we not mourn, our after life through, over energies wasted and opportunities lost? Are we not sadder, if wiser, men for our brief frenzy? As we return to the sober duties and simple joys of life, do not we say to Mirth, “Thou art mad!” and to Pleasure, “What canst thou do for us?” Yes, our verdict is that of the Preacher, “Lo, this too is vanity!” Non enim hilaritate, nec lascivia, nec visu, aut joco, comite levitatis, sed soepe etiam tristes firmitate, et constantia sunt beati.

Wisdom and Mirth compared. Ecc 2:12-23

It is characteristic of the philosophic temper of our author, I think, that, after pronouncing Wisdom and Mirth vanities in which the true Good is not to be found, he does not at once proceed to try a new experiment, but pauses to compare these two “vanities,” and to reason out his preference of one over the other. His vanity is wisdom. For it is only in one respect that he puts mirth and wisdom on an equality, viz., that they neither of them are, or lead up to, the supreme Good. In all other respects he affirms wisdom to be as much better than pleasure as light is better than darkness, as much better as it is to have eyes that see the light than to be blind and walk in a constant gloom (Ecc 2:12-14). It is because wisdom is a light and enables men to see that he accords it his preference. It is by the light of wisdom that he has learned the vanity of mirth, nay, the insufficiency of wisdom itself. But for that light he might still be pursuing pleasures which could not satisfy, or laboriously acquiring a knowledge which would only deepen his sadness. Wisdom had opened his eyes to see that he must seek the Good which gives rest and peace in other regions. He no longer goes on his quest in utter blindness, with all the world before him where to choose, but with no indication of the course he should, or should not, take. He has already learned that two large provinces of human life will not yield him what he seeks, that he must expend no more of his brief day and failing energies on these.

Therefore wisdom is better than mirth. Nevertheless it is not best, nor can it remove the dejections of a thoughtful heart. Somewhere there is, there must be, that which is better still. For wisdom cannot explain to him why the same fate should befall both the sage and the fool (Ecc 2:15), nor can it abate the anger that burns within him against an injustice so obvious and flagrant. Wisdom cannot even explain why, even if the sage must die no less than the fool, both must be forgotten well-nigh as soon as they are gone (Ecc 2:16-17); nor can it soften the hatred of life and its labours which this lesser yet patent injustice has kindled in his heart. Nay, wisdom, for all so brightly as it shines, throws no light on an injustice which, if of lower degree, frets and perplexes his mind, -why a man who has laboured prudently and dexterously and has acquired great gains should, when he dies, leave all to one who has not laboured therein, without even the poor consolation of knowing whether he will be a wise man or an idiot (Ecc 2:19-21). In short, the whole skein of life is in a dismal tangle which wisdom itself, dearly as he loves it, cannot unravel; and the tangle is that man has no fair “profit” from his labours, “since his task grieveth and vexeth him all his days, and even at night his heart hath no rest”; and when he dies he loses all his gains, such as they are, forever, and cannot so much as be sure that his heir will be any the better for them. “This also is vanity” (Ecc 2:22-23).

The Conclusion. Ecc 2:24-26

And yet, good things are surely good, and there is a wise and gracious enjoyment of earthly delights. It is right that a man should eat and drink, and take a natural pleasure in his toils and gains. Who, indeed, has a stronger claim than the labourer himself to eat and enjoy the fruit of his labours? Still, even this natural enjoyment is the gift of God; apart from His blessing the heaviest toils will produce but a scanty harvest, and the faculty of enjoying that harvest may be lacking. It is lacking to the sinner; his task is to heap up gains which the good will inherit. But he that is good before God will have the gains of the sinner added to his own, with wisdom to enjoy both. This, whatever appearances may sometimes suggest, is the law of Gods giving: that the good shall have abundance, while the bad lack; that more shall be given to him who has wisdom to use what he has aright, while from him who is destitute of this wisdom, even that which he hath shall be taken away. Nevertheless even this wise use and enjoyment of temporal good does not and cannot satisfy the craving heart of man; even this, when it is made the ruling aim and chief good of life, is vexation of spirit.

Thus the First Act of the Drama closes with a negative. The moral problem is as far from being solved as at the outset. All we have learned is that one or two avenues along which we urge the quest will not lead us to the end we seek. As yet the Preacher has only the ad interim conclusion to offer us, that both Wisdom and Mirth are good, though neither, nor both combined, is the supreme Good; that we are therefore to acquire wisdom and knowledge, and to blend pleasure with our toils; that we are to believe pleasure and wisdom to be the gifts of God, to believe also that they are bestowed, not in caprice, but according to a law which deals out good to the good and evil to the evil. We shall have other opportunities of weighing and appraising his counsel-it is often repeated-and of seeing how it works into and forms part of Coheleths final solution of the painful riddle of the earth, the baffling mystery of life.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary