Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ecclesiastes 3:20

All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

20. All go unto one place ] The “place” thus spoken of is not the Sheol of the Hebrews or the Hades of the Greeks, which implied, however vaguely, some notion of a shadowy disembodied existence, for the souls of men as distinct from those of brutes, but simply the earth as at once the mother, the nourisher, and the sepulchre of every form of life. So Lucretius, as a disciple of Epicurus, speaks ( De Rer. Nat. v. 259) of earth as being

“Omniparens eadem rerum commune sepulcrum.”

“The mother and the sepulchre of all.”

all are of the dust ] There is an obviously deliberate reference to the narrative of the Creation in Gen 2:7. To those who did not see below the surface, it seemed to affirm, as it did to the Sadducee, the denial of a life to come. “Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return” was the sentence passed, they might say, as on the brute creation, so on man also (Gen 3:19).

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Verse 20. All go unto one place]

“Man was born

To die, nor aught exceeds in this respect

The vilest brute. Both transient, frail, and vain,

Draw the same breath; alike grow old, decay,

And then expire: both to one grave descend;

There blended lie, to native dust return’d.”-C.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

All go unto one place; to the earth, as it is expressed, Ecc 3:21, out of which they were both taken.

All turn to dust again; which is meant only of their bodies, as it is explained, Ecc 12:7.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

All go unto one place,…. The earth w from whence they came;

all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again; Adam’s body was made of the dust of the earth, and so all his posterity, all of them; in which they agree with beasts, who are made of the dust also; and, when they die, return to it; see Ge 2:7.

w “Magna parens terra est”, Ovid. Metamorph. l. 1. Fab. 7.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

“All goes hence to one place; all has sprung out of the dust, and all returns to the dust again.” The “one place” is (as at Ecc 6:6) the earth, the great graveyard which finally receives all the living when dead. The art. of the first is that denoting species; the art. of the second is retrospective: to the dust whence he sprang (cf. Psa 104:29; Psa 146:4); otherwise, Gen 3:19 (cf. Job 34:15), “to dust shalt thou return,” shalt become dust again. From dust to dust (Sir. 40:11; 41:10) is true of every living corporeal thing. It is true there exists the possibility that with the spirit of the dying man it may be different from what it is with the spirit of the dying beast, but yet that is open to question.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

20. All are of the dust “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The perishing and dissolution of the bodies of men and beasts are visibly similar. There can be no doubt about that. And how of the spirit?

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