Ecclesiastes6chapter 6

Ecclesiastes 6:1-2

The Preacher names the book's bleakest case as an evil common among men: God gives a man riches, wealth and honour, wanting nothing his soul desires, yet withholds the power to eat of it, so a stranger enjoys what the owner cannot touch. Henry reads the phrase power to eat as the real gift missing from the man's wealth, appetite and occasion granted or withheld apart from the money itself. Gill notes the same withholding runs the earlier refrain in reverse, there God gives both riches and the power to enjoy them together as one gift, here he splits them, and that split is called an evil disease.

Ecclesiastes 6:3-6

The case grows harsher: even a man who fathers a hundred children and lives many years is judged worse off than a stillborn child, if his soul is not filled with good and he has no burial. Clarke reads verses 4 and 5 as the comparison's ground, the untimely birth comes and departs in darkness and its name is covered, yet it has more rest than the man who saw no good though he lived a thousand years twice told. The refrain do not all go to one place answers Genesis 3:19 in the Preacher's own key, the grave levels the man who had everything against the child who had nothing.

Ecclesiastes 6:7-9

The chapter turns from the extreme case to the common one: all the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled, wanting outlasting every wage earned. The question what hath the wise more than the fool levels rank the way chapter 2 already levelled it, and Gill reads the poor man who knows to walk before the living as one who at least manages daily life, no small skill by the Preacher's own reckoning. The sight of the eyes is set above the wandering of desire as the better if lesser portion, itself still called vanity and vexation of spirit.

Ecclesiastes 6:10-12

The chapter closes in the questions that the better-than proverbs of chapter 7 will answer: whatever exists was named long ago, and it is known that it is man, who cannot contend with him that is mightier. Many things increase vanity without increasing profit, so the Preacher asks plainly what is man the better, and the closing question, who knoweth what is good for man, states the book's need for an answer from outside the search itself. Delitzsch reads the final line, who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun, as the hinge the next chapters turn on, wisdom under the sun cannot see past the sun.