Ecclesiasteschapter 6
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Speaks with:Ecclesiastes 5×4Psalms 73×2Job 3×2Ecclesiastes 4×2Ecclesiastes 3×2Psalms 17×1
Summary
Chapter summary
The darkest turn of the gift: a man to whom God giveth riches, wealth, and honor, 'yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but an alien eateth it — this is vanity, and it is an evil disease.' Better an untimely birth than a man who begets a hundred children and lives a thousand years twice told with no burial and no good. 'All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.' Who knoweth what is good for man in his vain life, which he spendeth as a shadow?
Context
Poetry · Solomon — Ecclesiastes overview
- A. 1–6 Riches Given, and No Power to Eat Thereof
- B. 7–12 Who Knoweth What Is Good for Man in His Vain Days?
The outline
A.Riches Given, and No Power to Eat Thereofvv. 1 to 6
Read vv. 1 to 6 →B.Who Knoweth What Is Good for Man in His Vain Days?vv. 7 to 12
Read vv. 7 to 12 →
The world behind this chapter
Ecclesiastes 6The history
The chapter names the three things everyone in that world wanted — riches, many children, and a long life — and then removes the one thing that made them count: "he hath no burial." To an ancient Israelite, being gathered to your fathers in the family tomb, with the bones of past generations in it, was the proper end of a life. Bodies were laid on rock shelves in a cave tomb and the bones later collected into a pit or box, so the family stayed together underground. Dying unburied — killed abroad, lost, or despised — was a horror.
"An untimely birth is better than he" invokes the stillborn child, who "cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness." It is the bleakest comparison the writer can make, and he makes it against a man with a hundred children and a long life.
"All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled." The word is nephesh, the appetite or the throat — the thing that has to be fed again tomorrow no matter how well it was fed today. Everyone from the field labourer to the king was working for the same mouth.
"Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire." The Hebrew is closer to "the wandering of the appetite" — better what is actually in front of you than the roaming want that never lands anywhere.
What it meant to them
First hearers who could name every marker of a blessed life were being shown a man who scored full marks on all of them and was still, by the writer's judgment, worse off than a child who never drew breath.
The question that closes the chapter — "who knoweth what is good for man in this life?" — is left open on purpose. The book is not finished answering it.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ecclesiastes 6. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.