Ecclesiastes 6
The Vanity of Unenjoyed Wealth 1–6
The Futility of Insatiable Desire 7–9
Human Limitations and Ignorance 10–12
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Study Notes for Ecclesiastes 6
Verse 1
common among men — ‘Common’ is rab, the word usually rendered ‘many’ or ‘great’, as in ‘many years’ (v.3). The wording repeats 5:13, ‘a sore evil which I have seen under the sun’, and the case that follows (vv.1–2) is the reverse of 5:19, where God gives riches and also ‘power to eat thereof’.
Verse 2
a stranger eateth it — ‘Stranger’ is nokri, a foreigner, someone outside the family. The loss of one’s produce to another is among the curses of the law: ‘a nation which thou knowest not eat up’ (Deut 28:33). ‘Power’ (shalat) and ‘disease’ (choli) are the words of 5:19 and 5:17, and Christ’s parable ends on the same question: ‘then whose shall those things be’ (Luke 12:20).
Verse 3
an untimely birth — Nephel is a child born before its time; Job says of himself, ‘as an hidden untimely birth I had not been’ (Job 3:16). ‘Filled’ is saba, the verb of ‘satisfied’ in 5:10. ‘No burial’ was the end of Jezebel (2 Kgs 9:35) and the sentence on Jehoiakim: ‘buried with the burial of an ass’ (Jer 22:18–19).
Verse 5
more rest — Nachath, rest or quiet, is the word of 4:6, ‘an handful with quietness’, and of 9:17. The child ‘hath not seen the sun’, the sun under which the book sets all labour. Job voices the same wish: ‘now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest’ (Job 3:13).
Verse 6
a thousand years twice told — Two thousand years is longer than any life in Scripture; the longest, Methuselah’s, was ‘nine hundred sixty and nine years’ (Gen 5:27). To ‘see good’ is the aim of the long life in Ps 34:12, ‘What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good?’ ‘One place’ is 3:20, where ‘all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again’.
Verse 7
the appetite is not filled — ‘Appetite’ is nephesh, the soul: the same word is ‘soul’ in vv.2–3 and ‘desire’ in v.9, so the chapter’s word for what a man wants is one. ‘He that laboureth laboureth for himself; for his mouth craveth it of him’ (Prov 16:26). Christ names another food: ‘that meat which endureth unto everlasting life’ (John 6:27).
Verse 9
the wandering of the desire — Literally ‘the going of the soul’: halak, the verb of ‘do not all go to one place?’ in v.6, and nephesh, the soul of v.7. ‘The sight of the eyes’ is what is present and seen, set against the roving of the soul. Paul’s counterpart is ‘godliness with contentment is great gain’ (1 Tim 6:6).
Verse 10
named already — Literally ‘its name has been called already’: what has come to be was named beforehand, and the man so called cannot ‘contend’ with one ‘mightier’. ‘Mightier’ is taqqif, from taqaph, the ‘prevail’ of 4:12. Isa 45:9 states the same limit: ‘Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!’
Verse 11
many things that increase vanity — ‘Things’ is davar, ‘word’, and ‘many’ and ‘increase’ are one verb, the verb of 5:7: ‘in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities’. ‘The better’ is yoter, advantage, rendered ‘more’ in 2:15 and 6:8 and ‘profit’ in 7:11.
Verse 12
as a shadow — Tsel, the shade that passes: ‘he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not’ (Job 14:2); the book uses it of the wicked at 8:13. The question ‘who knoweth what is good for man?’ is asked from under the sun, and Mic 6:8 answers: ‘He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good’. ‘What shall be after him’ is the question of 3:22.