Bible Commentaries
Ecclesiastes 6

Verses 1-12

The preacher knows prosperity experimentally far better than poverty. Moreover, by observation he is more familiar with men of wealth than with poor men, and, therefore, he returns to a declaration of the sorrows of the wealthy. A man possessing, cannot possess. Lacking nothing of all he desires, yet he cannot eat thereof. That is to say, he has a craving and desire within him which none of these things can appease. If a man be surrounded by children and yet at last have no burial, it would be better if he had never been born. Though he continue for two millenniums and enjoy no good during their passing, what advantage is there in it, for death is the final goal? In a pregnant phrase he expresses the emptiness of wealth. Wandering desire tells the story of the life of restless attempt to possess the best by the use of material things. After all, man is man, and nothing more, and there is no value in his contending with the Mightier One. If the afterward of life be uncertain, who can tell what is good for its experience? Evidently the thought of the preacher is that the mar; a man possesses under the sun, the more profoundly conscious does he become of the vanity and vexation of it all.