Nothing Better Than to Eat and Drink
24 There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it is from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? 26 For to the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner he gives travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him who pleases God. This also is vanity and a chasing after wind.
The first of five commendations of ordinary life arrives immediately after the despair, and it is credited to God rather than recommended as a coping strategy.
One verse after even in the night his heart takes no rest, the book says this: there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labor.
The placement is the argument. Nothing has been solved. Death still levels the wise and the foolish, the heir is still unknown, and the accounting still comes out at nothing left over. The commendation is not offered as a solution to any of that.
And the second half of verse 24 refuses to let it be read as mere coping: this also I saw, that it is from the hand of God. Bread, wine, and satisfaction in a day's work are described as coming from somewhere — received rather than salvaged.
This is the first of five such commendations, and every one credits God: from the hand of God here, the gift of God twice Ecclesiastes 3:13 Ecclesiastes 5:19, days which God has given him Ecclesiastes 8:15, and works already accepted Ecclesiastes 9:7.
Verse 26 sorts the outcome by relationship rather than by effort: to the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy, while the sinner's labor is to gather and to heap up, and what he heaps goes to somebody else.
And verse 26 still ends this also is vanity and a chasing after wind — the ninth and last verdict of its kind falls in chapter 6 Ecclesiastes 6:9, and none is withdrawn. The commendation is not exempt from the diagnosis; it is what to do inside it.
settled What this mark means