Biblion Bible Commentary
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A Man Who Cannot Enjoy
Ecclesiastes 6:1-12
1 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is heavy on men: · WEB
Three verses after calling the power to enjoy wealth God's gift, the book describes a man given the wealth and denied the power.
Verse 2 is the exact inverse of what stood three verses earlier, and the pairing is the chapter's argument. There, God gave riches and has given him power to eat of it, and that was the gift of God Ecclesiastes 5:19. Here God gives riches, wealth, and honor, so that he lacks nothing, and then gives him no power to eat of it, but an alien eats it.
Same giver, same goods, one faculty withheld. The book calls it an evil disease, and the diagnosis is the point: enjoyment is not a by-product of having. It is separately given, and its absence is a sickness rather than an attitude problem.
Verses 3 to 6 push it to the limit with a man who has everything the ancient world counted: a hundred children, long years, and — the one dishonor added — no burial. Against him is set a stillborn child, which never saw the sun and has rest rather than the other.
That is the harshest comparison in the book, and its ground is stated: the man's soul is not filled with good. Length without enjoyment is what makes the shorter life preferable, and verse 6 doubles the years to make sure the point is not about duration — a thousand years twice told, and still don't all go to one place?
Verse 7 states the trap in one line: all the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled. Everything anyone does is, at bottom, feeding — and the mechanism does not close.
Verse 9 answers with a proverb about attention: better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the desire. What is in front of a person, rather than what is imagined beyond him.
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