Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Ecclesiastes 6:1-7
Life Is Not Enjoyable To Even Some of the Rich (Ecclesiastes 6:1).
‘There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavily on men. A man to whom God gives riches, wealth and honour so that he lacks nothing for himself of all that he could desire, yet God does not give him the privilege (power) of enjoying them, but a stranger eats of it. This is vanity and a sore affliction.'
He points out that life is not always consistent. There may be many reasons why a wealthy man may not be able to enjoy his wealth. He may have food incompatibility which prevents his enjoyment of food, he may find wine makes him sick, he may overindulge in the wrong foods or in drink, he may have health problems that prevent the enjoyment of life. Then he has the pain of watching strangers who enjoy the hospitality of his home eating and enjoying what he himself cannot enjoy. (Contrast Isaiah 3:10).
On the other hand he may have it taken away from him by invasion, or through brigands, or through those who dispense justice unfairly and use their position to grasp what is not theirs. Then a stranger again enjoys what was really his. His possession of wealth has been in vain.
‘This is vanity, and is a sore affliction.' The grief that the man suffers will be great, but it also brings out again the ultimate meaninglessness of life if this is all that there is to it.
‘If a man beget a hundred children, and live many years so that the days of his years are many, but he is not himself filled with good, and moreover he has no burial. I say that an untimely birth is better than he. For it comes in meaninglessness and departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness. Moreover it has not seen the sun, nor known it. This has rest rather than the other. Yes, even though he live a thousand years twice told, and yet enjoys no good. Do not all go to one place? '
The begetting of children was seen as a great blessing (Psalms 127:3). Here the man has ‘a great many children, more than the norm' (the significance of ‘a hundred'). A long life was also seen as a blessing (Deuteronomy 11:21). But if his days are not enjoyable and he lacks essential provision or he is bowed down with illness (he ‘is not filled with good'), or in some other way his life is not good because for example of family feuds, (and then he adds to make matters worse - ‘and has no burial'), then the baby who dies at birth is better off than he. And this is true for the man, if during that time he actually receives no ‘good', even if he lives for a thousand years and more.
‘And moreover he has no burial.' Not to be buried properly was looked on as something deeply humiliating and to be avoided at all costs (2 Kings 9:30; Isaiah 14:19; Jeremiah 22:19), and especially for a man with many children, whose responsibility it was to bury him. Perhaps here the thought is that his hundred children were alienated from him and wanted nothing to do with him in the day of his death, adding to his other problems. So being rich is not always the answer.
‘An untimely birth is better than he. For it comes in meaninglessness and departs in darkness, and its name is covered with darkness. Moreover it has not seen the sun, nor known it. This has rest rather than the other.' Such a life is even worse than that of a stillborn child. That is bad enough. The child comes in meaninglessness, and dies in the darkness of the womb, never having seen light, or the sun, and its name is never mentioned. But it has more rest than this poor rich man. And in the end they go to the same place, to the place of the dead. Both are the same in the end, it is simply that the stillborn child has escaped the misery.
The lesson is that both these men described had not in the end been given the blessings of God's allotment, even though outwardly it had seemed so, emphasising again how important to the enjoyment of life was the walk with God. The writer no doubt shared the popular viewpoint that not to be blessed was a sign of not being in right relationship with God.
‘All the labour of the man is for his mouth, and yet he himself is not satisfied.'
This refers back to the man we have been considering. The whole purpose of his labour was to feed himself, for he gained no other benefit from it. And this he achieved. But he could not achieve satisfaction for himself.