Ecclesiastes 2:24

There is nothing better for a man The Hebrew, as it stands, gives a meaning which is partly represented by the LXX., "There is no good for a man which he shall eat and drink," as though the simplest form of bodily pleasure were condemned. Almost all interpreters however are agreed in adopting a conjectural emendation, which again in its turn has given rise to two different renderings: (1) "Is it not better (or "Is it not good") for a man to eat and drink …?" or (2) "there is nothing good for a man but to eat and drink.…" The two last are of course substantially the same in their teaching, and both express what we may call the higher type of Epicureanism which forms one element of the book. The pursuit of riches, state, luxury, is abandoned for the simple joys that lie within every man's reach, the "fallentis semita vitae" of one who has learnt the lesson of regulating his desires. The words "to eat and drink" are closely connected with "enjoying good in his labour." What is praised is not the life of slothful self-indulgence or æsthetic refinement, but that of a man who, though with higher culture, is content to live as simply as the ploughman, or the vinedresser, or artificer. Λάθε βιώσας, "live in the shade," was the Epicurean rule of wisdom. Pleasure was not found in feasts and sensual excess but in sobriety of mind, and the conquest of prejudice and superstition (Diog. Laert. x. 1. 132). The real wants of such a life are few, and there is a joy in working for them. Here again the thought finds multiform echoes in the utterances of men who have found the cares and pleasures and pursuits of a more ambitious life unsatisfying. It is significant that the very words "eat and drink" had been used by Jeremiah in describing the pattern life of a righteous king (Jeremiah 22:15). The type of life described is altogether different from that of the lower Epicureans who said "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (1 Corinthians 15:32).

So we have one Epicurean poet singing

"Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes

Lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris,

Lumina nocturnis epulis ut suppeditentur,

Nec domus argento fulget auroque renidet

Nec citharae reboant laqueata aurataque templa,

Cum tamen inter se prostrati in gramine molli

Propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae

Non magnis opibus iucunde corpora curant,

Praesertim cum tempestas adridet et anni

Tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas."

"What though no golden statues of fair boys

With lamp in hand illumine all the house

And cast their lustre on the nightly feast;

Nor does their home with silver or with gold

Dazzle the eye; nor through the ceilèd roof,

Bedecked with gold, the harps re-echo loud.

Yet, while reclining on the soft sweet grass

They lie in groups along the river's bank,

Beneath the branches of some lofty tree,

And at small cost find sweet refreshment there,

What time the season smiles, and spring-tide weeks

Re-gem the herbage green with many a flower."

Lucret. De Rer. Nat. ii. 24 33.

So Virgil sang:

"O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,

Agricolas,"

and of these good things dwelt chiefly on

"At secura quies et nescia fallere vita.

Dives opum variarum, at latis otia fundis,

Speluncae, vivique lacus, et frigida Tempe,

Mugitusque boum, mollesque sub arbore somni

Non absunt; illic saltus ac lustra ferarum,

Et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta juventus,

Sacra deum, sanctique patres; extrema per illos

Justitia excedens terris vestigia fecit."

"Ah! but too happy, did they know their bliss

The tillers of the soil!…

Their's the calm peace, and life that knows no fraud,

Rich in its varied wealth; and leisure their's

In the broad meadows; caves and living lakes

And Tempe cool, and lowing of the kine;

Nor want they slumber sweet beneath the trees;

There are the thickets and the wild beasts" haunts,

And youth enduring toil and trained to thrift;

There Gods are worshipped, fathers held in awe,

And Justice, when she parted from the earth

Left there her latest foot-prints."

Georg.ii. 467 474.

So Horace, in the same strain:

"Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,

Ut prisca gens mortalium,

Paterna rura bubus exercet suis,

Solutus omni foenore."

"Thrice blest is he who free from care

Lives now, as lived our fathers old,

And free from weight of honoured gold,

With his own oxen drives the share

O'er fields he owns as rightful heir."

Horace, Epod.ii. 1.

So Shakespeare once more makes a king echo the teaching of Ecclesiastes:

"And to conclude: the shepherd's homely curds,

His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,

His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade,

All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,

Is far beyond a prince's delicates,

His viands sparkling in a golden cup,

His body couched in a curious bed,

When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him."

Henry VI., Part III. Act ii. 5.

This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God In the thought which is thus expressed, we find, however, something more than an echo of Greek Epicureanism. The Debater recognises a Divine Will in this apportionment of happiness, just as he had before recognised that Will in the toil and travail with which the sons of man were exercised (ch. Ecclesiastes 1:13). The apparent inequalities are thus, in part at least, redressed, and it is shewn as the teaching of experience no less than of the Divine Master, that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth" (Luke 12:15).