Ecclesiastes 6:3

If a man beget an hundred children A case is put, the very opposite of that described in the preceding verse. Instead of being childless the rich man may have children, and children's children; may live out all his days. What then? Unless his "soul be filled with good," unless there is the capacity for enjoyment, life is not worth living. Still, as before, "it were good never to have been born." We may probably trace an allusive reference to Artaxerxes Mnemon, who is reported to have had 115 children, and who died of grief at the age of 94, at the suicide of one of his sons, and the murder of another, both caused by a third son, Ochus, who succeeded him (Justin, x. 1).

and also that he have no burial The sequence of thought seems at first strange. Why should this be, from the writer's standpoint, as the climax of sorrow? Why should he who had noted so keenly the vanities of life put seemingly so high a value on that which comes when life is over and done with? Some writers have felt this so strongly, that they have suggested the interpretation, "even if there be no grave waiting for him," i.e.even if he were to live for ever. The natural meaning is, however, tenable enough, and we have once more an echo of Greek teaching. Solon had taught that we are not to call any man happy before his death, and by implication, in his story of the sons of Tellus, had made the prospect of posthumous honour an element of happiness (Herod. i. 30). So, in like manner, it was the direst of woes for a man to know that he "should be buried with the burial of an ass" (Jeremiah 22:19), or, in Homeric phrase, that his body should be "cast out to dogs and vultures." How could any man, however rich and powerful, be sure that that fate might not be in store for him? On the assumption of the late date of the book, there may be a reference to the death of Artaxerxes Ochus, who was murdered by the eunuch Bagoas, and his body thrown to the cats. Possibly, Koheleth himself may have had some reason for an anxious doubt, whether the honours of sepulture would be his. If, as seems likely, he was a stranger in a strange land, alone and with no child to succeed him, perhaps with a name cast out as evil or heretical, there was small chance of his being laid to rest in the sepulchre of his fathers. See the "Ideal Biography," Introduction, ch. iii.

an untimely birth is better than he The thought of ch. Ecclesiastes 4:3 is reproduced, but in a somewhat less generalized form. There, never to have been born, is asserted, after the manner of the Greek maxims quoted in the notes, to be better than existence of any kind. Here the assertion is limited to the comparison with the joyless pursuit of wealth. The "untimely birth" was the natural emblem of all abortive enterprise (Job 3:16; Psalms 58:8).