3 If a man fathers a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not filled with good, and moreover he has no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he:
Yes, better than them both is him who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.
Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants who never saw light.
They went to bury her; but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.
But you are cast forth away from your tomb like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, who are thrust through with the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit; as a dead body trodden under foot. You shall not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land, you have killed your people; the seed of evil-doers shall not be named forever.
Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage."
Children's children are the crown of old men; The glory of children are their parents.
The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born."
and they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of the sky, which they have loved, and which they have served, and after which they have walked, and which they have sought, and which they have worshiped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried, they shall be for dung on the surface of the earth.
All his days he also eats in darkness, he is frustrated, and has sickness and wrath. Behold, that which I have seen to be good and proper is for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy good in all his labor, in which he labors under the sun, all the days of his life which God has given him; for this is his portion. Every man also to whom God has given riches and wealth, and has given him power to eat of it, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labor--this is the gift of God.
As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, So are the children of youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them. They won't be disappointed when they speak with their enemies in the gate.
Let them be like a snail which melts and passes away, Like the stillborn child, who has not seen the sun.
The king commanded it so to be done: and a decree was given out in Shushan; and they hanged Haman's ten sons. The Jews who were in Shushan gathered themselves together on the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and killed three hundred men in Shushan; but they didn't lay their hand on the spoil.
So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king's wrath pacified.
Haman recounted to them the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and all the things in which the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king.
Of all my sons (for Yahweh has given me many sons), he has chosen Solomon my son to sit on the throne of the kingdom of Yahweh over Israel.
Now Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. Jehu wrote letters, and sent to Samaria, to the rulers of Jezreel, even the elders, and to those who brought up [the sons of] Ahab, saying,
Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, Yahweh give you seed of this woman for the petition which was asked of Yahweh. They went to their own home. Yahweh visited Hannah, and she conceived, and bore three sons and two daughters. The child Samuel grew before Yahweh.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Ecclesiastes 6
Commentary on Ecclesiastes 6 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 6
In this chapter,
Ecc 6:1-6
Solomon had shown, in the close of the foregoing chapter, how good it is to make a comfortable use of the gifts of God's providence; now here he shows the evil of the contrary, having and not using, gathering to lay up for I know not what contingent emergencies to come, not to lay out on the most urgent occasions present. This is an evil which Solomon himself saw under the sun, v. 1. A great deal of evil there is under the sun. There is a world above the sun where there is no evil, yet God causes his sun to shine upon the evil as well as upon the good, which is an aggravation of the evil. God has lighted up a candle for his servants to work by, but they bury their talent as slothful and unprofitable, and so waste the light and are unworthy of it. Solomon, as a king, inspected the manners of his subjects, and took notice of this evil as a prejudice to the public, who are damaged not only by men's prodigality on the one hand, but by their penuriousness on the other. As it is with the blood in the natural body, so it is with the wealth of the body politic, if, instead of circulating, it stagnates, it will be of ill consequence. Solomon as a preacher observed the evils that were done that he might reprove them and warn people against them. This evil was, in his days, common, and yet then there was great plenty of silver and gold, which, one would think, should have made people less fond of riches; the times also were peaceable, nor was there any prospect of trouble, which to some is a temptation to hoard. But no providence will of itself, unless the grace of God work with it, cure the corrupt affection that is in the carnal mind to the world and the things of it; nay, when riches increase we are most apt to set our hearts upon them. Now concerning this miser observe,
Ecc 6:7-10
The preacher here further shows the vanity and folly of heaping up worldly wealth and expecting happiness in it.
Ecc 6:11-12
Here,