Ecclesiastes 6:1 - Meaning and Application

Solomon had just shown, at the end of the previous chapter, how good it is to enjoy God’s gifts in a wise and thankful way. Here he shows the evil of the opposite, having wealth and not using it, storing up for unknown troubles while failing to meet present needs. This is an evil Solomon saw under the sun, and there is much evil in this world. There is a world above the sun where there is no evil, but God lets his sun shine on the evil and the good, which makes the evil worse.

God has given his servants light so they can work by it, but some bury their talent, like lazy and useless servants. They waste what they have and show themselves unworthy of it. Solomon, as a king, watched the behavior of his people and saw this as a harm to public life. A nation suffers not only from wasteful spending, but also from extreme stinginess.

Just as blood must circulate in the body, wealth must move in society. If it sits still and does not flow, it does harm. Solomon, as a preacher, noticed such evils so he could rebuke them and warn people against them. In his day this sin was common, even though there was much silver and gold. You might think such abundance would make people less eager to hoard, and the times were peaceful, with no clear threat of trouble. Yet prosperity by itself does not cure a greedy heart. Only God’s grace can do that. In fact, when riches increase, people are often most tempted to set their hearts on them.

Now think about this miser. He has abundant reason to serve God with joy and gladness because of all God has done for him. God has given him riches, wealth, and honor, (Ecclesiastes 6:2). Riches often bring honor from other people. Even if honor is only a kind of image, if it is made of gold, people will bow to it. Riches, wealth, and honor are gifts from God’s providence, and he does not give them equally to everyone, but as he sees fit. Yet he gives them to many who do not use them well, because he does not give them wisdom and grace with them. Common blessings can do more harm than good if they are not joined with special grace, that is, God’s saving help in the heart.

This man also lacks nothing his soul desires, at least in the sense of worldly desire. Providence has been so generous that he has as much as heart could wish, and more (Psalm 73:7). He does not crave grace for his soul, the better part of him. He only wants enough to satisfy his appetite, and he has that. His belly is filled with these hidden treasures (Psalm 17:14).

He is also thought to have a large family, as if he had a hundred children. They are the support and strength of his house, like a quiver full of arrows, which bring honor and credit to a family. He would have the hope of keeping his name alive in them, with all the kind of lasting memory this world can give. He is full of children (Psalm 17:14), while many of God’s people are childless and stripped of that comfort.

To complete the picture of his happiness, he is imagined to live many years, or better, many days, since life is counted more truly by days than by years. The days of his years are many, and he stays healthy so long that even more are likely ahead. Indeed, he is imagined to live a thousand years, and even a thousand years twice over, which no one known to us has ever done. Yet even such a long life should be enough to teach people from experience the folly of those who expect all good from worldly wealth, and also the folly of those who expect to find any good in it except in using it rightly.

The man’s great fault is that he has little heart to use what God gives him for the purpose God gave it. He does not repay God according to the benefit he has received. He does not serve the Lord, his benefactor, with joy and gladness of heart in the abundance of all things. In the day of prosperity he is not joyful. “Are you happy, yet sad?” That is his foolish state.

See his folly. He cannot bring himself to enjoy what he has. He has food before him and enough to support himself and his family in comfort, but he does not have power to eat it. His miserly temper will not let him spend, not even on himself, and not even on what is most necessary for himself. He cannot reason himself out of this absurd way of thinking or overcome his greedy habits. He is truly weak if he has no power to use what God gives him. Yet God does not give him that power, but withholds it as a judgment for his misuse of wealth. Because he will not use his riches to serve God, God denies him the ability to use them even for himself.

He also lets others take from him, people he is under no duty to support. A stranger eats it. That is the common end of misers. They may not trust their own children, but smooth-talking dependents and hangers-on find their way into their confidence and learn how to drain what they have, or get it left to them in a will. God orders it so that a stranger eats it. Strangers consume his strength (Hosea 7:9; Proverbs 5:10). This may well be called vanity, and a painful disease. What we possess is useless to us if we never use it, and the mind that keeps us from using it is a miserable sickness. Our worst diseases come from the corruption of our own hearts.

He also deprives himself of the good he could have had from his possessions. He does not merely fail to gain it, he robs himself and throws it away. His soul is not filled with good, (Ecclesiastes 6:3). He is still unsatisfied and uneasy. His hands may be full of riches, his barns full, and his bags full, but his soul is not filled with good. It keeps asking for more. In fact, (Ecclesiastes 6:6) he has not even seen good. He cannot even enjoy the sight of what he has, because his eyes keep looking farther, and with envy at those who have more. He does not even get the plain, felt good of an estate. Though he does not look beyond what can be seen, he still cannot look at it with true pleasure.

He has no burial worthy of his rank, no decent burial, but the burial of an ass.

Because of the ugliness of his character, he will not allow himself a fine burial. Either he refuses it, or the strangers who have used up his wealth leave him so poor that he has nothing for it. Or perhaps those who inherit what he leaves care so little for his memory, and want what they will get from him so much, that they will not spend the money to bury him properly, even though his own children would not have begrudged him that honor.

The preacher then says that an untimely birth is better than him. A child carried from the womb to the grave is better than a wealthy worldly man. It is like fruit that falls from the tree before it is ripe, which is better than fruit left until it rots. Job, in his distress, thought the fate of an untimely birth was better than his own suffering state (Job 3:16). But Solomon says here that it is better than the condition of a worldly man at the height of his success, when the world is smiling on him.

He admits that an untimely birth is sad in many ways (Ecclesiastes 6:4, Ecclesiastes 6:5). It comes into the world in vanity, because, as far as this life is concerned, someone born only to die at once was born for nothing. It goes away in darkness. Little or no notice is taken of it. As an abortive birth, it has no name, or if it had one, it is soon forgotten and buried in oblivion. It is covered with darkness, just as the body is covered with earth.

Even more, it has not seen the sun, but from the darkness of the womb it is taken straight to the darkness of the grave. Worse still, it has not known anything, and so it has missed the great pleasure and honor of being human. Those who live in willful ignorance, and know nothing that matters, are little better than an untimely birth that has not seen the sun or known anything.

Yet Solomon still says this is better than the life of a greedy miser. The untimely birth has more rest, because it has at least some rest, while the miser has none. The untimely birth has no trouble or unrest, but the other person is always stirred up and only makes trouble for himself. The shorter the life, the longer the rest. The fewer our days, and the less we have to do with this troublesome world, the less trouble we know.

The reason is that all go to one place to rest in, and the untimely birth reaches that rest sooner (Ecclesiastes 6:6). The one who lives a thousand years goes to the same place as the child who lives less than an hour (Ecclesiastes 3:20). The grave is where we all meet. Whatever differences people have in this world, they all die. They are all under the same sentence, and outwardly their deaths look alike.

The grave is, for both rich and poor, noble and lowly, educated and uneducated, a land of silence, darkness, separation from the living, and sleep. It is the common meeting place of all. The short-lived and the long-lived meet there. One arrives quickly, the other more slowly, but both end in the same dust, and their remains lie mixed together without distinction.