Ecclesiastes 5:16

And this also [is] a sore evil, [that] in all points as he came, so shall he go,.... This seems not to be an evil or vanity, distinct from the former; but the same repeated and confirmed, and

As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.

This also, which I have last mentioned and shall now repeat. For the wind; for riches, which are empty and unsatisfying, uncertain and transitory, fleeing away swiftly and strongly, , which no man can hold or stay in its course, all which are the properties of the wind. Compare .

Ecclesiastes 5:16 And this also [is] a sore evil, [that] in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?Ver. 16. And this also is a sore evil.] Malum dolorificum, so it will prove; a singular vexation, a sharp corrosive, when Balaam and his bribes, Laban and his bags, Nabal and his flocks, Achan and his wedge, Belshazzar and his bulls, Herod and his harlots, Dives and his dishes, &c., shall part asunder for ever, when they shall look from their death beds, and see that terrible spectacle, death, judgment, hell, and all to be passed through by their poor souls! Oh, what a dreadful shriek gives the guilty soul at death, to see itself launching into an ocean of scalding lead, and must swim naked in it for ever! Who, therefore, unless he had rather burn with Dives than reign with Lazarus, will henceforth reach out his hand to bribery, usury, robbery, deceit, sacrilege, or any such like wickedness or worldliness, which "drown men’ s souls in perdition and destruction?" If rich men could stave off death, or stop its mouth with a bag of gold, it were somewhat like. But that cannot be, as Henry Beaufort, that rich and wretched cardinal found by experience; as the King of Persia told Constance the Emperor, who had showed him all the glory and bravery of Rome; Mira quidem haec, said he, sed ut video, sicut in Persia, sic Romoe heroines moriuntur, - i.e., These be brave things, but yet I see that as in Persia, so at Rome also, the owners of these things must needs die. Agreeable whereunto was that speech of Nugas, the Scythian monarch, to whom, when Michael Paleologus, the emperor, sent certain rich robes for a present, he asked, Nunquid calamitates, morbos, mortem depellere possent? - whether they could drive away calamities, sickness, death? - for if they could not do so they were not much to be regarded, What profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?] i.e., For just nothing. See Hosea 12:1 Jeremiah 22:22. The Greeks expressed the same by hunting after and ‘ husbanding the wind.’ The apostle speaks of "beating the air," as he doth that fights with his own shadow - that disquiets himself in vain. The four monarchies are called the "four winds of heaven." And at the Pope’ s enthronisation a wad of straw is set on fire before him, and one appointed to say, Sic transit gloria mundi, - The glory of this world is but a blaze or blast. Fulgent. Pachymer., Hist, lib. v. Aνεμουςγεωργειν.

16. what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?] The ever-recurring question (ch. Ecclesiastes 1:3, Ecclesiastes 2:22, Ecclesiastes 3:9) rises once again, “What profit?” In “labouring for the wind” we have a phrase almost identical with the “feeding on wind” or, as some render it, the “striving after the wind” which is the key-note of the whole book. As in Proverbs 11:29; Isaiah 26:18; Job 16:3 the “wind” is the emblem of emptiness and nothingness.

16. Laboured for the wind — Clearly if he had not, but had been content to lead a quiet life, without the hazards of speculation, even then he would have been obliged to leave all behind at death.