Ecclesiastes 6:6

Yea, though he live a thousand years twice [told],.... Or two thousand years, which no man ever did, nor even one thousand years; Methuselah, the oldest man, did not live so long as that; this is

Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good: do not all go to one place?

Live a thousand years twice told; wherein he seems to have a privilege above an untimely birth. Hath he seen no good; he hath enjoyed little or no comfort in it, and therefore long life is rather a curse and mischief than a blessing or advantage to him. Do not all, whether born out of and before their time, or in due time, whether their lives be long or short, go to one place; to the grave. And so after a little time all are alike as to this life, of which he here speaks; and as to the other life, his condition is infinitely worse than that of an untimely birth.

Ecclesiastes 6:6 Yea, though he live a thousand years twice [told], yet hath he seen no good: do not all go to one place?Ver. 6. Yea, though he live a thousand years.] Which yet never any man did; Methuselah wanted thirty-two of a thousand. - The reason thereof is given by Oecolampadius; " Quia numerus iste typum habeat perfectionis, ut qui constet e centenario decies revoluto," because the number of a thousand types out perfection, as consisting of a hundred ten times told. But there is no perfection here, saith he. Yet hath he seen no good.] For, "all the days of the afflicted are evil," saith Solomon. And man’ s days are "few and full of trouble," saith Job. "Few and evil are the days of my pilgrimage," saith Jacob, "and I have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers." For Abraham lived one hundred and seventy-five years, and Isaac one hundred and eighty - near upon forty years longer than Jacob, but to his small comfort, for he was blind all that time; yet nothing so blind as the rich wretch in the text, qui privatus interno lumine, tamen in hac vita diu vult perpeti caecitatem suam, as one speaketh, who being blind as a mole, lies rooting and poring incessantly in the bowels of the earth - as if he would that way dig himself a new and a nearer way to hell - and with his own hands addeth to the load of this miserable life. As he hath done no good, so he hath seen or enjoyed none; but goes to his place (do not all go to one place?) - the place that Adam provided for all his posterity, the house appointed for all living, as Job calls it, the congregation house, as one renders it. Heaven the apostle calls the congregation house of the firstborn, whose names also are there said to be written in heaven: but covetous persons, as they are called "the inhabitants of the earth," in opposition to those coelicolae, citizens of heaven, the saints; so their names are "written in the earth," "because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters," and "hewed them out cisterns that can hold no water." What marvel, then, if they live long, and yet see no good?

(6) Though.—The conjunction here used is only found again in Esther 7:4.

6. Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told] The weariness of life carries the thinker yet further. Carry it to the furthest point conceivable, and still the result is the same. The longer it is, the fuller of misery and woe. The thought finds, as before, a parallel in the speech of Solon to Crœsus (Herod. i. 32). The man goes to the same place,—to the dark, dreary world of Sheol, perhaps even to a more entire annihilation than was implied in the Hebrew thought of that unseen world,—as the abortive birth, with nothing but an accumulated experience of wretchedness. Depression could go no further. See the poem of Omar Khayyam in the Appendix.

He live - Rather, he hath lived. “He” refers to the man Ecclesiastes 6:3.

6. Seen no good — The antithesis of this verse is really after the word “good,” and the question balances all that precedes. Does not his long, joyless life go out in gloom at last, as much as that of the abortion?