Ecclesiastes 8

1. Who is as the wise man? and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? A man’s wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the hard 2 ness of his face is changed. I counsel thee, Keep the king’s command, and that in re 3 gard of the oath of God. Be not hasty to go out of his presence; persist not in an evil thing: for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him. 4 Because the king’s word hath power; and who may say unto him, What doesst thou? 5 Whoso keepeth the commandment shall know no evil thing; and a wise man’s heart 6 discerneth time and judgment: for to every purpose there is a time and judgment; because the misery of man is great upon him: 7 for he knoweth not that which shall be; for 8 who can tell him how it shall be? There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power over the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war: neither shall wickedness deliver 9 him that is given to it. All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: there is a time wherein one man hath power over another to his hurt. 10 And I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone away from the holy place, and they were forgotten in the city where 11 they had so done: this also is vanity. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. 12 Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and prolong his days, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, 13 which fear before him: but it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; be 14 cause he feareth not before God. There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be righteous men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the right

15 cous: I said that this also is vanity. Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him in his labour all the days of his life which God hath given him under the sun.

16. When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes.) 17 then I beheld all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because however much a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea moreover, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.

9:1 For all this I laid to my heart, even to explore all this; that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God: whether it be love or hatred, man 2 knoweth it not; all is before them. All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea also, the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they 4 live, and after that they go to the dead. For to him that is joined with all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a 5 dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for 6 the memory of them is forgotten. As well their love, as their hatred and their envy, is now perished: neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.

8:1. Wisdom is apparent even in a man’s face to whom God has given the power of expressing intelligence and emotion. It makes his face glow with the radiance of thought. H.C. 2,3. The oath of God here is the oath of allegiance to the king. Revealed religion enjoins obedience to the civil magistrate. Such obedience it recognizes as a duty of the highest obligation. Civil government has not its origin in a mere social compact entered into by men, but in the will and authority of God. Hence its authority. Consequently religion is the grand conservator of public order. But as the oath in question recognizes the supremacy of God, it does not, and cannot bind subjects to do anything contrary to His laws. Solomon is clearly advocating simply subjection to the magistrate, in the exercise of his lawful authority.

5. These words state the benefits which accrue to the peaceful, obedient citizen. Good rulers are not a terror to the good, but to the evil. The heart of the wise man pays a proper regard to all the duties which grow out of his several relations, and performs them in their season. He has reference not merely to present time, but to future judgment. He remembers his accountability to God, and this makes him a faithful citizen. There will be retribution. The connection, says Dr. Noyes, requires us to understand a time of judgment, which denotes retribution. J. M. M.

6. Sentiment: “There will be a time of judgment, because the evil which man commits is so great that it presses heavily upon him.” The scriptural idea of the appropriate time for punishment is that it is the period when iniquity is full, or heavy. M. S.

8. Death is a prevalent, insuperable evil. Hence the proverbial expression, Strong as death that subdues all, cruel as the grave that spares none. It is in vain to struggle with the pangs of death. No simples in nature, no compositions of art, no power of angels can support the dying body or retain the flitting soul. “There is no man hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power over the day of death; and there is no discharge in that war.” The body sinks in the conflict, and death feeds on its prostrate prey in the grave. Bates.

There is a war where all must enlist and bear arms. None are exempt from its conscriptions. Save the two lonely cases of Enoch and Elijah, the world has yet seen no instance of a discharge. There is a great fortress and line of siege confronting and commanding every group of our people, a line whose pointed musketry we are, perforce, sooner or later, all of us to face, and into the very mouth of whose death-dealing batteries we are steadily marching. Sabbath by Sabbath, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, with each heaving of the lungs and with each winking of the eyelash, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the thoughtless and the gloomy, the ignorant and the scholarly, are walking up, in one inevitable procession, with the intermingled tramp of manhood’s heavy foot, and the patter of childhood’s footfall, into the flaming range of these terrible bastions. “There is no discharge in this war,” no flying—no bribing—no pleading—no reasoning—no treating with “the last enemy!” W.R. Williams.

One of the causes of not considering the fact of death is the utter inability to form any defined idea of the manner of existence after death. Another is a general presumption of having long to live. Yet another is that men occupy their whole soul and life with things that preclude the thought of its end. And, to give full force to these causes, there is, in a large proportion of men, a formal, systematic endeavor to keep off the thought of death. But let it be impressed upon us, that to end our life is the mightiest event that awaits us in this world. And it is that which we are living but to come to. It holds out a grand protest against being absorbed and lost in this world. It is the termination of a period confessedly introductory and probationary. Without thinking of it, often and with deep interest, there is no possibility that our scheme and course of life should be directed to the supreme purpose of life. To have been thoughtless of it, then, will ultimately be an immense calamity; it will be to be in a state unprepared for it. Foster.—The usual course is not to think that we shall die. We know it, however, and we every day see it light on some one near us. We know that we must die, but we feel that we are alive. We have the habit of life, but we have not that of death. Life, with its bustle, its various impressions, its joys, its pains, ever fills our whole soul. By dint of forgetting death we cease to believe it, and when it at length arrives its presence astonishes us like the arrival of the least expected as well as least wished for guest. But be this as it may, it must be received. We must not abandon life to death which claims it, but restore life faithfully to God who asks it back. It is necessary to die, and die well. Vinet.

Life is that power by which we act and think and love and intend and hope. And suppose that all our energies have been wasted on things that cannot follow us into the grave, then how can we conceive of any life at all beyond this? When we know that we must die, we feel about for something in us that shall not perish, some thread of continuity to knit our present and future life into one; and if we have never lived for God, never realized the difference between treasures of earth and treasures of heaven, we find nothing that shall assure us of that other life. We start back in horror from a grave so dark and so profound. If these two terrors were all, some at least would not fear to die, would even court death as a repose. But there is yet another terror. Death means judgment. To die is to meet God, to stand before a Judge of infinite power, whose wrath no man can resist; before a Judge of infinite wisdom, who shall call back acts out of the distant past and lay bare all secret thoughts. Archbishop Thomson.

Death did not strike Adam the first sinful man, nor Cain the first hypocrite, but Abel the innocent and righteous. The first soul that met with death overcame death; the first soul that parted from earth went to heaven. Death argues not displeasure, because he whom God loved best dies first, and the murderer is punished with living. Bishop H.—Dying is one thing and the state of death is another; and this state of death is not formidable to the believer. Death for him is nothing more than the transit into another and a better world. The Christian who dies passes from the realm of shadows into the Kingdom of light—from conflict to rest—from God, seen in type and emblem, to God, seen as He is in the splendor of His own essential beauty. In fact, the Christian’s death is a birth into the fulness of life. “He that believeth on Me shall never die.” G. Calthrop.

The empire of death, which has suffered a slow decay, which it has required so many ages to overthrow, which has seemed to recover from its defeats, will at last sink by one powerful stroke, never to rise again. It will not require more than a moment of time to raise all the dead, to lay open every sepulchre, to restore every particle of dust, that is fit to be restored, to its proper body, and for all the bodies of the saints to be prepared for the mansion of eternal glory. How insipid and tame are the histories of all other conquests—of the rise and fall of all other kingdoms and empires—when compared with the grand and wonderful achievements of the “King Immortal,” and the fall of death beneath His power, and the giving up of all his prey; when every victim from earth and sea, though under monuments of marble, nay, rocks of adamant, shall be restored; when He shall bring forth every particular form to be repossessed by its proper spirit, from which it has been for a season divorced! Thus will He “swallow up death in victory,” and then clothe His redeemed with garments of immortality. R. Hull.

9. He has seen rulers insisting on obedience to evil commands; and this, at last, to their own hurt. It is shown above (v. 5) that obedience to such evil commands is sin, and that it brings evil upon him who executes them. Now he subjoins, that such commands injure those also who give them. M. S.

10. “I saw wicked [rulers] buried, who came and went from the holy place, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so ruled; this—their being at last overtaken by death and oblivion—shows their lot also to be vanity.” The ancient versions apply the whole of this verse to the wicked, which seems the preferable interpretation. W. T. B.—Not only did they depart, but even from the holy city where they had lived, they went away, i.e., their departure was made from the city by their being carried out of it in order to be buried; as indeed all the dead were. And then they were forgotten in the city; in other words, no monument was erected to them, no lamentation made over them, and therefore they were forgotten. M. S.—The clear vision of faith sees them passing forevermore away from the society and communion of the holy, to be quickly forgotten. It is noticeable that our Lord in like manner (Luke 16: 19-24) represents the rich man’s burial as a notable event, yet his soul went away forever from the abodes of the holy. H. C.

Two suggestive facts are fairly intimated by this tenth verse, as thus interpreted: First, That one may go from association with the godly to the burial of the ungodly. From the very midst of intercourse the most constant, close, prolonged, pleasant, from relations the most tender and intimacies the most endearing with the holy, from a lifetime of such association in all that pertains to the social state, it is possible to pass from life, from all these associations, with mind unrenewed, with heart unchanged, with all these ties forever sundered, to receive all unconsciously the following of kindred and friends to the grave of the ungodly. This impressive fact confronts and contradicts the secret thought and hope of many who are unprepared for death. Many do secretly cherish the contrary thought and hope. Surrounded on every side by Christian friends, whose lives are knit with theirs in the tenderest sympathies, counting themselves safe in such companionship, many live on themselves unheeding the personal call of God, unthoughtful of and unprepared for an issue which depends alone upon their own treatment of that call—an issue whose sole condition and determination is found in their own penitence, prayer, obedience, or their own continued impenitence, prayerlessness, and disobedience. Many are living thus, with an issue so momentous impending day by day—living on undisturbed by thought or fear of its eternal consequences—living thus in the face of God’s solemn protest and denial in His entire Word. And alas! how many the actual signs which seem to show that the holy, those upon whose association such a baseless confidence and hope rest, that Christian believers share in and contribute to the perpetuation of such confidence and hope!

A second fact intimated by the verse is that the proof of actual character, ensuring a sinner’s burial, is simply no good left behind, no works of a living faith in Christ, no fruits of an active, vital love to Christ. The wicked referred to in the text, who had lived among the holy, acted with and apparently like them all their lives, were forgotten in the city where they had so done. Unlike the righteous, who in their deeds of faith and love are held in everlasting remembrance, they left behind them no memories of Christ-like acting in the life, no fragrance of beneficent deeds like His, dictated by obedient, grateful love to Him. In the allegory of the Judgment, it was not that those on the left hand had sinned grossly, that they had left abundant, positive proofs of flagrant transgressions, but that they had not wrought works of faith and love, that they had left behind them no actual fruits, no blessed effects of deeds done for Christ, through love to Christ, the spring of all holy acting. Inasmuch as ye did it not to Me, this is the charge, the terrible charge undenied, which makes sure the burial and the final, irrevocable condemnation of the unbelieving, unloving soul as unholy, wicked.

The Christian’s burial! How full of rejoicing hope are the thoughts it brings, how stripped of all that is truly sorrowful. The Christian’s grave! How holy, how blessed, how inspiring, how radiant with bright memories and brighter prospects! Gratefully, hopefully standing there our hearts may triumphantly sing:

" ‘Tis a blessing to live, but a greater to die,

And the best of the world, is its path to the sky.—

Be it gloomy or bright, for the life that He gave,

Let us thank Him—but blessed be God for the grave!

‘Tis the end of our toil, ’tis the crown of our bliss,

‘Tis the portal of happiness—aye, but for this, How hopeless were sorrow, how narrow were love,

If they looked not from earth to the rapture above!

But the portals of death open out on the skies, And the mortal who enters in ecstasy flies,

An angel of light, to the throne of the King; While the echoes of Heaven in harmony ring With the song of the seraphs, “Oh! blessed are they

Who die in the Lord, and from earth come away—

They rest from their labors—the works of their love

Have followed, and crown them with glory above.”

But oh! the sinner’s burial! how unutterably awful! The Christless shroud, the Christless sleep, the Christless grave or tomb! How heartbreakingly sad, how vividly terrible the thoughts which follow the spirit gone to the judgment and the doom! B.

11. Because sentence is not executed speedily, therefore the heart is set to do evil. The delay in God’s retributive judgments for sin emboldens sinners; they madly say, “Where is the promise of His coming?” and set their heart fully to the doing of evil. The very mercy that spares the sinner to give him space for repentance, he abuses and perverts to bolder sin, to deeper guilt, and to a swift and more terrible doom. Scarcely any words in this book evince a more just appreciation of the spirit of wicked men than these. The author had noted closely but truthfully how wicked men abuse God’s mercy and provoke His wrath. H. C.

A sentence is passed and stands in force against every evil work; and the words of Solomon represent to us, on the one hand, the marvellous patience of God in suspending the execution of this righteous sentence; and, on the other hand, men’s vile abuse of his unmerited goodness. Instead of being led to repentance, they grow bolder in sin; and “because sentence against their evil works is not speedily executed, therefore their heart is fully set in them to do evil.” There is an awful emphasis in the last of these expressions; it denotes the extreme wickedness that sinners may arrive at; not only to commit sin when assaulted with violent temptations, but to make an habitual trade of it; nay, to employ themselves in it with delight. Their heart is so fully set in them to do evil, that all their faculties bend that way. Thus we read of some “who drink iniquity like water;” “who devise mischief upon their beds,” and set themselves in a way that is not good; nay, who put themselves to incredible pains and hard labor, who “weary themselves to commit iniquity.” R. Walker.

Man must strike soon, if he would strike at all; for opportunities pass away from him, and his victim may escape his vengeance by death. There is no passing of opportunity with God, and it is this which makes His long-suffering a solemn thing. God can wait. F. W. R.—There is a sublime, silent delay about the Divine Justice which leaves rash sinners under the delusion that against a Lawgiver so long-suffering they may offend with impunity. If every Cain were marked the very instant he shed blood, and every Ananias struck dead upon the utterance of his lie, scoffing at judgments would be impossible. But the awful tread of justice is slow, and so the depraved soul grows bold. Conscience sleeps, and therefore the sinner thinks the sin is not on record. “He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten; He hideth His face; He will never see it” (Psalm 10:11). J. W. A.—Nothing will better that man or move that man who is given up to spiritual judgments. Let God smile or frown, stroke or strike, cut or kill, he minds it not, regards it not. Such a man’s preservation is but a reservation unto a greater condemnation. He has guilt in his bosom and vengeance at his back wherever he goes; neither ministry nor misery, neither miracle nor mercy can mollify his heart; and if this soul be not in hell on this side hell, who is? T. Brooks.

To sin because God is long-suffering, is to be evil because He is good, and to provoke Him because He spares us; it is to strive with God and to contend with His goodness, as if we were resolved to try the utmost length of His patience; and because God is loath to punish, therefore to urge and importune Him to that which is so contrary to His inclination. This abuse of the long-suffering of God is a provocation of the highest nature, because it is to trample upon His dearest attributes, those which He most delights and glories in, His goodness and mercy; for the long-suffering of God is His goodness to the guilty and His mercy to those who deserve to be miserable. This day of God’s patience is the great opportunity of our salvation; and if we let it slip it is never to be recovered. If we misimprove this time of our life, we shall not be permitted to live it over again to improve it better. Archbishop Tillotson.—The long-suffering of God declares His power. What He does not punish now, He can punish by and by; what He does not punish here, He can punish there; what not in this world, in the next. He is patient because He is strong, because all power belongeth unto Him. The long-suffering of God is a declaration of His love, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. This tardiness of vengeance argues no listlessness, no moral indifference to the eternal distinctions between good and evil, on the part of Him who is the Judge of the whole earth, and by whom actions are weighed. It means that Christ has died for sinners, and that God can afford to wait. Flee from Him thou canst not. To flee to Him is thy only way of deliverance. Trench.

12. Whatever advantage oppressors may gain, and however great the evils which they occasion, it remains true after all, and it is a consolation for the oppressed, that those who fear God shall sooner or later obtain their reward. In this world? The tenor of the Book is plainly against this. That it is in another world seems to be the necessary implication. M. S.

It is the happiness of all that fear God that in the worst of times it shall be well with them; their happiness in God’s favor cannot be prejudiced nor their communion with God interrupted by their troubles; they are in a good case, for they are kept in a good frame under their troubles, and in the end they shall have a blessed deliverance from and an abundant recompense for their troubles. And therefore surely I know, I know it by the promise of God and the experience of all the saints, that however it goes with others it shall go well with them. All is well that ends well. H.

12,13. Here seems to be a very full and firm conviction of the doctrine of a retribution, both for the good and for the evil. M. S.—Disembodied spirits do not at once pass into the state or the place which they are finally to hold. Yet they are in measure receiving the things done in the body, whether good or bad, one class rejoicing, the other suffering. This intermediate existence is in no sense remedial or purgatorial, there being not even a hint to that effect anywhere. Retribution follows death at once. All questions as to locality are vain and fruitless. It is not at all needful to know where either heaven or hell is, for such knowledge would add nothing to our comfort or our inducements to a holy life. Nor do we require to be able to answer every question about Hades or Paradise. It is enough to know, as we do beyond a peradventure, that in the future life it shall be well with the righteous at once and forever; but woe, woe unto the wicked, for it shall be ill with them at once and forever. Chambers.

14. We may mistake God’s thought entirely. The pains which He sends upon the good for discipline we may mistake for retribution and assume to be only tokens of His wrath. The good things He grants to the wicked may be for their moral trial, and in no sense a proof of His approbation. These points, brief compared with the magnitude of the subject, bear upon the just explanation of those apparent anomalies in the present administration of God’s moral government over the race, to which our passage alludes. H. C.

It is worth noting that the instance of vanity, to which these words are specifically applied, is the seeming inequality of God’s justice. For if they are considered, as they may fairly be considered, in connection with the profession in v. 12 of personal faith in God’s absolute justice, the conclusion is irresistible, that, whatever reason the Preacher had for reserve in declaring his belief, he certainly looked forward to a final judgment in a future state of existence. W. T. B.—The things of this world are not the best things, nor were ever designed to make a portion and happiness for us, for if they had, God would not have allotted so much of this world’s wealth to His worst enemies, and so much of its troubles to His best friends; there must, therefore, be another life after this, the joys and griefs of which must be real and substantial, and able to make men truly happy or truly miserable, for this world does neither. H.

15. Mirth is not the best word here. Enjoyment, rejoicing, give the sense of the Hebrew much better. This Hebrew word is used more than any other for “rejoicing before the Lord,” and “rejoicing in the Lord,” especially in sacred worship and in grateful praise and trust. Solomon commends the free-hearted and cheerful enjoyment of our daily bread and of all the good which God provides for in our physical constitution, for this remains with us as the good of our labor while we live. Yet he carefully suggests that it is God who gives us this life and all its enjoyments. They should therefore be accepted and enjoyed as His gifts in the spirit of filial obedience and true gratitude. The same sentiment has appeared before (2:24; 3:12, 13, 22), guarded there, moreover, against abuse by the same beautiful and pertinent suggestion that this is “the gift of God,” and that we have even these most common blessings of life from His gracious hand and parental heart. H. C.—Then I commended joy, a holy security and serenity of mind arising from a confidence in God, and His power, providence, and promise, because a man has no better thing under the sun (though a good man has much better things above the sun) than to eat and drink—that is, soberly and thankfully to make use of the things of this life, and to be cheerful whatever happens. H.

16,17. To see the business. The word for “business” is the same which is rendered “travail” in 2:26; 3:10, having obviously here the same sense as there, viz., selfish, pleasure-seeking toil for earthly good—thought of, moreover, as altogether unavailing, futile, and vain. In the light of God’s providence, often baffling and frustrating the best human calculations and endeavors, he found himself unable to fathom these depths. H. C.

In other words, this matter of the righteous and the wicked, as having their respective lots reversed, and the insufficiency of an attempt to enjoy the fruits of labor—all this is a matter too deep for us to fathom. God has kept the grounds of this mysterious dispensation to Himself. “Who can by searching find out God?” M. S.—There is no fuller statement in Ecclesiastes of the incapacity of every man with his finite understanding to comprehend the plans and operations of the Infinite and Eternal God. W. T. B.

9:1-6. The ninth chapter should not have been dissevered from the preceding one, with the close of which it is most intimately connected. He had said that God’s work is inscrutable, and to him must be attributed the arrangement of all events. He now says, that the righteous and the wise, and all their doings, are at the Divine disposal, and subjected to the will of God (v. 1). He goes on to develop more fully the objection raised in 8:14 against the declarations preceding that passage, respecting an adequate retribution to the righteous and the wicked. It is now suggested again that all have one common lot, whatever their character may be. All men have more or less of folly, and all die alike (vs. 2, 3), and when dead all enjoyment ceases, and they know not anything more (vs. 4, 5). All sensation ceases, and they have no more a part to act in life (v. 6). M. S.

1. This testimony respecting the righteous is peculiarly grateful in such a connection as this. It is refreshing to see that the author in the depth of his perplexities in reference to both God’s providential and moral government over men, when facing events and complications which tasked his mind to the utmost, could yet fall back upon this precious truth—that the righteous, the wise, and their works, are all in the hand of God, the object of His unceasing love and care. H. C.—Love and hatred are here understood by almost all interpreters to mean the ordinary outward tokens of God’s favor or displeasure, i.e., prosperity and adversity. “Man knows not whether to expect prosperity or adversity from God; all his earthly future is in obscurity.” He represents man as looking forward into the future and contemplating various contingencies without knowing which of them shall be his lot. W. T. B.—

He lays this down for a rule, That the love and hatred of God are not to be measured and judged of by men’s outward condition. If prosperity were a certain sign of God’s love, and affliction of His hatred, then it might justly be an offence to us to see the wicked and godly fare alike. But the matter is not so; No man knows either love, or hatred, by all that is before them in this world. H.

2. No man knows either love or hatred by outward mercy or misery; for all things come alike to all. The sun of prosperity shines as well upon the brambles of the wilderness as upon the fruit-trees of the orchard; the snow and hail of adversity light upon the best garden as well as upon the wildest waste Health, wealth, honors, crosses, sicknesses, and losses are cast upon good and bad men indifferently. T. Brooks.—The course of nature is without respect of persons; we see no laws suspended to favor the good or to punish the bad. Yet the inspired writer does not lose sight of the great distinction between the two classes of men, and he recognizes the eternal distinction between moral good and evil, by the terms which he applies to them—the righteous and the wicked, the clean and the unclean, the worshipper and the despiser of God’s worship. And “there is a vast difference,” Henry well remarks, “between the original, the design, and the nature of the same event to the one and to the other; the moral effects and issues of them are likewise vastly different; the same Providence to the one is a savor of life unto life, to the other of death unto death, though, to outward appearance, it is the same.” J. M. M.

3. Full of evil. How manifestly hideous the process going on in human souls under the power of sin. It is a process of real and fixed deformity. The most beautiful natural character, in man or woman, changes, how certainly, its type, when growing old in worldliness and the neglect of religion. The deforming process murders the angel in us, and saves the drudge or the worm. The man that is left is but a partial being, a worker, a schemer, a creature of passion, thought, will, hunger, remorse, but no Divine principle, no kinsman of Christ, or of God. On the other hand, it will be seen that a thoroughly religious old person holds the proportions of life, and even grows more mellow and attractive as life advances. Indeed, the most beautiful sight on earth is an aged saint of God, growing cheerful in his faith as life advances, becoming mellowed in his love, and more and more visibly pervaded and brightened by the clear light of religion. H. B.

We see no retribution for sin in this life; who then will believe that there is any to be feared hereafter—if, indeed, there be any hereafter? This madness, he says, abides in them long as they live. After that—what? The omission of the verb go in the original is peculiarly expressive: “After that—to the dead!” H. C.

In attaching the word madness to the moral conduct of unrenewed men, revelation lends us an apt illustration of that conduct. Ever heeding and keenly sensitive to bodily pain or to wounded affection, they have no feeling or thought concerning the more terrible anguish of the spirit, the more fearful wounds to its high immortal affections, to which their own deeds are daily tending and which they are directly inflicting. Sensitive to the loss of perishable wealth, they are insensible to the incomputable loss of the imperishable soul. Every passing event in human life, all the shifting scenes of national, social, and personal history, stir the fountains of emotion in their souls, while the grander events and awful verities of spiritual being, the vaster scenes of eternal history which throng the pathway of the past and present, move hardly a pulse within them. Upon a thoughtful, feeling, God-fearing mind, gazing upon this strange course of immortal men, surely the conviction of human folly and madness cannot but press with saddening, irresistible force. B.

If men were persuaded that sin is attended with eternal death, would “they drink in iniquity like water?” The devils themselves are not able to conquer the fear of judgment to come, they “believe and tremble;” therefore when it is not active upon the conscience, it is either because men do not believe it, or they fancy that retaining their beloved lusts they may obtain an easy absolution. Astonishing perverseness! How many will not discern or censure that folly in themselves which they will condemn in others for extreme madness? If one riotously lavishes away his estate, and, for the short pleasure of a few years, be reduced with the prodigal to extreme poverty, would he not be esteemed to have been beside himself? Yet this is a very tolerable case, in comparison of exposing the soul to eternal vengeance for the pleasures of sin that are but for a season. Bates.—When we look on the madness of life, and are marvelling at the terrible career of dissipation, let there be no contempt felt. It is an immortal spirit marring itself. It is an infinite soul, which nothing short of the Infinite can satisfy, plunging down to ruin and disappointment.

Men of pleasure, whose hearts are as capable of an eternal blessedness as a Christian’s, that is the terrible meaning and moral of your dissipation. God in Christ is your only Eden, and out of Christ you can have nothing but the restlessness of Cain; you are blindly pursuing your destiny. F. W. R.

4. “Whoever is still attached to the living, as to him there is hope.” The meaning seems to be—He is something; has some power of accomplishment, for even a dog, contemptible as he was in the East, could do more and was more an object of hope or of fear, than a dead lion. This is doubtless a proverb. The author meant to say strongly that so far as this world is concerned, there is no power in the dead, and therefore no ground of confidence or trust in them. This he proceeds to show more in detail. H. C.

The lesson of the Preacher is an old one. While there is life there is hope, and only while there is life. Let us be up and doing, for the night cometh in which no man can work. Our actual opportunities, small and trifling though they may seem, are, simply because they are still in our power, infinitely more valuable than even the greatest and noblest when once these have slipped from our grasp forever. Consider the truth that in all things admitting of the distinction, things that can be said to be living and to be dead, it is life which gives the value, it is the earnestness and truth which underlie all real vital power that alone give significance and redeem from worthlessness; and that unless the angel be there to stir the waters, even the pool of Bethesda is but a stagnant pool, powerless and disappointing. It is thus both in nature and also in man, in the outer world which attracts and engages the senses, and in the inner world of soul and spirit. It is the fresh life in both that we value, and justly. T. H. Steel.

5,6. I give below a paraphrase of these two verses which in my view is sustained by the following considerations: It is in harmony with the course of thought with which the passage is introduced in v. 4 and with which it closes in v. 6. It coincides with the logic of the passage itself, especially in the last half of v. 5. It relieves the passage of its doctrinal difficulties, viz., its supposed denial of a future conscious existence, and its contradiction of the great doctrine of a future retribution—a doctrine which Solomon in this very book affirms with most solemn emphasis. “For the living know as to death that they shall die; but the dead know nothing as to the living, nor as to any of the scenes and events of this earthly life, neither have they any more reward in the line of fame and honor, for the memory of them is forgotten. They may have labored hard for an immortal name among the living of earth, but this reward fails them, for no remembrance of them long survives their disappearance from among men. Also their love and their hatred and their envy have long ago perished; all died with them, and are no longer of the least concern to the living, whom their love cannot help nor their hatred harm; neither have they any longer a portion forever in all that is done under the sun. They may have a portion elsewhere—of that there is no occasion now to speak; but they have no portion in the way of active agency or proper reward in anything done on the earth.” This paraphrase assumes that the author is not speaking at all of the departed dead with reference to their consciousness, their happiness, or their misery in that other world, but only with reference to their relations to this world and to its events and interests. According to this construction the passage bears forcibly upon the vanity of laying up immense stores for future enjoyment, whether of wealth or of posthumous remembrance and fame. Thousands in every age toil to accumulate indefinitely more than they could ever use in a century—to whom Solomon would say here: “What will all that wealth avail you after you are dead? Other thousands, especially in the ancient Oriental world, exhausted the great labors of a lifetime to build mausoleums and tombs for themselves that should immortalize their names among the living. Was there not occasion enough to say to such men: “The dead know not anything of what transpires among the living;” nor have they any more a reward on earth, however much they may have sought it, for the very remembrance of them is perished, however stubbornly they may have fought against this result and labored to make their earthly name immortal. H. C.

6. The three passions, love, hatred, and envy, are named as strongest and most vehement in their action. Even these are hushed in the calm of the grave. E. H. P.

The surest thing in life is death. We can be absolutely sure of nothing else. There will come an unexpected night, of which “no man knoweth, not even the angels of God,” upon which no sunrise will dawn. A thousand ills may be avoided, a thousand perils escaped, but death cannot be. But the most unsure event in life is the time of death. The moment may come within the next hour; it may be postponed fifty years. No averages, no tables of

mortality, no study of contingencies, can assure any mortal of one day’s life. Death is an enemy; to some, alas, not to all—“the last enemy!” Yet over this dread foe there may be victories; there have been millions who have exultingly triumphed. Such triumph is never attained by our own courage, or resolution, or strength; never by recollection of our own obedience, faithfulness, or good works. It comes only from faith in Christ Jesus. It is this that assures of resurrection—not “of flesh and blood”—but of the “spiritual body.” J. L. Burrows.