Ecclesiastes 3

Ecclesiastes 3:21

21. Who knoweth the spirit of man &c.] The sense may be, How few men live as if they knew that the soul of man is immortal, and that, when the body dies, it goeth upward to God to be judged by Him; and that the spirit of the beast dying with the body, and going downward to the earth, there utterly perishes. Dr. Wells.

Ecclesiastes 3:22

22. — that a man should rejoice in his own works.] That he should make a cheerful use of God’s good blessings, as the only fruit and alleviation which the earth will afford of all his painful labours here. Bp. Hall. Chap. IV. ver. 1. So I returned.] He proceeds to consider the power which many times falls into the hands of unjust and cruel men, and to represent the miserable estate of those that are subject to them, as a further argument of the vanity and vexation to which all men are liable in this troublesome world; and, having noted some of the principal mischiefs of this sort, he concludes this chapter with some animadversions on the condition of the greatest and best of princes, who are not so happy as the world is apt to think them. Bp. Patrick.