Ecclesiastes 6

Today’s Passage: Ecclesiastes 6

Having spent the previous chapter watching a man hoard his riches to his own hurt, the Preacher now turns to a sorrow that cuts even deeper. Here he names another evil under the sun, one that lies heavily on us all: a man to whom God has given everything a heart could want, wealth and possessions and honor, and yet the one thing he cannot lay hold of is the ability to enjoy any of it. A stranger will taste what he only stored. From there the chapter presses on into a hard saying about a life so joyless that a stillborn child seems better off, and it ends by pulling us up short before the God who is stronger than we are, reminding us how little we truly know about what is good for us in our few passing days. It is a chapter about appetite, and about the difference between having and enjoying.

As you read, hold this: To possess much yet be unable to enjoy it, or to be driven by a hunger nothing ever fills, is a deep emptiness, for true satisfaction is not grasped but given by God.

Ecclesiastes 6:1–2 (BSB)

¹ There is another evil I have seen under the sun, and it weighs heavily upon mankind: ² God gives a man riches, wealth, and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires; but God does not allow him to enjoy them. Instead, a stranger will enjoy them. This is futile and a grievous affliction.

Consider the strange and heavy thing the Preacher lays before us. Here is a man who lacks nothing. Whatever his heart has ever reached for, God has placed within his grasp: riches, wealth, honor, the full storehouse of what men chase their whole lives long. And yet the one gift that would have crowned all the rest is withheld. He cannot enjoy any of it. He owns the feast but never tastes it, and in the end a stranger sits down and eats what he only gathered. Notice carefully where the Preacher lays the matter. Both the having and the enjoying are in God’s hands, and the second is a separate gift from the first. This is the quiet, humbling truth of the whole chapter. Possession is something a man can arrange for himself by toil and shrewdness, but enjoyment is a grace only God can give, and where He does not give it, the fullest storehouse in the world is a grievous affliction and nothing more.

Ecclesiastes 6:3–6 (BSB)

³ A man may father a hundred children and live for many years; yet no matter how long he lives, if he is unsatisfied with his prosperity and does not even receive a proper burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. ⁴ For a stillborn child enters in futility and departs in darkness, and his name is shrouded in obscurity. ⁵ The child, though neither seeing the sun nor knowing anything, has more rest than that man, ⁶ even if he lives a thousand years twice over but fails to enjoy his prosperity. Do not all go to the same place?

Now the Preacher presses his point to its hardest edge, and we must let it be as hard as he meant it. Take a man who has everything the ancient heart prized, a hundred children and years beyond counting, and yet who never once found contentment in any of it and passed from the world unmourned and unremembered. Of such a man the Preacher dares to say that a stillborn child, who never drew a breath or saw the light, is better off. It is a shocking word, and it is meant to shock. His reasoning is not that life itself is worthless but that a long life untasted is a kind of living death. The child at least enters and departs in quiet rest, knowing nothing of the ache; but the man of many years has been given the whole banquet and has sat before it starving, and that is a sorrow the grave itself does not carry. Stretch his life to a thousand years twice over, and if he never enjoys it, the length only lengthens the emptiness. In the end, the Preacher reminds us, both go to the same place, so the question was never how long a man lives but whether he was ever truly alive to the gifts in his hands.

Ecclesiastes 6:7–9 (BSB)

⁷ All a man’s labor is for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied. ⁸ What advantage, then, has the wise man over the fool? What gain comes to the poor man who knows how to conduct himself before others? ⁹ Better what the eye can see than the wandering of desire. This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

Here the Preacher lays bare the machinery of our restlessness. All a man’s labor, he says, is for his mouth, and yet the mouth is never full. We work to feed a hunger that eats what we bring it and then hungers again, and so the wheel turns without end. It is a picture of the whole striving life, forever pouring in and never reaching the brim. And if that is so, he asks, what real advantage has the wise man over the fool, or the poised and capable poor man over anyone else? For all of them share the same unfilled appetite (נֶפֶשׁ) nephesh, pronounced NEH-fesh. Strong's H5315, soul, life, living being, self. This is one of the great, wide words of the Old Testament: the soul, the very life and self of a person, carrying within it the sense of a living thing’s deep desire, its craving, its appetite. When the Preacher says the appetite is never satisfied, he uses the word for the whole hungering soul, not merely the stomach. That is why this verse reaches so far into us. The emptiness he describes is not a matter of an unfilled plate but of an unfilled self, a soul that keeps reaching and reaching and never comes to rest. And here is the quiet lesson the whole chapter has been leading toward: a soul like ours, so vast in its wanting, cannot be filled by riches or years or anything under the sun. It was made to be satisfied by the God who gave it, and until He gives that satisfaction, it will wander on, hungry, forever chasing the wind. . Then he sets down a small piece of wisdom worth carrying: better the good that is actually before your eyes than the endless wandering of desire after what is not. The craving that is always roaming, never settling, never satisfied, is chasing the wind. There is more contentment in gratefully receiving the plain gift in your hand than in the restless reaching that can never be filled.

Ecclesiastes 6:10–12 (BSB)

¹⁰ Whatever exists was named long ago, and it is known what man is; but he cannot contend with one stronger than he. ¹¹ For the more words, the more futility—and how does that profit anyone? ¹² For who knows what is good for a man during the few days in which he passes through his fleeting life like a shadow? Who can tell a man what will come after him under the sun?

The chapter closes by setting us gently but firmly in our place. Whatever exists, the Preacher says, was named and settled long ago, and it is already known what man is; we are not the authors of our own lives but creatures inside a story already being told. And he adds the word that humbles all our striving: a man cannot contend with One stronger than he. We may argue and pile up words against our lot, but our arguing changes nothing and only multiplies emptiness. Then he leaves us with two questions that no wise man can answer on his own. Who really knows what is good for him in these few shadow-days we are given? And who can tell a man what will come after him, once his day is done? The Preacher is not trying to crush us with these questions but to loosen our grip. If we do not know what is good for us, and cannot secure our own tomorrow, then the only sane thing is to stop clutching and to receive both the gift and the enjoyment of it from the hand of the One stronger than we are, who alone knows what is good and holds all our days.