Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 39:6 Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.
Psalms 49:10 For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others.
Luke 16:27-28 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
1 Kings 11:11-13 Wherefore the LORD said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have co…
Psalms 17:14 From men which are thy hand, O LORD, from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid…
Ecclesiastes 1:3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
Ecclesiastes 1:13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to t…
Ecclesiastes 2:4-9 I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards:
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ecclesiastes 2:17–end
Business is a thing that wise men have pleasure in. They are in their element when they are in their business, and complain if they be out of business. They may sometimes be tired with their business, but they are not weary of it, nor willing to leave it off. Here therefore one would expect to have found the good that men should do, but Solomon tried this too; after a contemplative life and a voluptuous life, he betook himself to an active life, and found no more satisfaction in it than in the other; still it is all vanity and vexation of spirit, of which he gives an account in these verses, where observe,
I. What the business was which he made trial of; it was business under the sun (Ecc 2:…
One hope alone was left to the disappointed worldling, the perpetuation of his name and riches, laboriously gathered, through his successor. For selfishness is mostly at the root of worldly parents' alleged providence for their children. But now the remembrance of how he himself, the piously reared child of David, had disregarded his father's dying charge (Ch1 28:9), suggested the sad misgivings as to what Rehoboam, his son by an idolatrous Ammonitess, Naamah, should prove to be; a foreboding too fully realized (1Ki. 12:1-18; Kg1 14:21-31).
John Gill on Ecclesiastes 2:18
Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun,.... The great works he made, the houses he built; the vineyards, gardens, and orchards he planted, &c. what he got by his labour, his riches and wealth; and what he also got, not by the labour of his hands, but of his mind. Some understand this of the books he wrote; which were a weariness to his body, and fatigue to his mind; and which he might fear some persons would make an ill use of: Aben Ezra interprets it of his labour in this book. All which he had no great regard unto, since it was to be left to another;
because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me; because he could not enjoy the fruits of his labour himse…
If the whole earth is not worth the kingdom of heaven, surely he who has left a few fields leaves nothing, as it were; even if he has given up a house or much gold, he ought not to boast nor grow weary. Moreover, we should consider that if we do not relinquish these things for virtue's sake, we leave them behind later when we die and often, as Ecclesiastes reminds us, to those to whom we do not wish to leave them. Why, then, do we not relinquish them for the sake of virtue, so that we may inherit a kingdom? LIFE OF ST.
"Thus I hated all my achievements labouring under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who succeeds me. And who knows whether he will be wise or foolish? - And he will control all my possessions which I toiled and have shown myself wise under the sun. This, too, is vanity. "He seems to be reconsidering wealth and riches, because according to the Gospel, being snatched by sudden death, we do not know with which kind of heir we die - whether he will be a fool or wise who will enjoy the fruits of our toil. This was also the case with Solomon: for he did not regard his son Roboam as similar to himself. We learn from this that a son is not worthy of his father's heredity if he is foolish. But to me studying the work it seems that he is speaking more about spiritual labour, because a wise man will work on the Scriptures for days and nights, and will compose books and will hand down his memory to his descendants, and nonetheless all this will come into the hands of fools, who repeatedly find in them the seeds of heresy, according to the perversity of their own mind, and waste other men's efforts. For if the text now refers to Ecclesiastes' personal wealth, it was necessary to say about toil and wealth: "and he will control all my possessions which I toiled and have shown myself wise under the sun." For what is wise in the pursuit of earthly riches?
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Heir · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Industry · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Inheritance · UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO — UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO
Murmuring · . — .
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Keil & Delitzsch on Ecclesiastes 2:18
"And I hated all my labour with which I laboured under the sun, that I should leave it to the man who shall be after me;" i.e., not: who shall come into existence after me, but: who shall occupy my place after me. The fiction discovers itself here in the expression: "The king," who would not thus express himself indefinitely and unsympathetically regarding his son and successor on the throne, is stripped of his historical individuality. The first and third שׁ are relat. pron. (quem, after the schema egymologicum עמל עמל, Ecc 2:11, Ecc 9:9, and qui), the second is relat. conj. (eo) quod. The suffix of שׁאן refers to the labour in the sense of that which is obtained by wearisome labour, accomp…
The Teacher came to hate life because of its griefs (1:18), toils (2:18), and apparent futility (2:19-20).
Rashi on Ecclesiastes 2:17
And [so] I hated life. He was prophesying about the generation of Rechovam, who were wicked [people].22During Rechovam’s reign, ten tribes defected and joined forces with him.
