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:…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Ecclesiastes 2:23
The only fruit he has is, not only sorrows in his days, but all his days are sorrows, and his travail (not only has griefs connected with it, but is itself), grief.
John Gill on Ecclesiastes 2:23
For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief,.... All his days are full of sorrows, of a variety of them; and all his affairs and transactions of life are attended with grief and trouble; not only the days of old age are evil ones, in which he can take no pleasure; or those times which exceed the common age of man, when he is got to fourscore years or more, and when his strength is labour and sorrow; but even all his days, be they fewer or more, from his youth upward, are all evil and full of trouble, Genesis 47:9;
yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night; which is appointed for rest and ease; and when laid down on his bed for it, as the word signifies; yet, either through an eage…
Read the whole note in the consoleKeil & Delitzsch on Ecclesiastes 2:22-23
"For what has man of all his labour, and the endeavours of his heart with which he wearies himself under the sun? All his days are certainly in sorrows, and his activity in grief; his heart resteth not even in the night: also this is vain." The question literally is: What is (comes forth, results) to a man from all his labour; for "to become, to be, to fall to, happen to," is the fundamental idea of הוה (whence here הוה, γινόμενον, as at Neh 6:6, γενεεσόμενος) or היה, the root signification of which is deorsum ferri, cadere, and then accidere, fieri, whence הוּה, eagerness precipitating itself upon anything (vid., under Pro 10:3), or object.: fall, catastrophe, destruction. Instead of שׁהו…
