preeminence · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct
earth
אֶ֖רֶץ'E.retz
H776
the earth (at large · noun, common feminine singular absolute
king
מֶ֥לֶךְMe.lekh
H4428
a king · noun, common masculine singular absolute
served
נֶעֱבָֽדne.'e.Vad
H5647
to work (in any sense) · verb, niphal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
field
לְשָׂדֶ֖הle.sa.Deh
H7704
a field (as flat) · preposition + noun, common masculine singular absolute
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
1 Kings 4:7-23 And Solomon had twelve officers over all Israel, which provided victuals for the king and his household: each man his month in a year made p…
Psalms 115:16 The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.
Genesis 1:29-30 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the…
Psalms 104:14-15 He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth;
Genesis 3:17-19 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying…
1 Samuel 8:12-17 And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, an…
1 Chronicles 27:26-31 And over them that did the work of the field for tillage of the ground was Ezri the son of Chelub:
Proverbs 13:23 Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ecclesiastes 5:9-17
Solomon had shown the vanity of pleasure, gaiety, and fine works, of honour, power, and royal dignity; and there is many a covetous worldling that will agree with him, and speak as slightly as he does of these things; but money, he thinks, is a substantial thing, and if he can but have enough of that he is happy. This is the mistake which Solomon attacks, and attempts to rectify, in these verses; he shows that there is as much vanity in great riches, and the lust of the eye about them, as there is in the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life, and a man can make himself no more happy by hoarding an estate than by spending it.
I. He grants that the products of the earth, for the support and…
"The profit (produce) of the earth is (ordained) for (the common good of) all: even the king himself is served by (the fruits of) the field" (Ch2 26:10). Therefore the common Lord of all, high and low, will punish at last those who rob the "poor" of their share in it (Pro 22:22-23; Amo 8:4-7).
John Gill on Ecclesiastes 5:9
Moreover, the profit of the earth is for all,.... Or, "the excellency of the earth in" or "above all things is this" (y); that God most high rules over all the earth, and is higher than the kings of it, and all oppressors in it; or in all respects there is a preference, a superior excellency in the country as opposed to the city, especially in this, that there are not so many tumults, riots, and oppressions there; though this is mostly understood of the preference and superior excellency of agriculture, or tillage of the earth. So the Targum,
"the excellency of the praise of tilling the earth is above all things:''
and to the same purpose Jarchi and Aben Ezra; and the profit arising from i…
The author, on the other hand, now praises the patriarchal form of government based on agriculture, whose king takes pride, not in bloody conquests and tyrannical caprice, but in the peaceful promotion of the welfare of his people: "But the advantage of a country consists always in a king given to the arable land." What impossibilities have been found here, even by the most recent expositors! Ewald, Heiligst., Elster, Zckl. translate: rex agro factus = terrae praefectus; but, in the language of this book, not עבד but מלך עשׁה is the expression used for "to make a king." Gesen., Win., de Wette, Knobel, Vaih. translate: rex qui colitur a terra (civibus). But could a country, in the sense of it…
The Church Fathers
Regarding the literal interpretation: No one is lord, owner and ruler over a field that lies fallow where thorns and thistles grow; but the field that is well tilled has a king. Thereby the owner is called a king.…When the defenders of the teaching that God's providence rules over everything argue that there is providence, they generally say, Like a weave clearly shows that there is a weaver—whether or not he is seen—in the same way he who sees a well tilled field gets the impression that it has someone who leads and rules over it.… When you, therefore, see a soul that is well tilled, that sows with tears and is ready to reap with shouts of joy, then this tilled field has a king, the Logos, who leads, rules and reigns.
"A lover of money will never be satisfied with money; a lover of abundance has no wheat. This too, is futility! As goods increase, so do those who consume them; what advantage, then, has the owner except what hi eyes see?" Wherever we read 'silver', according to the ambiguity of the Greek term, it can be translated as 'money', since each has the meaning of the Greek "argurion. "More precisely Tullius is said to have called these men 'pecuniary', who have many small savings, that is wealth in cattle. [(because the Latin for cattle is pecus)] For they were called this in antiquity. But little by little the word devolved into the one used here through misuse. Therefore he is described as greedy because he is never sated by wealth, and the more he has, the more he desires. Horace also agrees with this sentiment, who says, "always the miser is wanting" [Horat. Epist. I. 2, 56.], and too the noble historian, since "avarice is diminished neither by possessions, nor by lack of them" [Sallust Catil. 11, 3.]. Nothing therefore, says Ecclesiastes can aid a man who possesses riches, unless only this: that he sees what he possesses. For the greater his wealth, the more he will have a larger number of servants, who use up his amassed wealth. But if he will only see what he has, he will be able to take more than the food of one man.
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
Agriculture · LAWS CONCERNING — LAWS CONCERNING
Agriculture Or Husbandry · Contributes to the support of all — Contributes to the support of all
Kings · Dependent on the earth — Dependent on the earth
Land · Products of, for all — Products of, for all
Measure · about a bushel and a half — about a bushel and a half
Riches · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Stork · FIGURATIVE — FIGURATIVE
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).
For every official is under orders from higher up, and matters of justice get lost in red tape and bureaucracy. Even the king milks the land for his own profit! Or For one official watches over another, and higher officials are over them. The land benefits from a king who cultivates the field. The NLT understands these verses to mean that bureaucracy brings oppression rather than justice, all the way up to the king (see also 1 Sam 8:11-18). This should not be surprising because that is how bureaucracies tend to function. Others interpret the verses along the lines of the alternate translation above: The king and his officials provide oversight to restrain injustice and oppression. The former…
He who loves money will never be satisfied with money. Whoever loves [to perform God’s] commandments never has his fill of them.12See the Gemara in Maseches Makkos 10a which interprets that this verse is referring to Moshe.
And he who loves abundance. Of many commandments
Will have no produce. And among them none has a specific and distinguishable commandment, e.g., the building of the Beis Hamikdosh or a synagogue, or [writing] a beautiful Torah scroll.
This too is vanity. So are these two verses expounded upon in the Midrash, and there are other suitable interpretations, but I stated this one first because it is related to the matter of, “and there are higher ones over them,” which Scri…
