Bible Commentaries

The vanity of human courses in the works of pleasure, planting, building, equipage, amassing wealth, etc., Ecclesiastes 2:1-11. Wisdom preferable to folly, Ecclesiastes 2:12-14; yet little difference between the wise and the foolish in the events of life, Ecclesiastes 2:15-17. The vanity of amassing wealth for heirs, when whether they will be foolish or wise cannot be ascertained, Ecclesiastes 2:18-21. There is much sorrow in the labor of man, Ecclesiastes 2:22, Ecclesiastes 2:23. We should enjoy what the providence of God gives, Ecclesiastes 2:25, Ecclesiastes 2:26.

I will prove thee with mirth - This is well expressed by the author so often referred to. Having tried speculative knowledge in vain, passion and appetite whisper: -

"From the rugged thorny road

Of wisdom, which so ill repays thy toil,

Turn back, and enter pleasure's flowery paths.

Go, take thy fill of joy, to passion give

The reins; nor let one serious thought restrain

What youth and affluence prompt."

I said of laughter, It is mad - Literally "To laughter I said, O mad one! and to mirth, What is this one doing?"

Solomon does not speak here of a sober enjoyment of the things of this world, but of intemperate pleasure, whose two attendants, laughter and mirth are introduced by a beautiful prosopopoeia as two persons; and the contemptuous manner wherewith he treats them has something remarkably striking. He tells the former to her face that she is mad; but as to the latter, he thinks her so much beneath his notice, that he only points at her, and instantly turns his back.

To give myself unto wine, (yet acquainting [נהג noheg, "guiding"] mine heart with wisdom) - I did not run into extremes, as when I gave up myself to mirth and pleasure. There, I threw off all restraint; here, I took the middle course, to see whether a moderate enjoyment of the things of the world might not produce that happiness which I supposed man was created to enjoy here below.

I builded me houses - Palace after palace; the house of the forest of Lebanon, 1 Kings 7:1, etc.; a house for the queen; the temple, etc., 2 Chronicles 8:1, etc.; 1 Kings 9:10, etc., besides many other buildings of various kinds.

I made one gardens and orchards - פרדסים pardesim, "paradises." I doubt much whether this be an original Hebrew word. ferdoos, is found in the Persian and Arabic; and signifies a pleasant garden, a vineyard. Hence our word paradise, a place full of delights. How well Solomon was qualified to form gardens, orchards, vineyards, conservatories, etc., may be at once conceived when we recollect his knowledge of natural history; and that he wrote treatises on vegetables and their properties, from the cedar to the hyssop.

Pools of waters - Tanks and reservoirs.

To water therewith the wood - Aqueducts to lead the water from the tanks to different parts.

Servants and maidens - For my works, fields, folds, and various domestic labors.

Servants born in any house - Besides those hired from without, he had married couples in the precincts of his grounds, palaces, etc., who, when their children grew up, got them employment with themselves.

Great and small cattle - Oxen, neat, horses, asses, mules, camels, and such like; with sheep and goats. And multitudes of most of these he needed, when we are told that his household consumed daily ten stall-fed oxen, with twenty from the pasture, with a hundred sheep; besides harts, roebucks, fallow deer, fatted fowls, and other kinds of provision, Probably, such another court for splendor and expense was not in the universe.