Ver. 1. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun.] This wretched life is so pestered with evils that the Preacher could hardly cast his eye beside one or other of them. A diligent observer he was of human miseries, that he might hang loose to life and the better press upon others the vanity of doting upon it. One would wonder, surely, that our life here being so grievously afflicted, should yet be so inordinately affected; and that even by those that are “in deaths often,” that have borne God’s yoke from their youth, that have suffered troubles without and terrors within, and who, if they had hope in this life only, were, by their own confession, of all men the most unhappy. (1 Corinthians 15:19) And yet so it is; God is forced to smoke us out of our clayey cottages, and to make life unto us to be nothing better than a lingering death, that we may grow weary of it, and breathe after a better, where are riches without rust, pleasure without pain, youth without decay, joy without sorrow, Ubi nihil sit quod nolis, et totum sit quod velis, where is all that heart can wish, &c. The skilful surgeon mortifieth with straigtht binding the member that must be cut off; so doth God fit us for our cutting off, by binding us with the cords of afflictions. “He crieth not when God bindeth him,” (Job 36:13) saith Elihu of hypocrites; a generation of men, than the which nothing is more stupid and insensible; till at length, God making forcible entry upon them, doth violently break that cursed covenant that they have made with death and hell, dash the very breath out of their bodies with one plague upon another, turn them out of their earthly tabernacles, with a firma eiectione, and send them packing to their place in hell, from which they would not be stopped by all those crosses that, for that purpose, he cast in their way. And it is common among men.] Proper to men, for beasts are not subject to this evil disease, and common to all sorts of men. One evil may well be common among many, when many evils are so commonly upon one. It happened to be a part of Mithridates’ misery, that he had made himself unpoisonable. And Cato so felt this miserable life, ut causa moriendi nactum se esse gauderet, that he was glad of an occasion to go out of the world. Aeterna vita vera vita. -August. Bernard. Hypocritis nihil stupidius. -Pareus, Isa. xxviii. Cicero, in Tusc. quaest.
Ver. 2. So that he wanteth nothing.] Nothing but everything, because he dare not make use of anything almost, but is tantalised by his own baseness. He famisheth at a full feast, he starveth at a fireside. And this is often repeated in this book, because it can never enough be observed and abhorred. Yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof,] i.e., He withholdeth his grace from him, that he cannot use it to his comfort. Herein he is like a stag that hath great horns, but no courage to use them; or rather like an ass loaded with gold and victuals, but feeding upon thistles. Pray we, therefore, that God would together with riches, “give us all things richly to enjoy.” (1 Timothy 6:17) Vel mihi da clavem, vel mihi tolle feram. Either give me the key, saith one, or take away the lock. The Greeks describe a good householder to be κτητικον, φυλακτικον, κοσμητικον των υπαρχοντων, και χρηστικον, a good husband, as in getting, keeping and setting out what he hath to the best, so in making good use of it, for his own and others’ behoof and benefit. But a stranger eats it.] God so providing that if one will not, another shall; that if the owner will not eat, but sit piddling or sparing, a stranger, and perhaps an enemy, shall take away. That if men will not serve God with cheerfulness in the abundance of all things, they should fast another while, and be forced to serve their enemies in hunger and thirst and nakedness; and by the want of all be taught the worth of them, carendo quam fruendo (Deuteronomy 28:15-68)
Ver. 3. If a man beget an hundred children.] As Ahab did half a hundred, after that God had threatened to cut off all his house, as it were in contempt of the divine threatening. And as Proculus Caesar got twenty maids with child in fifteen days’ space, as Pliny reports. Erasmus mentioneth a maid of Eubcea, called Combe, that being married to a husband, brought him a hundred children. Like enough it might be luctuosa faecunditas, as Jerome saith of Laeta, who buried many children. And live many years.] So that he be trisaeclisenex, as Nestor was of old, and Iohannes de temporibus, a Frenchman, not many ages since, to whom I may add that old, old, very old man, that died of late years, having been born in Henry VII’s days, or Edward IV’s. And his soul be not filled with good.] Though he be filled with years, and filled with children, that may survive and succeed him in his estate, yet if he be a covetous wretch, a miserable muckworm, that enjoys nothing, as in the former verse, is not master of his wealth, but is mastered by it, lives beside what he hath, and dies to save charges —as the bee in Camden’s Remains. And also that he have no burial.] He leaves nothing to bring him honestly home, as they say; or if he do, yet his ungrateful, greedy heirs deny him that last honour, so that he is buried “with the burial of an ass,” (Jeremiah 22:19) as Coniah; suffered to rot and stink above ground, as that Assyrian monarch, (Isaiah 14:19,20) and after him Alexander the Great, who lay unburied thirty days together. So Pompey the Great, of whom Claudian the poet sings thus, “ Nudus pascit aves, iacet en qui possidet orbem, Exiguae telluris inops.’’—- And a similar story about our William the Conqueror, and various other greedy engrossers of the world’s good. See here the poisonful and pernicious nature of niggardliness and covetousness, that turns long life and large issue, those sweetest blessings of God, into bitter curses. And with it take notice of the just hand of God upon covetous old men, that they should want comely burial; which is usually one of their greatest cares, as Plutarch observeth. For giving the reason why old men, that are going out of the world, should be so earnestly bent upon the world, he saith, it is out of fear that they shall not have τους θρεψοντας και τους θοψαντας, friends to keep them while they are alive, and some to bury them when they are dead. I say that an untimely birth.] I affirm it in the word of truth, and upon mature deliberation, that an untimely birth—not only a naked young child, as aforesaid, that is carried ab utero ad urnam, from the womb to the tomb, from the birth to the burial—but an abortive, that coming too soon into the world, comes not at all; and, by having no name, finds itself a name, as Pliny speaks of the herb anonymus. Lib. vii. Erasm. in Chilia. Jerome, Epist. 7. Parr.