Ecclesiastes 9:6 - Exposition

Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now ( long ago ) perished . All the feelings which are exhibited and developed in the life of the upper world are annihilated (comp. Ecclesiastes 9:10 ). Three are selected as the most potent passions, such as by their strength and activity might ideally be supposed to survive even the stroke of death. But all are now at an end. Neither have they any more a portion forever in any thing that is done under the sun. Between the dead and the living an impassable gulf exists. The view of death here given, intensely gloomy and hopeless as it appears to be, is in conformity with other passages of the Old Testament (see Job 14:10-14 ; Psalms 6:5 ; Psalms 30:9 ; Isaiah 38:10-19 ; Ecclesiasticus 17:27, 28; Bar. 3:16-19), and that imperfect dispensation. Koheleth and his contemporaries were of those "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" ( Hebrews 2:15 ); it was Christ who brightened the dark valley, showing the blessedness of those who die in the Lord, bringing life and immortality to light through the gospel ( 2 Timothy 1:10 ). Some expositors have felt the pessimistic utterances of this passage so deeply that they have endeavored to account for them by introducing an atheistic objector, or an intended opposition between flesh and spirit. But there is not a trace of any two such voices, and the suggestion is quite unnecessary. The writer, while believing in the continued existence of the soul, knows little and has little that is cheering to say about it's condition; and what he does say is not inconsistent with a judgment to come, though he has not yet arrived at the enunciation of this great solution. The Vulgate renders the last clause, Nec habent partem in hoc saeculo et in opere quod sub sole geritur . But "forever" is the correct rendering of לְעוֹלָם , and Ginsburg concludes that Jerome's translation can be traced to the Hagadistic interpretation of the verse which restricts its scope to the wicked The author of the Book of Wisdom, writing later, takes a much more hopeful view of death and the departed (see Ecclesiastes 1:15 ; Ecclesiastes 2:22-24 ; Ecclesiastes 3:1 ; Ecclesiastes 6:1-12 :18; Ecclesiastes 8:17 ; 15:3, etc.).