Ecclesiastes 6:5-7

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Ecclesiastes 6:5 tn Heb “saw the sun.”
2. Ecclesiastes 6:5 tn The word “anything” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity.
3. Ecclesiastes 6:5 sn The Hebrew term translated rest here refers to freedom from toil, anxiety, and misery—part of the miserable misfortune that the miserly man of wealth must endure.
4. Ecclesiastes 6:6 tn Heb “Do not all go to the same place?” The rhetorical question is an example of erotesis of positive affirmation, expecting a positive answer, e.g., Ps 56:13 [14] (see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 947). It affirms the fact that both the miserly rich man who lives two thousand years, as well as the stillborn who never lived one day, both go to the same place—the grave. And if the miserly rich man never enjoyed the fruit of his labor during his life, his fate was no better than that of the stillborn who never had opportunity to enjoy any of the blessings of life. In a sense, it would have been better for the miserly rich man to have never lived than to have experienced the toil, anxiety, and misery of accumulating his wealth, but never enjoying any of the fruits of his labor.
5. Ecclesiastes 6:7 tn The phrase “for nothing more than” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for clarity.
6. Ecclesiastes 6:7 tn Heb “All man’s work is for his mouth.” The term “mouth” functions as a synecdoche of part (i.e., mouth) for the whole (i.e., person), substituting the organ of consumption for the person’s action of consumption (see E. W. Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 641-43), as suggested by the parallelism with נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “his appetite”).
7. Ecclesiastes 6:7 tn The term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, “desire; appetite”) is used as a metonymy of association, that is, the soul is associated with man’s desires and appetites (BDB 660 s.v. נֶפֶשׁ 5.c; 6.a).