Ecclesiastes 2:26 - Exposition

For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight . The subject "God" is not, in the Hebrew, an omission which is supposed to justify its virtual insertion in Ecclesiastes 2:25 . The Vulgate boldly supplies it here, Homini bone in conspectu sue dedit Deus . To the man that finds favor in God's sight ( 1 Samuel 29:6 ; Nehemiah 2:5 ), i . e . who pleases him, ha gives blessings, while he withholds them or takes them away from the man who displeases him. The blessings specified are wisdom, and knowledge, and joy. The only true wisdom which is not grief, the only true knowledge which is not sorrow ( Ecclesiastes 1:18 ), and the only joy in life, are the gifts of God to those whom he regards as good. But to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up. The sinner takes great pains, expends continuous labor, that he may amass wealth, but it passes into other. (more worthy) hands. Horace, 'Carm.,' Ecclesiastes 2:14 . 25—

"Absumet heres Caecuba dignior Servata centum clavibus."

The moral government of God is here recognized, as below, Ecclesiastes 3:15 , Ecclesiastes 3:17 , etc; and a further thought is added on the subject of retribution: That he may give to him that is good before God . This idea is found in Proverbs 28:8 , "He that augmenteth his substance by usury and increase, gathereth it for him that hath pity upon the poor;" and Ecclesiastes 13:22, "The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the righteous" (comp. Job 27:16 , Job 27:17 ). So in the parable of the talents, the talent of the unprofitable servant is given unto him who had made best use of his money ( Matthew 25:28 ). This also is vanity . It is a question what is the reference here. Delitzsch considers it to be the striving after pleasure in and from labor (verse 24); Knobel, the arbitrary distribution of the good things of this life; but, put thus baldly, this could hardly be termed a "feeding on wind;" nor could that expression be applied to the "gifts of God" to which Bullock confines the reference. Wright, Hengstenberg, Gratz, and others deem that what is meant is the collecting and heaping up of riches by the sinner, which has already been decided to be vanity (verses 11, 17, 18); and this Would limit the general conclusion to a particular instance. Taking the view contained in verse 24 as the central idea of the passage, we see that Koheleth feels that the restriction upon man's enjoyment of labor imposed by God's moral government makes that toil vain because its issue is not in men's hands, and it is a striving for or a feeding on wind because the result is unsatisfying and vanishes in the grasp.