Ecclesiastes 5:10 - Exposition

He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver . "Silver," the generic name for money, as Greek ἀργύριον and French argent . The insatiableness of the passion for money is a common theme of poets, moralists, and satirists, and is found in the proverbs of all nations. Thus Horace ('Ep.,' Ephesians 1:2 . 56): "Semper avarus eget;" to which St Jerome alludes ('Epist.,' 53), "Antiquum dictum est, Avaro tam deest, quod habet, quam quod non habet." Comp. Juvenal, 'Sat.,' 14.139—

"Interea pleno quum forget sacculus ere,

Crescit amor nummi, quantum ipsa pecnnia crevit."

"For as thy strutting bags with money rise,

The love of gain is of an equal size."

(Dryden.)

There is much more of similar import in Horace. See 'Carm.,' 2.2. 13, sqq .; 3.16. 17, 28; 'Ep.,' 2.2, 147; an, 1 Ovid, Fast.,' 1.211—

"Creverunt etopes et opum furiosa cupido,

Et, quum possideant plura, plura volunt."

"As wealth increases grows the frenzied thirst

For wealth; the more they have, the more they want."

Nor he that loveth abundance with increase . The Authorized Version scarcely presents the sense of the passage, which is not tautological, but rather that given by the Vulgate, Et qui amat divitias fructum non capiet exeis , "He who loveth abundance of wealth hath no fruit therefrom;" he derives no real profit or enjoyment from the luxury which it enables him to procure; rather it brings added trouble. And so the old conclusion is again reached, this is also vanity. Hitzig takes the sentence as interrogative, "Who hath pleasure in abundance which brings nothing in?" But such questions are hardly in the style of Kohelcth, and the notion of capital without interest is not a thought which would have been then understood. The Septuagint, however, reads the clause interrogatively, καὶ τίς ἠγάπησεν ἐν πλήθει αὐτῶν ( αὐτοῦ , al .) γέννημα ; "And who has loved [or, has been content with] gain in its fullness?" But מִי is not necessarily interrogative, but here indefinite, equivalent to "whosoever."