Ecclesiastes 5:12 - Exposition

Another inconvenience of great wealth—it robs a man of his sleep. The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much. The laborer is the husbandman, the tiller of the ground ( Genesis 4:2 ). The Septuagint, with a different pointing, renders δούλου , "slave," which is less appropriate, the fact being generally true of free or bond man. Whether his fare be plentiful or scanty, the honest laborer earns and enjoys his night's rest. But the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. The allusion is not to the overloading of the stomach, which might occasion sleeplessness in the case of the poor equally with the rich man, but to the cares and anxieties which wealth brings. "Not a soft couch, nor a bedstead overlaid with silver, nor the quietness that exists throughout the house, nor any other circumstance of this nature, are so generally wont to make sleep sweet and pleasant, as that of laboring, and growing weary, and lying down with a disposition to sleep, and very greatly needing it …. Not so the rich. On the contrary, whilst lying on their beds, they are frequently without sleep through the whole night; and, though they devise many schemes, they do not obtain such pleasure" (St. Chrysostom, 'Hom. on Stat.,' 22). The contrast between the grateful sleep of the tired worker and the disturbed rest of the avaricious and moneyed and luxurious has formed a fruitful theme for poets. Thus Horace, 'Carm.,' 3.1.21—

"Somnus agrestium

Lenis virorum non humiles domes

Fastidit umbrosamque ripam,

Non Zephyris agitata Tempe."

"Yet sleep turns never from the lowly shed

Of humbler-minded men, nor from the eaves

In Tempe's graceful vale is banished,

Where only Zephyrs stir the murmuring leaves."

(Stanley.)

And the reverse, 'Sat.,' 1.1.76, sqq . —

"An vigilare metu exanimem, noctesque diesque

Formidare males fures, inccndia, serves,

Ne to compilent fugientes, hoc juvat?"

"But what are your indulgencies? All day,

All night, to watch and shudder with dismay,

Lest ruffians fire your house, or slaves by stealth

Rifle your coffers, and abstract your wealth?

If this be affluence—this her boasted fruit,

Of all such joys may I live destitute."

(Howes.)

Comp. Juvenal, 'Sat.,' 10.12, sqq .; 14.304. Shakespeare, 'Henry IV .,' Pt. II ; act 3. sc. 1—

"Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,

Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,

Under the canopies of costly state,

And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody?"