Ecclesiastes 6:5 - Exposition

It has seen nothing of the world, known nothing of life, its joys and its sufferings, and is speedily forgotten. To" see the sun" is a metaphor for to "live," as Ecclesiastes 7:11 ; Ecclesiastes 11:7 ; Job 3:16 , and implies activity and work, the contrary of rest. This hath more rest than the other ; literally, there is rest to this more than to that . The rest that belongs to the abortion is better than that which belongs to the rich man. Others take the clause to say simply, "It is better with this than the other." So the Revised Version margin and Delitzsch, the idea of "rest" being thus generalized, and taken to sights a preferable choice. Septuagint, καὶ οὐκ ἔγνω ἀναπαύσεις τούτῳ ὑπὲρ τοῦτον , "And hath not known rest for this more than that"—which reproduces the difficulty of the Hebrew; Vulgate, Neque cognovit distantiam boni et malt , which is a paraphrase unsupported by the present accentuation of the text. Rest, in the conception of an Oriental, is the most desirable or' all things; compared with the busy, careworn life of the rich man, whose very moments of leisure and sleep are troubled and disturbed, the dreamless nothingness of the still-born child is happiness. This may be a rhetorical exaggeration, but we have its parallel in Job's lamentable cry in Ecclesiastes 3:1-22 . when he "cursed his day."