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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 6:2 - 6:2
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To עשֶׁר וּנְךָ, as at 2Ch 1:11, וְךָ and honour is added as a third thing. What follows we do not translate: “and there is nothing wanting ... ;” for that אֵינֶנּוּ with the pleonastic suff. may mean: “there is not,” is not to be proved from Gen 39:9, thus: and he spares not for his soul (lxx καὶ οὐκ κ.τ.λ) what he always desires. חָסֵר is adj. in the sense of wanting, lacking, as at 1Sa 21:1-15 :16; 1Ki 11:22; Pro 12:9. לְנַפְשׁוֹ, “for his soul,” i.e., his person, is = the synon. לְעַצְמוֹ found in the later usage of the language; מִן (different from the min, Ecc 4:8) is, as at Gen 6:2, partitive. The נָכְרִי, to whom this considerable estate, satisfying every wish, finally comes, is certainly not the legal heir (for that he enters into possession, in spite of the uncertainty of his moral character, Ecc 2:19, would be in itself nothing less than a misfortune, yet perfectly in order, Ecc 5:13 [14]), but some stranger without any just claim, not directly a foreigner (Heiligst.), but, as Burger explains: talis qui proprie nullum habet jus in bona ejus cui נכרי dicitur (cf. נָכִרְיָּה of the unmarried wife in the Book of Proverbs).
That wealth without enjoyment is nothing but vanity and an evil disease, the author now shows by introducing another historical figure, and thereby showing that life without enjoyment is worse than never to have come into existence at all: