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Ecc_2:23 For all his days [are] sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.
Ver. 23. For all his days are sorrows, &c.] All the days of the afflicted are evil, {Pro_15:15} and every day hath a sufficient evil laid upon it by God. {Mat_6:34} "Few and evil" were the days of Jacob’s pilgrimage. {Gen_47:9} God gave him not a draught only of the cup of affliction, but made him a diet drink. "Man is born to trouble," saith Eliphaz, {Job_5:7} "as the sparks fly upward." Man and miserable are in a manner terms convertible. He that remembers that himself is a man, will not think much of any sorrow betides him, saith the heathen orator. {a} For,
“ Si nisi res cuius nulla est contraria votis
Vivere nemo potest, vivere nemo potest. ”
Yea, his heart taketh no rest in the night.] As a clock can never stand still so long as the plummets hang thereat, so neither can a worldling’s heart for cares and anxieties. These gnats will not suffer him to sleep; these flies of Egypt are continually stinging him, Nocte ac die non dabunt requiem, as those tyrants. {Jer_16:13} Night and day he is disquieted with them; he lies upon a pillow stuffed with thorns. Not so the godly man; he contracts his cares into a narrow compass, communes with his own heart upon his bed, and having made all even with God, sleeps undisturbed. {Psa_3:5; Psa_4:8} Jacob rests sweetly when his head lay upon a hard stone at Bethel. Ahasuerus cannot rest, though upon a bed of down, but calls for the chronicles. It was wisely done of Burleigh, Lord Treasurer, to put off his cares together with his clothes; when he laid by his gown he would commonly say, Lie there Lord Treasurer, and so quietly compose himself to take his sleep. {b} "In nothing be careful," saith the apostle, "but let the peace of God guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." {Php_4:6-7}
{a} O ìåìíçìåíïò ïôé åóôéí áíèñùðïò , &c. - Isocr.
{b} Camden.