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Ecc_4:8 There is one [alone], and [there is] not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet [is there] no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither [saith he], For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This [is] also vanity, yea, it [is] a sore travail.
Ver. 8. There is one alone, and there is not a second.] A matchless miser, a fellow that hardly hath a fellow; a solivagant, or solitary vagrant, that dare not marry for fear of a numerous offspring. Child he hath none to succeed him, nor brother to share with him, and yet "there is no end of all his labour"; he takes incessant pains and works like a horse, "neither is his eye satisfied with riches"; that lust of the eye - as St John calls covetousness {1Jn_2:16} - is as a bottomless gulf, as an unquenchable fire, as leviathan that wanteth room in the main ocean, or as behemoth, that "trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth." {Job_40:23}
Neither saith he, For whom do I labour and bereave my soul of good?] Si haec duo tecum verba reputasses, Quid ago? respirasset cupiditas et avaritia paululum, saith Cicero to Nevius. {a} If thou wouldst but take up those two words, and say to thyself, What do I? thy lust and covetousness would be somewhat rebated thereby. But lust is inconsiderate and headlong; neither is anything more irrational than irreligion. The rich glutton bethought himself of his store, and resolved to take part of it, {Luk_12:17} so did Nabal; but this wretch here hath not a second, he "plants a vineyard and eats not of the fruit thereof." {1Co_9:7}
And bereave my soul of good,] i.e., Deprive myself of necessary conveniences and comforts, and defraud my genius of that which God hath given me richly to enjoy; {1Ti_6:17} or, bereave my soul of good, of God, of grace, of heaven, never thinking of eternity, of "laying up for myself a good foundation," that I may "lay hold upon eternal life"; {1Ti_6:19} but by low ends, even in religious duties, making earth my throne and heaven my footstool. "This is vanity" in the abstract; "this is a sore travail," because, Nulla emolumenta laborum, No good to be gotten by it - no pay for a man’s pains; but, as the bird that sitteth on the serpent’s eggs, by breaking and hatching them brings forth a perilous brood, to her own destruction, so do those that sit abrood on the world’s vanities.
{a} Orat. pro Quinti