Ecclesiastes 2:18 Commentary and Bible Study

Here was yet another anxiety which dawned on him. Driven by a powerful urge to work and to gather substance for himself in this life, Solomon found that he was storing up not for himself, but for another. This is not an argument against ever giving anything to others or against passing on what we have worked for to the next generation. He had after all received the benefit of an immense store of materials from his father, David, in preparation for the building of the temple. What Solomon reflects on is the foolishness of the situation in which a person thinks they are gathering this world’s goods for themselves, whereas in fact they are gathering them for others. Because they cannot take those gifts with them into the next world and because they must soon leave this world, they find they have no permanent possession and cannot enjoy what they have worked so hard for, but must pass it on to those who will live after them, and who may not even know them. Did they really consider this when they expended so much effort to make their gains? Were they willing to work so hard to enjoy the benefits for so short a time? This is an attack on covetousness based not an any moral argument but on a practical one. The labour of a covetousness man is fuelled by his expectation of gain and the thought of the enjoyment of that gain, but does he consider that he may keep hold of what he has gained for such a short time before it necessarily becomes the property of another, that he is in effect doing all this labour not for himself but for the one who comes after him? Will that man regard what passes into his ownership in the same way? Will he be properly grateful to his predecessor for all his hard work? Will he deserve what he receives? More likely he will say, ‘Although I did no work to acquire all these things, and indeed I am ignorant of the immense labour involved in getting them, I take possession of them without feeling any sense of debt to the one who went before me.’ Who feels a sense of debt to dead men? Even if we did feel it, we have no means of paying it. This contravenes the basic law of labour and reward. This realisation further gnawed away at Solomon’s heart, until his instinctive enthusiasm for life turned into sickness at the pointlessness of it all.