Ecclesiastes 4:1 Commentary and Bible Study

Solomon then turns his thought in a new direction and considers another aspect of the vanity of life under the sun: the abuse of power and the suffering which the disempowered experience at the hands of their powerful oppressors. Is the world a place of justice and fair dealing for all, where the principles of mercy and kindness operate universally? Far from it, it is a place of oppression where there seems little prospect of putting right the gross abuse of power that exists. There are those with no power or influence, who are at the mercy of callous and self-seeking individuals working only for their own advantage, poor people with no one to speak up for them and no wealth to enable them to improve their lot. To whom can they go for justice, when justice itself is in the pocket of the rich? Their lives are made a daily misery so that while the well-off have everything they could desire and more, the poor, not through any lack of hard work, struggle to obtain enough to feed their families and make ends meet. The rich seem incapable of putting themselves in the position of the poor and asking how they would like to be treated if their positions were reversed. They seem to imagine that their wealth has come to them due to some intrinsic superiority that makes them deserve it. Meanwhile the downtrodden weep at the bitterness of their situation. When they consider who they can turn to, they find no one who will sympathise with them or raise a finger to help them. There is no one in whose heart there is a spark of pity, capable of being fanned to a flame; there is no one who will act for them or put in a word for them with those who are in power. The system is designed for the benefit of those who already have the most and there is no one to whom the oppressed can turn who will listen to them. This sad state of affairs is a direct consequence of the selfishness and heartlessness that has entered the human soul as a result of the fall.