Ecclesiastes 4:5 Commentary and Bible Study

What alternative is there? What happens if we decide to opt out of the rat race, and just let others overtake us? We sit down in our quiet corner and fold our hands together and give up striving to be winners. This is the opposite policy. The man in the previous verse toils hard and takes every opportunity improve his skills, but finds that his hard work only brings trouble. This one has given up all work in response to this hostile reaction. You sense the envy that you stir up in others when you are successful, or you find yourself driven by the same envy as you look at others doing better than you, so you decide to opt out. But you haven’t really overcome the problem of envy; you have just tried to ignore it, but it is still there inside you and inside others.It doesn’t work, says Solomon. The person who does this ends up eating his own flesh. This is his graphic way of saying that a policy of opting out, of not striving at all is going to bring us into destitution, and we will be unable to keep body and soul together. If you opt out of life, you cannot survive.