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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Ecclesiastes 6:4
Comments
What Solomon presents as an advantage seems to have little to commend it. The stillborn child comes into this world of vanity and raises no expectation of future prospects but is counted as a life that never really got started. After the initial sorrow of the parents, they abandon that truncated life and accept that there is nothing further they can do to protect or care for the one who would have been. They must let go of any hopes they had and consign that one to the obscurity and darkness of the grave. The child may not even be named and if it is named privately by the parents, that name will continue only in their memories and will not be generally known. But this stillborn child has an advantage over the man who seems to get so close to the goal of material success, says Solomon, for it avoids the ambiguity of future possibilities, and makes clear from the start that such things will never be obtained. Because no false hopes are raised, no future disappointments are possible; no dreams of earthly happiness are fostered and life is far more likely to be recognised for what it is – utter vanity. Solomon prefers this stark representation of things to the delusions of wealth and riches because it is more realistic. This is his shocking way of getting us to see the worthlessness of earthly hopes. Don’t imagine that because success seems to come so close that it is really within our grasp; the truth is that it is a mirage that deceives the naïve spirit.
Application
How vain life must be, if it is better never to have grappled with it, in the deluded belief that there is something real to be gained from life without God. You engage with life with all the enthusiasm of a runner setting out to win a race. But you are doomed to fail before you start and all the energy and optimism you put into it will be ground down by the vanity of life, leaving you with nothing at the end. What begins well will end badly. Better like the untimely birth to have left before you began. If this child who departs in darkness, is better off, then the man who lives what seems like a full life also departs in darkness, and so he does, for he goes to the place from which there is no return.
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