the Week of Proper 15 / Ordinary 20
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THE MESSAGE
Ecclesiastes 2:25
Bible Study Resources
Concordances:
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- InternationalDevotionals:
- EveryParallel Translations
because who can eat and who can enjoy life apart from him?
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?
For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I?
for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?
because no one can eat or enjoy life without him.
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?
For who could eate, and who could haste to outward things more then I?
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment outside of Him?
For apart from Him, who can eat and who can find enjoyment?
and no one enjoys eating and living more than I do.
For who will eat and who will enjoy except me?
For who can eat, or who be eager, more than I?
For who can eat or who can drink except he?
How else could you have anything to eat or enjoy yourself at all?
For who can eat and drink, and who can enjoy life apart from him?
For who can eat, or who can enjoy, apart from me?
For who maye eate, drynke, or brynge eny thige to passe without him? And why?
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?
Who may take food or have pleasure without him?
For who will eat, or who will enjoy, if not I?
For who can eate? or who else can hasten hereunto more then I?
For who wyll eate or go more lustyly to his worke then I?
For who shall eat, or who shall drink, without him?
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?
Who schal deuoure so, and schal flowe in delicis, as Y dide?
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I?
For who can eat, or who else can hasten [to it] more than I?
For no one can eat and drink or experience joy apart from him.
For who can eat, or who can have enjoyment, more than I? [fn]
For who can eat or enjoy anything apart from him?
For who can eat and who can find joy without Him?
for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
For who could eat and who could enjoy, so well as I?
Who shall so feast and abound with delights as I?
for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
For who eateth and who hasteth out more than I?
For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?
Contextual Overview
Bible Verse Review
from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge
who can: Ecclesiastes 2:1-12, 1 Kings 4:21-24
Reciprocal: Genesis 48:15 - fed me Ecclesiastes 2:12 - I turned 1 Corinthians 7:31 - use
Cross-References
A river flows out of Eden to water the garden and from there divides into four rivers. The first is named Pishon; it flows through Havilah where there is gold. The gold of this land is good. The land is also known for a sweet-scented resin and the onyx stone. The second river is named Gihon; it flows through the land of Cush. The third river is named Hiddekel and flows east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.
Immediately the two of them did "see what's really going on"—saw themselves naked! They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves.
Moses saw that the people were simply running wild—Aaron had let them run wild, disgracing themselves before their enemies. He took up a position at the entrance to the camp and said, "Whoever is on God 's side, join me!" All the Levites stepped up.
I've thrown in my lot with you; You won't embarrass me, will you? Or let my enemies get the best of me? Don't embarrass any of us Who went out on a limb for you. It's the traitors who should be humiliated.
All those who make no-god idols don't amount to a thing, and what they work so hard at making is nothing. Their little puppet-gods see nothing and know nothing—they're total embarrassments! Who would bother making gods that can't do anything, that can't "god"? Watch all the no-god worshipers hide their faces in shame. Watch the no-god makers slink off humiliated when their idols fail them. Get them out here in the open. Make them face God-reality.
"If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I'm leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you'll be an even greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels."
Scripture reassures us, "No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it." It's exactly the same no matter what a person's religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help. "Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!' gets help."
Gill's Notes on the Bible
For who can eat?.... Who should eat, but such a man that has laboured for it? or, who has a power to eat, that is, cheerfully, comfortably, and freely to enjoy the good things of life he is possessed of, unless it be given him of God? see Ecclesiastes 6:1;
or who else can hasten [hereunto] more than I? the word "chush", in Rabbinical language, is used of the five senses, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting: and R. Elias says c, there are some that so interpret it here, "who has [his] sense better than I?" a quicker sense, particularly of smelling and tasting what be eats, in which lies much of the pleasure of eating; and this is of God; which interpretation is not to be despised. Or, "who can prepare?" according to the Arabic sense of the word d; that is, a better table than I? No man had a greater affluence of good things than Solomon, or had a greater variety of eatables and drinkables; or had it in the power of his hands to live well, and cause his soul to enjoy good; or was more desirous to partake of pleasure, and hasten more to make the experiment of it in a proper manner; and yet he found, that a heart to do this was from the Lord; that this was a gift of his; and that though he abounded in the blessings of life, yet if God had not given him a heart to use them, he never should have really enjoyed them.
c In Tishbi, p. 109. d Vid. Rambachium in loc.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
Solomon having found that wisdom and folly agree in being subject to vanity, now contrasts one with the other Ecclesiastes 2:13. Both are brought under vanity by events Ecclesiastes 2:14 which come on the wise man and the feel alike from without - death and oblivion Ecclesiastes 2:16, uncertainty Ecclesiastes 2:19, disappointment Ecclesiastes 2:21 - all happening by an external law beyond human control. Amidst this vanity, the good (see Ecclesiastes 2:10 note) that accrues to man, is the pleasure felt Ecclesiastes 2:24-26 in receiving God’s gifts, and in working with and for them.
Ecclesiastes 2:12
What can the man do ... - i. e., “What is any man - in this study of wisdom and folly - after one like me, who, from my position, have had such special advantages (see Ecclesiastes 1:16, and compare Ecclesiastes 2:25) for carrying it on? That which man did of old he can but do again: he is not likely to add to the result of my researches, nor even to equal them.” Some hold that the “man” is a reference to Solomon’s successor - not in his inquiries, but in his kingdom, i. e., Jeroboam.
Ecclesiastes 2:14
Event - Or, “hap” Ruth 2:3. The verb from which it is derived seems in this book to refer especially to death. The word does not mean chance (compare Ecclesiastes 9:1-2), independent of the ordering of Divine Providence: the Gentile notion of “mere chance,” or “blind fate,” is never once contemplated by the writer of this book, and it would be inconsistent with his tenets of the unlimited power and activity of God.
Ecclesiastes 2:16
Seeing that ... - Compare Ecclesiastes 1:11. Some render, “as in time past, so in days to come, all will be forgotten;” others, “because in the days to come all will have been long before forgotten.”
Ecclesiastes 2:17
I hated life - Compare this expression, extorted from Solomon by the perception of the vanity of his wisdom and greatness, with Romans 8:22-23. The words of Moses Numbers 11:15, and of Job Job 3:21; Job 6:9, are scarcely less forcible. With some people, this feeling is a powerful motive to conversion Luke 14:26.
Ecclesiastes 2:19
Labour - Compare Ecclesiastes 2:4-8.
Ecclesiastes 2:20
I went about - i. e., I turned from one course of action to another.
Ecclesiastes 2:23
Are sorrows ... grief - Rather, sorrows and grief are his toil. See Ecclesiastes 1:13.
Ecclesiastes 2:24
Nothing better for a man, than that ... - literally, no good in man that etc. The one joy of working or receiving, which, though it be transitory, a man recognizes as a real good, even that is not in the power of man to secure for himself: that good is the gift of God.
Ecclesiastes 2:26
The doctrine of retribution, or, the revealed fact that God is the moral Governor of the world, is here stated for the first time (compare Ecclesiastes 3:15, Ecclesiastes 3:17 ff) in this book.
This also is vanity - Not only the travail of the sinner. Even the best gifts of God, wisdom, knowledge, and joy, so far as they are given in this life, are not permanent, and are not always (see Ecclesiastes 9:11) efficacious for the purpose for which they appear to be given.
Clarke's Notes on the Bible
Verse 25. For who can eat - more than I? — But instead of חוץ ממני chuts mimmenni, more than I; חוץ ממנו chuts mimmennu, without HIM, is the reading of eight of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS., as also of the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic.
"For who maye eat, drynke, or bring enythinge to pass without him?" - COVERDALE.
I believe this to be the true reading. No one can have a true relish of the comforts of life without the Divine blessing. This reading connects all the sentences: "This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God;-for who can eat, and who can relish without HIM? For God giveth to man that is good." It is through his liberality that we have any thing to eat or drink; and it is only through his blessing that we can derive good from the use of what we possess.
