Ecclesiastes 4:2,3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

Wherefore I praised the dead, &c. I judged them less miserable. For this is certain, that setting aside the future life, which Solomon doth not meddle with in the present debate, and considering the uncertainty, and vanity, and manifold calamities of the present life, a wise man would not account it worth his while to live. Yea, better is he than both they “Much more desirable than either of these is it not to have come into the world at all; and so to have had no sense of the miseries which the dead have formerly felt, and which the living now undergo.”

Ecclesiastes 4:2-3

2 Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.

3 Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.