Musings On Man's Work (Ecclesiastes 3:9-10).
‘What profit has the workman in that in which he labours?
We return here to the question of purposelessness. The workman who labours gains nothing from his labours apart from his wages. Nothing of what he labours on will benefit him. It is thus to him a pointless and empty exercise. And this is even true of the godly man. And yet man has to work hard and long to achieve what he does. Such is the pointlessness of his life. All that is permanent that he gains by his labours is for others.
‘I have seen the hard exertions which God has given to the sons of men to be exercised with.'
We note that there is almost a repeat of Ecclesiastes 1:16 here. In Ecclesiastes 1:16 he had said, ‘It is an unhappy business that God has given to the sons of men to be exercised with.' Now that situation has improved to simply being ‘hard exertions which God has given to the sons of men to be exercised with.' The improvement presumably arises from the introduction of the godly man who has found joy in his labour. But it still depresses him, for he sees the hard exertions which are required of man as given to him by God. What he observes others as doing (‘men are busy with') he sees as a God given-task (consider Genesis 3:17-19), but one which apparently leads nowhere (unless, of course, it is performed towards God).