Ecclesiastes 4:2 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

I praised; I judged them more happy, or less miserable; which he seems to deliver not only as the judgment of the flesh, or of the sense, or of men in misery, as this is commonly understood, but as his own judgment. For this is most true and certain, that setting aside the advantage which this life gives him for the concerns of the future life, which Solomon doth not meddle with in the present debate, and considering the uncertainty, and vanity, and manifold vexations of mind, and outward calamities of the present life, a wise man would not account it worth his while to live, and would choose death rather than life. The dead which are already dead; those which are quite dead; who possibly are here opposed to them that, in respect of their deplorable and desperate condition, are even whilst they live called dead men, Isaiah 26:19, and said to die daily, 1 Corinthians 15:31. The living which are yet alive; which languish under their pressures, of whom we can only say, as we use to speak of dying men, They are alive, and that is all.