Ecclesiastes 6:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

An hundred children, i.e. very many children, to whom he intends to leave his estate. Live many years; which is the chief thing that he desires, and which giveth him opportunity of increasing his estate vastly. The days; he saith days, because the years of men's life are but few. Be not filled with good; hath not a contented mind and comfortable enjoyment of his estate whilst he lives. Have no burial; and if after his death he hath either none, or a mean and dishonourable burial, because his sordid and covetous carriage made him hateful and contemptible to all persons, his children and heirs not excepted, and he was by all sorts of men thought unworthy of any testimonies of honour, either in his life or after his death. Thus he describes a man who lives miserably, and dies ignominiously. An untimely birth; which as it never enjoyed the comforts, so it never felt the calamities, of this life, which are far more considerable than its comforts, at least to a man that denied himself the comforts, and plunged himself into the toils and vexations, of this life.

Ecclesiastes 6:3

3 If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.