Ecclesiastes 10:18 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

By much slothfulness, &c.— Through slothfulness the building will decay, and through idleness of hands the house will drop; Ecclesiastes 10:19 while they make feasts to divert themselves, and spend their life in making themselves merry with wine and oil; money supplying with them the want of every thing else. Lastly, Solomon concludes this proof, from Ecclesiastes 10:16. (see on ch. Ecclesiastes 9:15.) with a moving explanation upon the unhappy state of a nation, whose fate it is to be governed by men of such a stamp as he had before described; and, to make it more conspicuous, he opposes it to the happiness of another nation, whose king, being descended from noble ancestors, may be presumed to have had a proper education, will imitate those virtues through which his forefathers acquired their nobility, and will make use of ministers or princes like himself; Ecclesiastes 10:16-17. The several mischiefs and disorders before complained of, are more likely to happen under the reign of an upstart king, than of an hereditary one; as he does not only want experience and education, but is also often necessitated to support an ill-gotten authority by the worst means. Those whom he employs under him must probably be such as have helped him to the throne, or been his friends in his former life; men of no worth, who will mind nothing but eating and drinking from morning till night. While such men as these imagine that their new-gotten wealth may supply the want of all qualifications soever, the constitution must suffer from their neglect and incapacity, as much as a house, the roof of which is not repaired, through the slothfulness of the owner, Ecclesiastes 10:18-19.