Ecclesiastes 1:4 [One] generation passeth away, and [another] generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
Ver. 4. One generation passeth away, &c.] Therefore, no happiness here, because no assurance of life or long continuance: -
“ Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo:
Et subito casu, quae valuere ruunt. ”
Xerxes, looking upon his huge army, wept to think that, within less than a hundred years, not one of those many should be left alive. Mortality is the stage of mutability; mere man is but the dream of a dream, but the generation of a fancy, but an empty vanity, but the curious picture of nothing, a poor feeble, unable, dying flash. How then can he here work out unto himself a happiness worth having? Why should he lay up and "load himself with thick clay," Hab 2:6 as if his life were riveted upon eternity?
But the earth endureth for ever.] As a stage, whereon the several generations act their parts and go off; as the centre of the world and seat of living creatures, it stands firm and unmovable. That was an odd conceit of Plato's that the earth was a kind of living creature, having stones for bones, rivers for veins, trees for hairs, &c. And that was worse of Aristotle, teaching the world's eternity; which some smatterers in philosophy fondly strive to maintain out of this text, not rightly understanding the force of the Hebrew phrase for ever, which ofttimes, and here, signifies a periodical perpetuity, a long indefinite time, not an infinite. see 2Pe 1:3 ; 2Pe 1:10 The whole engine shall be changed. By ever then is meant, till the end of all things.