All things [are] full of labour; man cannot utter [it]: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
Ver. 8. All things are full of labour.] Labor est etiam ipsa voluptas. Molestation and misery meet us at every turn. The whole world is a "sea of glass" (for its vanity), "mingled with fire" (for its vexation), -. Rev 4:6 Vota etiam post usum, fastidio sunt: All things are sweeter in the ambition than in the fruition. There is a singular vanity in this splendid misery. One well compares it to a beautiful picture, drawn with white and red colours in sackcloth, which afar off is very lovely, but near by it is like the filthy matter of a sore or wound, purulent rottenness, or the back of a galled horse. No man ever yet found any constant contentation in any state; a yet may his outward appearance deceive others, and another's him.
Man cannot utter it.] If Solomon cannot, no man can; for "what can the man do that cometh after the king?" Ecc 2:12
The eye is not satisfied with seeing.] Though these be the two ‘learned senses,' as Aristotle calls them, whereby learning is let into the soul, yet no man knows so much but he would know more. Herillus, therefore, and those other philosophers that placed the happiness of a man in the knowledge of natural causes and events, were not in the right. There is a curse of dissatisfaction which lies upon the creature. The soul, that acts in and by the outward senses, flickers up and down, as Noah's dove did, but finds no firm footing; sharks and shifts from one thing to another for contentment, as the bee doth from flower to flower for honey, and desires still more things in number, and new things for manner. Hence the particles in the Hebrew that signify and and or, come of a word that signifieth to desire, b because the desires of man would have this and that, and that and another; and doth also tire itself, not knowing whether to have this or that or that or the other, so restless it is, after utmost endeavours of plenary satisfaction, which this life affords not.
a Chiron, cum ob iustitiam Dii permitterent ut perpetuo viveret, maluit mori, quod offenderetur taedio rerum semper eodem tenore recurrentium.
b ו and, א of אוה .