Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun [is] grievous unto me: for all [is] vanity and vexation of spirit.
Ver. 17. Therefore I hated life,] i.e., I less loved it than I had done; I saw mortality to be a mercy, with Cato; I was neither fond of life, nor afraid of death, with Queen Elizabeth. I preferred my coffin before my cradle, my burial day before my birthday a Ecc 7:1 A greater than Solomon threatens those that love life with the loss of life, Luk 17:33 and hath purposely set a particular vanity and vexation upon every day of our life, that we may not dote upon it, since "we die daily." "Sufficient to the day is the evil (that is, the misery) thereof." Quicquid boni est in mundo, saith Augustine; what good thing soever we have here, is either past, present, or to come. If past, it is nothing; if to come, it is uncertain; if present, yet it is insufficient, unsatisfactory. So that, while I call to mind things past, said that incomparable Queen Elizabeth, behold things present, and expect things to come, I hold them happiest that go hence soonest, b
a Usque adeone mori miserum. - Virgil.
b Camden's Elisabeth, fol. 325.