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. If a man beget a hundred children - If he have the most numerous family and the largest possessions, and is so much attached to his riches that he grudges himself a monument; an abortion in the eye of reason is to be preferred to such a man; himself is contemptible, and his life worthless. The abortion comes in with vanity - baulks expectation, departs in darkness - never opened its eyes upon the light, and its name is covered with darkness - it has no place in the family register, or in the chronicles of Israel. This, that hath neither seen the sun, nor known any thing is preferable to the miser who has his coffers and granaries well furnished, should he have lived a thousand years, and had a hundred children. He has seen - possessed, no good; and he and the abortion go to one place, equally unknown, and wholly forgotten.
Related Commentaries of Ecclesiastes 6:3
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.