“There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil. If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place? All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind. Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?”

The Sin of Ungrateful Man

1. The Evil of Ingratitude

“There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil.”

Solomon has written at some length concerning the tragedy of the man who is obsessed with worldly matters. He wrote of the satisfaction he found in his work, saying in Ecclesiastes 2:10,

“And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.”

Only to shortly thereafter address his discontent with his toil, saying in Ecclesiastes 2:18–19,

“I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.”

In Ecclesiastes 4:7–8 Solomon stated,

“Again, I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, ‘For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?’ This also is vanity and an unhappy business.”

And last week we closed with the observation in Ecclesiastes 5:18–20,

“Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.”

This left us with a question – one I could have done a better job in answering. Are these things which Solomon identifies as “the gift of God,” truly gifts, or are they a curse that draws our eyes and occupies our days while we distract ourselves from and ignore our Creator with the things He has given us? In a sense, it’s both. If you live a life of comfort – whether that be the extravagant luxury that Solomon himself lived in, or you simply have a comfortable, stable life – then the answer to the question as to if the gifts are blessings or curses, lies in where your eye is fixed. If you see the gifts and continually praise God, knowing and acknowledging that they’ve come from Him, then these things are truly blessings. This can be seen in the figure of Job, with Job 1:1–5 describing both the material blessings of his life, and his standing before the Lord,

“There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.’ Thus Job did continually.”

From the standpoint of material wealth Job was doing exceptionally well, but we can see that it wasn’t his fortune that he held regard for, it was the Lord. Conversely, after Jesus’ initial conversation with the rich young ruler, we read in Matthew 19:21–26,

“Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’ But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”

For Job, God was first and all that he owned was secondary. For the rich young ruler, his possessions were first, and God was secondary. So for Job the gifts of God were truly blessings, but for the rich young ruler, the condition of his heart turned what could have easily been a blessing into a point of condemnation. From what we read in Ecclesiastes 6, we can begin to understand that a core part of what distinguishes gracious acceptance of a blessing from sinning against the Lord is the matter of gratitude – and in this we can see the wealth of evil that exists in ingratitude. It’s incredibly easy to enjoy God’s blessings when He is our highest priority. If I look at the product of my toil – for this example I’ll use the work that by far means the most to me, which is all the writing I’ve gotten to do on Scripture – what am I actually seeing? The reality is that any work I’ve done stands as a testament to God’s blessings. It is He who sustains the spark of electricity within me, firing my central nervous system. There’s not a beat of my heart within my chest, or a breath of air that enters my lungs that He has not graciously provided. The sun rose today, I opened my eyes and got out of bed, not because I set an alarm, woke up, and decided to start my day, but because He willed and provided for these things to take place. Hebrews 1:3 says of Jesus that,

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power…”

He is literally upholding and sustaining, not just reality as this grand, unquantifiable thing, but every piece and particle that makes up all of existence. So if I look at my work with gratitude, if I see the material comforts in my life, or the catalog of writing I’ve been able to compile around understanding and appreciating the Word of God, and I acknowledge with a gracious heart that all these things are not products of my own work or will, but are from God, then they’re blessings. But if my heart is bent on serving myself, if I see the work of my hands as only being, just that, the work of my hands, and I have no sense of gratitude for what the Lord has given, then I have neglected the Creator in favor of the creation. To do this isn’t just to walk the path of blind idiocy (though it certainly is that), it’s evil. To work the work you’ve been given with no satisfaction, no gratitude for God’s work in your life is to rob the Lord of the glory and honor that is due to Him and Him alone. And before someone takes this and thinks that you can’t feel a sense of dissatisfaction with your job, Solomon’s not saying that you can’t switch professions, or that you can’t dislike working in a certain field. But when all things are approached with the gratitude that acknowledges God for the work that He has done and the blessings that He’s poured out, it changes our attitude and approach to everything, even those that might be undesirable. What this all returns back to is God being the foundation of all that you are. Because if you are the picture of what Solomon describes, a man to whom God has given wealth, possessions, and honor, who lacks nothing of all that he desires, and just as Job did, you lose all these things, with God as your foundation, though you may be hurt, you’re far from destroyed. But if you, being wicked and ungrateful, were obsessed only with the material things and neglected God Himself, then their end is your end. And what Solomon is telling us, and what is tragically true, visible throughout the world, is that if the possessions are all you have, then the possessions will never be enough. You will have them, you will rest upon them, but in this you will know no rest. Because the ungrateful heart can never appreciate what God has given and can only ever continually seek after more – and this is the great evil of ingratitude that lies heavy upon mankind.

2. The Restlessness of Ingratitude

“If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he. Even though he should live a thousand years twice over, yet enjoy no good—do not all go to the one place? All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.”

Jesus says in Matthew 11:28–30,

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Something that we can struggle to realize, yet is all too real, is the extent of restlessness that exists in a heart that is hardened with ingratitude. Illustrating the severity of this condition, Solomon compares the obsessive, ungrateful man to a stillborn child, a baby who will never know anything of the world. There’s a brief remark that Solomon makes in reference to the man before he compares him to the child – that his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, but specifically, he also has no burial. In our modern culture we seem to lean farther and farther away from many traditional practices of funerals and burials. Death is not viewed positively, which is fair, but because of this we’ve distanced ourselves and diminished the things surrounding death. The simple matter is that there’s a goodness to the funereal process – not that death and loss are necessarily good things, but that there is goodness in remembering and mourning those who we have lost. Jesus teaches as part of the introduction of the Sermon on the Mount in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:4,

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

And Paul councils us in Romans 12:15,

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

There is purpose and goodness in the act of mourning, and there can be healthy remembrance and the processing of grief in the act of burying a loved one. But we also have to consider the imagery of burial – it’s not without reason that we use the terminology that someone has been “laid to rest.” But for the person whose heart is estranged from the Lord, for the one who has looked upon what God has given and said ungratefully that it was insufficient, how could there ever be any rest? How could they truly be given a burial and laid to rest? Returning to Jesus’ words from Matthew 11 and the promise that those who come to Him will be given rest, we have to understand the width and breadth of the rest He offers, and how that is rejected when we reject Him. God offers us a rest in this life that the rest of the world remains separated from, a peace that surpasses understanding that guards our hearts and minds. We are also offered a rest that endures into eternity, a home in the presence of God, which John describes in Revelation 22:1–5,

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

There are two clear and decisive paths – either a current and eternal state of rest, or a current and eternal state of restlessness, and being polar opposites, no middle ground exists between the two. To represent these two paths, Solomon contrasts a man who has lived a materially prosperous life, yet has remained restless, dissatisfied, and ungrateful for what he’s been given, compared to a stillborn infant. Not only does this comparison show us the gravity of the condition of the prosperous, yet restless man, it also affirms something that can sometimes be hotly contested within certain Christian circles, which is the eternal condition of little children who pass away. For those who insist that water baptism is required for salvation there are varied teachings around these children’s eternal condition outside of heaven, be that in an imagined limbo, purgatory, or in hell itself. However what Scripture consistently confirms is that these children whose lives seem to end before they begin are not exiled or cast out, but are given rest. This is supported through Jesus welcoming the little children to Him, and His declaration in Matthew 19, Mark 10, and Luke 18, that it is to the little children that the kingdom of heaven belongs. But one of the earliest affirmations as to the salvation of children comes from David, and it is spoken concerning Solomon’s older brother. After David commits adultery with Bathsheba, she becomes pregnant, and David subsequently has her husband killed. Once the child is born he becomes sick, and the prophet Nathan prophesies that he will die. In 2 Samuel 12:15–23 we see the whole account, saying,

“Then Nathan went to his house. And the LORD afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and he became sick. David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. And the elders of his house stood beside him, to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. On the seventh day the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, ‘Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us. How then can we say to him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.’ But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, ‘Is the child dead?’ They said, ‘He is dead.’ Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. He then went to his own house. And when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate. Then his servants said to him, ‘What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive; but when the child died, you arose and ate food.’ He said, ‘While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, “Who knows whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?” But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.’”

While it’s necessary to understand the full story, it’s those final words that land so heavily. “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” The question then becomes, where exactly is it that David expects himself to go? We have an answer to that in Psalm 23:6,

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”

David did not anticipate an eternity of darkness in the pit of Sheol, but a home in the presence of the Lord forever – the place where he will go to join his son. Bearing this in mind, that God’s provision is not limited to the grown and accountable, who can count the cost and joyfully follow Him, but is extended to the little ones who, as Solomon writes, will never see the sun, and will never know anything of this world, we can see the extremes of ungrateful restlessness, pitted against perfect, divine rest. The invitation of the Christ is one of true rest and true peace – rest in the midst of chaos, peace in the midst of war. But if we have forsaken God, if we’ve looked up His great generosity and mercy with hard, ungrateful hearts, if our minds are continually focused on endless work, always on the next task, always on acquiring more, because what we’ve been given is never enough, then how could we possibly know God’s rest? We are called to be fruitful and multiply, and in the social security of family, God can give us a sense of rest. We might amass great possessions and wealth, and in these things God may bless our lives. But without Him as our foundation, there is no point in long life, an expansive family, or a wealth accrued over generations. Whatever we do will only be the vapor of the passing moment, here and gone, with no rest. We can chase our cravings and desires endlessly, continually trading one for the other, never satisfied, as Solomon writes,

“All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.”

But if we cannot be grateful for what God has given, if we cannot look past the creation to revere and worship the creator, how could we ever appreciate and truly know the rest that has been provided? The little child who died before fully entering life is more blessed, more provided and cared for in the eternal rest of God – but for the ungrateful their restlessness is a curse they will bear through life and into eternity.

3. The Ignorance of Ingratitude

“For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.”

To be fair, the wise man should have a vast advantage over the fool – but as Solomon already addressed, there can be a backlash to wisdom. As we’ve read previously in Proverbs 9:10,

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”

But it seems, as shown in Solomon’s writings, that there can be a wise man who, despite the best of beginnings, turns his wisdom inward and ultimately uses it for the gratification of himself. A wise man will die the same as a fool, and just as a poor man who knows social courtesy and proper conduct in the world will still find himself poor, the wise man who has ungratefully misaimed and misused his wisdom will have no gain over the fool. The people of Israel who were freed from slavery in Egypt witnessed the works of God with their own eyes. They saw the plagues unfold, culminating with the Passover, and the death of all the firstborn in Egypt. They were guided by the pillars of cloud and fire as they were freed from their oppression and entered into the wilderness. They witnessed the wind and the parting of the Red Sea, crossing through the waters, delivered safely while the pursuing armies of Pharaoh were destroyed. They received the Law from the Lord, the manna from heaven, the water from the rock – and they complained continually. While they certainly feared the Lord, their fear was never consistent enough to stop them from rebelling at every turn. They complained over hunger and thirst, they complained about Moses’ leadership and the loss of the comforts they’d known in Egypt… As slaves. And because of their complaining and their poor faith, they were rebuked and dealt harshly with. Solomon writes,

“Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.”

The people were not content and gracious over the work of the Lord that was unfolding before them, the manna on the ground that was provided each morning, but rather were repeatedly tempted by their own wandering appetite. Numbers 11:1–6 we read,

“And the people complained in the hearing of the LORD about their misfortunes, and when the LORD heard it, his anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them and consumed some outlying parts of the camp. Then the people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the LORD, and the fire died down. So the name of that place was called Taberah, because the fire of the LORD burned among them. Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, ‘Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.’”

Now again, to reiterate, the people have been freed, called to the Lord, separated unto Him and are being guided to the promised land. They are being fed and sustained with miracle bread from heaven and they’re actively complaining because the food was better when they were slaves. If it seems incredibly shortsighted and ungrateful, that’s only because it is. In Numbers 11:31–33 we see the situation continue,

“Then a wind from the LORD sprang up, and it brought quail from the sea and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and a day’s journey on the other side, around the camp, and about two cubits above the ground. And the people rose all that day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail. Those who gathered least gathered ten homers. And they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck down the people with a very great plague.”

Now, a few clarifying points, one is that this is one of the cases where it’s commonly thought that the Old Testament is being hyperbolic with the numbers to emphasize the point, because for each person to gather ten homers would have been literally billions of quail, like multiple donkey loads per person. What then is the point that’s being made? We’re being shown that the people of Israel who the Lord was richly providing for again, were unimaginably greedy and ungrateful. They need food, God gives them food. They complain about the food, God relents from destroying them all and gives them the food they ask for. There’s not a word of thanks, not a prayer of gratitude toward God, no song of praise for His great provision, just a constant, mindless toil to collect more than anyone could possibly consume. There was no relief in the action, no rest received in the food, and no gratitude or reverence offered toward God – only a staggering degree of idiocy as the people thoughtlessly chase a craving, never satisfied with what has been provided. There is never a case where it is okay to see the creation to the point of ignoring the Creator, there’s never a case where it’s permissible to chase fleshly cravings and desires and ignore the glory of the Lord that is in our midst – to do so isn’t just ungrateful, it’s not just sinful, it’s stupid. It takes a profoundly ignorant person to forsake honoring what God has done in favor of continually seeking more – and that’s what we see the people of Israel do repeatedly, it’s what we see from the model of the ungrateful man that Solomon writes of, and it’s something we must continually guard against in our own lives, lest in our complacency we ask foolishly, and deny God the glory and gratitude He is so rightly due.

“Whatever has come to be has already been named, and it is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one stronger than he. The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man? For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?”

When something is without a name it is without assignment, it’s vague, mysterious, and undefined. We name things to put them in proper order, to give classification and with that, hopefully, a degree of understanding. Drain cleaner and maple syrup both have their own, highly important names. A grizzly bear and a labrador retriever are again, given separate and distinct names because they’re separate and distinct animals. True, each of these things are different in their makeup, their chemical compositions, or their overall natures. But when someone says, “drain cleaner,” you don’t need an exact anatomical breakdown of its chemical structure to understand the function it serves and potential danger it holds. The brown bear is a direct threat to your life, while the black lab is a friendly companion, and you don’t need an extensive genetic profile on the two in order to understand these differences, because the general understanding of all that information is distilled down into their identifiable names. Genesis 1:26–27 says,

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

In Genesis 2:19–20 we’re given further information around the creation of woman specifically, but we’re also shown the relationship that God gave man with nature through this process of naming,

“Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.”

God made everything, yet He allowed us to assign names to the animals that inhabit the world along with us, He afforded us the privilege of identifying and classifying them as we saw and understood them. We even see after Eve is made as a helper and companion for Adam that he gives her the designation of “woman,” saying in Genesis 2:23,

“… This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

This is an interesting distinction, because Adam has been allowed to name every animal, but even though he calls Eve “woman” and even though he’s the one who first calls her “Eve” after the fall, God had already given the classification that both of them were considered part of mankind. This means that out of every living creature on the planet, it was man alone who was made in the image of God, and man alone who was named by God. This is an important distinction because while God has ultimate knowledge of everything, He allowed man to name the animals by our own understanding and reason, but we were named by God, not according to our own understanding. Again, this doesn’t mean that we understand nature better than God does – He made everything, and passages like Job 38-41 show a glimpse of the unimaginably intricate depth with which God understands every facet of what He has created, with chapter 39 drawing a particular emphasis to the patterns and behaviors of the animal kingdom. And while what Jesus says in Matthew 10:29 has a direct application to God’s care and provision for us,

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”

It also shows the depth of God’s knowledge and control over even the smallest elements of His creation. God is Master, and He has granted us dominion within the natural order of the world He has made. And yet we in our arrogance take what has been given and go a step farther, as we have in our sin since the very beginning. We do not have the provision and authority over ourselves as we have been given in regard to the animals, to assign and define based on our own understanding. We have been named before we were made, classified and assigned after the image of God, and it is a mark of the greatest ignorance and stupidity to think that we can determine just who and what we are, and what we actually require during our days under the sun. This is not to say that we cannot ask our Father for His provision, or to appeal to Him for something we desire for Him to bring into our lives – 1 Peter 5:6–7 tells us,

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

But there is a world of difference between submitting before God, and seeking His will in our lives, and imagining that we somehow know better and can determine what is needed in our lives for ourselves. Solomon writes,

“The more words, the more vanity, and what is the advantage to man?”

And this cuts to the heart of man’s broken condition to a staggering degree. We are blessed with the power of speech, to palely imitate what God, in whose image we’re made, can do. He speaks reality into existence, He speaks order into being from the chaos, and we are privileged to speak, to name, to give a sense of order and structure to the world around us through speech. But in this, broken through the fall, we indulge in the idiotic delusion, not just that we can order and identify, but that we can reorder and reshape the world, the things in it, and worst of all, ourselves into something we find more desirable. But we’re creatures of vanity, we’re a wisp of vapor – when we die to our flesh and are born again in Christ we’re given substance and eternal life through His victory over the grave – but in our flesh we’re nothing, and when we weave a tapestry of words, intent upon remaking and redefining who we are on our own terms, we only add to the vapor, we only heap useless vanity on top of useless vanity. We show ourselves not just as sinful, not just as profoundly stupid, but as deeply, tragically ungrateful when we look upon what the Lord has made and set into motion and say in our hearts, “I can do better.”