Ecclesiastes 6:1-12

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Now for a contrast. In Eccl. 5:18-20 we saw that not only does God give good gifts to man but also the capacity to enjoy them. He gives the gift of empowering to enjoy.

That paragraph started with the word: Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting.

Now notice how Chapter six begins.

Ecclesiastes 6:1

There is an evil which I have seen under the sun and it is prevalent among men . . .


He is the man who has managed to acquire wealth but lacks any capacity to enjoy it. He has one gift from God, the gift of prosperity, but not the other gift, the gift of empowering.

PREVALENT is the Hebrew RAB and means more common or a majority. This was the most common scenario in Solomon's day and today. More people who have wealth do not wear it well and the very wealth they worked so hard to acquire becomes a source of disillusion and disappointment.

Principle: The test of prosperity is more often failed than the test of adversity.

Prosperity Testing.

There are two categories of prosperity testing.
1. Individual prosperity testing, in which some form of success challenges the top priority of doctrine and a personal relationship with God.

2. Collective prosperity testing, in which a city, state, nation, or group becomes very prosperous. The believer sharing in that prosperity becomes distracted from doctrine, lured away from his personal relationship with God.

The entire society usually becomes very hedonistic, making pleasure the chief function in life. Hedonism is self indulgence; the pursuit of pleasure to the exclusion of truth and doctrine. It contends that the purpose of life is fulfilled in the gratification of pleasure seeking.

The pursuit of pleasure excludes the priorities of integrity both in secular and Christian life. Collective prosperity testing challenges the society to choose between God' truth and man's truth.

Every believer must pass the prosperity test before he can achieve spiritual maturity and occupation with Christ.

Prosperity cannot bring happiness apart from the believer's dependence upon God, his function in the spiritual life, his reliance upon divine truth, and walking in the Spirit.

Prosperity is the most subtle distraction to our personal relationship with God. We leave God for the pursuit of prosperity. We leave a person for a thing.

Capacity must always precede prosperity. God gives us the capacity to enjoy whatever we have at the moment.

This is related to our relationship with him. Only when we know Him will we know that what ever He gives us is good.

The only protection you have to pass this test is spiritual confidence and a personal relationship with God which comes by faith. Prosperity cannot be accompanied by joy unless the believer has faith in God and God's perfect plan and in God's perfect gifts.

The world can offer you success, sex, fame, wealth, promotion, social and professional prosperity, but all these are without capacity and joy and can make your own misery.

Passing the prosperity test develops the believer's scale of values, making them consistent with God's values, resulting in stabilizing the right priorities of life, and giving even more capacity to enjoy prosperity.

Passing this test means that the mature believer receives God's greatest prosperity, the greater blessings of time and eternity.

If you are unhappy in the midst of prosperity, it means that you do not have the empowering of God to enjoy the prosperity. You hustled for it yourself at the expense of learning, thinking, and applying doctrine. God gave it to you without the gift of capacity to teach you to know Him and depend upon Him

When you have the same joy in adversity as well as prosperity, it means you have passed the test, and are appreciating the giver rather than the gifts.

Now, here is what Solomon has not only seen but lived.

Ecclesiastes 6:2

A man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that his soul lacks nothing of all that he desires, but God has not empowered him to eat from them, for a foreigner enjoys them. This is vanity and a severe affliction.


All the money in a man could want and yet he is not given the gift of God that will allow him to enjoy them.

The verb EMPOWER is SHAWLAT and is a Hiphil stem, imperfect tense.

The word means to dominate, to master. The Hiphil stem is causative. Thus, God has not been caused to give this part of the gift. Imperfect sees something as being incomplete.

And wealth without capacity is incomplete. And the cause that would have effected the giving of the gift is the recognition that God alone prospers.

This person's mental attitude is one that says money will make me happy, secure, significant. Not a cause for God to give capacity.

Solomon now looks at the span of life of this type of man.

Ecclesiastes 6:3

If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, Better the miscarriage than he.


The word MISCARRIAGE is NA-FEL and can be used for a miscarriage, an abortion, a still born.

A man's heirs were responsible to give him a proper burial. But here all the heirs are interested in is what is left behind and how much of it they get.

Think of what it would be like to live a life void of any satisfaction. This would lead to the bitterness Solomon spoke of Eccl. 5:15-17.

Solomon says, better to not have been born.

Ecclesiastes 6:4,5

For it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity.

It never sees the sun and it never knows anything; it is better off than he.


NOW REMEMBER, THIS DEPRESSING statement is for the man under the sun, the person who sees God as irrelevant and is trying to live by secular wisdom.

In verse 6, Solomon draws a similar conclusion with death, one of the three intrusions upon secular wisdom (death, chance, evil).

Ecclesiastes 6:6

Even if the other man lives a thousand years twice and does not enjoy good things-- do not all go to one place?


Solomon is not talking about places such as heaven or hell or paradise of torments or the Lake of Fire.

In dealing with the secular he is on their level and he states what all can observe. When a positive believer dies he goes into the grave. When a negative believer dies, he goes to the same place. When an unbeliever dies, he goes to the same place too.

Men can see this, it is observable. A man dying and going to heaven or hell is not observable.

Even the miscarriage, it is buried along side the one who may have lived a long life.

Ecclesiastes 6:7

All a man's labor is for his mouth and yet the appetite is not satisfied.


Labor, and its rewards, are not able to satisfy the appetite. Man wants more and more. We saw that back in the last chapter.

Ecclesiastes 6:8

For what advantage does the wise man have over the fool? What advantage does the poor man have, knowing how to walk before the living?


The word ADVANTAGE looks into the future. The results of being wise, being a fool, being poor, even a poor man who knows how to conduct himself among people.

What is the result? WE DO NOT KNOW...

We might hear the adage that a fool and his money are soon parted.

But have you ever stopped to consider that the fool being talked of had to have money in the first place in order to lose it.

Apart from a relationship with God and being dependent upon Him we have no way of knowing where are wisdom or our foolishness or our outstanding conduct may lead us.

Ecclesiastes 6:9

What the eyes see is better than what the soul desires. This too is futility and a striving after wind.


What does eye see when it looks at your life? Is it satisfied with what it sees...or is your life lived around what the soul desires. Always more, always what you do not have. Living for the future potential of filet mignon, and not enjoying the span burger you have on you plate today.

Solomon says that is futility and like chasing the wind.

Ecclesiastes 6:10

Whatever exists has already been named, and it is known what man is; for he cannot dispute with him who is stronger than he is.


This verse reminds us who is in control. Not man but God.

We should not set our plans against God's plan. We need to fit into His plan, we cannot dispute with Him. We cannot win.

Ecclesiastes 6:11

For there are many words which increase futility. What then is the advantage to a man?


All the words spoken, all the philosophies written, all the words, mean nothing.

We can take this very practically also. The words of boasting of what one will do, someday, are empty.

Raise some teenagers that are not yours and you will hear ear fuels of the future that rarely come to pass.

Ever know someone to whom this applies. Their identity gets wrapped up in what they will do and what they will be rather than enjoying the day God has given, today.

Ecclesiastes 6:12

For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?


Life is short, we do not even know tomorrow. How do we even know if we will enjoy the outcome of the plans we make. We do not...Yet God is already there is our future knowing us now, knowing us then.

And His plan never fails . . .

Proverbs 16:9 The mind of man plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.

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