The preacher tells us another evil that crushes the souls of men under the sun. In a few sentences, that evil will be attributed to God, so we should get in front of that and ask what we’re talking about here and if something got lost in translation. This is good a good apologetics reflex by the way: when something raises and eyebrow and creates a contradiction, go digging. See what other translations have to say or read another commentary in case there’s some Greek or Hebrew at play. In this case, the term “evil” is being more attributed to dark times or conditions, not a moral problem. Solomon points out the futility of spending your days gathering wealth, acknowledging that riches, wealth, and honor are gifts from God, but not paired with the ability to enjoy them (also a gift from God). Instead, through inheritance or some other wealth transfer, people who didn’t have to toil for riches can enjoy the fruits of them. Instead, focusing on any of this is meaningless. We should appreciate God, who is the source of our blessings whether it’s material things or the ability to enjoy them. What’s greater? The wealth or the love of the one who would give you wealth? Your spiritual wealth is eternal and not dependent on you putting in double triple overtime and it’s not subject to market crashes. Your priorities should follow the eternal. Besides which, a mature spiritual mind should understand that God is the distributor of good times and bad and we should not complain about our lives. I know, that’s a huge ask and I don’t live up to it myself, but you should at least have that in the back of your mind as something to strive for. If you have good days or bad, that’s God’s determination and to challenge Him on it is to suggest that you know better than He who is sovereign. Not making any promises on God’s behalf here, but perhaps surrendering your will to His plan with grace and dignity and a heart without complaint will demonstrate you’ve learned something and no longer require hard times to make you into something more? Again, I’m not promising anything. Some of life’s difficulties are just consequences of a fallen world, but having a better heart about these things has no possible consequences, so you may as well go for it and hope for the best possible outcome.

The alternative is to spend your days grumbling and preferring to have never been born. Solomon gives the example of a man who lived a profoundly long life and had an enormous family and wanted for nothing but, due to his deep spiritual discontentment, would be better off never existing to begin with. We’re provided the imagery of a stillborn child, which is a disheartening reminder of life itself as hevel–vapor. There’s something poetically morose about a stillborn in that it’s giving birth to death. You try to grasp on to worldly things to give you comfort and security, but even being successfully born is not a sure thing. Day 0 of your life and you’re struck with a painful reminder that nothing has been promised to you but eternity. Still, the stillborn has not walked the earth and toiled and been burned by life’s many challenges, so the stillborn is simply not experienced enough to fall to despair, so in that, lacking a spiritual turmoil, Solomon speculates that it would be preferable to suffer such a fate than to spend a century on this earth accomplishing everything one reasonably could but still having no hope because all your hope was placed in untrustworthy and temporary things. If the rich man who hates life and the stillborn are bound for the same destination, why not just cut to the chase, after all?

Most of your labor is about feeding yourself and staying alive. Making it to the next day. He asks then, what does it matter to be wise or a fool? Who cares if you can navigate the upper social classes? Everyone is just trying to eat and make it to the next day, anything layered on top of that is manmade nonsense by comparison. Better to enjoy the things in front of you and what’s realistically attainable than to pine after things that are far beyond you and endlessly wanting more. This is another chasing of the wind. Replacing the love of God and appreciation of His many small blessings with yearning and stress for the material will hollow you out. Biblical wisdom literature deals with wisdom for the spiritual and material life, but these passages highlight the reality that spiritual wisdom will directly relate to practical material living. By focusing your priorities rightly, you can rearrange your earthly priorities. Being content with the portion that God has given you can be freeing. Maybe you don’t need to get 3 more college degrees and chase new jobs ever 6 months if you’re making enough to live responsibly and trusting the rest of your life to God. I’ll spell it out because it won’t sit with me if I don’t: This isn’t a condemnation of trying to better yourself or accomplish things in the physical world. If you can be a rocket scientist with a 7 figure salary, go for it. It’s about motive. Are you seeking more training and higher paying jobs because you’re envious of what others have, obsessed over your status and how you’re perceived, or just anxious about the next disaster wiping out your savings? The teacher would argue that more riches won’t solve this.