Ecclesiastes 2:23

For all his days [are] sorrows, and his travail grief,.... All his days are full of sorrows, of a variety of them; and all his affairs and transactions of life are attended with grief and trouble;

For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity. All his days are sorrows and his travail grief. Same sentiment as Ecclesiastes 2:21, interrogatively.

For all his days are sorrows; or, though all his days were sorrows, i.e. full of sorrows. For this seems added to aggravate the evil mentioned in the foregoing verse. Though he took great and unwearied pains all his days, yet after death he hath no more benefit by it than another man hath. His travail grief; the toils of his body are, or were, accompanied with the vexations of his mind. Taketh not rest in the night; either because his mind is distracted, or his sleep broken, with perplexing cares and fears.

Ecclesiastes 2:23 For all his days [are] sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.Ver. 23. For all his days are sorrows, &c.] All the days of the afflicted are evil, and every day hath a sufficient evil laid upon it by God. "Few and evil" were the days of Jacob’ s pilgrimage. God gave him not a draught only of the cup of affliction, but made him a diet drink. "Man is born to trouble," saith Eliphaz, "as the sparks fly upward." Man and miserable are in a manner terms convertible. He that remembers that himself is a man, will not think much of any sorrow betides him, saith the heathen orator. For, “ Si nisi res cuius nulla est contraria votis Vivere nemo potest, vivere nemo potest. ” Yea, his heart taketh no rest in the night.] As a clock can never stand still so long as the plummets hang thereat, so neither can a worldling’ s heart for cares and anxieties. These gnats will not suffer him to sleep; these flies of Egypt are continually stinging him, Nocte ac die non dabunt requiem, as those tyrants. Night and day he is disquieted with them; he lies upon a pillow stuffed with thorns. Not so the godly man; he contracts his cares into a narrow compass, communes with his own heart upon his bed, and having made all even with God, sleeps undisturbed. Jacob rests sweetly when his head lay upon a hard stone at Bethel. Ahasuerus cannot rest, though upon a bed of down, but calls for the chronicles. It was wisely done of Burleigh, Lord Treasurer, to put off his cares together with his clothes; when he laid by his gown he would commonly say, Lie there Lord Treasurer, and so quietly compose himself to take his sleep. "In nothing be careful," saith the apostle, "but let the peace of God guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." O μεμνημενοςοτιεστινανθρωπος, &c. - Isocr. Camden.

(23) The fact that the wise man must surrender his acquisitions exhibits the inutility of the painful toil by which he has gained them.

Verse 23. His days are sorrows] What a picture of human life where the heart is not filled with the peace and love of God! All his days are sorrows; all his labours griefs; all his nights restless; for he has no portion but merely what earth can give; and that is embittered by the labour of acquisition, and the disappointment in the using. This is also vanity.] Emptiness of good and substantial misery.

23. yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night] The verse speaks out the experience of the men who labour for that which does not profit. There is no real pleasure, even at the time. The “cares of this world” come together with “the pleasures of this life” (Luke 8:14). We trace the same yearning after the “sweet sleep” that lies in the far-off past as in ch. Ecclesiastes 5:12, perhaps also in the “almond tree” of ch. Ecclesiastes 12:5. So has the great master-poet portrayed the wakefulness of successful ambition, the yearning for the sleep of the “smoky crib,” or even of the ship-boy on the mast, the terrible conclusion, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”Shakespeare, Henry IV. Part II. Act iii. 1. No “poppies” or “mandragora” can restore that sleep to the slave of mammon or the worn out sensualist.

23. His days… sorrows — Better, All his days his business is anxious and vexing: and often fails, both in its prosecution and results, to yield the satisfaction and comfort he had expected. Surely, this is also vanity.