Ecclesiastes 2:25

For who can eat?.... Who should eat, but such a man that has laboured for it?

For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I? Who can eat, or who else can hasten (hereunto), more than I? - Hebrew, yaachuwsh (H2363) chuwts (H2351) mimeniy (H4480): Who can hasten more than I, and beyond me?

Who can more freely and fully enjoy the comforts of this life than I did? This verse is added to confirm what he said in the foregoing verse from his own experience, which was the more considerable, because no man ever was a more capable judge of these matters, none could either have more creature-comforts, or more addict himself to the enjoyment of them, or to improve them to better advantage, than he did; and therefore he could best tell what was the greatest good to be found in them, and whether they were able of themselves, without God’ s special gilt, to yield a man satisfaction. Who else can hasten hereunto, to wit, to the procuring and enjoying of them? who can pursue them with more diligence, or obtain them with more speed and readiness, or embrace them with more greediness and alacrity?

Ecclesiastes 2:25 For who can eat, or who else can hasten [hereunto], more than I?Ver. 25. For who can eat, or who can hasten? &c.] And yet I have found - and so shall you - that tranquillity and true happiness, the kingdom of God, doth not consist in meats and drinks. A Turk may believe sensualities in his fool’ s paradise, but no servant of God is a slave to his palate.

(25) Hasten.—Habakkuk 1:8. More than I.—There is a various rendering, which has the authority of the LXX., and which has every appearance of being right: “without Him.”

Verse 25. For who can eat - more than I?] But instead of חוץ ממני chuts mimmenni, more than I; חוץ ממנו chuts mimmennu, without HIM, is the reading of eight of Kennicott's and De Rossi's MSS., as also of the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic. "For who maye eat, drynke, or bring enythinge to pass without him?" - COVERDALE. I believe this to be the true reading. No one can have a true relish of the comforts of life without the Divine blessing. This reading connects all the sentences: "This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God;-for who can eat, and who can relish without HIM? For God giveth to man that is good." It is through his liberality that we have any thing to eat or drink; and it is only through his blessing that we can derive good from the use of what we possess.

25. For who can eat] The sequence of thought is obscure, and many commentators follow the LXX. and the Syriac version, as implying an original text which gives a better meaning, Who can eat and who can hasten (i.e. be eager in this pursuit of pleasure), or, as some take the words, have enjoyment, without Him, i.e. without God. This, it is obvious, follows on the thought of the preceding verse, that the calm enjoyment of which it speaks as “good,” is “from the hand of God.” Those who keep to the received text give it very different meanings, of which the two most prominent are: (1) that we have, as it were, the words of the labourer whose lot the Debater here admired, “Who has a right to eat and enjoy himself, if not I?” the thought being parallel to that of 2 Timothy 2:6 (“The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits”); and (2) that the Debater speaks in his own person, “Who could eat or enjoy more than I? Who therefore can better attest that it is all in vain without the gift of God.” On the assumption that the writer was one who had come into contact with Greek thought, we may trace in this utterance partly the old faith of Israel reasserting itself and giving a higher sanction to the life of regulated enjoyment which the Greek teachers counselled, partly, perhaps, the mingling of Stoic and Epicurean counsels natural in a mind that had listened to both and attached himself definitely to neither. So in the Meditations of Aurelius we have like thoughts: πάνταγὰρταῦταθεῶνβοηθῶνκαὶτύχηςδειται (“all these things require the help of the Gods and of Fortune”); and again τὰτῶνΘεῶνπρονίαςμεστὰ (“the works of the Gods are full of Providence” (Meditt. ii. 3). Koheleth, of course, as an Israelite, used the language of the wiser Stoics, like Cleanthes, and spoke of one God only.

25. More than I — Better, Except myself. “The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits,” and Koheleth has the first right to the good which he gathers.