Ecclesiastes 4:3

Yea, better [is he] than both they which hath not yet been,.... That is, an unborn person; who is preferred both to the dead that have seen oppression, and to the living that are under it; see Job 3:10.

Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun. Who hath not seen - nor experienced.

Which hath not yet been; who was never born. How this is true, see on the foregoing verse. Not seen, i.e. not felt; for as seeing good is put for enjoying it, , so seeing evil is put for suffering it, as hath been more than once observed.

Ecclesiastes 4:3 Yea, better [is he] than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun.Ver. 3. Yea, better is he than both they.] The heathen could say, Optimum non nasci: proximum mori. Life is certainly a blessing of God, though never so calamitous. Why is living man sorrowful? saith the prophet: and it is as if he should say, Man, if alive, hath some cause of comfort amidst all his miseries; if he may escape though but "with the skin of his teeth," and have his life for a prey, he should see matter of thankfulness, and say, "It is the Lord’ s mercy that I am not consumed" - that I am yet on this side hell. But those that have set their hearts upon earthly things, if ever they lose them, they are filled almost with unmedicineable sorrows; so as they will praise the dead above the living, and wish they had never been born. These are they whom Solomon in this sentence is by some thought to personate.

Verse 3. Which hath not yet been] Better never to have been born into the world, than to have seen and suffered so many miseries.

3. Yea, better is he than both they] As the utterance of a personal feeling of despair we have a parallel in the words of Job (Ecclesiastes 3:11-16). As expressing a more generalised view of life we have multiform echoes of the thought in the Greek writers, of whose influence, direct or indirect, the book presents so many traces. Thus we have in Theognis: Πάντωνμὲνμὴφῦναιἐπιχθονίοισινἄριστον,μηδʼ ? ἐσιδεῖναὐγὰςὀξέοςἠελίου·φύνταδʼ ? ὄπωςὤκισταπύλαςἈΐδαοπερῆσαι,καὶκεῖσθαιπολλὴνγῆνἐπαμησάμενον.“Best lot for men is never to be born,Nor ever see the bright rays of the morn:Next best, when born, to haste with quickest treadWhere Hades’ gates are open for the dead,And rest with much earth gathered for our bed.”425–428. Or in Sophocles: μὴφῦναιτὸνἄπαντανικᾷλόγοντὸδʼ ?, ἐπεὶφανῇ,βῆναικεῖθενὄθενπερἤκει,πολὺδεύτερον, ὡςτάχιστα.“Never to be at allExcels all fame;Quickly, next best, to passFrom whence we came.”Oed. Col. 1225. More remote but of yet deeper significance is the fact that the same feeling lies at the root of Buddhism and its search after Nirvana (annihilation or unconsciousness) as the one refuge from the burden of existence. Terrible as the depression thus indicated is, it is one step higher than the hatred of life which appeared in chs. Ecclesiastes 1:14, Ecclesiastes 2:17-18. That was simply the weariness of a selfish satiety; this, like the feeling of Ηakya Mouni when he saw the miseries of old age and disease and death, and of the Greek Chorus just quoted, rose from the contemplation of the sorrows of humanity at large. It was better not to be than to see the evil work that was done under the sun. In marked contrast with this dark view of life we have the words: “Good were it for that man not to have been born” in Matthew 26:24, as marking out an altogether exceptional instance of guilt and therefore of misery.

3. Better… not yet been — The dead have suffered; the living now suffer. The abortion that perishes unborn, as infants which never saw light, escapes all suffering.