Ecclesiastes 9:5

He sarcastically verifies his comparison in favour of a living dog. "For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, and have no more a reward; for their memory is forgotten. Their love, as well as their hatred and their envy, has long ago perished, and they have part no more for ever in all that is done under the sun." The description of the condition of death begins sarcastically and then becomes elegiac. "They have no reward further," viz., in this upper world, since there it is only too soon forgotten that they once existed, and that they did anything worthy of being remembered; Koheleth might here indeed, with his view shrouded in dark clouds, even suppose that God also forgot them, Job 14:13. The suff. of אהב, etc., present themselves was subjective, and there is no reason, with Knobel and Ginsburg, to render them objectively: not merely the objects of their love, and hatred, and envy, are lost to them, but these their affections and strivings themselves have ceased (Rosenm., Hitzig, Zckl., and others), they lie (Kevar 'avadah) far behind them as absolutely gone; for the dead have no part more in the history which is unfolding itself amid the light of the upper world, and they can have no more any part therein, for the dead as not living are not only without knowledge, but also without feeling and desire. The representation of the state after death is here more comfortless than anywhere else. For elsewhere we read that those who have been living here spend in Sheol, i.e., in the deep (R. של, to be loose, to hang down, to go downwards) realm of the dead, as rephaim (Isa 14:9, etc.), lying beneath the upper world, far from the love and the praise of God (Psa 6:3; Psa 30:10), a prospectless (Job 7:7., Job 14:6-12; Job 18:11-13), dark, shadowy…

Solomon, in this chapter, for a further proof of the vanity of this world, gives us four observations which he had made upon a survey of the state of the children of men in it: - I. He observed that commonly as to outward things, good and bad men fare much alike (Ecc 9:1-3). II. That death puts a final period to all our employments and enjoyments in this world (Ecc 9:4-6), whence he infers that it is our wisdom to enjoy the comforts of life and mind the business of life, while it lasts (Ecc 9:7-10). III. That God's providence often crosses the fairest and most hopeful probabilities of men's endeavour, and great calamities often surprise men ere they are aware (Ecc 9:11, Ecc 9:12). IV. That wisdom often makes men very useful, and yet gains them little respect, for that persons of great merit are slighted (Ecc 9:13-18). And what is there then in this world that should make us fond of it?