When I surveyed all . . . I had toiled
to achieve, everything was meaningless.
—Ecclesiastes 2:11
Ecclesiastes 6 profiles two men who have wealth but don’t have God.
The first is super successful: “[He] lacks nothing his heart desires”—at least nothing that money can buy. But he doesn’t enjoy his bounty, dies unhappy, and leaves his fortune to people who haven’t worked for it (vv. 1–2).
The second is prosperous, has lots of children, and lives a long life but dies unloved and miserable. He says it would have been better not to have lived at all (vv. 3–6).
The day we get a proper perspective of all we are and have is the day we “take hold of life that is truly life” (1 Tm 6:17–19).
You can’t buy your way
into happiness or out of misery.