Ecclesiastes 3:11

Ecclesiastes 3:11  •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 12
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It appears to me that the preacher is showing that however absorbing any object "under the sun" may be, yet that it does not satisfy that craving in the heart of man for something permanent, something "forever," because it is but "for a season. " "God hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set 'forever' (or, as Arius Montanus has it in the margin of his Diglott, `perpetuitates desiderium') in the heart of man." So the word is rendered v. 14, "I know that whatsoever God doeth it shall be forever." God who knows the craving presents Himself as the one alone able to satisfy it: "he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." Solomon, the great experimentalist as to what the creature is, speaks largely of "labor," and its unsatisfyingness and disappointment; the "greater than Solomon" says, "Come unto me all ye that labor."
Presbutes The Christian Annotator 3:398 (1856).