If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.
Solomon had shown, in the close of the foregoing chapter, how good it is to make a comfortable use of the gifts of God's providence; now here he shows the evil of the contrary, having and not using, gathering to lay up for I know not what contingent emergencies to come, not to lay out on the most urgent occasions present.
Commenting on Ecclesiastes 6:1-6
If a man beget an hundred children,.... Sons and daughters, a certain number for an uncertain. Some have had many children, and almost this number; Rehoboam had twenty eight sons and threescore daughters; and Ahab had seventy sons, how many daughters is not said, Ch2 11:21; this was reckoned a great honour and happiness to have many children; happy was the man that had his...
Even if a man (of this character) have very many (equivalent to "a hundred," Kg2 10:1) children, and not have a "stranger" as his heir (Ecc 6:2), and live long ("days of years" express the brevity of life at its best, Gen 47:9), yet enjoy no real "good" in life, and lie unhonored, without "burial," at death (Kg2 9:26, Kg2 9:35), the embryo is better than he.