Ecclesiastes Chapter 10 verse 19 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 19. - A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry. Here is a cause of the decay spoken of above. The rulers spend in revelry and debauchery the time and energy which they ought to give to affairs of state. More literally, for merriment they make bread, and wine [that] cheereth life; i.e. they use God's good gifts of bread and wine as means of intemperance and thoughtless pleasure. So a psalmist speaks of wine as making glad the heart of man (Psalm 104:15); and Ben-Sira says, "Wine is as good as life to a man, if it be drunk moderately: what life is there to a man that is without wine? for it was created to make men glad. Wine measurably drunk and in season bringeth gladness of the heart, and cheer fullness of the mind" (Ecclus. 31. [34.] 27, 28). But money answereth all things; i.e. grants all that such persons want. It requires money to provide rich food and costly wines; this they possess, and they are thus able to indulge their appetites to the utmost. It concerns them not how such resources are obtained - won by extortion from a starving people, exacted in exorbitant taxation, pillaged by unscrupulous instruments; they want gold to expend on their lusts, and they get it same-how, and with it all that in their view makes life worth living. Commentators alto Horace, ' Ep.,' 1:6.36, "Scilicet uxorem," etc. "For why - a portioned wife, fair fame, and friends,Beauty and birth on sovereign Wealth attends.Blest is her votary throned his bags among?Persuasion's self sits perched upon his tongue;Love beams in every feature of his face,And every gesture beams celestial grace."(Howes.) Corn. a Lapide appositely quotes - "...quidquid nummis praesentibus opta,Et veniet; clausum possidet arca Jovem." "If thou hast gold, then wish for anything,And it will surely come; the money-boxHath in it a most potent deity." Pineda, followed by Metals, suggests that this verse may be taken in a good sense. He would make ver. 18 correspond to ver. 16, characterizing the government of debauchees, and ver. 19 correspond to ver. 17, representing the rule of temperate princes where all is peace and prosperity. But there is nothing grammatical to indicate this arrangement; and the explanation given above is doubtless correct. The Septuagint Version is not faithful in our present text, though it is followed virtually by the Syriac: Αἰς γέλωτα ποιοῦσιν ἄρτον καὶ οϊνον καὶ ἔλαιον τοῦ εὐφρανθῆναι ζῶντας καὶ τοῦ ἀργυρίου ταπεινώσει ἐπακούσεται τὰ πάντα "For gladness they make bread and wine and oil, that the living may rejoice, and to money all things will humble themselves, will obey" (doubly translating the word).

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(19) I look on these verses as isolated proverbs, and believe that the obvious meaning suggested by the English of this verse is the right one. Those who strive to trace a continuity of thought take Ecclesiastes 10:18 as a figurative description of the ruin of an ill-governed land; Ecclesiastes 10:19 as describing the riot of those rulers who make feasts for merriment, and have money freely at their disposal; and (Ecclesiastes 10:20) as a warning to the subjects to beware how, notwithstanding all this mis-government, they venture to rebel.