The Man With a Thousand Cans and No Can Opener Text: Ecclesiastes 6:3-6
Introduction: The Sore Affliction of a Full Life and an Empty Soul
The book of Ecclesiastes is a divine therapy for a particular kind of spiritual sickness, a sickness that is rampant in our affluent and distracted age. It is the sickness of having everything and enjoying nothing. The Preacher, Solomon, is not some ancient, melancholy nihilist. He is a Spirit-inspired diagnostician, holding up a mirror to the man who has chased every vanity under the sun, caught it, and found that it was like catching smoke in a net. He is showing us that a life crammed with blessings but devoid of God-given satisfaction is not just a tragedy; it is a curse. It is a sore affliction from the hand of a sovereign God.
We moderns think that the problem is always a lack of something. If we just had more money, more years, more children, more experiences, then our souls would be satisfied. We are inveterate grass-is-greener idolaters. But Solomon, who had more of everything than anyone, tells us that the problem is not a lack of supply. The problem is a lack of spiritual taste buds. God frequently gives men many external blessings without giving them the internal, spiritual capacity to enjoy them. This is a severe mercy, a judgment designed to show us that the gift is nothing without the Giver.
In our text today, the Preacher pushes this logic to its most shocking and offensive conclusion. He presents us with a thought experiment that is designed to rattle our cages and offend our sentimentalities. He sets up a contest between two lives: the man who has it all by every worldly metric, and a child who never even drew a breath. And his conclusion is a gut punch to our entire way of thinking. This is not pessimism for its own sake. This is a divine wrecking ball, sent to demolish our false shelters so that we might flee to the only true refuge.
The Text
If a man becomes the father of one hundred children and lives many years, however many the days of his years may be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, “Better the miscarriage than he, for that one comes in vanity and goes into darkness; and that one’s name is covered in darkness. Indeed, that one never sees the sun and never knows anything; that one has more rest than he. Even if the other man lives one thousand years twice and does not see good things, do not all go to the same place?”
(Ecclesiastes 6:3-6 LSB)
The Externally Blessed Man (v. 3a)
The Preacher begins by sketching a portrait of a man who, by all external appearances, is blessed beyond measure.
"If a man becomes the father of one hundred children and lives many years, however many the days of his years may be..." (Ecclesiastes 6:3a)
In the ancient world, these were the two premier signs of divine favor: a quiver full of children and a long life. Children were your legacy, your workforce, your social security, and your defense. A long life was the sign of wisdom and stability. The Preacher stacks the deck. He says, let's not just give this man a dozen sons. Let's give him a hundred children. A veritable tribe. And let's not just give him seventy years. Let him live "many years," an indefinite but impressive number. He has posterity and longevity in spades. He is the man on the cover of Israel's Success magazine.
This is a direct challenge to a simplistic "health and wealth" theology that would look at this man's life and declare, "There is a man God has blessed." The Preacher wants us to look past the external resume. He is setting us up. He is showing us the apex of worldly success, the very best that a man can accumulate "under the sun," in order to show us its profound and utter bankruptcy when one crucial element is missing.
The Internally Bankrupt Soul (v. 3b)
Now comes the pivot, the devastating "but." Here is the fatal flaw in this seemingly perfect life.
"...but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, 'Better the miscarriage than he...'" (Ecclesiastes 6:3b)
Despite the mountain of blessings, his soul is not "satisfied." The Hebrew word here means to be full, to have enough. This man has a hundred children, but his heart is empty. He has many years, but they are hollow. He is a spiritual black hole, consuming blessings without ever being filled by them. He has the feast, but no appetite. He has the banquet, but no taste buds. This is the man to whom God has given a thousand cans of peaches, but no can opener. He can lick the label, he can admire the picture on the front, but he cannot taste the sweetness within. And this inability to enjoy God's gifts is a judgment from God Himself (Eccl. 6:2).
Then another detail is added: "he does not even have a proper burial." In the Old Testament, to be left unburied was a sign of ultimate shame and curse (Jer. 22:19). It meant you were forgotten, dishonored, your memory blotted out. Despite his hundred children, no one is there to honor him in his death. His life was so profoundly self-absorbed and joyless that he alienated everyone. His relationships were as empty as his soul. His hundred children were just another set of possessions, not a covenantal joy. And so, in the end, his life amounts to nothing. He lived like a king and was buried like a dog.
Faced with this grim portrait, the Preacher delivers his shocking verdict: "Better the miscarriage than he." Better to have never been born into the world of light and life than to live like this. This is meant to stun us. How could a non-life be better than a long, prosperous one? Because a long, prosperous life without satisfaction in God is not life at all. It is a long, slow death. It is an extended tutorial in the meaning of hell, which is to be surrounded by goodness and yet be utterly incapable of enjoying it because you are alienated from the Giver of all goodness.
The Rest of the Unborn (v. 4-5)
Solomon now explains his reasoning by describing the "life" of the miscarried child.
"...for that one comes in vanity and goes into darkness; and that one’s name is covered in darkness. Indeed, that one never sees the sun and never knows anything; that one has more rest than he." (Ecclesiastes 6:4-5)
The stillborn child's existence is described in terms of negatives. It comes in vanity, a puff of smoke. It goes into darkness. Its name is forgotten. It never saw the sun, the symbol of life under heaven. It never knew anything of the toil and striving of this world. It experienced nothing. And in this nothingness, the Preacher finds a strange kind of superiority. The stillborn child "has more rest than he."
The rich man strived and toiled for a thousand years twice over, and never found rest for his soul. His life was a constant, agitated striving for a satisfaction that always eluded him. The stillborn child, by contrast, never entered that rat race. It never knew the vexation of spirit that comes from chasing the wind. The rest here is not the conscious bliss of heaven, but the simple absence of turmoil. The rich man's life was a long and noisy agony. The stillborn's non-life was a short and silent peace. In this grim calculus, silence is better than agony.
The Common Destination (v. 6)
Finally, the Preacher drives the point home by appealing to the great equalizer: death.
"Even if the other man lives one thousand years twice and does not see good things, do not all go to the same place?" (Ecclesiastes 6:6)
He doubles down on the hyperbole. Let the man live not just many years, but two thousand years. An impossibly long life. But if in all that time he "does not see good," if he never tastes and sees that the Lord is good, and therefore never learns to enjoy the goodness of God's gifts, what is the point? It is just a longer road to the same destination. "Do not all go to the same place?" That place is Sheol, the grave. Death is the final vanity that swallows all other vanities.
The rich man's two thousand years of joyless striving and the stillborn's moment of silent darkness both end in the dust. From the perspective of the grave, what was the advantage of the long life? The man accumulated a mountain of experiences, but since he could not enjoy any of them, they were just a mountain of regrets. The stillborn child missed out on all that "good," but it also missed out on all that vexation. And since both ended up in the same place, the one who traveled the shorter, quieter road is judged to be better off.
The Gospel Can Opener
This is a bleak picture if we leave it "under the sun." If this is all there is, then the Preacher's logic is grimly impeccable. But this book was written to drive us out from "under the sun" to the God who is over the sun. This passage is not the final word; it is a divine argument meant to strip us of our self-reliance and our worldly definitions of "the good life." It is meant to make us desperate for something more.
The problem of the man with a hundred children is that he has the gifts but not the Giver. He has the creation but not the Creator. And so he has nothing. What he needs is not more stuff. What he needs is a new heart, a regenerated soul that can taste and see the goodness of God. He needs what the Bible calls salvation.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the announcement that God has provided the ultimate can opener for the human soul. Jesus Christ lived the only truly satisfied life. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, yet He always did what pleased the Father. His soul was profoundly satisfied in His communion with God, even as He walked toward the cross. He is the one who saw "good" in every moment because He saw the Father's hand in every moment.
And on the cross, He entered into the ultimate darkness. He became the ultimate miscarriage. His name was covered in darkness. He was cut off from the land of the living, left without a proper burial in a borrowed tomb. He did this to take upon Himself the curse that we deserve, the curse of a joyless, unsatisfied, meaningless existence that ends in the dark.
But because He is the Son of God, the grave could not hold Him. He rose from that "same place" to which all men go, and in His resurrection, He offers us not just His blessings, but Himself. When we, by faith, are united to Christ, God gives us the gift of Himself. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us, and He is the one who gives us the spiritual taste buds to enjoy God. He is the divine can opener.
A Christian with one child, or no children, who lives for fifty years and dies in a simple grave, but who knows Christ, is infinitely richer and more satisfied than the man in our text. Why? Because the Christian has learned to enjoy the vanity. He knows that the repetitions of life, the mowing of the lawn, the washing of the dishes, the paying of the bills, are all a gift from a sovereign God. He can eat his bread with joy and drink his wine with a merry heart, because he knows that God has already accepted his works in Christ (Eccl. 9:7). He is not chasing satisfaction; he has been given it as a gift. And that gift is Christ Himself, in whom all the promises of God are Yes and Amen.