Surely, Solomon here speaks of eating and drinking. He means our actual, physical eating and drinking. And further, Solomon uses that as a summary of our consumption of earthly things in general. He refers to living in our houses, sleeping in our beds, and eating food and drinking beverages. Because man eats his bread in the sweat of his brow, Solomon brings up the toil and labor of man in the earth. And because man does nothing apart from his mind, body, and will, Solomon also refers to our plans and purposes. 

Eating and drinking, like breathing, are necessary activities and are basic to the continuation of human life. Man must eat to live. He is not like the angels, but he is flesh and blood that is nourished by food and drink. Yet man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. God so created man that he must eat; and perhaps even more crucially, he must drink. Through these means God exerts his power, and man’s life is continued for another day, a month, or a year. And so man, also in his eating and drinking—and in his breathing, work, care, industry, and use of earthly things—has to do with God his creator; and in man’s earthly life, he is wholly dependent on God. 

Thus the preacher is not interested in speaking merely about eating and drinking and the use of earthly things. He is not like the Stoic, who teaches that to eat or not to eat is indifferent; or like the Epicurean, whose philosophy is to eat and to drink, for tomorrow we die; or as the modern philosopher of health, who is consumed with what he will eat and what he will drink to achieve the best health and the longest life; or as the preacher of earthly wisdom, who cautions moderation in all things. Solomon carefully distinguishes two kinds of eating and drinking. Are the mere eating of food, the drinking of wine, the filling of the belly, and the consuming of earthly things blessings from God, so that all eating and drinking by everyone are blessed? 

There is a good eating. 

There is a bad eating. 

There is a spiritual eating. 

There is a carnal eating. 

One is the work of the deceitful heart of man, who abuses the good gifts of God. 

The other is the gift of God to those upon whom alone his favor rests. 

There is beautiful eating and drinking. 

Solomon describes this beautiful eating and drinking against the dark backdrop of ugly eating and drinking. 

There is ugly eating and drinking! 

In the consumption of earthly things, beware of ugly eating and drinking! Solomon says about man, “All his days also he eateth in darkness” (v. 17). If all your days you would eat in darkness, you would be a disgusting mess, and your eating and drinking would be ugly, like a beast’s rather than a man’s. 

Such are the eating and drinking of the unbelieving man. No matter the grandeur of his situation, no matter the lavishness of his table, no matter the richness of his consumption of earthly things, all of them are ugly eating and drinking. 

Such ugly eating and drinking find their source in man’s ugly, covetous heart. So the preacher says that there is a man in the earth who loves silver and abundance (v. 10). Such is man’s love for silver and abundance that they consume his thoughts and his labors: get silver and get it in abundance. The covetous man will be rich in the world. Even if he is dirt poor, he will be rich, or at least he will have the trappings of wealth. He is covetous. Such a man is never satisfied, even when silver increases and when there is great abundance. So in all his life, he lives out of the principle of covetousness. Mammon is his god. Riches are his goal. To get silver and to have abundance, he bends all his labors and efforts. Happiness for the covetous man consists in the multiplication of things. 

But what trouble comes to him! So the preacher says, “When goods increase, they are increased that eat them” (v. 11)! When such a man comes into money, he begins to keep a bigger and better household. With more money come bigger houses, more cars, more toys, and more of everything. And the preacher observes this and says, “The abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep” (v. 12). With all his things the rich man is worn down with cares and concerns and anxieties. Worse is what Solomon says about this man and his money: “There [are]…riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt” (v. 13). Not all saving is good. There is a saving that destroys the owner. He would have been better off without all his wealth, for his riches destroy his soul, lift him up in pride, provide him with the means to sin greatly, and are the opportunity to show his miserly and covetous heart because he keeps his riches at all costs, even at the cost of his soul. Better to sell all that he has and to follow Christ. 

And how foolish is this man when one considers his attitude toward silver and gold in light of the reality of death. What a miserable existence to live for riches and to hoard wealth when death comes and sweeps the man away from his money. As he came naked out of his mother’s womb, so he will return naked to the grave. He brings nothing into this world, and it is certain that he can carry nothing out. And having gained the world in this life, he will lose his soul in the life to come. What good are all his riches? With them he can neither pay the ransom for his soul nor purchase an entrance into the kingdom of heaven. 

It is especially in his sickness that the spiritual bankruptcy and covetousness of this worldling is revealed. All his days he eats in darkness, and he has “much sorrow and wrath with his sickness” (v. 17). In calamity, trouble, affliction, or setback—either that which devours his riches, prevents him from using them, or threatens his possession of them—he frets and worries and is full of anxiety, or he storms and rages against God, who strips him of his things that are so dear to him and for which he labored all his life and by which he pierced himself through with many sorrows in hope of a lasting gain. 

What a terrible eating is the eating of this unbelieving and covetous man. He eats of his labors. But he eats in darkness. It is the darkness of his own unbelief. It is the darkness of his own folly that treasures gold rather than heaven. It is the darkness of God’s curse and wrath upon this unbelieving and covetous man. 

Note well, the preacher is not condemning riches as such. It is true that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Yet it is not riches that the preacher condemns. He also does not condemn the use and enjoyment of earthly things, and even in abundance, although it is true that abundance brings with it the spiritual danger that we forget God. Neither is the preacher praising abject poverty, for it also comes with the threat that we curse God and ask, “Where is the Lord?” And the preacher is not extolling mere moderation, although the man who strives for mastery is temperate in all things. Solomon is not cursing with the darkness of God’s wrath only a drunken eating and drinking, a gluttonous eating and drinking, a debauched eating and drinking, mean miserliness, or a showy opulence. 

But Solomon condemns the eating and drinking of the covetous man, who eats and drinks out of the heart that loves silver and abundance. He may be moderate in all his eating and abstemious in his drinking, but his heart is wrong. Though his eating and drinking be with impeccable manners and the greatest decorum; though his eating and drinking be with the greatest discipline; though he squanders not a dime, as far as the world is concerned, with wasting; and though he may mouth some meaningless words about thanksgiving and God and gifts, all his eating and drinking are out of his covetous heart that loves silver. And the one who loves silver does not love God, for a man cannot serve two masters. He cannot serve God and mammon. 

Such a man’s eating and drinking are ugly eating and drinking because they are evil eating and drinking. They are eating and drinking in covetousness, in the worship of mammon, forgetting God, forgetting man’s sin on account of which he deserves nothing in this life except judgment, and forgetting that it is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment. Forgetting all this in the blindness of his mind and in the covetousness of his heart, the covetous man loves silver and abundance; and loving them, he hates God, the giver of every good and perfect gift. 

Over that eating and drinking, the curse of God hangs like the sword of Damocles. 

Antithetical to that ugly eating and drinking stand the beautiful eating and drinking of verse 18: “Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink.” Comely means beautiful. So there is a good and comely eating and drinking. The goodness of a thing is always that it serves the purpose for which God gave it. Beautiful eating and drinking are beautiful because they are eating and drinking that serve the purpose for which God gave eating and drinking. Being good, nothing can be alleged against that eating and drinking, and they cannot be charged with sin. 

Notice, that involves eating and drinking too. It is not good that man starves himself, abstains from meat and drink that God gave to be received. It is good and comely to eat and to drink. And notice that eating and drinking also involve a man’s labor. He eats and drinks in the way of his labor. Belonging to the goodness and beauty of his eating and drinking are the goodness and beauty of the labor by which he eats and drinks. And note as well that Solomon makes the same rule for all men: they all eat and drink in the way of their labor. In verse 18 Solomon establishes the rule that there is a beautiful eating and drinking, and in verse 19 he applies that rule to the man of wealth. The rule stands whether a man has little or much. The beauty of this eating and drinking is seen in the man of less substance in that he eats and drinks what is his without coveting more; the beauty of the eating and drinking of the man of more substance is that he eats and drinks what is his without coveting more or hoarding what he has. 

And note as well that Solomon applies this rule not only to all men but also for all times of their lives. Because Solomon says that it is good and comely for a man so to eat and to drink in all his labor, which he takes under the sun all the days of his life that God gives to him. So the rule applies to everyone, at all times, in all places, and in every situation. 

This beautiful eating and drinking begin with the proper view of one’s life and substance. 

The proper view is that all that one is and everything that one has are of God. 

Where in the whole description of the life and the wild pursuit of riches by the covetous man is God mentioned? God is not mentioned because God is not in the thoughts of the covetous man. God is not the God of the covetous man, but mammon is his god. 

In verse 9 Solomon established the principle that it is not the things of the earth that are the problem. The evil and ugliness of eating and drinking are never the fault of things, not even in the abundance of earthly things. There is no evil in things. The profit or increase of the earth is for all. For man, for beast, for great and small, for even the king with his great riches are served by the field. God distributes to all many good things. He gives riches and wealth; he gives strength and labor; he gives length of days and end of life. And in all of this and to all, he feeds all from the increase of the field. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, its wealth and all that they contain. Because the earth is the Lord’s, all things in the earth are good and nothing to be refused. God did not make evil things. He made everything good. And in all those things that God gives and also in the abundance and increase of the earth, the Lord does good to all. He is an overflowing fountain of all good. He never does evil, but he always does good. 

So in faith this beautiful eating and drinking say, first of all, that one’s whole life is given to him by God. All the days of life that God gives him! God is in this man’s thoughts every day and all day. This man lives consciously in the reality that God gives to him his very heartbeat, numbers the hairs of his head, that his days are written in God’s book, and his name is in the book of life. He lives in the reality that he has an allotted time on this earth. That it is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment. So he lives by this principle: if the Lord wills, I will live and do this or that. Such a life begins with faith in the absolute sovereignty of God over one’s entire life. For if God knows one’s very days, then all the details of one’s life are also given by God; and if God controls the least of things, then God also controls all things great and small. 

Second, faith says that God gives one his portion in this life. Literally, a portion means an inheritance. As a father allots various portions of his estate to his children, so God allots a portion of his things to his people. God gives to this one and to that one as he sees fit. What God gives is one’s portion. Further, just as with an inheritance, a portion is undeserved. It is given. An inheritance is a mark of the overflowing goodness of the father to his children that apportions to them from his wealth in the earth. So when we say that God gives a portion, we mean that out of his overflowing goodness he allots to those who are wholly undeserving of it that which they might have and enjoy. Solomon places the riches of man under that same rule. God gives to some riches and wealth. That is their portion. They are allotted those riches by God. But since all are undeserving and since all is given in God’s overflowing goodness, that portion, whether great or small, is always unmerited and a manifestation of God’s overflowing goodness. 

And thus beautiful eating and drinking are measured eating and drinking. The preacher says that a man who eats and drinks beautifully takes his portion. God gives a man a portion, and from that portion a man takes. That Solomon speaks of this in connection with the rich man makes the preacher’s point even sharper. Because the rich man sees that everything comes from God and that God gives him all that he has as a portion, the rich man takes for his use his own portion of that. And this means that he does not see his substance as his own but as God’s and as directed by the word of God in its use. The man sees that his substance is not all for himself to be used for himself. But the portion that he eats and drinks is just a portion of all his substance because he sees that God gave him his substance, not only to be used and enjoyed but also to recognize that others and other things have a claim on his substance. There is a portion for the poor and a portion for liberality and a portion for the church and a portion for the school and a portion for his children. 

Thus this beautiful eating and drinking involve enjoying the good of all a man’s labor. Solomon says basically the same thing again in verse 19: “To rejoice in his labour.” He means that this man’s eating and drinking are joyful and the good that he has from his labor. There is nothing more that all your and my earthly labor can give than for us to eat and to drink. Man eats in the sweat of his brow. The good in earthly labor is that by means of it one may eat and drink. Labor has no other good that it can give. Labor is for the support of one’s earthly life. That is it. 

What a pitiful soul is one who places his happiness, joy, and blessedness in earthly things that he gets by his earthly labor. When earthly things increase, he never can be satisfied because they do not bring satisfaction, and he is full of anxiety lest he lose them. And when earthly things are taken away, he rages and storms because he has lost them and with them lost his happiness. 

Rejoicing is something that the man who loves to be rich can never do. He never rejoices. He loves silver, but silver has no joy to give; and when silver increases, it only brings anxiety. He loves abundance; but when abundance comes, he is not satiated. 

And does this not point out that beautiful eating and drinking involve contentment? There is no joy where there is no contentment. There is no contentment where lust reigns because there is no satisfaction with such things as one has. Beautiful eating and drinking are contented eating and drinking. And what is contentment except that one’s joy, happiness, well-being, and satisfaction are not found in earthly things at all but are found in the God who gives these things. Only if one’s joy is in God can one also rejoice in his labor in the station and calling that God gives to him in the world, and only then can he see good in all his labor as he eats and drinks of the portion that God gave of this world’s goods. 

And if one is to rejoice in his labor and see the good in his labor, does this not mean that in his eating and drinking he uses those things in harmony with the purpose for which God gave them? God gave them as supports of earthly life, not for drunkenness and surfeiting. He gave them to be received with thanksgiving, not to be worshiped as gods. God gave them to be used for his glory. God made all things for his glory. God gives all things so that they serve his glory, mere food and drink too, so that those things will support a life lived to the glory of God. 

And you have to say that such beautiful, contented, proportioned, God-glorifying eating and drinking are the work of God’s grace. Beautiful eating and drinking are eating and drinking with grace. So Solomon says, “Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God” (v. 19). “Gift” can be translated as reward. And since every reward of God to man is a reward of God’s grace, Solomon is talking about God’s grace. Grace explains man’s beautiful eating and drinking. 

That is what grace does. Grace always makes beautiful again what man has made ugly. So God had given man beautiful eating and drinking in the garden, but man made them ugly by his covetousness and sin, and all things in the judgment of God were subjected to vanity. God makes eating and drinking beautiful again by his grace. Apart from the grace of God, a man’s eating and drinking can and will only be ugly eating and drinking out of covetousness, out of the heart that loves silver and abundance and which heart is devoid of love for God and is full of hatred toward him. 

The lack of grace explains the covetous and ugly eating and drinking of the unbeliever. God overflows to the covetous with his goodness. The covetous man heaps to himself a pile of this earth’s goods; but in that goodness, God does not overflow to that man with his grace. God overflows to that man as the only good God in his wrath, in darkness, and with a curse. That is the revelation of God’s goodness to the wicked, to the unbelieving, and to the covetous. The revelation of God’s goodness is that he overflows with wrath to the wicked and unbelieving and with a curse to them. Thus all their eating and drinking are in darkness. 

And understand Solomon’s point. He says two things belong to God’s grace toward a man who eats and drinks beautifully. 

First, Solomon says that God gives to that man things in an attitude of favor toward that man. Solomon does not say that riches and wealth or whatever else God gives to a man of this earth’s goods are God’s grace. Rather, Solomon says that God gives to that man this or that thing in his grace toward that man. Grace is God’s attitude in the giving. God gives; and whatever he gives, also when he gives wealth and honor, he gives in his grace. 

Second, the preacher says that God gives to man not only riches and wealth in grace but also power to eat thereof, power to take his portion, and power to rejoice in his labor. The thing itself is given in an attitude of favor, and that grace is also the power of the man’s proper use of the thing. All of this belongs to the idea that the reception of earthly things is from God; and all the use of these earthly things, so that a man eats and drinks beautifully, is the work of God’s grace. 

If God only gives wealth to a man but does not give grace to him, that man’s eating and drinking will be ugly and cursed eating and drinking, rooted in covetousness. But when God gives riches and wealth and the power to eat and drink beautifully of those things, so that a man receives them from God, ascribes them all to God, eats contentedly before God, uses his portion as from God, and rejoices with thanksgiving to God, then this is the power of God’s grace. 

And Solomon calls this a power because grace is the power that changes the naturally covetous heart of man and makes that heart love God, makes that heart thankful, and makes in that heart the glory of God the goal of all things. 

And because the thing is given in grace and because the thing is used by the power of grace, the gift of those things in grace has its foundation in the cross of Christ. Every reward of God is not only the reward of grace, but every reward of God is also based on the perfect work of Christ on the cross. The reward of eating and drinking beautifully in thanksgiving to God and all the grace that comes to us to give us that reward come only on the basis of the cross of Christ and through the forgiveness of our sins. Beautiful eating and drinking have their source in faith in the cross of Christ as the only ground of all our eating and drinking, at which cross he paid for our sins, justified us before God, and restored to us the right to eat and to drink beautifully in God’s creation again. 

So the preacher speaks of a blessed forgetfulness: “He shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart” (v. 20). 

There is a cursed forgetfulness that belongs to the covetous heart of man and because of which he eats and drinks in darkness and because of which all his eating and drinking are ugly. In the covetousness of his heart, he forgets God. He forgets his sin. He forgets that it is appointed unto men once to die and after that the judgment. He forgets that this world is but a prelude to the eternal. God answers such a one in his covetous heart. God’s answer to him in the covetousness of his heart is that God is cursing all that man’s eating and drinking and all his labor. And because that is God’s answer to the covetous man’s heart, there is no joy to him at all in his labor or in his eating and drinking. He may make merry with the despairing merriment of the world—let us eat and drink and be merry—but they only say that and live that way because tomorrow they die. There is the answer of God to that man’s covetous heart that God binds on him all his sin, that God is angry with the wicked every day, and that God is turning all things to that man’s destruction. 

But to the one who believes in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of all his sins, there is a blessed forgetfulness. That man will not much remember the days of his life. That is blessed forgetfulness because the days of his life are full of sin. That sin God forgives for Christ’s sake. God answers the believer with joy in his heart by faith. God gives joy to the believer by grace and by faith, and this joy—a joy in God, a joy in Christ, a joy in the hope of eternal life, a joy in the forgiveness of sins, and a joy in his salvation—makes his days blessed and makes all his eating and drinking to be beautiful eating and drinking.