All things [are] full of labour
Or "are laborious" F7; gotten by labour, and attended with
fatigue and weariness; riches are got by labour, and those who
load themselves with thick clay, as gold and silver be, weary
themselves with it; honour and glory, crowns and kingdoms, are
weighty cares, and very fatiguing to those that have them; much
study to acquire knowledge is a weariness to the flesh; and as
men even weary themselves to commit iniquity, it is no wonder
that religious exercises should be a weariness to a natural man,
and a carnal professor; man cannot utter [it];
or declare all the things that are laborious and fatiguing, nor
all the labour they are full of; time would fail, and words be
wanting to express the whole; all the vanity, unprofitableness,
and unsatisfying nature of all things below the sun; particularly
the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled
with hearing;
both one and the other require new objects continually; the
pleasure of these senses is blunted by the same objects
constantly presented; men are always seeking new ones, and when
they have got them they want others; whatever curious thing is to
be seen the eye craves it; and, after it has dwelt on it a while,
it grows tired of it, and wants something else to divert it; and
so the ear is delighted with musical sounds, but in time loses
the taste of them, and seeks for others; and in discourse and
conversation never easy, unless, like the Athenians, it hears
some new things, and which quickly grow stale, and then wants
fresh ones still: and indeed the spiritual eye and ear will never
be satisfied in this life, until the soul comes into the perfect
state of blessedness, and beholds the face of God, and sees him
as he is; and sees and hears what eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard below. The Targum is,
``all the words that shall be in the world, the ancient prophets were weary in them, and they could not find out the ends of them; yea, a man has no power to say what shall be after him; and the eye cannot see all that shall be in the world, and the ear cannot be filled with hearing all the words of all the inhabitants of the world.''
F7 (Myegy) "laboriosae", Pagninus, Vatablus, Mercerus, Gejerus, Schmidt.