Ecclesiastes 2:8, commentary and pictures

The gathering of silver and gold, the special treasure of kings and of provinces, men singers and women singers, and delights of every sort was part of seeking the highest good and lasting satisfaction in earthly things, holding back nothing the eyes desired. That royal and provincial treasure is seen in such things as jeweled thrones and crowns, golden crowns, imperial robes and regalia, the finest spoils and the choicest gifts of kings. Together with this were great works with houses and vineyards and gardens and servants, so that he became great and increased more than all who were before him in Jerusalem, withholding his heart from no joy and rejoicing in all his labor.

By his own bitter experience he learned its emptiness, judging it all vanity and vexation of spirit that brought no lasting profit or satisfaction and no rest for the soul. After looking on all the works his hands had made he turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. He found no rest even in the foreign gods to whom he built altars, whose promise of rest proved empty.

Wearied and thirsting, he turned from earth's broken cisterns to drink again at the fountain of life, and the discipline of suffering at last accomplished its work in him. Under inspiration he recorded the history of his wasted years as a lesson of warning for later generations, so that although his people reaped harvests of evil from the seed he sowed, his life work was not wholly lost. Such vast collections of earthly treasure have to be carefully guarded and kept sealed, and those who possess them are to be pitied rather than envied.