ECCLESIASTES 4.4-6:

4 Again, I saw that for all toil and every skillful work a man is envied by his neighbor. This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.

5 The fool folds his hands together, and eats his own flesh.

6 Better is a handful with quietness, than two handfuls with labour and striving after wind.

Moving on down his reality checklist, Solomon now identifies a second major cause of man’s troubles in this evil world -- namely, the spirit of personal envy that manifests itself in jealous competition and strife instead of harmony and constructive co-operation. So not only is mankind oppressed by wicked powers, but also by the human nature, which sets man against his brother.

Perhaps James has this section of Ecclesiastes in mind when he identifies the same root cause of personal strife and even warfare, saying, Quote: “Do you think that the scripture says in vain, The spirit that dwells in us lusts to envy? “ (James 4:4).

Next, Solomon considers the two opposite faces of this sad reality – the person who envies and the person who is envied, a pair of unfortunate opposites. The one wears himself out with his compulsive striving for material gain, and the other lazily sits back, clasps his hands together in self-pity and frustration, and gnaws on them in agony over his insecurity and hopelessness -- and so achieves nothing.

Perhaps Solomon’s lesson is that we should aim for moderation and balance in all we do -- rather than falling victim to either obsessive striving on the one hand or idle laziness on the other. Better have a handful with quietness, he says, which may refer to feeding food into the mouth at a meal, a metaphor signifying sufficiency -- rather than two handfuls with strife, perhaps depicting a greedy person using both hands to stuff more food into his mouth than he can possibly chew.