IV. All the torrents are running towards the sea, that sea which never overflows; to the place where these torrents are hastening, thither they are only returning to go back.
(7.) All the torrents (נחל, a mountain stream especially) are going to the sea, and the sea it is not full (equivalent to ‘that sea which is never filled or any fuller’), to the place to which the rivers (contract relative, meaning these same rivers) are going, thence are they returning to go back. (So the LXX.; others with the Authorized Version translate, ‘Thither they return again.’) It is to be remarked that this fact is scientifically accurate in statement. The Targum has the gloss that the rivers flow into the ocean which surrounds the world like a ring, and that they return again through the subterranean channels, but Koheleth knows nothing of such false philosophy.
8 All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
V. All matters are fatiguing; impossible for any one to reason out. Never is the eye satisfied by seeing, nor ever the ear filled with sound.
(8.) All the words (with the article, and therefore generic; ‘matters’ or ‘things,’ in the technical sense of things reasoned about, see [verse 1]) are fatiguing (so the LXX. and Vulgate; Ginsburg has ‘feeble;’ Preston, ‘in activity;’ and Hengstenberg, ‘all words become weary;’ but the ancient verses make better sense with the context), not possible is it for a man (not אדם here, but איש = ‘one,’ or ‘any one’) to utter them (לדבר, ‘to speak rationally concerning them,’ and so to account for their existence or explain their nature. The impossibility of exhausting a subject by talking or reasoning about it is here the point, as is evident from the order of the words); not satisfied (answering to the ‘not possible’ above) is the eye with seeing, and not is filled the ear by sound (or by what it hears). So then, while the consideration of any matter is pretty sure to produce weariness, it is quite certain not to produce satisfaction.
9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.