8 There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.
There exists a solitary who has no fellow; neither son nor brother has he, yet there is no end to all his toils: and besides no satisfaction to himself in all his wealth: who never asks, ‘For whom am I now toiling and depriving myself of good?’ This is an instance of evanescence and uncertainty, which is evil and nothing else.
(8.) There is one, and there is not a second (evidently meaning that there is one who is quite alone in the world). Moreover, son and brother there is not to him (i.e. he has emphatically neither posterity nor relationship to account for this desire of accumulating which Koheleth is subsequently about to bring forward: his love of accumulation is purely selfish), and there is nothing of an end (אין, ‘nothing,’ is repeated three times: ‘No end at all’ is therefore the meaning. This continual harping on the nothingness of the miser’s state is an exceedingly effective piece of oratory) to all his toil. Moreover, his eyes (altered by the Masorets to the singular, but without much taste: ‘both his eyes devour his wealth’) does not satisfy (feminine singular; hence, as the LXX. show, the word must refer to eyes as its subject; they render ‘is not filled with,’ for it is a case of a distributive plural) wealth. And for whom do I (the oratio obliqua is dropped, and the directa used in its place; or perhaps with this meaning does this ego) toil, and depriving my soul (with the usual meaning, ‘myself’) of good? (abstract.) Also this is a vanity and an anxiety which an evil is (emphatic) ‘indeed’ (equivalent to ‘an evil and nothing else,’ or ‘is simply an evil’; other anxieties may be beneficial, this cannot be. This is the reason why we have רע, and not רעה, the abstract, as we should have expected).
9 ¶ Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
Good things are companionships, and better than solitaries; for these indeed have some reward for their labour.
(9.) Good (things) are the doubles (i.e. union in the abstract), better than the single (again, for the same reason, with the article), because (literally ‘which,’ the full relative, and referring back to the whole idea) there is (exists, ‘because there exists,’) a reward, a good (i.e. a real good; for to love one’s neighbour as one’s self is one of the real good things of this world) in the toil of them.