Ecclesiastes 1:13

I gave my heart The phrase, so expressive of the spirit of an earnest seeker, is eminently characteristic of this book and meets us again in Ecclesiastes 1:17, chaps. Ecclesiastes 7:25; Ecclesiastes 8:9; Ecclesiastes 8:16. Like forms are found in Isai. 41:42; Psalms 48:14. "Heart" with the Hebrews, it may be noticed, is the seat of the intellect as well as the affections, and "to give the heart" is therefore specially expressive of an act of concentrated mental energy. The all that is done under heaven (we note the variation of phrase from the "under the sun" of Ecclesiastes 1:9) takes in the whole range of human action as distinct from the cosmical phenomena of Ecclesiastes 1:5-7. The enquiry of the seeker was throughout one of ethical rather than physical investigation.

this sore travail The words express the feeling with which the writer looked back on his inquiry. It had led to no satisfying result, and the first occurrence of the name of God in the book is coupled with the thought that this profitless search was His appointment. He gave the desire but, so the preacher murmurs in his real or seeming pessimism, not the full Truth in which only the desire can rest. The word for "travail" is peculiar to this book. That for "exercised" is formed from the same root.