*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
When - Or, as in the margin. For the meaning of this verse, compare marginal references.
For he knoweth not that which shall be,.... Or that "it shall be" (b); that he ever shall have the opportunity again he has lost, nor what is to come hereafter; what shall be on the morrow, or what shall befall him in the remaining part of his days; what troubles and sorrows he shall meet with, or what will be the case and circumstances of his family after his death;
for who can tell him when it shall be? or "how it shall be" (c)? how it will be with him or his; no one that pretends to judicial astrology, or to the art of divination, or any such devices, can tell him what is to come; future things are only certainly known by God; none but he can tell what will certainly come to pass; see Ecclesiastes 3:22; Jarchi interprets it of a man's not considering for what God will bring him to judgment, and that no man can tell him the vengeance and punishment that will be inflicted.
(b) "quod futurum est", Pagninus, Montanus. (c) "quo modo", Junius & Tremellius, Gejerus, Rambachius, so Broughton.
he--the sinner, by neglecting times (for example, "the accepted time, and the day of salvation, 2-Corinthians 6:2), is taken by surprise by the judgment (Ecclesiastes 3:22; Ecclesiastes 6:12; Ecclesiastes 9:12). The godly wise observe the due times of things (Ecclesiastes 3:1), and so, looking for the judgment, are not taken by surprise, though not knowing the precise "when" (1-Thessalonians 5:2-4); they "know the time" to all saving purposes (Romans 13:11).
Ecclesiastes 8:7 and Ecclesiastes 8:8 thus continue the For and For: "For he knoweth not that which shall be; for who can tell him who it will be? There is no man who has power over the wind, to restrain the wind; and no one has authority over the day of death; and there is no discharge in the war; and wickedness does not save its possessor." The actor has the sin upon himself, and bears it; if it reaches the terminus of full measure, it suddenly overwhelms him in punishment, and the too great burden oppresses its bearer (Hitzig, under Isaiah 24:20). This עת ומשׁ comes unforeseen, for he (the man who heaps up sins) knoweth not id quod fiet; it arrives unforeseen, for quomodo fiet, who can show it to him? Thus, e.g., the tyrant knows not that he will die by assassination, and no one can say to him how that will happen, so that he might make arrangements for his protection. Rightly the lxx κατηὼς ἔσται; on the contrary, the Targ., Hitzig, and Ginsburg: when it will be;
(Note: The Venet. ἐν ᾧ, as if the text had בּאשׁר.)
but כּאשׁר signifies quum, Ecclesiastes 5:1; Ecclesiastes 5:3; Ecclesiastes 8:16, but not quando, which must be expressed by מתי (Mishnic אימתי, אימת).
Now follows the concluding thought of the four כי, whereby Ecclesiastes 8:5 is established. There are four impossibilities enumerated; the fourth is the point of the enumeration constructed in the form of a numerical proverb. (1) No man has power over the wind, to check the wind. Ewald, Hengst., Zckl., and others understand רוּח, with the Targ., Jerome, and Luther, of the Spirit (חיים( tir רוח); but man can limit this physically when he puts a violent termination to life, and must restrain it morally by ruling it, Proverbs 16:32; Proverbs 25:28. On the contrary, the wind hrwch is, after Ecclesiastes 11:5, incalculable, and to rule over it is the exclusive prerogative of Divine Omnipotence, Proverbs 30:4. The transition to the second impossibility is mediated by this, that in רוח, according to the usus loq., the ideas of the breath of animal life, and of wind as the breath as it were of the life of the whole of nature, are interwoven. (2) No one has power over the day of death: death, viz., natural death, comes to a man without his being able to see it before, to determine it, or to change it. With שׁלּיט there here interchanges שׁלטון, which is rendered by the lxx and Venet. as abstr., also by the Syr. But as at Daniel 3:2, so also above at Ecclesiastes 8:4, it is concr., and will be so also in the passage before us, as generally in the Talm. and Midrash, in contradistinction to the abstr., which is שׁלטן, after the forms אבדן, דּרבן, etc., e.g., Bereshith rabba, c. 85 extr.: "Every king and ruler שלטון who had not a שולטן, a command (government, sway) in the land, said that that did not satisfy him, the king of Babylon had to place an under-Caesar in Jericho," etc.
(Note: Regarding the distinction between שׁלטון and שׁלטן, vid., Baer's Abodath Jisrael, p. 385.)
Thus: no man possesses rule or is a ruler .
A transition is made from the inevitable law of death to the inexorable severity of the law of war; (3) there is no discharge, no dispensation, whether for a time merely (missio), or a full discharge (dimissio), in war, which in its fearful rigour (vid., on the contrary, Deuteronomy 20:5-8) was the Persian law. Even so, every possibility of escape is cut off by the law of the divine requital; (4) wickedness will not save (מלּט, causative, as always) its lord (cf. the proverb: "Unfaithfulness strikes its own master") or possessor; i.e., the wicked person, when the עת ום comes, is hopelessly lost. Grtz would adopt the reading עשׁר instead of רשע; but the fate of the רשׁע בּעל, or of the רשׁע, is certainly that to which the concatenation of thought from Ecclesiastes 8:6 leads, as also the disjunctive accent at the end of the three first clauses of Ecclesiastes 8:8 denotes. But that in the words בּעל רשׁע (not בּעלי) a despotic king is thought of (בּעליו, as at Ecclesiastes 5:10, Ecclesiastes 5:12; Ecclesiastes 7:12; Proverbs 3:27; cf. under Proverbs 1:19), is placed beyond a doubt by the epilogistic verse:
For - Men are generally ignorant of future events, and therefore their minds are disquieted.
*More commentary available at chapter level.