I gave my heart (Ecclesiastes 1:17; Ecclesiastes 7:25; Daniel 10:12). The heart, in the Hebrew conception, was the seat, not of the affections only, but of the understanding and intellectual faculties generally.
So the expression here is equivalent to "I applied my mind." To seek and search out. The two words are not synonymous. The former verb ( דָּרַשׁ, darash) implies penetrating into the depth of an object before one; the other word ( תּוּר, tur) taking a comprehensive survey of matters further away; so that two methods and scopes of investigation are signified.
By wisdom; ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ. Wisdom was the means or instrument by which he carried on his researches, which were directed, not merely to the collecting of facts, but to investigating the causes and conditions of things.
Concerning all things that are done under heaven; i.e. men's actions and conduct, political, social, and private life. We have "under the sun" in Ecclesiastes 1:9, and again in Ecclesiastes 1:14. Here there is no question of physical matters, the phenomena of the material world, but only of human circumstances and interests.
This sore travail (rather, this is a sore travail that) God hath given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. The word rendered "travail" ( עִנְיָן, inyan) occurs often in this book (e.g. Ecclesiastes 2:23, Ecclesiastes 2:26, etc.
), and nowhere else in the Old Testament. The same root is found in the word translated "exercised;" hence Wright has, "It is a woeful exercise which God has given to the sons of men wherewith to exercise themselves."
If we keep to the word "travail," we may render, "to travail therein." It implies distracting business, engrossing occupation. Septuagint, περισπασμόν; Vulgate, occupationem. Man feels himself constrained to make this laborious investigation, yet the result is most unsatisfactory, as the next verse shows.
"God" is here Elohim, and so throughout the book, the name Jehovah (the God of the covenant, the God of Israel) never once occurring. Those who regard Solomon as the author of the book account for this on the plea that the king, in his latest years, reflecting sadly on his backsliding and fall, shrank from uttering with his polluted lips the adorable Name once so often used with filial reverence and beloved.
But the true reason is found in the design of Koheleth, which was to set forth, not so much Israel's position under the covenant, as the condition of man in the face of the God of nature. The idiosyncrasies and peculiar features of the chosen people are not the subject of his essay; he deals with a wider sphere; his theme is man in his relation to Divine providence; and for this power he uses that name, common alike to the true and false religions, Elohim, applied to the Supreme Being by believers and idolaters.