Ecclesiastes chapter 4

vs 1

This sounds a little bit like Marxism, but I think its scope is bigger. Of course power is on the side of the oppressor. Who can oppress without the power to?

vs 2

Job says something similar. It's an odd statement to make, but the sense of it is very clear - better not to live than have to live in the situation we find ourselves. It's not condoning suicide, necessarily, as we will see in the next verse. What it is doing is bemoaning the evil of the world, and that it seems to overpower the good, and certainly seems to overpower the helpless.

vs 3

So the best person is one who has not even been born. If you died, it means you lived, and so poor you. Better to never live, he says. This is not a difficult conclusion to come to if you are simply looking at what you see in the world at face value. There is evil, evil does triumph sometimes, and people do get oppressed by evil people, and never comforted or helped. It happens. Seeing that can lead someone to think, "What's the point of living?"

vs 4

How much of what people do is driven by such envy, the "keeping up with Joneses" type envy, or what MMORPG players call "Red Queen" envy? Probably a lot. We would probably never want something so much if we didn't keep seeing other people with it. Sure, there are still some things we just have to see and we want them. But how often do we see something, and want it not just because it's cool, but because someone else has it? And yet both die. Meaningless.

vs 5

This is in contrast to the previous verse. Working for jealousy is meaningless, but not working at all is ruinous. This is one of the many sections that has that Proverbs-esque style about it in Ecclesiastes.

vs 6

So chasing after the Joneses is folly, not working at all is folly. Better to be happy with little, than work your ass off for much. Probably better to work a bit for a lot, but not everyone gets that opportunity.

vs 7

Again!

vs 8

This man, whether real or imagined, is asking a question that completely ignores God. Because of his loneliness, all the work he does seems meaningless to him. Why work so much? If he is rich, perhaps he can only live out so much of his wealth. If he is poor, then perhaps he should not bother at all. In any case, his life will come and go, and not a single person will probably really notice. Meaningless.