Charles Ellicott Commentary Ecclesiastes 4:15

"I saw all the living that walk under the sun, that they were with the youth, the second, that stood up in his stead." — Ecclesiastes 4:15 (ASV)

I considered. —Heb., I saw. Most modern interpreters regard the “second child” as identical with the “young man” of Ecclesiastes 4:13, and understand the passage, “I saw him at the head of all his people; yet his great popularity was but temporary, and the next generation took no pleasure in him.”

It seems to me that by no stretch of rhetoric can all the living which walk under the sun be taken for the subjects of the sovereign in question. I am inclined to think that the Preacher reverts to the general topic, and considered all the living with the “second youth,” i.e., the second generation who will succeed them. He saw the old generation hardened in its ways, and incapable of being admonished, and then displaced by a new generation, with which the next will feel equal dissatisfaction.