Miser

The figure of the miser is drawn in a single sketch in Ecclesiastes — a solitary man whose labor has no limit and whose eyes are never satisfied with what he has gathered.

Vanity of solitary accumulation

The Preacher names this scene as one of the things he saw under the sun. "Then I returned and saw vanity under the sun. There is one who is alone, and he has not a second; yes, he has neither son nor brother; yet is there no end of all his labor, neither are his eyes satisfied with riches. For whom then, [he says], do I labor, and deprive my soul of good? This also is vanity, yes, it is an intense travail" (Ec 4:7-8). The portrait stacks four marks: complete isolation (no second, no son, no brother), unending labor, eyes that cannot be filled by riches, and a self-deprivation the man himself eventually recognizes when he asks for whom he is laboring. The Preacher ends by classing the whole pattern as vanity and as intense travail.