Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 143 · May 23
Two Are Better
“Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.”
You are reading this on your own, and one of two things is true of you. Either there is nobody within reach who would notice if you went down, or there are a dozen people within reach and not one of them has ever seen you go down.
Ecclesiastes is not being sentimental about company, and what sits above the line proves it. There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour. That is a man working himself into the ground for an heir who does not exist. The chapter had opened on people who were oppressed and had no comforter, saying no comforter twice in one verse. Then: Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. And the reason given is falling. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
Both of you have work to do and it is not the same work. One has to be found by somebody, which is slow and undignified. The other has to let one of the dozen watch the falling, which is worse. Ecclesiastes promises neither of you that it goes well. It states the return on the arrangement, a good reward for their labour, and Paul names the labour when he tells a church to bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. The reward is a pair of hands close enough to get under you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 143 is Delivered from Temptation (2 Peter 2:9).