Hades, the world of the dead, and Destruction (Death, the destroying power, personified) have been at all times and in all countries thought of as all-devouring, insatiable (compare the marginal reference). Yet one thing is equally so, the lust of the eye, the restless craving which grows with what it feeds on Ecclesiastes 1:8.

Hell and destruction are never full - How hideous must the soul of a covetous man be, when God compares it to hell and perdition!
The eyes of man are never satisfied - As the grave can never be filled up with bodies, nor perdition with souls; so the restless desire, the lust of power, riches, and splendor, is never satisfied. Out of this ever unsatisfied desire spring all the changing fashions, the varied amusements, and the endless modes of getting money, prevalent in every age, and in every country.

Hell and destruction are never full,.... The grave, as the word used often signifies; and which may be called "destruction", because bodies laid in it are soon corrupted and destroyed; and though bodies are cast into it and devoured by it, it is ready for more; it is one of the four things which never have enough. The place where Gog is said to be buried is called Hamongog, the multitude of Gog, Ezekiel 39:11; and by the Septuagint there Polyandrion, which is the name the Greeks give to a burying place, because many men are buried there; and with the Latins the dead are called Plures (o), the many, or the more; and yet the grave is never satisfied with them, Proverbs 30:16. Or hell, the place of everlasting damnation and destruction, is meant, which has received multitudes of souls already, and where there is room for more, nor will it be full until the last day;
so the eyes of man are never satisfied; as not the eyes of his body with seeing corporeal objects, but still are desirous of seeing more, and indeed everything that is to be seen, and are never glutted, Ecclesiastes 1:8; so neither the eyes of the carnal mind, or the lusts of it, which are insatiable things, let the objects of them be what they will; as in an ambitious man, a covetous person, or an unclean one.
(o) Plauti Trinum, Acts. 2. Sc. 2. v. 14.

Two things are here said to be never satisfied, death and sin. The appetites of the carnal mind for profit or pleasure are always desiring more. Those whose eyes are ever toward the Lord, are satisfied in him, and shall for ever be so.

Men's cupidity is as insatiable as the grave.

The following proverb has, in common with the preceding, the catchword האדם, and the emphatic repetition of the same expression:
20 The under-world and hell are not satisfied,
And the eyes of man are not satisfied.
A Kerı̂ ואבדון is here erroneously noted by Lwenstein, Stuart, and others. The Kerı̂ to ואבדּה is here ואבדּו, which secures the right utterance of the ending, and is altogether wanting
(Note: In Gesen. Lex. this אבדה stands to the present day under אבדה.)
in many MSS (e.g., Cod. Jaman). The stripping off of the ן from the ending ון is common in the names of persons and places (e.g., שׁלמה, lxx Σολομών and שׁלה); we write at pleasure either ow or oh (e.g., מגדּו), Olsh. 215g. אבדּה (אבדּו) of the nature of a proper name, is already found in its full form אבדּון at Proverbs 15:11, along with שׁאול; the two synonyms are, as was there shown, not wholly alike in the idea they present, as the underworld and realm of death, but are related to each other almost the same as Hades and Gehenna; אבדון is what is called
(Note: Vid., Frankel, Zu dem Targum der Propheten (1872), p. 25.)
in the Jonathan-Targum בּית אבדּנא, the place of destruction, i.e., of the second death (מותא תנינא). The proverb places Hades and Hell on the one side, and the eyes of man on the other, on the same line in respect of their insatiableness. To this Fleischer adds the remark: cf. the Arab. al'ayn l'a taml'aha all'a altrab, nothing fills the eyes of man but at last the dust of the grave - a strikingly beautiful expression! If the dust of the grave fills the open eyes, then they are full - fearful irony! The eye is the instrument of seeing, and consequently in so far as it always looks out after and farther, it is the instrument and the representation of human covetousness. The eye is filled, is satisfied, is equivalent to: human covetousness is appeased. But first "the desire of the eye," 1-John 2:16, is meant in the proper sense. The eyes of men are not satisfied in looking and contemplating that which is attractive and new, and no command is more difficult to be fulfilled than that in Isaiah 33:15, "...that shutteth his eyes from seeing evil." There is therefore no more inexhaustible means, impiae sepculationis, than the desire of the eyes.

Hell - The grave devours all the bodies which are put into it, and is always ready to receive and devour more. The eyes - The desires, which discover themselves by the eyes.