I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure,
For my heart rejoiced in all my labor;
And athis was my reward from all my labor.
And on the labor in which I had toiled;
And indeed all was avanity and grasping for the wind.
There was no profit under the sun.
The End of the Wise and the Fool
For what can the man do who succeeds the king?—
Only what he has already bdone.
But the fool walks in darkness.
Yet I myself perceived
That bthe same event happens to them all.
“As it happens to the fool,
It also happens to me,
And why was I then more wise?”
Then I said in my heart,
“This also is vanity.”
Since all that now is will be forgotten in the days to come.
And how does a wise man die?
As the fool!
| << Ecclesiastes 2:11 | Ecclesiastes 2:13 >> |
Ecclesiastes 2:12
He had tried (worldly) wisdom (Ecclesiastes 1:12-18) and folly (foolish pleasure) (Ecclesiastes 2:1-11); he now compares them (Ecclesiastes 2:12) and finds that while (worldly)
wisdom excelleth folly (Ecclesiastes 2:13-14), yet the one event, death, befalls both (Ecclesiastes 2:14-16), and that thus the wealth acquired by the wise man's "labor" may descend to a "fool" that hath not labored (Ecclesiastes 2:18-19, Ecclesiastes 2:21); therefore all his labor is vanity (Ecclesiastes 2:22-23).
what can the man do . . . already done— (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Parenthetical. A future investigator can strike nothing out "new," so as to draw a different conclusion from what I draw by comparing "wisdom and madness." HOLDEN, with less ellipsis, translates, "What, O man, shall come after the king?" etc. Better, GROTIUS, "What man can come after (compete with) the king in the things which are done?" None ever can have the same means of testing what all earthly things can do towards satisfying the soul; namely, worldly wisdom, science, riches, power, longevity, all combined.
Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Ecclesiastes 2:12:
Ecclesiastes 1:13
Ecclesiastes 1:17
Ecclesiastes 2:12
Ecclesiastes 7:25
| << Ecclesiastes 2:11 | Ecclesiastes 2:13 >> |
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