ani serves for the giving of prominence to the object, and here precedes, after the manner of a substantival clause (cf. Isa 45:12; Eze 33:17; 2Ch 28:10), as at Gen 24:27; cf. Gesen. §121. 3. Miqrěh (from קרה, to happen, to befall) is quiquid alicui accidit (in the later philosoph. terminol. accidens; Venet. συμβεβεεκός); but here, as the connection shows, that which finally puts an end to life, the final event of death. By the word יד the author expresses what he had observed on reflection; by בּל...אם, what he said inwardly to himself regarding it; and by דּבּ דל, what sentence he passed thereon with himself. Lammah asks for the design, as maddu'a for the reason. אז is either understood temporally: then when it is finally not better with me than with the fool (Hitz. from the standpoint of the dying hour), or logically: if yet one and the same event happeneth to the wise man and to the fool (Eslt.); in the consciousness of the author both are taken together.The זה of the conclusion refers, not, as at Ecc 1:17, to the endeavouring after and the possession of wisdom, but to this final result making no difference between wise men and fools. This fate, happening to all alike, is הבל, a vanity rendering all vain, a nullity levelling down all to nothing, something full of contradictions, irrational. Paul also (Rom 8:20) speaks of this destruction, which at last comes upon all, as a ματαιότης.

The author now assigns the reason for this discouraging result.

Verse 16

Ecc 2:16 “For no remembrance of the wise, as of the fool, remains for ever; since in the days that are to come they are all forgotten. And how dieth the wise man: as the fool!” As in Ecc 1:11, so here זכרון is the principal form, not different from זכּרון. Having no remembrance forever, is equivalent to having no eternal endurance, having simply no onward existence (Ecc 9:6). עם is both times the comparat. combin., as at Ecc 7:11; Job 9:26; Job 37:18; cf. יחד, Psa 49:11. There are, indeed, individual historically great men, the memory of whom is perpetuated from generation to generation in words and in monuments; but these are exceptions, which do not always show that posterity is able to distinguish between wise men and fools. As a rule, men have a long appreciating recollection of the wise as little as they have of the fools, for long ago (vid., beshekvar, p. 640) in the coming days (כּב אבּ, accus. of the time, like the ellipt.הב, Isa 27:6) all are forgotten; הכּל is, as at Psa 14:3, meant personally: the one as the other; and נשׁכּח is rendered by the Masora, like Psa 9:6, כּב אב, as the pausal form of the finite; but is perhaps thought of as part., denoting that which only in the coming days will become too soon a completed fact, since those who