The Relative Value of Wisdom

¹² Then I turned to consider wisdom,^(A) madness, and folly, for what will the man be like who comes after the king? He^[a] will do what has already been done.^{(B) 13} And I realized that there is an advantage to wisdom over folly, like the advantage of light over darkness.^(C)

Yet I also knew that one fate comes to them both.^{(E) 15} So I said to myself, “What happens to the fool will also happen to me. Why then have I been overly wise?”^(F) And I said to myself that this is also futile. ¹⁶ For, just like the fool, there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man,^(G) since in the days to come both will be forgotten. How is it that the wise man dies just like the fool? ¹⁷ Therefore, I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me. For everything is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

What the Teacher Found

²³ I have tested all this by wisdom. I resolved, “I will be wise,” but it was beyond me. ²⁴ What exists is beyond reach and very deep.^(A) Who can discover it? ²⁵ I turned my thoughts to know, explore, and seek wisdom^(B) and an explanation for things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity and folly is madness. ²⁶ And I find more bitter than death^(C) the woman who is a trap,^(D) her heart a net, and her hands chains. The one who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her. ²⁷ “Look,” says the Teacher, “I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find out the explanation, ²⁸ which my soul continually searches for but does not find: among a thousand people I have found one true man, but among all these I have not found a true woman.^{(E) 29} Only see this: I have discovered that God made people upright,^(F) but they pursued many schemes.”