Ecclesiastes 2:12-16

Common English Bible

¹²My reflections then turned to wisdom, madness, and folly. What can the king’s heir do but what has already been done? ¹³I saw that wisdom is more beneficial than folly, as light is more beneficial than darkness.

¹⁴The wise have eyes in their head,
but fools walk around in darkness.

But I also realized that the same fate happens to both of them. ¹⁵So I thought to myself, What happens to the fool will also happen to me. So why have I been so very wise? I said to myself, This too is pointless. ¹⁶There is no eternal memory of the wise any more than the foolish,^[a] because everyone is forgotten before long. How can the wise die just like the fool?

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