Ecclesiastes 2:12-16

Revised Standard Version

Wisdom and Joy Given to One Who Pleases God

¹² So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly; for what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what he has already done. ¹³ Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. ¹⁴ The wise man has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness; and yet I perceived that one fate comes to all of them. ¹⁵ Then I said to myself, “What befalls the fool will befall me also; why then have I been so very wise?” And I said to myself that this also is vanity. ¹⁶ For of the wise man as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise man dies just like the fool!