translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: ECC

label: NET study note

text: Instead, someone else enjoys it . A person may be unable to enjoy the fruit of his/her labor due to an unfortunate turn of events that robs a person of his possessions ( 5:13-14 ) or a miserly, lifelong hoarding of one’s wealth that robs him of the ability to enjoy what he has worked so hard to acquire ( 5:15-17 ). Qoheleth recommends the enjoyment of life and the fruit of one’s labor, as God enables ( 5:18-20 ). Unfortunately, the ability to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor is often thwarted by the obstacles described in 6:1-2 and 6:3-9 .


text: The point of 6:3-6 is that the futility of unenjoyed wealth is worse than the tragedy of being stillborn.


text: The birth of the stillborn was in vain – it did it no good to be born.


text: The name of the stillborn is forgotten.


text: The Hebrew term translated rest here refers to freedom from toil, anxiety, and misery – part of the miserable misfortune that the miserly man of wealth must endure.


text: So what advantage does the wise man have over a fool? The rhetorical question in Hebrew implies a negative answer: the wise man has no absolute advantage over a fool in the sense that both will share the same fate: death. Qoheleth should not be misunderstood here as denying that wisdom has no relative advantage over folly; elsewhere he affirms that wisdom does yield some relative benefits in life ( 7:1-22 ). However, wisdom cannot deliver one from death.


text: As in the preceding parallel line, this rhetorical question implies a negative answer (see the note after the word “fool” in the preceding line).