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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 2:2 - 2:2
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“To laughter I said: It is mad; and to mirth: What doth it issue in?” Laughter and mirth are personified; meholāl is thus not neut. (Hitz., a foolish matter), but mas. The judgment which is pronounced regarding both has not the form of an address; we do not need to supply אַתָּה and אַתְּ, it is objectively like an oratio obliqua: that it is mad; cf. Psa 49:12. In the midst of the laughter and revelling in sensual delight, the feeling came over him that this was not the way to true happiness, and he was compelled to say to laughter, It has become mad (part. Poal, as at Psa 102:9), it is like one who is raving mad, who finds his pleasure in self-destruction; and to joy (mirth), which disregards the earnestness of life and all due bounds, he is constrained to say, What does it result in? = that it produces nothing, i.e., that it brings forth no real fruit; that it produces only the opposite of true satisfaction; that instead of filling, it only enlarges the inner void. Others, e.g., Luther, “What doest thou?” i.e., How foolish is thy undertaking! Even if we thus explain, the point in any case lies in the inability of mirth to make man truly and lastingly happy, - in the inappropriateness of the means for the end aimed at. Therefore עֹשָׂה is thus meant just as in עָשׂה פְרִי (Hitz.), and מעשׂה, effect, Isa 32:17. Thus Mendelssohn: What profit does thou bring to me? Regarding זֹה; מַה־זֹּה = mah-zoth, Gen 3:13, where it is shown that the demonstrative pronoun serves here to sharpen the interrogative: What then, what in all the world!
After this revelling in sensual enjoyment has been proved to be a fruitless experiment, he searches whether wisdom and folly cannot be bound together in a way leading to the object aimed at.