survive go from the burial of the one, as well as from that of the other, to the ordinary duties of the day. Death thus sinks the wise man, as it does the fool, in eternal oblivion; it comes to both, and brings the same to both, which extorted from the author the cry: How dieth the wise man? as the fool! Why is the fate which awaits both thus the same! This is the pointed, sarcastic איך (how!) of the satirical Mashal, e.g., Isa 14:4; Eze 26:17; and ימוּת is = moriendum est, as at 2Sa 3:3, moriendum erat. Rambach well: איך est h. l. particula admirationis super rei indignitate.
What happened to the author from this sorrowful discovery he now states.
Verse 17
Ecc 2:17 “The life became hateful to me; for the work which man accomplsihes under the sun was grievous to me: because all is vain and windy effort.” He hated life; and the labour which is done under the sun, i.e., the efforts of men, including the fate that befalls men, appeared to him to be evil (repugnant). The lxx translate: πονηρὸν επ ̓ ἐμέ; the Venet.: κακὸν ἐπ ̓ ἐμοί; and thus Hitzig: as a woeful burden lying on me. But עלי רע is to be understood after tov al, Est 3:9, etc., cf. Psa 16:6, and as synon. with בּעיני or לפני (cf. Dan. 3:32), according to which Symmachus: κακὸν γάρ μοι ἐφάνη. This al belongs to the more modern usus loq., cf. Ewald, §217i. The end of the song was also again the grievous ceterum censeo: Vanity, and a labour which has wind as its goal, wind as its fruit.
Verse 18
Ecc 2:18 “And I hated all my labour with which I laboured under the sun, that I should leave it to the man who shall be after me;” i.e., not: who shall come into existence after me, but: who shall occupy my place after me. The fiction discovers itself here in the expression: “The king,” who would not thus express himself indefinitely and unsympathetically regarding his son and successor on the throne, is stripped of his historical individuality. The first and third שׁ are relat. pron. (quem, after the schema egymologicum עמל עמל, Ecc 2:11, Ecc 9:9, and qui), the second is relat. conj. (eo) quod. The suffix of שׁאן refers to the labour in the sense of that which is obtained by wearisome labour, accomplished or collected with
