I reasoned over the matter with my own heart to this effect. I who have, it appears, become greater and more advanced in wisdom than any who were before me in Jerusalem, and experienced over the widest extent of wisdom and knowledge,
(16.) Reasoned I myself together with my heart to say (as reasoned stands first, this is the subject of the whole, and the words ‘to say,’ לאמר, are the usual formula of introduction of the thing said; they are equivalent to our ‘to this effect.’ This then is Koheleth’s reasoning, the result of which is to be given), I behold (stating it as an admitted and patent fact) I have been made great, and I have been added to in wisdom above all which were before me in Jerusalem, and my heart has seen the much (with the article expressed; equivalent therefore to very much, or as much as possible of) wisdom and knowledge.
17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
and have set my heart earnestly to know wisdom, and to know false successes from real acts of prudence, know but this: it is simply vexing one’s spirit;
(17.) And I have given my heart in order to know wisdom (that is, he made wisdom his special study and object) and the knowledge of (‘know’ being repeated rises into special prominence, and hence the meaning is to know wisdom, or to be wise enough to recognise) false expectations and prudences. (This passage is one of great difficulty, but the exact sense will become apparent on investigating the meaning of the two words הוללות and שכלות; now הוללות occurs chapter i. 17, ii. 12, vii. 25, ix. 3, and pointed with Shurek at x. 13, and is peculiar to Ecclesiastes. It is a technical word, and is correctly translated ‘folly,’ but it is that kind of folly which displays itself in false joy. The future poel from which this noun is derived occurs Job xii. 17, chapter vii. 7, Isaiah xliv. 25; and the participle at chapter ii. 2, Psalm cii. 89. Thus we see the connexion between this sense and the more ordinary one of ‘praise;’ it is the ‘bepraised’ used in a bad sense. The word שכלות occurs here only, but it is rendered by the LXX. ἐπιστήμη, and by the Syriac
, compare also Genesis xli. 33, with the meaning ‘prudence,’ and with this agrees the later Hebrew. Now these meanings make consistent sense. Koheleth wished to know wisdom and the knowledge of folly and prudence; in other words, to have a wisdom which could tell the one from the other. Thus the LXX. render הל״ by παραβολὰς, which A² has altered into περιφορὰν; this apparently very strange rendering is thus intelligible enough, especially to those who had the Hebrew before them. To alter the text to סכלות, as some have proposed, is not even to cut the Gordian knot, for with the true meaning of this word, ‘clever-folly,’ ‘false-wisdom,’ no better sense will be made, although it is quite possible that שכ״ may have been chosen for the equivoke it gives, not even differing in sound, if the pointing can be trusted, from סכ״. The truth is that so much of our elaborate wisdom and best plans are but elaborate mistakes, that to attempt to judge the one from the other is a hopeless task. Hence then the following) I know (this is the fourth time this word occurs in the clause, thus it is brought out with the very strongest prominence, and gives the meaning ‘what I do know is’) that even this (שגם, compare places chapter ii. 15, viii. 14, has a peculiar meaning, expressive of surprise that this should be so) really is vexing of spirit (רעיון, not רעות, as above; because in this case the vexation is subjective,——the idea conveyed by the whole passage being ‘what I do know as the result of my wisdom and knowledge being just even this, that it is only a vexing of the spirit’). It may be observed that רעיון occurs in the Chaldee of Daniel——see Daniel ii. 29, 30; iv. 19 (16); v. 6, etc., always in the sense of a ‘painful reflection,’ but in later Chaldee and Syriac as ‘a reflection’ of any kind. As the sense in which Koheleth uses the word is the nearest to the root-meaning, is it not an evidence, so far, of earlier composition of his book?