I SAID in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.
SAID then I in my heart, Come now, I will try thee with mirth, and so get a sight of a real-good; but see now, this is altogether an evanescent thing. Of laughter, I said Delirium:
II. (1.) I said, even I (the personal pronoun is not redundant, it indicates that Koheleth is recording his own experience), in my heart (this formula usually introduces in this book a thought more specious than true), Come now, I will try thee with mirth and see into good (i.e. still addressing his heart, ‘to see a real good;’ טוב is used in this book as a technical word, like bonum in the summum bonum); and behold (stating a manifest fact) also this (emphatic, signifying this same mirth) is a vanity (an evanescent thing; joy or mirth then is too short-lived to be considered a real good).
2 I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?
and of mirth, What will that do?
(2.) To laughter I said, Madness (that which is made mad, see note to chapter [i. 17]), and to pleasure (or mirth), What doth that do? (as this expects the answer No, it is very nearly equivalent to ‘It does nothing.’) (The Syriac reads here
