For there are numberless reasons, and they only increase the demonstration of evanescence, and that there could be no profit to humanity.
(11.) For there exist words (reasonings, in the technical use of the word in this book) the much (i.e. to the full) multiplying vanity, what is the profiting to humanity? The meaning seems to be that there could be adduced a still greater number of reasons, all of which would show that human life was evanescent; but what is the profit, or use, of stating them to humanity, or bringing them forward? and as יותר naturally refers to דברים, the nearest nominative, it must be taken as a distributive singular; so that this interpretation is the simplest the grammar of the passage admits.
12 For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, [¹]all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? for who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?
[¹] Hebrew the number of the days of the life of his vanity.
For no one can tell what is a real good to mankind in any life: that life being a number of evanescent days, which he spends as a shadow, and of which no one can tell to any man what shall result to him——in this hot work-day world.
(12.) For (another additional reason) who knows what is a good to man in his lives (אדם, followed by plural, ‘lives,’ in any life, therefore), the number of the days of his life (i.e. as he passes the days of that life), his vanity (that evanescent life of his), and he makes them as a shadow (the LXX. render ἐν σκιᾷ, but this may be ad sensum only, not because they read differently) which (full relative, because the whole idea is referred to, it may be best rendered ‘because’) who (repeated, and so giving emphasis) tells to man what shall be after him (i.e. what shall succeed him) under the sun. The limitation is necessary, and especially here, as this passage closes the argument thus far. What is to follow is in the nature of detached and paradoxical aphorisms, illustrating these truths: they are some of these many arguments demonstrating human evanescence and transitoriness, but stated less formally than heretofore.