Ecclesiastes 2:16

"For no remembrance of the wise, as of the fool, remains for ever; since in the days that are to come they are all forgotten. And how dieth the wise man: as the fool!" As in Ecc 1:11, so here זכרון is the principal form, not different from זכּרון. Having no remembrance forever, is equivalent to having no eternal endurance, having simply no onward existence (Ecc 9:6). עם is both times the comparat. combin., as at Ecc 7:11; Job 9:26; Job 37:18; cf. יחד, Psa 49:11. There are, indeed, individual historically great men, the memory of whom is perpetuated from generation to generation in words and in monuments; but these are exceptions, which do not always show that posterity is able to distinguish between wise men and fools. As a rule, men have a long appreciating recollection of the wise as little as they have of the fools, for long ago (vid., beshekvar, p. 640) in the coming days (כּב אבּ, accus. of the time, like the ellipt.הב, Isa 27:6) all are forgotten; הכּל is, as at Psa 14:3, meant personally: the one as the other; and נשׁכּח is rendered by the Masora, like Psa 9:6, כּב אב, as the pausal form of the finite; but is perhaps thought of as part., denoting that which only in the coming days will become too soon a completed fact, since those who 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 Sa2 3:3, moriendum erat. Rambach well: איך est h. l.…

Solomon having pronounced all vanity, and particularly knowledge and learning, which he was so far from giving himself joy of that he found the increase of it did but increase his sorrow, in this chapter he goes on to show what reason he has to be tired of this world, and with what little reason most men are fond of it. I. He shows that there is no true happiness and satisfaction to be had in mirth and pleasure, and the delights of sense (Ecc 2:1-11). II. He reconsiders the pretensions of wisdom, and allows it to be excellent and useful, and yet sees it clogged with such diminutions of its worth that it proves insufficient to make a man happy (Ecc 2:12-16). III. He enquires how far the business and wealth of this world will go towards making men happy, and concludes, from his own experience, that, to those who set their hearts upon it, "it is vanity and vexation of spirit," (Ecc 2:17-23), and that, if there be any good in it, it is only to those that sit loose to it (Ecc 2:24-26).