Ecclesiastes 2:2

"To laughter I said: It is mad; and to mirth: What doth it issue in?" Laughter and mirth are personified; meholāl is thus not neut. (Hitz., a foolish matter), but mas. The judgment which is pronounced regarding both has not the form of an address; we do not need to supply אתּה and אתּ, it is objectively like an oratio obliqua: that it is mad; cf. Psa 49:12. In the midst of the laughter and revelling in sensual delight, the feeling came over him that this was not the way to true happiness, and he was compelled to say to laughter, It has become mad (part. Poal, as at Psa 102:9), it is like one who is raving mad, who finds his pleasure in self-destruction; and to joy (mirth), which disregards the earnestness of life and all due bounds, he is constrained to say, What does it result in? = that it produces nothing, i.e., that it brings forth no real fruit; that it produces only the opposite of true satisfaction; that instead of filling, it only enlarges the inner void. Others, e.g., Luther, "What doest thou?" i.e., How foolish is thy undertaking! Even if we thus explain, the point in any case lies in the inability of mirth to make man truly and lastingly happy, - in the inappropriateness of the means for the end aimed at. Therefore עשׂה is thus meant just as in עשׂה פרי (Hitz.), and מעשׂה, effect, Isa 32:17. Thus Mendelssohn: What profit does thou bring to me? Regarding זה; מה־זּה = mah-zoth, Gen 3:13, where it is shown that the demonstrative pronoun serves here to sharpen the interrogative: What then, what in all the world! After this revelling in sensual enjoyment has been proved to be a fruitless experiment, he searches whether wisdom and folly cannot be bound together in a way leading to the object aimed at.

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).