The unit begins with two parallel but contrasting sayings. The first indicates that foolish leaders pose a danger to the welfare of the nation.

Woe: although this interjection introduces a familiar prophetic judgment form (compare Isa 5.8, 11, 18, 20), the way Qoheleth uses it indicates that he has altered that setting to an educational one. Here it introduces Qoheleth’s warning of the dangers of a given situation. The cry of Woe … has been used once before in a similar setting in 4.10 (see comments there). So Woe can be rendered as “trouble,” or “predicament.” A nation with foolish rulers is “most unfortunate”; compare Good News Translation “a country is in trouble when….” Another translation possibility is to preserve the cry of despair with a rendering like “Alas for you…!” This is how New Revised Standard Version presents it.

O land, a simple vocative, indicates who is addressed. Land includes more than soil or territory; it includes the people who live within its borders as well. Terms like “nation,” “people,” or, where these terms are not used, “tribe” can convey the sense well. The translator needs to determine if it is natural to address a country or a people in this way. In some cases it may be quite appropriate to do so with a term like “O my countrymen” or more simply “O people.” Some languages will not have a vocative marker like O but may simply say “Countrymen, …” or “People, ….” In other languages, however, even this style may seem unnatural. Some versions such as Good News Translation eliminate the vocative and express this verse entirely in the third person; for example, “A country is in trouble when….” This also is an option to be considered.

When your king is a child is a noun clause introduced by the so-called relative marker, indicating that the clause describes the nation or land. The connector can be expressed as “whose” or “if” as well as by the Revised Standard Version choice when. This is possible because the example it gives is a hypothetical case.

Your king: see comments on 4.13.

A child renders a Hebrew term that has a wider meaning including “young man.” We know from comments he has made elsewhere that Qoheleth does not believe that just because a person is young he cannot be a good ruler (see 4.13-16). Solomon is described by this same term in 1 Kgs 3.7. Our present verse gives a negative example, while the following verse (verse 17) provides a positive balance, and we can use this parallelism of the verses to help our understanding of their meaning. The structure suggests that the term in this verse is the opposite of “free man” in the next verse. Thus it means something like “servant.” In fact the context suggests that what he does is foolish, so “foolish servant” will convey the sense here.

If we choose a third person form, we may say:

• A country may be in great trouble if its king is a foolish servant.

• A tribe can be in trouble if its leader is an unlearned youth.

We may wish to retain more of the flavor of the original by retaining the second person address:

• You are in trouble if your king is nothing but a youth.

• Too bad for you, countrymen, if a foolish servant is your king.

And your princes feast in the morning! parallels the first half of the verse. Princes is comparable to “kings.” In communities without a royal tradition, a term for another member of the tribal leadership can be used instead of princes. “Noblemen,” “chosen leaders,” or “big people [people in high positions]” are possibilities. The English term “prince” describes the son of a king or queen. The Hebrew term sometimes translated “prince” does not carry that sense at all. It refers to one who rules.

Feast in the morning: although most people eat at least moderately in the morning, the saying here gives the sense that there is something wrong in what these people are doing. We picture the leaders beginning their feasting or gluttony as soon as they get up each morning. They then continue eating throughout the day and into the evening. The imperfect form of the verb “eat” carries this meaning of continuous feasting. Revised Standard Version feast shows that it is more than the simple act of eating. Many other languages have a similar term to refer to eating more than is necessary.

Morning, or early in the day, is a fairly general reference, but there is still no reason to adopt the Good News Translation rendering “they feast all night long.” If special emphasis is desired, we may say something like “as soon as the sun comes up.”

Translation possibilities for this clause are:

• and your [or, its] leaders begin their gluttony early in the day.

• and your [or, its] princes begin their feasting early in the morning.

Again, the form this verse takes will depend on the style the translator wishes to adopt. We can preserve the prophetic formula in second person address, or state the condemnation indirectly. The entire verse can be translated in a solemn and poetic style:

• You are to be pitied,
People whose king is an untrained child,
Whose leaders start their feasting as soon as the sun comes up!

or in a less figurative style:

• A nation is most unfortunate if a foolish servant is its king,
and its leaders begin their gluttony early in the day!

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Zogbo, Lynell. A Handbook on the Book of Ecclesiates. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .