And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?: Qoheleth knew from early on that material goods were always inherited by someone, so that in itself was not the problem. The issue was that he could not guarantee that his heir would be wise or foolish. The rhetorical question who knows …? actually affirms that nobody knows. It may be translated either as in Revised Standard Version or as in Good News Translation. Some alternatives are “Can anyone guarantee that my heir will be wise and not foolish?” or “Nobody knows whether my heir will act wisely or foolishly.”

Qoheleth continues to lament over the problem with the words Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. The reason for this anguish is that he is helpless to determine what the heir will be like. A conjunction like Revised Standard Version Yet, or “But it’s he who will…” may help to convey this emotion. The Hebrew verb translated be master of is a word found mostly in the books written in the later Hebrew period (Esther, Nehemiah, and Ecclesiastes). Some languages may express this as “have control over” or “take charge of.” In others there may be a special idiom such as “he will eat all….” The phrase all for which I toiled can be given as “the fruit of all my labor” or as in Good News Translation, “everything I have worked for.”

The phrase and used my wisdom is an adverbial expression telling us that Qoheleth worked according to wisdom principles, as he mentioned in 2.3, 9. We may use the adverb “wisely” to modify the verb “toil” for a smoother translation, “which I labored wisely to achieve,” or “which my wisdom helped me achieve.”

This also is vanity: the demonstrative pronoun This refers to the issue just described, namely, that a fool may be his heir. This is the core of the problem. It is not hevel (“useless”) to leave your goods behind at death; that happens to everyone. It is hevel that your goods may be inherited by a fool. Qoheleth cries in frustration because this is a situation beyond his control. “How frustrating!” or “What a waste!” is the sense.

For verse 19, then, we can propose:

• No one knows whether this man will be wise or foolish. And yet, it’s he who will take charge of everything I worked so hard and wisely for! This, too, is a mystery!

• Who knows whether my heir will be a wise person or a fool? Yet, he’ll be in control of everything I worked so wisely to achieve. What a frustrating situation!

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 .