This verse describes two contrasting individuals, the one “good” and the other “evil.” This black-white contrast is typical of the way wisdom writers thought and spoke. In this case it presents us with another perspective on the wise person and the fool, and the value their lives have. The statement is one from conventional wisdom and is almost certainly a quotation inserted by Qoheleth.

For to the man who pleases him: the Hebrew describes a person “who is good before him.” As Qoheleth uses a similar expression later in this verse, we can show that “before him” obviously means “before God.” This can be made clear as in Revised Standard Version and many other versions. However, the Hebrew still requires some explanation. In this book “good” and “sinner” do not refer to moral and immoral people in the sense that those words have when used by the prophets, for example. In wisdom writing these terms describe the wise person and the fool (see 9.18 for evidence). We may wish to make that clear in translation. Thus “the person who is good before him” speaks of the person who in God’s view is wise. This can mean the one God considers wise, or simply the person who acts wisely in God’s presence. A good translation is something like “to the wise [or, good] person, God….”

God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy: the Hebrew sentence lacks the subject “God,” but as there can be no doubt from the context that this is what Qoheleth means, we are correct to state this in our translation. On the terms wisdom and knowledge, see the comments in 1.16 and 2.21. For joy see 2.1. Not only are these three gifts from God, they are clearly available for us. So the wise person is the one who accepts these gifts from God; the fool refuses them. In this way the wise receives even more blessings, and the fool misses out on them. This is what the verse is trying to convey, and we can render it as “To the wise person God gives even more wisdom, knowledge and joy.”

But to the sinner deliberately sets that person over against the wise or good person. In this wisdom context the sinner actually means “the fool.”

He gives the work of gathering and heaping reflects Qoheleth’s view that everything comes from God. In this case what God gives the fool is work or an assignment that brings no personal reward, no sense of accomplishment. On work see comments on “business” in 1.13. What the fool is gathering and heaping is not indicated here, as is common in so many of the general illustrations Qoheleth presents. Recalling what Qoheleth has said about work, we are quite safe in assuming that here he means all the results of a person’s work, that is, the “wealth” or “things” a person accumulates. This explains why Good News Translation renders this as “earning and saving.” New American Bible combines both actions into one, “gathering possessions.”

Only to give to one who pleases God: here is the fool’s dilemma. Everything he strives for actually is given to the person who is wise, the person who does God’s will. An obvious question to ask is, Who gives these things to the wise person? Does God give them? Does the fool himself give them? We know that God gives the task, but does he take from the fool to give to the wise? The general nature of Qoheleth’s statement suggests nothing more than that somehow the fool cannot hold on to what he earns, and that in the end the wise person gets it all. This allows us to avoid saying who gives away what the fool earns. This is closer to the original as well.

In translation we may say “But the fool has the task of amassing wealth to give to the wise,” or “God assigns the fool the task of amassing wealth, but the wise [or, good] person gets it all in the end.”

This also is vanity and a striving after wind: refer to comments on 1.13 for translation. Qoheleth adds this concluding phrase as another reminder of the unpredictable nature of things, and of the fact that we can never fully understand the complexities of life in this world. Despite this fact of life, he never abandons his conviction that God’s intention is that people enjoy the world in which he has put them.

With this subsection Qoheleth brings to an end a major division of the book.

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 .