Qoheleth quotes a standard proverb about laziness and its effects (see Pro 6.10-11; 19.15). Good News Translation‘s introduction “They say that…” is one way to mark this as a quotation. However, in this instance Good News Translation is not a good model for showing the normal form of a proverb in the remainder of the verse. As there are many proverbs throughout our text, the translator may choose to show that this is a special literary type. Placing the verse inside quotes may be one way of marking it.

Wisdom literature always contrasts the fool with the person who is wise. It is a term that can be defined negatively, that is, “someone who does not follow the teachings of the wise.” Often in Proverbs it indicates a person who is immoral also. In this context a fool is a stupid or lazy person.

Folds his hands is another way of saying that he refuses to work and prefers idleness. The action is expressed as a participle and so points to a perpetual state or attitude to life. Both Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation translate the saying literally. However, folding the hands is not the normal expression of idleness in English-speaking cultures. We would say “He folds his arms.” But folding the arms can signal a variety of other meanings also; it does not always indicate laziness. Therefore translators will need to use culturally appropriate expressions for a person who refuses to work or who is idle. If the expression makes use of the word “hands,” so much the better. In at least one language, for example, it is natural to say “if his hand is afraid of work.” In colloquial English we would say “the person who just sits around.”

And eats his own flesh: this rather graphic phrase means that the person destroys himself or herself. They waste away, either literally or metaphorically. An idiom with a similar meaning may exist in the translator’s language. In many languages the verb eats is often connected with destruction or waste, so the lazy person who “eats himself” may refer very naturally to a person who causes his own ruin. If such figurative expressions do not exist, other verbal expressions can be found, such as “destroys himself,” “causes his own ruin,” or “wastes away” (Revised English Bible). Good News Translation suggests a meaning “lets himself starve to death.” Translators can also take this approach, which tries to make clear that laziness leads to poverty, which in turn leads to death.

The relationship between the two halves of this saying must be understood before we can translate it adequately. Although Hebrew links the two parts of the saying with the conjunction “and,” in fact the second part of the saying expresses the result of the action in the first half. To put it another way, self-destruction comes as a result of laziness.

Some possibilities for translation are:

• The fool folds his arms and as a result destroys himself.

• The fool is one who refuses to work, so he has no food and destroys himself.

• The fool is lazy and so wastes away.

Another possibility is to express the statement in a proverb-like form with no conjunction:

• The fool who refuses to work brings about his own ruin.

• The fool who sits around [only] destroys himself.

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 .