Ecclesiastes 12:13

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter The word for "let us hear" has been taken by some scholars as a participle with a gerundial force, "The sum of thewhole matter must be heard," but it admits of being taken as in the English version, and this gives a more satisfying meaning. The rendering "everything is heard," i.e.by God, has little to recommend it, and by anticipating the teaching of the next verse introduces an improbable tautology. The words admit of the rendering the sum of the whole discourse, which is, perhaps, preferable.

Fear God, and keep his commandments This is what the Teacher who, as it were, edits the book, presents to his disciples as its sum and substance, and he was not wrong in doing so. In this the Debater himself had rested after his many wanderings of thought (ch. Ecclesiastes 5:7, and, by implication, Ecclesiastes 11:9). Whatever else might be "vanity and feeding on wind," there was safety and peace in keeping the commandments of the Eternal, the laws "which are not of to-day or yesterday."

for this is the whole duty of man The word "duty" is not in the Hebrew, and we might supply "the whole end," or "the whole work," or with another and better construction, This is for every man: i.e.a law of universal obligation. What is meant is that this is the only true answer to that quest of the chief good in which the thinker had been engaged. This was, in Greek phrase, the ἔργον or "work" of man, that to which he was called by the very fact of his existence. All else was but a πάρεργον, or accessory.