Ecclesiastes 2:16

there is no remembrance of the wise More accurately, For the wise man as for the fool there is no remembrance for ever, the last two words being emphatic, almost as if intentionally calling in question the teaching of Psalms 112:6, that "the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance." The assertion seems at first too sweeping. There are sages, we say, who live yet in the memory of men whose names the world will not willingly let die. Practically, however, as regards the influence of the desire for posthumous fame as a motive, the number of such names is inappreciably small, even with the manifold resources of monuments and written records. The scribes and doctors, the artists and the poets of one age are forgotten in the next, and only here or there can any man be bold to say with Bacon that he commits his memory "to the care of future ages." (See note on ch. Ecclesiastes 1:11.) Even a biographical dictionary is often but as the sepulchre of the mouldering remains of reputations that have been long since dead, and their place knoweth them no more. Then, as in later days, there were those who substituted the permanence of fame for that of personal being, and the Debater, with his incisive question shatters the unsubstantial fabric.

And how dieth the wise man? As the fool Literally, " with the fool," as if in partnership with him, sharing the same lot. Better, perhaps, as an exclamation, not a question, " How dieth the wise man with (as) the fool. The absence of any hope of an immortality beyond that of fame has been already implied. The present clause brings before us the manner and circumstances of death. We stand, as it were, by the two death-beds, of the wise and of the fool, and note the same signs of the end, the same glazed eye, the same death-dew on the brow, the same failing power of thought. The picture of chap. Ecclesiastes 12:1-6 is true of both. The seeker had apparently never stood by the death-bed of one whose face was lit up, and, as it were, transfigured by a "hope full of immortality." Here also we may trace in the later personator of Solomon a deliberate protest against what seemed to him the teaching of Ecclesiastes (Wis 2:1-9).