| 9 Then I became great and increased more than all who preceded me in Jerusalem |
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The experiment comes to an end and all three parts of the exercise are restated; Vanity of Wisdom, Knowledge, Madness, and Folly, Vanity of Physical Stimulation, and Vanity of Increasing Wealth. An argument can be made that these things do not endure so of course they are useless, empty, and vain. But here in the conclusion to the experiment, we are told these thing remained with the king. The vanity of these three areas is not vanity because they ceased to be, but the vanity in their presence. |
| 9b My wisdom also stood by me. |
| Wisdom was still present. |
| 10a All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. |
| Pleasure is not refused and remains. |
| 10b I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. |
| Nothing was outside the reach of the king, he did not miss investigating anything due to a lack of resources. In the second part of the experiment, the author alludes to a possibility of rewarding activity. Here we have that again, a bit more explicit. The heart was pleased, not from having wealth, but in the labor in gathering wealth. |
| 11a Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, |
| Finding his heart had been pleased with labor, the preacher reflects on scope of labor he accomplished during scope of this experiment. |
| 11b and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun. |
| After the speaker’s final reflection, the reflection on any pleasure he found in work he accomplished, he still found everything to be empty and striving after the wind! At the same time we see that there can be partial satisfaction in accomplishing work. |