(16.) =There is nothing= of =an end= (_i.e._ ‘result,’ occurs chapter iv. 8, 16) =to all the people= (with the article, τῷ παντὶ λαῷ, LXX.――and in this book it appears as a collective for the human race――see chapter xii. 9), =to all= (repeated, hence with the meaning, ‘that is to all those’) =that= (full relative) =were before them= (but ‘before’ in the sense of in their ‘presence,’ not in the sense of ‘before their time’), =moreover= (introducing an additional reason), =the succeeding ones=――(see 2 Chronicles ix. 29, xii. 15, which will give the exact meaning) =not= (rather emphatic from its position, ‘not at all’) =will they= (_i.e._ the people before them) =rejoice in it= (‘it’ is a singular following a plural, and hence a distributive, ‘any successor’) =for also this= is =a vanity= (an instance of evanescence) =and vexing= (not ‘vexation,’ because this comes from within) =of spirit.= Thus the sense is clear; it is the conclusion of the argument. Koheleth’s observation has regard to the progress of lives in relation to anything that may or is to be produced by them in the way of heritage――or, in other words, he asks how far the present state of things can be explained on the theory that it is a working for posterity, and he shows that this is not an explanation, for there is no result obtained by the collective people in the present, because each age is the same morally as that which went before it; while, of course, with regard to what is to succeed, the present generation cannot rejoice in that, because they will be all dead, and as the argument is limited to what takes place under the sun, so all so-called progress is but an instance of evanescence. The idea, if not that contained in the observation of one who selfishly observed, when requested to care for posterity, ‘that as posterity had done nothing for him, he did not see why he should do anything for posterity,’ rests on the same facts. The sentence also, it appears, contains a remarkable equivoke. ‎‏לכל העם לכל sounds very like לכל העמל כל, and this division of the words will make such good and pungent sense that we can hardly imagine that the equivoke was unintentional. The equivoke is sought to be rendered in the paraphrase by the addition of the words enclosed in the brackets. At this point we come to another division in the book. Certain practical exhortations follow, deduced from the previous arguments, concerning human conduct, under the circumstances above set forth. CHAPTER V.