This concludes this part of the discourse, as is evident from the formula, ‘I turned round, I and my heart,’ with which the following passage begins; that which is to succeed is a personal experience of another kind. 25 ¹I applied mine heart │ To come to another point then, to know, and to search, and │ in my own experience of to seek out wisdom, and the │ knowledge and investigation: I reason _of things_, and to │ mean the discovery of wise and know the wickedness of folly, │ prudent experiments by which even of foolishness _and_ │ one may recognise wickedness madness: │ as folly, and false-prudence │ as mad disappointment. ¹ _Hebrew_ I and my heart │ compassed. │ (25.) =I turned round= (to do something, as this formula always implies), =I and my heart= (for we have here a _confession_) =to know= and =to investigate= (that is in order to know, etc., the prepositions being repeated) =and seek= (without a preposition; the distinction seems to be that the seeking is to be the consequence of the above investigation) =wisdom and device= (חשבון is exclusively a Koheleth word, and occurs verse 27, ix. 10, only, it is thus not easy to determine its precise meaning, but it is probably, as Moses Stuart points out, the opposite of הללות; and if so, it will be something reasonable, in the sense of wise or well-formed and successful plan, as its opposite is an ill-formed and disappointing one; thus השבונות――occurs only here, verse 29, and 2 Chronicles xxvi. 15, where it is used to denote Asa’s engines of war――is evidently ‘efficient contrivances.’ To know wisdom and _a device_, then, in this sense, is ‘wisdom how to obtain a reasonable or proper result; and, on the other hand, to discover the opposite.’ With this accords what follows), =and to know= (as this is repeated it is equivalent to, and so to know) =wickedness= (as) =folly= (כֶסֶל――the only instance of the occurrence of this form in Ecclesiastes――compare Job viii. 14, xxxi. 24, where we find that ‘expectation’ is the meaning, though not necessarily in a bad sense, yet clearly so here. The LXX. render ἀσεβοῦς ἀφροσύνην [which E. X. alter to εὐφροσύνην], ‘the folly of a wicked person’) =and the false wisdom= (plural form in ות――with the article) =follies= (הוללות, as we have seen, compare chapter i. 17, of the disappointing kind. The LXX. render here ὀχληρίαν, ‘trouble,’ and περιφοράν, ‘madness,’ with καὶ ‘and,’ which is so far wrong, as there is no conjunction in the original. The meaning of this passage it is no doubt difficult to discover, but if we are right in the above analysis the interpretation must be as follows: ‘I turned myself round, I and my heart――(or, my own personal experience) to know and to investigate, and so seek, wisdom and well-formed plans: and so to recognise a wicked folly; and [a series of] falsely-wise acts, [which were] disappointing follies.’