The "see" in ver. 10 is taken by many to have the same object as the "see" in ver. 9. "Yea, he shall see it." (So Hupfeld, Hitzig, Perowne, and others.) "The wise die" will then begin a new sentence. But the repetition is feeble, and breaks up the structure of ver. 10 undesirably. The fact stares the rich man in the face that no difference of position or of character affects the necessity of death. Down into that insatiable maw of Sheol ("the ever-asking"?) beauty, wisdom, wealth, folly, and animalism go alike, and it still gapes wide for fresh food. But a strange hallucination in the teeth of all experience is cherished in the "inward thought" of "the men of this world"--namely, that their houses shall continue for ever. Like the godless man in Psalm x., this rich man has reached a height of false security, which cannot be put into words without exposing its absurdity, but which yet haunts his inmost thoughts. The fond imagination of perpetuity is not driven out by the plain facts of life and death. He acts on the presumption of permanence; and he whose working hypothesis is that he is to abide always as his permanent home in his sumptuous palace, is rightly set down as believing in the incredible belief that the common lot will not be his. A man's real belief is that which moulds his life, though he has never formulated it in words. This "inward thought" either underlies the rich godless man's career, or that career is inexplicable. There is an emphatic contrast drawn between what he "sees" and what he, all the while, hugs in his secret heart. That contrast is lost if the emendation found in the LXX. and adopted by many modern commentators is accepted, according to which, by the transposition of a letter, we get "their grave" instead of "their inward [thought]." A reference to the grave comes too early; and if the sense of ver. 11 _a_ is that "their grave (or, the graves) are their houses for ever," there is no parallelism between ver. 11 _a_ and _c_. The delusion of continuance is, on the other hand, naturally connected with the proud attempt to make their names immortal by impressing them on their estates. The language of ver. 11 _c_ is somewhat ambiguous; but, on the whole, the rendering "they call their lands by their own names" accords best with the context.