Ecclesiastes 2:14 - Exposition

The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh 'in darkness. This clause is closely connected with the preceding verse, showing how wisdom excelleth folly. The wise man has the eyes of his heart or understanding enlightened ( Ephesians 1:18 ); he looks into the nature of things, fixes his regard on what is most important, sees where to go; while the fool's eyes are in the ends of the earth ( Proverbs 17:24 ); he walks on still in darkness, stumbling as he goes, knowing not whither his road shall take him. And I myself also ( I even I ) perceived that one event happeneth to them all. "Event" ( mikreh ); συνάντημα ; interitus (Vulgate); not chance, But death, the final event. The word is translated "hap" in Ruth 2:3 , and "chance" in 1 Samuel 6:9 ; but the connection here points to a definite termination; nor would it be consistent with Koheleth's religion to refer this termination to fate or accident. With all his experience, he could only conclude that in one important aspect the observed superiority of wisdom to folly was illusory and vain. He saw with his own eyes, and needed no instructor to teach, that both wise and fool must succumb to death, the universal leveler. Horace, in many passages, sings of this: thus 'Carm.,' 2.3. 21—

"Divesne prisco natus ab Inacho,

Nil interest, an pauper et infima

De gente sub dive moreris,

Victima nil miserantis Orci."

(Comp, ibid, 1.28. 15, etc.; 2.14. 9, etc.) Plato refers to a passage in 'Telephus,' a lost play of 2 Eschylus, which is restored thus—

ἁπλῆ γὰρ οἶμος πάντες εἰς ἅιδου φέρει .

"A single path leads all unto the grave."