Chapters 9–10 of Ecclesiastes address the subjects of how one should live in light of the certainty of death and in light of the theoretical and practical limits of wisdom. The exact demarcation of these respective sections is less clear. Ecclesiastes 8:16–17 could serve as the introduction to 9:1–10, and 9:11–12 could be taken as addressing either the first or the second topic. Verse 11 refers to the wise, while verse 12 may refer to death, and the use of first-person verbs in chapter 9 (vv. 1, 11, 13, 16) is inconclusive.

As in Ecclesiastes 7:23 and 8:9, commentators are not unified regarding whether “all this” (twice in 9:1) points backward or forward. The NIV translation here paraphrases a difficult Hebrew text; the remainder of verse 1 could express the goal rather than the result o…