“For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.”
The final verse of chapter 2 announces that God gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy to those who please God, while the sinner labors only to give wealth to the one who pleases God. This conclusion reintroduces moral and theological categories apparently absent from much of Ecclesiastes' investigation: there is a difference between those who please God and sinners, and divine justice does operate, at least in the distribution of the capacity for joy. Yet the final phrase—"this too is vanity and striving after wind"—suggests that even this just distribution occurs within the overarching context of vanity, leaving unresolved the tension between God's justice and life's apparent meaninglessness.
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