not grasping folly. The Masoretic
Text reads “grasping folly” (leʾehoz besikhlut), but this translation
adopts a frequently proposed emendation, assuming that a scribe inadvertently
dropped “not” (loʾ) in copying because it had the same two letters,
lamed and aleph, that begin the next word, leʾehoz. The idea is that
Qohelet gave himself over to drinking and revelry yet clung to his perspective
of wisdom because his purpose in indulging the senses was to see if, indeed,
that was part of “what is good for the sons of man that they should do under the
heavens.” (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2019], 3:682)
