Commentaire de citation sur L’Ecclésiaste 5:15

We have already elucidated in the tenth chapter of Sanhedrin that there is no completion or addition after death. Instead, a person increases and completes his virtue in this world. And about this Shlomo hinted when he stated (Ecclesiastes 9:10), "for there is no action, no reasoning, no knowledge, no wisdom in the grave to where you are going." But this matter is that [the situation] to which a person goes will remain [the same] forever. And because of this a man should make efforts during this short time and not waste his time, but only [spend it] on the acquisition of virtues - as his loss would [otherwise] be great, since he has no replacement [for it] and he cannot acquire [it later]. And since the pious ones knew this, they only saw [fit] to finish their time with wisdom and the increase of virtues; and they benefited from all of their time in the true way. And they only frittered very little time on physical matters and on a thing that it is necessary and impossible without it. But others spent all of their time only in physicality and they left [the world] like they came [to it] - 'all corresponding to how it came, so will it go' - and they lost an eternal loss. And the masses all switched the truth about this question and said that the first group lost the world and that the last group profited [from] the world. And the matter is the opposite, as we have recounted. And they make darkness into light and light into darkness. And woe is it to those that destroy the truth. And Shlomo, peace be upon him, made this matter a fundamental in Ecclesiastes, in his praising the profit of the world and his disgracing its loss. And its elucidation is that there is neither gain nor [any] other acquisition of that which he refrained from here, after death. And this is all true. And when you examine that book from this perspective, the truth will be clear.