Kabbalah sa Eclesiastes 4:13: Zohar

So Scripture says: “Better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king, who knoweth not how to receive admonition any more” (Eccl. 4, 13). The “child” here signifies the good prompter, who is so called because he is, as it were, a youngster by the side of man, whom he does not join till he is at the age of thirteen years, as elsewhere affirmed.

He is better, then, than “an old and foolish king”, to wit, the evil prompter, who is called king and ruler over the sons of men, and who is assuredly old, since, as already said, so soon as a man is born and sees the light of day he attaches himself to him;

On the “other side”, the side which is not holy, there is also a king, the one who is called “an old king and a fool” (Eccl. 4, 13), and the priest, who is under him and ministers to him, is On (=aven, nothingness, idolatry); he is alluded to in the verse: “And Ephraim said, Yet I am become rich, I have found me out power”, namely, the celestial unholy power which presided over the act of idolatry committted by Jeroboam (I Kings 12, 28), without which he would not have been able to succeed.