Rivalry and Resignation: Girard and Qoheleth 247 existence which, like vapor, is fleeting, transient, and vanishes without a trace (8). A few examples from Qoheleth will demonstrate this. In Chapter 2, Qoheleth recounts his experiment in hedonism in a descriptive passage framed by the use of lbh together with the phrase “I said in my heart”, used to express his despair at the realization that the wise and powerful must die just as the foolish and the weak (9). Because the nature of human life is temporary, the awareness of death taints every experience of pleasure by reminding Qoheleth of its impermanence. Qoh 3,19 observes that human beings die just as the animals do, and that this is because (yk) all is lbh, that is to say, temporary. Even more explicit is the description in 6,12 of the human life span as “a breath” (lbh) and “a shadow” (lx), parallel terms that evoke the images of ephemerality and the false sense of substance (10). Similarly, in the occurrences of lbh in the proverb under discussion here, the term is used by Qoheleth to express the impermanence of humankind in the face of death (11). Twice in the “autobiographical” passage of Chapter 2 just mentioned, the proverb emphasizes how death renders one’s accomplishments useless and reveals the wise to have no advantage over fools. Qoh 2,11 uses it as an exclamation after a sweeping statement in which he steps back to consider the entirety of his life’s effort. That Qoheleth is looking at the sum total of his entire existence is made clear in the redundant nature of the statement. “All the deeds that my hands have done” is set in parallelism with “the toil with which I toiled to do (it)”, culminating in the conclusion of the proverb (introduced by hnh), that all such human toil is fruitless because of our transient nature. Qoh 4,16 speaks of the youth who succeeds the great king and, although he led an (8) FREDERICKS, Coping With Transience; SEOW, “Beyond Mortal Grasp”, 4. Also significant is the fact that lbh is the spelling of the name “Abel” in Genesis 4; see H. GUNKEL, Genesis (Macon 1997) 42; C. WESTERMANN, Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis 1994) 285; and K. SEYBOLD, “lbh”, TDOT III, 313-320. (9) yblb yna ytrma in v. 1 and yblb ytrbdw in v. 15. (10) Compare the use of these two terms in Ps 39, 6-7: “See, you have made my days few and brief; and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight. Surely all humanity stands as only a breath; surely each person walks like a shadow” (vyaA˚lhty µlxbA˚a bxn µdaAlk lbhAlkh ˚a) and Ps 144,4: “Humanity is like a breath; its days like a passing shadow” (rbw[ lxk wymy hmd lbhl µda.); cf. MILLER, Symbol and Rhetoric, 75-78; and M. FOX, “The Meaning of Hebel for Qoheleth”, JBL 105 (1986) 420-421. (11) MILLER, Symbol and Rhetoric, 154-155.