The Preacher asks rather than declares to force readers to confront humanity’s ignorance about the future, thereby exposing the folly of multiplying words about unknowable things. The interrogative form invites self-examination rather than mere intellectual assent.

The Preacher provides no verbal answer from the fool or reader but allows the question to stand unanswered, demonstrating through rhetorical silence that indeed no human can tell what will be. The surrounding context (verse 15) notes that the fool’s labor wearies him because he does not even know the way to the city, reinforcing human ignorance.

The Preacher presents two interconnected rhetorical questions that expose human limitation regarding future knowledge. The first question, “no man knows what is to be” (mah-she-yihyeh), establishes the general principle of human ignorance. The Hebrew construction emphasizes absolute negation, literally “not knows the man.” The second question intensifies the point: “who can tell him what will be after him?” The phrase “after him” (‘acharav) suggests both temporal succession and personal legacy, matters about which the fool speaks voluminously despite possessing no special insight. The Preacher uses interrogative form rather than declarative statement to implicate the reader in the fool’s error, making us feel the weight of our ignorance. This double question carries theological gravity: if none can know the future, then multiplying words about it reveals not wisdom but folly, and true wisdom begins with acknowledging the limits of human knowledge before God’s sovereign control of all that is to come.