Verses 8-9 represent four examples of occupations in which the worker is exposed to certain risks. They illustrate the principle in 9.18 that wisdom or something of value can be destroyed by small errors or by some minor but unexpected danger.

The first of four examples of possible danger to the worker relates to He who digs a pit. A participle form “digging one” describes the worker. The illustration is not concerned with details about the hole or why it is being dug, so translation should be equally general.

Will fall into it renders the Hebrew imperfect verb form. As an illustration or example, Qoheleth is not saying that the person must inevitably fall into the hole he has dug, but that this is a possible danger. The English will fall is too strong; so we solve the problem by using “could,” “might,” “may” as the auxiliary verb with fall (so New American Bible and New English Bible). The sense of possible trouble is absent from Good News Translation, which says baldly “you fall into it,” giving the impression that it always happens. We can say “Anyone who digs a hole could fall into it,” or “A person who digs a hole might fall into it.”

The second and parallel possibility concerns him who breaks through a wall. The participle phrase breaks through refers to someone knocking a wall down (compare New English Bible “pulls down a wall”). The purpose of knocking it down is not of any concern here. The Hebrew term used for wall is used for walls along the roadside protecting a field, so probably this is what the example refers to rather than the wall of a house or room.

Qoheleth pictures a serpent, which has presumably been lying on the wall or in a hole in the wall, biting the person who disturbed it. Although serpent is a general term, the context seems to suggest a poisonous snake. Many language groups have no general term for snakes but identify each type by its own name. In such cases we can translate using the name of a poisonous snake found in rocky places.

Will bite: like the verb in the first part of the clause, this one should use the potential form, so “may bite” is a good choice. We should not follow Good News Translation for the same reasons as given above.

Some commentators interpret the danger presented in this and the following verses as a punishment. They suggest that the person must have done something wrong to deserve this misfortune. The Hebrew text, however, gives no reason for drawing this kind of conclusion. Qoheleth assumes that the snake was disturbed while the wall was being knocked down, and therein lies the danger. A possible translation is “anyone who knocks down a wall could be bitten by a snake hiding in it.”

A translation that preserves the grammatical parallelism in the verse may be:

• A person who digs a hole might fall into it;
A person who tears down a wall might get bitten by a snake.

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Zogbo, Lynell. A Handbook on the Book of Ecclesiates. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .