"... Qohelet both affirms divine justice and complains of the injustices that God allows. The contradiction is most blatant in 8:10-14, where Qohelet says that the righteous live long and the wicked die young (8:12-13) and that the opposite sometimes occurs (8:10-12 + 14). The techniques for eliminating contradictions have been exercised most vigorously on Qohelet's statements on justice. Inconsistencies have been harmonized and various sentences tagged as orthodox glosses or quotations. But this contradiction appears too often, too prominently, and too well-integrated into context to be convincingly harmonized. The addition-hypothesis requires deciding in advance that Qohelet believes one side or the other of the contradiction, though both are well represented. And it is equally arbitrary to identify one opinion as a quotation, for nothing in the passages at issue attributes one of the contradictory ideas to another voice ..."