Ecclesiastes 9:5

[Belacqua]

people here (except perhaps @Belaqua) do not like low-level Biblical criticism.

It's kind of you to think of me. I really do enjoy these translation questions, though you'll find I have little Latin and less Hebrew.

I've found this web site useful for Old Testament language:

https://biblehub.com/text/ecclesiastes/9-5.htm

As you can see, Hebrew grammar is different from English, so the sentence can appear as just a string of words and we have to be careful how we reassemble them. It's sometimes helpful to click on the Hebrew term and see different examples of the same term from different chapters. So in this case, ziḵ-rām is a key word and it helps to see how it's used elsewhere. 

I'm told that the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible in English has translations that are the most accurate, in the eyes of language scholars. Here is the page for Ecclesiastes 9:5:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se...ion=NRSVUE

5 The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost.

It's certainly in keeping with the pessimism of the rest of Ecclesiastes, which makes such an interesting contrast with other parts of the Bible.