In Oedipus Rex, what does the chorus's final speech tell us about human life?

The final
speech of thelooks back to reinforce one of the lessons of the play -- that the future is beyond
human knowledge:

Ye men of Thebes, behold this Å’dipus,

....
And, lo! in what a sea of direst woe
He now is plunged. From
hence the lesson draw,
To reckon no man happy till ye see
The closing day;
until he pass the bourn
Which severs life from death, unscathed by
woe.

In a very short time,has gone from being a king to
being a despised outcast.

However, there is a second layer of meaning to the '
words. Oedipus, after all, does not die at the end of -- he goes into
exile. The Chorus thus looks not only backwards but forwards, to the events of
, which covers the death of Oedipus himself, and . In
Oedipus at Colonus, the disgraced Oedipus accepts the judgment of the gods
and the prophecy of the place where he will die, and so far succeeds in his penance that his
burial site becomes a source of blessings and victory. In this way, he seems redeemed. On the
other hand, he also curses his sons and predicts they will kill each other, a prophecy shown to
have been fulfilled in Antigone with the added death of one of Oedipus'
daughters and the total and unexpected ruin of his formerly triumphant nemesis . Thus to the
very end of Oedipus' life, and even beyond, human fortunes remain unpredictable, as the Chorus
has warned.