In passing from the book of Ecclesiasticus to that of Ecclesiastes, we are conscious of breathing an entirely different intellectual atmosphere. ‘Seek not out the things that are too hard for thee,’ said Sirach, ‘for thou hast no need of the secret things’ (iii. 21, 22), but the book now before us is the record of a thinker, disappointed it is true, but too much in earnest to give up thinking. Of meditative minds there was no lack in this period of Israel’s history. The writers of the 119th and several other Psalms, as well as Jesus the son of Sirach, had pondered over the ideal life, but our author (the only remaining representative of a school of writers[286]) was meditative in a different sense from any of these. He could not have said with the latter, ‘I prayed for wisdom before the temple’ (Ecclus. li. 14), nor with the former, ‘Thy commandment is exceeding broad’ (Ps. cxix. 96). The idea of the religious primacy of Israel awakened in his mind no responsive enthusiasm. We cannot exactly say that he conceals the place of his residence,[287] but he has certainly no overpowering interest in the scene of his life’s troublesome drama. In this feature he resembles to a considerable extent the humanists of an earlier date (see p. 119), but in others, and those the most characteristic, he differs as widely from them as the old man from the child. They believed that virtue was crowned by prosperity; even the writer of Job, as some think, had not wholly cast off the consecrated dogma; but the austere and lonely thinker who has left us Ecclesiastes finds himself utterly unable to harmonise such a theory with facts (viii. 14). To him, living during one of the dreariest parts of the post-Exile period, it seemed as if the past aspirations of Israel had turned out a gigantic mistake. That home-sickness which impelled, if not the Second Isaiah himself, yet many who were stirred by his eloquence, to exchange a life of ease and luxury for one of struggle and privation—in what had it issued? In ‘vanity and pursuit of wind’ (comp. Isa. xxvi. 18). To quote a great Persian poet, who in some of his moods resembles Koheleth (see end of Chap. IX.),
Such thoughts as these made the history of Israel an aid to scepticism rather than to faith; added to which it is probable that society in Koheleth’s[288] time seemed to him too corrupt to admit of an idealistic theory of life. For an individual to seek to put in practice such a theory would expose him to hopeless failure and misery. Therefore, ‘be not righteous overmuch,[289] neither pretend to be exceedingly wise; why wilt thou ruin (lit. desolate) thyself?’ (vii. 16). Some, no doubt, as the Soferim or Scripturists, had tried it, but they had only succeeded in making their lives ‘desolate,’ without any compensating advantage. Nor can we say that Ecclesiastes had given up theistic religion. He does not indeed believe in immortality and a future judgment, and is thus partly an exception to the rule of Lucretius,
He mentions God twenty-seven times, but under the name Elohim, which belonged to Him as the Creator, not under that of Yahveh, which an Israelite was privileged to use; and his one-sided supernaturalism obscured the sense of personal communion with God. He accepts only the first part of the great proclamation concerning the dwelling place of God in Isa. lxvii. 15 (see Eccles. v. 2). It is no doubt God who ‘worketh all’ (xi. 5), but there are nearer and almost more formidable potentates, an oppressive hierarchy of officials ranging from the taxgatherer to the king, ‘a high one watching above the high, and high ones over both’ (v. 8). True, our author seems to admit—at least if the text be sound (iii. 17; comp. viii. 12, 13)—that ‘God will judge the righteous and the wicked’ (i.e. in this life, for he does not believe in another), but the comfort of this thought is dashed with bitterness by an unspoken but distinctly implied complaint, which may perhaps be well expressed in the language of Job (xxiv. 1), ‘Why are judgments laid up (so long) by the Almighty,[290] and (why) do they that know him not see his days?’ or in other words, Why is divine retribution so tardy? It is, in fact, this extreme tardiness of God’s judicial interpositions which our author considers one of the chief causes of the prevalence of wickedness;—
‘Because sentence against the work of wickedness is not speedily executed, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil’ (viii. 11).
On the whole, we may say that the older humanists were sincere optimists, while Koheleth, though theoretically perhaps an optimist (iii. 11), constantly relapses into a more congenial ‘malism.’ I use this word designedly. Koheleth can only be called a pessimist loosely. Bad as things are, he does not believe that the world is getting worse and worse and hasting to its ruin. He believes in revolutions, some for evil, some for good, some for ‘rending’ or ‘breaking down,’ others for ‘sewing’ or ‘building up.’ He believes, in other words, that God brings about recurrent changes in human circumstances. But (like another wise man, Prov. xxv. 21) he does not trust revolutions of human origin (‘evil matters’ he calls them, viii. 3); he is no carbonaro (x. 20). And so for the present he is a ‘malist,’ and having no imaginative faculty he cannot sympathise with the ‘Utopian’ prospects for the future contained in the prophetic visions.
Yet, in spite of appearances, Koheleth builds upon a true Israelitish foundation. It is already something that he cannot bear to plunge into open infidelity, that he is still (as we have seen) a theist, though his theism gives him but little light and no comforting warmth. Now and then he alludes to the religious system of his people (see v. 1-5, 17, viii. 10). A stronger proof of his Israelitish sympathies is his choice of Solomon as the representative of humanity; I say, of humanity, because the author evidently declines to place himself upon the pedestal of Israelitish privilege. (Perhaps, too, as Herzfeld thinks,[291] he would console his people by showing them that they have companions in misfortune everywhere ‘under the sun;’ and we have already seen Job snatch a brief alleviation of pain from the thought of suffering humanity.) Koheleth is not only a Jew, but a man of culture. He cannot perhaps entirely defend himself from the subtle influence of the Greek view of life, and is even willing to associate from time to time with the ministers of alien sovereigns. True, he has noted with bitter irony the absurd and capricious changes in the government of Palestine (x. 5-7), but he has no spark of the spirit of the Maccabees, unless indeed in viii. 2-5, x. 4, 20, beneath the garb of servile prudence we may (with Dr. Plumptre) detect the irony of indignation. To the simple-minded reader at any rate he appears to counsel passive obedience, and a cautious crouching attitude towards those in power. I suspect myself that either the advice is but provisional, or else Koheleth still feels the power of the prophetic Utopia: ce peuple rêve toujours quelque chose d’international.[292] Nay; shall we not carry our generosity even farther? That ‘last word,’ which he would have spoken had he lived longer, may possibly not have been that which the Soferim have forced upon him. Not a future judgment, but a return of prosperity to a wiser though sadder Israel, may have been his silent hope, and in this prosperity we may be sure that a wider and more philosophic culture would form a principal ingredient. This is by no means an absurd fancy. Koheleth firmly believed in recurrent historical cycles, and if there was ‘a time to break down,’ there was also ‘a time to build up’ (iii. 3). Sirach knows no future life and no Messiah; but he believes in the eternity of Israel; why, on the ground of his fragmentary remains, deny the same consolation to Koheleth? Much as I should prefer to imagine a far more satisfactory close for his troubled life (see Chap. IX.), I think we ought to admit the possibility of this hypothesis.
As an author, the characteristics of Koheleth are in the main Hebraic, though not without vague affinities to the Greek philosophic spirit. His work is without a model, but the dramatic element in it reminds us somewhat of the Book of Job. Just as the writer of that great poem delineates his own spiritual struggles—not of course without poetic amplification—under the assumed name of Job, so our author, with a similar poetical license, ascribes his difficulties to the imaginary personage Koheleth (or Ecclesiastes). There are also passages in which, like Job, he adopts the tone, style and rhythm[293] of gnomic poetry, though far from reaching the literary perfection of Job or of the proverbial collections. The attempt of Köster and Vaihinger to make him out an artist in the management of strophes is a sport of fancy. Unity and consistency in literary form were beyond the reach, if not of his powers, yet certainly of his opportunities; even his phraseology, as a rule, is in the highest degree rough and unpolished. This is the more striking by contrast with the elegant workmanship of Sirach. But the unknown author has very strong excuses. Thus, first, the negative tone of his mind must have destroyed the cheerful composure necessary to the artist. ‘The burden of the mystery’ pressed too heavily for him to think much of form and beauty. His harp, if he ever had one, he had long since hung up upon the willows. Next, it is highly probable that he was interrupted in the midst of his literary preparations. Nöldeke has remarked[294] that his object was not to produce ‘ein literarisches Schaustück.’ That is perfectly true; his primary object was ‘to scatter the doubts of his own mind.’ But he did not despise the literary craft; he was well aware that even ‘the literature of power’ may increase its influence by some attention to form. It seems to me that the ‘labour of the file’ has brought the first two chapters to a considerable degree of perfection; but the rest of the book, upon the whole, is so rough and so disjointed, that I can only suppose it to be based on certain loose notes or adversaria, written solely with the object of dispersing his doubts and mitigating his pains by giving them expression. The thread of thought seems to break every few verses, and attempts to restore it fail to carry conviction to the unbiassed mind. The feelings and opinions embodied in the book are often mutually inconsistent; in Ibn Ezra’s time, and long before that, the Jewish students of the book were puzzled by this phenomenon, so strange in a canonical Scripture. Not a few scattered remarks have absolutely no connection with the subject. The style, too, is rarely easy and natural, and sometimes (especially in viii. 16, 17) we meet with a sentence which would certainly not have passed an author’s final revision. The most obvious hypothesis surely is that from chap. iii. onwards we have before us the imperfectly worked-up meditations of an otherwise unknown writer, found after his death in proximity to a highly finished fragment which apparently professed to be the work of king Solomon. The meditations and the fragment were circulated in combination (for which there was much excuse, especially as some parts of the notes seemed to be in the narrative and even autobiographic style), and were received with much favour by the students of ‘wisdom,’ more, I should think, owing to the intrinsic interest of the book than to the literary fiction of Solomonic authorship. If this hypothesis be correct, we need not be surprised either at the author’s inconsistencies in opinion, or at the general roughness of his style. The book may not even be all one man’s work. Luther has already brought Ecclesiastes into connection with the Talmud.[295] Now the proverbial sayings which interrupt our thinker’s self-questionings on ‘vanity of vanities’ are like the Haggadic passages which gush forth like fountains in the weary waste of hair-splitting Talmudic dialectics. No one has ever maintained the unity of the Talmud, and no one should be thought unreasonable for doubting the absolute freedom of Ecclesiastes from interpolations.[296]
The third and last excuse which I have to offer is that the meditations of Koheleth partake of the nature of an experiment. He may indeed (as I have remarked) be a member of a school of writers, but his strikingly original manner compels us to regard him as a master rather than a disciple. No such purely reflective work had, so far as we know, as yet been produced in Hebrew literature. Similar moral difficulties to those which preoccupied our author had no doubt occurred to some of the prophets and poets, but they had not been sounded to their depths. Even in the Book of Job the reflective spirit has very imperfect scope. The speeches soon pass into a lyric strain, and Jehovah Himself closes the discussion by imposing silence. But the author of Ecclesiastes was a thinker, not a lyrist, and was compelled to form his own vehicle of thought. He ‘sought,’ indeed, ‘to find out pleasant words’ (xii. 10), but had to strain the powers of an unpliant language to the uttermost, to coin (presumably) new words, and apply old ones in fresh senses, till he might well have complained (to apply Lucretius) ‘propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem.’[297] He deserves great praise for his measure of success; Luzzatto in his early work failed to do him justice. He is not ambitious; as a rule, he abstains from fine writing. Once indeed he attempts it, but, as I venture to think, with but ill success—I refer to the closing description of old age (xii. 4-9), which has a touch of the extravagant euphuism of late Arabic literature.[298] From a poetical point of view, the prelude (i. 4-8) is alone worthy to be mentioned, though not included either by Renan or by Bickell among the passages poetical in form (for a list of which see below[299]). Let us mark this fine passage, that we may return to it again in another connection.
Let us now take a general survey of this strange book, regarding it as a record of the conflicting moods and experiences of a thoughtful man of the world. The author is too modest to appear in his own person (at least in i. 1-ii. 12), but, like Cicero in his dialogues, selects a mouthpiece from the heroic past. His choice could not be doubtful. Who so fit as the wisest of his age, the founder and patron of gnomic poetry, king Solomon (1 Kings iv. 30-32)? After the preluding verses, from which a quotation has been given above, Ecclesiastes continues thus:—
I Koheleth have been[300] king over Israel in Jerusalem; and I gave my mind to making search and exploration, by wisdom, concerning all that is done under heaven; that is a sore trouble which God hath given to the sons of men to trouble themselves therewith! I saw all the works which are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and pursuit of wind.
The name or title ‘Koheleth’ is obscure. According to the Epilogue ‘Koheleth was a wise man’ (xii. 9)—a statement which confirms the explanation of the name as meaning ‘one who calls an assembly.’[301] The ‘wise men’ of Israel gathered their disciples together, and such an able teacher as Koheleth would fain gather all who have ears to hear around his seat. But Koheleth is also Solomon (though only for a short time—the author did not, I suppose, live long enough thoroughly to fuse the conceptions of king and philosopher[302]). The wise king is to be imagined standing on the brink of the grave, and casting the clear-sighted glance of a dying man on past life, somewhat as Moses in parts of Deuteronomy or David in 2 Sam. xxii., xxiii. 1-7. A subtle and poetic view of Solomon’s career is thus opened before us. He is not here represented in his political relation, but as a specimen of the highest type of human being, with a boundless appetite for pleasure and every means of gratifying it. But even such a man’s deliberate verdict on all forms of pleasure is that they are utterly unsubstantial, mere vanity (lit. a vapour—Aquila, ἀτμίς; comp. James iv. 14). Neither pure speculation (i. 13-18), nor riotous mirth (ii. 1, 2), nor even the refined voluptuousness consistent with the free play of the intellect[303] (ii. 3), could satisfy his longing, or enable him, with Goethe’s Faust, to say to the flying moment, ‘Ah! linger yet, thou art so fair.’ It is true that wisdom is after all better than folly; Solomon from his ‘specular mount’ could ‘see’ this to be a truth (ii. 13); but in the end he found it as resultless as ‘the walking in darkness’ of the fool.
‘And I myself perceived that one fate befalleth them all. And I said in my heart, As the fate of the fool will be the fate which shall befall me, even me; and why have I then been exceeding wise? and I said in my heart that this also is vanity’ (ii. 14b, 15), i.e. that this undiscriminating fate is a fresh proof of the delusiveness of all things.
And in this strain Koheleth runs on to nearly the end of the chapter, with an added touch of bitterness at the thought of the doubtful character of his successor (ii. 18, 19). Then occurs one of those abrupt transitions which so often puzzle the student of Ecclesiastes. In ii. 1-11 Koheleth has rejected the life of sensuous pleasure, even when wisely regulated, as ‘vanity.’ He now returns to the subject, and declares this to be, not of course the ideally highest good, but the highest good open to man, if it were only in his power to secure it. But he has seen that both sensuous enjoyment and the wisdom which regulates it come from God, who grants these blessings to the man who is good in his sight, while profitless trouble is the portion of the sinner. He repeats therefore that even wisdom and knowledge and joy, the highest attainable goods, are, by reason of their uncertainty, ‘vanity and pursuit of wind’ (ii. 26).
At the end of this long speech of Koheleth, we naturally ask how far it can be regarded as autobiographical. Only, I think, in a qualified sense. Its psychological depth points to similar experiences on the part of the author, but to experiences which have been deepened in their imaginative reproduction. It is truth mingled with fiction—Wahrheit und Dichtung—which we meet with in the first two chapters. A more strictly biographical narrative appears to begin in chap. iii., from which point the allusions to Solomon cease, and are replaced by scattered references to contemporary history. The confidences of the author are introduced by a passage (iii. 1-8) in the gnomic style, containing a catalogue of the various actions, emotions, and states of feeling which make up human life. Each of these, we are told, has its own allotted season in the fixed order of nature, but as this is beyond the ken and influence of man, the question arises, ‘What profit hath he that worketh in that wherewith he wearieth himself?’ (iii. 9.) Thus, the ‘wearisome trouble’ of the ‘sons of men’ has no permanent result. All that you can do is to accustom yourself to acquiesce in destiny: you will then see that every act and every state in your ever-shifting life is truly beautiful or seemly (iii. 11), even if not profitable to the individual (iii. 9). More than this, man has been endowed with the faculty of understanding this kaleidoscopic world, with the drawback that he cannot possibly embrace it all in one view:—[304]
Also he hath put the world into their heart (i.e. mind), except that man cannot find out from beginning to end the work which God hath made (iii. 11).
In fact, to quote Lord Bacon’s words in the Advancement of Learning, ‘God has framed the mind like a glass, capable of the image of the universe, and desirous to receive it, as the eye to receive the light.’ But here a dark mood interrupts the course of our author’s meditations; or perhaps it is the record of a later period which is but awkwardly attached to the previous passages. ‘To rejoice and to fare well’—sensual (or, let us say, sensuous) pleasure, in short—is now represented as the only good for man, and even that is not to be too absolutely reckoned upon, for ‘it is the gift of God’ (iii. 12, 13, 22; comp. ii. 24). Certainly our author at any rate did not succeed in drowning care in the wine-cup: he is no vulgar sensualist. His merriment is spoiled by the thought of the misery of others, and he can find nothing ‘under the sun’ (a passionate generalisation from life in Palestine) but violence and oppression. In utter despair he pronounces the dead happier than the living (iv. 1, 2). In fact, he says, neither in life nor in death has man any superiority over the other animals, which are under no providential order, and have no principle of continuance. Such is the cynical theory which tempts Koheleth; and yet he seems to have hesitated before accepting it, unless we may venture with Bickell to strike out iii. 17, as the work of a later editor who believed in retributions hereafter (like xi. 9b xii. 7, 13, 14). I confess that consistency seems to me to require this step; the verse is in fact well fitted to be an antidote to the following verse, which seems to have suggested the opening phrase. This is how the text runs at present:—
I said in my heart, The righteous and the wicked shall God judge; for there is a time for every purpose and for every work there (emphatically for ‘in the other world;’ or read, hath he appointed). I said in my heart, (It happens) on account of the sons of men, that God may test them, and that they may see that they are but beasts. For the sons of men are a chance (comp. Herod. i. 32), and beasts are a chance; yea, all have one chance: as the one dies, so dies the other; yea, they all have one spirit; and advantage of the one over the other there is none, for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward, and whether the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth?[305] (iii. 17-21.)
Our author’s abiding conviction is that ‘the spirit does but mean the breath’ (In Memoriam, lvi.), so that man and the lower animals have ‘one spirit’ and alike end in dust. ‘Pulvis et umbra sumus.’ It is true, some of his contemporaries hold the new doctrine of Immortality, but Koheleth, in his cool scepticism, hesitates to accept it. Which indeed of its enthusiastic advocates can claim to ‘know’ that which he asserts; or can prove to Koheleth’s satisfaction that God (as a psalmist in Ps. xlix. 15 puts it) will ‘receive’ the spirit of man, in spite of the fact that the vital principle of beasts loses itself in the dust of death? It is no doubt an awkward construction which Koheleth adopts: he seems to express an uncertainty as to the fate of the lower animals. To convey the meaning which I have given, the construction ought to have been disjunctive, as in this line from a noble modern poem,
Friend, who knows if death indeed have life, or life have death for goal?[306]
But there is, or rather there ought to be, no doubt as to Koheleth’s meaning. Dean Plumptre frankly admits that ‘it is not till nearly the close of the book, with all its many wanderings of thought, that the seeker rests in that measure of the hope of immortality which we find’ [but this is open to considerable doubt] ‘in xii. 7.’
Let us now resume the thread of Koheleth’s moralising. Violence and oppression were two of the chief evils which struck an attentive observer of Palestinian life. But there were two others equally worthy of a place in the sad picture—the evils of rivalry and isolation. First, with regard to rivalry (iv. 4-6). What is ‘skilful work,’ or art, but an ‘envious surpassing of the one by the other’? This also is ‘pursuit of wind;’ it gives no permanent satisfaction. True, indolence is self-destruction: but on the other hand a little true rest is better than the labour of windy effort, urged on by rivalry yielding no rest (Delitzsch). Such at least is the most probable connection, supposing that vv. 5 and 6 are not rather interpolated or misplaced. If however it be objected (here Koheleth passes to a second great evil—that of isolation) that a man may labour for his child or his brother, yet who, pray, is benefited by the money-getting toils of one who has no near relative, and stands alone in the world? A pitiable sight is such unprofitable toil! The fourth chapter closes with maxims on the blessings of companionship (iv. 9-12), followed by a vivid description of the sudden fall of an old and foolish king (iv. 13-16), who had not cared to appropriate one of the chief of these blessings, viz. good advice. There is much that is enigmatical in the last four verses. We should expect the writer to be alluding to some fact in contemporary history, but no plausible parallel has yet been indicated.[307] Ver. 16 is certainly either corrupt or mutilated. Bickell thinks that it must originally have run somewhat as follows:—
There was no end of all the people, even of all those who [applauded him and cast reproaches on the old king. For because he had despised the counsel of the prudent, to rule foolishly and to oppress the people, therefore they hated him, even as those had hated him] who were before them; they also that came afterwards did not rejoice in him.
At this point the ideal autobiography of Koheleth is interrupted. From v. 1 (= iv. 17 in the Hebrew) to vii. 14 we are presented with a mixture of proverbial sayings (such perhaps as Koheleth was continually framing and depositing in his note-books) and records of the wise man’s personal experience. Notice especially the reappearance of the old Israelitish instinctive sympathy with husbandmen (or, shall I say, with yeomen) in ver. 9. Both proverbs and personal records are the offspring of different moods, and therefore not always consistent. Thus at one time our author repeats his preference of sensuous enjoyment to any other mode of passing one’s life.
For (then) he will not think much on the (few) days of his life, because God responds to the joy of his heart (v. 20).
But the writer is too pessimistic to rest long in this thought. It is a ‘common evil among men’ to have riches without the full enjoyment of them: ‘better an untimely birth,’ he cries, than to be in such a case (vi. 3). Note here in passing the fondness of our author for using a comparison in expressing an emphatic judgment (comp. iv. 9-16, vii. 1-8). Better, he continues, is a momentary experience of real happiness than to let the desire wander after unattainable ends. ‘There are many things that increase vanity;’ with the reserve of good taste, he understates his meaning, for what human object, according to Koheleth, is not futile? That gift which to the Christian is so wondrously fair—the gift of life—to him becomes ‘the numbered days of his life of vanity;’ and ‘who knows what is good for man in life, which he spends as a shadow? For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?’ (vi. 12.) Koheleth, we see, has no faith in his nation, nor in humanity.
I do not feel sure that we may say with Dean Bradley that ‘out of this very gloom and sadness come forth in the next chapter thoughts that have gone, some of them, the round of the world.’ No doubt there is more than a mere tinge of the same midnight gloom in some of these proverbial sayings. But surely there is a complete break in the thread of thought of vi. 12, and a fresh collection of looser notes has found a place at the head of chap. vii. At any rate, these sayings supply a convincing proof that Koheleth was not a mere hedonist or Epicurean. He recalls in vii. 2 his former commendation of feasting, and declares,
It is better to go into the house of mourning than to go into the house of feasting, inasmuch as that is the end of all men, and the living can lay it to his heart (vii. 2).
I said that Koheleth was too pessimistic to remain long under the influence of hedonism. I might have said that he was too thoughtful; a rational man could not, without the anticipations of faith, close his mind to the suggestions of pessimism in the circumstances of Koheleth’s age. Better thoughtful misery than thoughtless mirth, is the keynote of the triad of maxims (vii. 2-6) on the compensations of misery which follows the dreary sentence praising death, in vii. 1.[308] Resignation is the secret of inward peace; ‘with a sad face the heart may be cheerful.’ Not only in view of the great problem of existence, but in your everyday concerns, restrain your natural impulses whether to towering passion or to brooding vexation at the wrongness or the slowness of the course of human affairs (vii. 8, 9). Above all, do not give way to an ignorant idealism. It is unwise to ask ‘How is it that the former days were better than these?’ (vii. 10.) The former time, so bright and happy, and the present, with its predominant gloom, were alike ordained by God (vii. 13 should follow vii. 10); and as a last consolation for cool and rational thinkers, be sure that there is nought to fear after death; there are no torments of Gehenna. This in fact is the reason why God ordains evil; there being no second life, man must learn whatever he can from calamity in this life.
On a good day be of good cheer, and on an evil day consider (this): God hath also made this (viz. good) equally with that (evil), on the ground that man is to experience nothing at all hereafter[309] (vii. 14; comp. ix. 10).
Thus, not only ‘be not righteous over much’ (vii. 16), but ‘do not believe over much’ is the teaching of our rationalist-thinker. There is neither good nor evil after death. But is there no present judgment? Yes; but this is not a thought of life and hope. It is a true ‘religion’ to him; it binds him in his words as well as his actions. But although Hooker so admired the saying in v. 2 (‘God is in heaven, and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be few’) as to quote it in one of his finest passages,[310] yet the context of v. 2 sufficiently shows how different was the quality of the reverence of the two writers. Be careful to pay thy vows, says Koheleth, lest when thou invokest God’s name, His angel should appear, and call thee to account.
Suffer not thy mouth to bring punishment upon thy body; and say not before the angel, It was an oversight;[311] wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thy hands?’ (v. 6.)
To Koheleth the mention of the divine name is a possible source of danger; to Hooker God is One ‘whom to know is life, and joy to make mention of his name.’ Koheleth has only fear for God’s holy name—a fear which is not indeed ineffectual but very pale and cheerless; Hooker, a ‘perpetual fear and love,’ and the love gives a new quality and a new efficacy to the fear.
At vii. 15 a new section begins, consisting almost entirely of the author’s personal experiences, very loosely connected; it continues as far as ix. 12. A curious passage at the outset appears to describe virtue as residing in the mean between two extremes (vii. 15-18). The appearance however is deceptive: it is as much out of place to quote Aristotle’s famous definition of virtue (μεσότης δύο κακιῶν), as Buddha’s counsel to him who would attain perfection to ‘exercise himself in the medium course of discipline.’ Koheleth merely offers practical advice how to steer one’s ship between the rocks. Do not, he says, make your life a burden by excessive legalism. But on the other hand, do not earn the reputation of caring nothing for the precepts of the law. That were folly, and would bring you to an early death.[312] Koheleth expresses this sharply and enigmatically; do not be too ‘righteous,’ and do not be too ‘wicked.’ ‘Righteous’ and ‘wicked’ are both to be taken in the common acceptation of those terms in the religious world: the words are used ironically. Our author’s only theory of virtue is that no theory is possible. The ‘wisdom’ which both gives ‘defence’ and ‘preserves life’ (vii. 12) is the practical wisdom of resignation and moderation. Of essential wisdom (or philosophy as we should call it[313]) he says, alluding to Job xxviii. 12-23, that it is ‘far off, and exceeding deep; who can find it out?’ (vii. 24.) The old theory, which claimed to give the secret of history, and which even afterwards satisfied some wise men (e.g. Sirach)—the theory that the good are rewarded and the bad punished in this world—is not borne out by Koheleth’s experience,—
There is (many) a righteous man who perishes in spite of his righteousness, and there is (many) an ungodly man who lives long in spite of his wickedness (vii. 15; contrast the interpolated passage viii. 12, 13).
But though Koheleth, like Job, despairs of essential wisdom, he ‘turns’ with hope to the wide field of wisdom—or, as he calls it, ‘wisdom and reasoning,’ i.e. moral inquiries pursued on the inductive method. And what is the result of his inquiry? He gives it with much deliberateness, stating that he (viz. ‘the Koheleth,’ see on xii. 8) has put one fact to another in order to form a conclusion (ver. 27) and it is that women-tempters are more pernicious than Death (man’s great enemy personified, as so often). Or, putting it in other words, which I am forced to paraphrase to bring out their meaning—words to which the well-known poem of Simonides is chivalry itself—‘A few rare specimens of uncorrupted human nature I have found, so rare that one may reckon them as one among a thousand; but not one of these truly human creatures was a woman.’[314] The latter statement is the stronger, and shows that our author agrees with Ecclus. xxv. 19, that ‘all wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.’ And so much in earnest is he, that he even tries a third mode of expressing his conclusion. Carefully limiting himself he says, ‘Lo! this only have I found; that God made mankind upright, but they have sought out many contrivances’ (ver. 29); that is, men and women are both born good, but are too soon sophisticated by civilisation (and the leaders in this downward process, we may infer from the context, are the women). Koheleth scarcely means to imply that civilisation is bad in itself; if he does, the few good men he has met must apparently have been hermits! But though not essentially immoral, the inventive or contriving faculty (so wonderful to Sophocles) seems to Koheleth the chief source of moral danger.
But are these the only results of Koheleth’s wide induction from the facts of contemporary life? Yes; a time such as this ‘when man rules over man to his hurt’ (viii. 9) suggests, not only prudential maxims, but this sad conclusion, already (vii. 15) mentioned by anticipation, that the fate proper to the wicked falls upon the righteous, and that proper to the righteous on the wicked (viii. 14), or to express this in the concrete,
And in accordance with this I have seen ungodly men honoured, and that too in the holy place (i.e. the temple; comp. Isa. xviii. 7); but those who had acted rightly had to depart and were forgotten in the city. This too is vanity[315] (viii. 10).
No wonder that wickedness is rampant! It requires singular courage to do right when Nemesis delays her visit; or, as Koheleth puts it, in language which sorely displeased a later editor,
Because sentence against a wicked work is not executed speedily, therefore men have abundant courage to do evil. For I know that it even happens that a sinner does evil for a long time, and yet lives long, whilst he who fears before God is short-lived as a shadow (viii. 12, 13).
Koheleth does not, of course, include himself among the reckless evil-doers. He acquiesces in the painful inconsistencies of the world, and seems to comfort himself with the relatively best good—‘to eat and drink and be merry’ (viii. 15). Charity may perhaps suggest that this is not said without bitter irony.
Then follows a clumsy but affecting passage (viii. 16, 17) on the uselessness of brooding (as the author had so long done) over the mysteries of human life, which introduces the concluding part of the section (ix. 1-12). These twelve verses are full of a restrained passion. Such being the unfree condition of man that he cannot even govern his sympathies and antipathies, and so regardless of moral distinctions the course of destiny, and there being no hereafter,[316] what remains but to take such pleasure as life—especially wedded life—can offer, and to carry out one’s plans with energy? Yet, alas! it is only too true that neither success nor freedom of action can be reckoned upon, for ‘the race is not to the swift,’ and men are ‘snared’ like the fishes and the birds.
The section which begins at ix. 13 is of still more varied contents. It begins with a striking little story about the ‘poor wise man,’ a Themistocles in common life, ‘who by his wisdom delivered the city, and no one remembered that poor man’ (ix. 14, 15). Surely here (as in iv. 13, 14, viii. 10) we catch the echo of contemporary history. It is not a generalisation (comp. Prov. xxi. 22), but a fact which the author gives us, and it may plausibly be conjectured that he was the ‘poor wise man’ himself. The rest of the section (down to x. 15) contains proverbs on wisdom and folly, and some bitterly ironical remarks on the exaltation of servants and burden-bearers[317] above the rich and the princely.
A new section begins at x. 16—no ingenuity avails to establish a connection with the preceding verses. We are approaching our goal, and breathe a freer air. From the very first the ideas and images presented to us are in a healthier and more objective tone. The condemnation expressed in ver. 16 does credit to the public spirit of the writer, and, I need hardly say, is not really inconsistent (as Hitzig supposed) with the advice in ver. 20. In the words—
Even among thine acquaintance[318] curse not the king, and in thy bedchambers curse not the rich; for the birds of the heaven may carry the voice [comp. the cranes of Ibycus] and that which hath wings may report the word—
Dean Plumptre perhaps rightly sees ‘the irony of indignation’ which ‘veils itself in the garb of a servile prudence.’ There is no necessity to reduce Koheleth to the moral level of Epicurus, who is said to have deliberately preferred despotism and approved courting the monarch.
It is a still freer spirit which breathes in the remainder of the book. Let courtiers waste their time in luxury (x. 18), but throw thou thyself unhesitatingly into the swift stream of life. Be not ever forecasting, for there are some contingencies which can no more be guarded against than the falling of rain or of a tree (xi. 3, 4). Act boldly, then, like the corn-merchants, who speculate on such a grand scale,—
Send forth thy bread upon the wide waters [lit. upon the face of the waters], for thou mayst find it [i.e. obtain a good return for it] after many days (xi. 1).
But since fortune is capricious, do not risk thine all on a single venture. ‘Ships are but boards, sailors but men’ &c., as Shylock says. Divide thy merchandise, and so, if one vessel is wrecked or plundered, much may still be saved; or—another possible interpretation—store thy property in various hiding-places, so that, in case of some political revolution, thine all may not be taken from thee,—
Make seven portions, and also eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth (or, the land) (xi. 2).
This is not, of course, the usual explanation of these two verses, which are enigmas fairly admitting of more than one solution. Most commentators understand them as recommending beneficence, which ver. 2 requires to be of extensive range, and which ver. 1 compares to cakes of bread thrown upon the water, and gathered up no one knows by whom. So perhaps (besides Rashi, Aben Ezra, Ginsburg &c.) Goethe in the Westöstliche Divan—