Was willst du untersuchen
Wohin die Milde fliesst!
Ins Wasser wirf dein Kuchen—
Wer weiss wer sie geniesst![319]

I do not think that this suits the context, which suggests activity and caution as the two good qualities recommended by Koheleth. But it is very possible that the proverb was a popular one which the author took up, giving it a fresh application.

Such is the author’s parting advice to the elder part of his readers,—not very elevated, but not without a breath of courageous faith (xi. 5). Not that he has given up his advocacy of pleasure. Side by side with work, a man should cherish, even to the very last, all those sources of joy which God Himself has provided, remembering the long dark days which await him in Sheól. Then, at ver. 9, he addresses the young, and in measured distichs intreats them to enjoy life while they may.

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth,
and let thy heart gladden thee in the flower of thine age;
and walk in the ways of thy heart
and according to the sight of thine eyes;
And banish discontent from thy heart,
and put away evil from thy flesh:—
for youth and the prime of life are vanity.

Between lines 4 and 5 we find the received text burdened with a prosaic insertion, which is probably not due to an after-thought on the part of the writer, but to the anxiety of later students to rescue the orthodoxy of the book. The insertion consists of the words, Rabbinic in expression as well as in thought, ‘But know that for all this God will bring thee into the judgment.’[320] It was the wisdom of true charity to insert them; but it is our wisdom as literary students to ‘banish discontent’ with the discord which they introduce by restoring the passage to its original form.

At this point Koheleth turns away from the young to those (presumably) of his own age. Again there are traces at least of a series of distichs which must once have stood here, but either the author or one of his editors, or both, have so far worked over them that the series is no longer perfect. The first suspected instance of this ‘overworking’ occurs at the very outset. ‘Remember thy Creator in the flower of thine age,’ are the opening words of Koheleth’s second address. They are usually explained as taking up the idea of the last judgment expressed at the close of xi. 9. ‘Since God,’ to quote Dr. Ginsburg’s paraphrase, ‘will one day hold us accountable for all the works done in the body, we are to set the Lord always before our eyes.’ The importance of this passage, when thus interpreted, is manifest. It suggests that Koheleth had struggled through his many difficulties to an assured doctrinal and practical position, and that it is not mere rejoicing, but ‘rejoicing in the Lord,’ that Koheleth recommends in xii. 1—an edifying view of the old man’s final result which every one must desire to be true if only it be consistent with the rest of the book. I fear that this is not the case. Elsewhere in the book sensuous pleasure in moderation is praised without any reference to God, and in the immediate neighbourhood of this verse the motive given for rejoicing is not the thought of God, but that of the many days of darkness (i.e. of Sheól) which are coming. Besides, the exhortation ‘Remember thy Creator’ does not perfectly suit the close of the verse, or indeed of the section. What is the natural inference from the fact that at an advanced age life becomes physically a burden? Surely this—that man should enjoy life while his powers are fresh. Cannot an old man ‘remember’ his Creator? (To ‘remember’ is to think upon; it is not a synonym for conversion.) The text therefore is almost certainly incorrect.

Has an editor, then, tampered with the text of the opening words of the exhortation? May we, for instance, follow Grätz and read, for bōr’éka ‘thy Creator,’ bōr’ka ‘thy fountain’ (lit. thy cistern), taking this as a metaphorical expression for ‘thy wife’ or ‘thy wedlock’ (as in Prov. v. 15-18)? The objection certain to be raised is that the text when thus corrected brings the book to a lame and impotent conclusion. It may be true, as Bishop Temple has said, that chastity and monotheism are the chief legacies which the Jewish Church has bequeathed to mankind.[321] There is nothing in an exhortation to prize a pure married life unworthy of a high-minded Jewish teacher. But in this connection it is certainly to a Western reader strange, and one is sorely tempted to suppose a displacement of the words, and, following Bickell, to make the distich—

And remember thy fountain
in the flower of thine age—

the conclusion of the stanzas beginning at xi. 9. This, it is true, involves (1) the excision of the words ‘for youth and the prime of life are vanity,’ and (2) an alteration of the construction of xii. 1, 2 (reading ‘and evil days shall come’ &c.). This violent change is no doubt justified by Bickell on metrical grounds, but as I cannot unreservedly adopt his metrical theory, I have not sufficient excuse for accepting his rearrangement of the text.

I wish some better remedy than that of Grätz could be devised. I would gladly close these Meditations with admiration as well as sympathy. But at the risk of being called unimaginative, I must venture to criticise the entire conclusion of the original Book of Koheleth (xii. 1-7). Most English critics admire the poem on the evils of old age which follows on the earnest ‘Remember,’ and naturally think that it requires some specially sublime saying to introduce it. I do not join them in their admiration, and consequently find it easier to adopt what seems to some the ‘low view’ of Dr. Grätz. Observe that we have already met with an eulogy of wedded bliss side by side with a gloomy picture of death in an earlier section (ix. 9, 10).

This is the poem (if we may call it so) with which the second exhortation of Koheleth is interwoven—

Ere the evil days come, and the years approach
of which thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them:
Ere the sun be darkened, and the light, and the moon, and the stars,
and the clouds keep returning after heavy rains [the winter rains, i.e. old age]:
In the day when the keepers of the house [the hands and arms] tremble,
and the strong men [the feet and legs] bow themselves,
and the grinding-maids [the teeth] cease because they are few,
and the (ladies) who look out at the lattice [the eyes] are darkened:
And the doors [the lips] are shut towards the street,
while the sound of the grinding is low,
And the voice riseth into a sparrow’s [‘childish treble’]
and all the daughters of song [words] are faint.
They are afraid too of a steep place,
and terror besets every way;
and the almond-tree is in bloom [white hair[322]],
and the locust drags itself along,
and the caper-berry fails [to excite the appetite],
For the man is on the way to his eternal home,
and the mourners go about in the street.
Ere the silver string [the tongue] be tied,
and the golden bowl [the head] break,
and the pitcher [the heart] be shivered at the fountain,
and the windlass [the breathing apparatus] break into the pit.

With a little determination the traces of development in the Biblical literature can be more or less effaced. The pious but unphilological editors of Koheleth were not deficient in this quality. After altering the introduction of the poem on old age they proceeded to furnish it with a finale. Not only the opening words of ver. i., but the comfortless expression ‘his eternal house’[323] in ver. 5 gave them serious offence. One remedy would have been to transpose (with the Syriac translator) two of the letters of the Hebrew, and thus change ‘home of his eternity’ into ‘home of his travail’ (i.e. the place where ‘the weary are at rest’). They preferred, however, to add two lines—

and the dust return to the earth as it was,
and the spirit return unto God who gave it.

This no doubt is a direct contradiction of iii. 21. But the ancients probably got over this, as most moderns still do, by supposing that the earlier passage did but express a sceptical suggestion which skimmed the surface of Koheleth’s mind.

The excision of these words would of course not be justified in a translation intended for popular use; but for the purposes of historical study seems almost inevitable. It hangs together with the view adopted as to the origin of xi. 9b, and implies the assumption that the Targum rightly paraphrases, ‘and thy spirit (lit. thy breath, nishm’thāk) will return to stand in judgment before the Lord who gave it thee.’ It ought to be mentioned, however, that some critics (accepting the clause as genuine) see in that return to God nothing more than the absorption of the human spirit into the divine (whether in a naïve popular or in a developed philosophical sense).[324] This will seem plausible at first to many readers. As a Lutheran writer says, ‘Si spes, quam nos fovemus lætissimam, Ecclesiastæ adfulsisset, non obiter ipse tetigisset et verbis ambiguis notasset rem maximi momenti’ (Winzer, ap. Hengstenberg). But if the Hebrew rūakh means, as I think it does, the personal, conscious, spiritual side of man in iii. 21,[325] I fail to see why it should not bear that meaning here.

CHAPTER VI.
KOHELETH’S ‘PORTRAIT OF OLD AGE;’ THE EPILOGUE, ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN.

We have now arrived at the conclusion of the meditations of our much-tried thinker. It is strongly poetic in colouring; but when we compare it with the grandly simple overture of the book (i. 4-8), can we help confessing to a certain degree of disappointment? It is the allegory which spoils it for modern readers, and so completely spoils it, that attempts have been sometimes made to expel the allegorical element altogether. That the first two verses are free from allegory, is admitted, and it is barely possible that the sixth verse may be so too—may be, that is, figurative rather than allegorical. Poets have delighted in these figures; how fitly does one of them adorn the lament in Woolner’s My Beautiful Lady,—

Broken the golden bowl
Which held her hallowed soul!

The most doubtful part, then, is the description in vv. 3-5. I am not writing a commentary, and will venture to express an opinion in favour of the allegorists (it is not fair to call them satirically the anatomists).[326] It is true that there is much variety of opinion among them; this only shows that the allegory is sometimes far-fetched, not that it is a vain imagination. Can there be anything more obscure than the canzoni in Dante’s Convito, which we have the poet’s own authority for regarding as allegorical? And if we compare the rival theories with that which they attempt to displace, can it be said that Taylor’s dirge-theory,[327] or Umbreit’s storm-theory,[328] or that adopted by Wright from Wetzstein[329] is more suitable to the poem than the allegorical theory? Certainly the latter is a very old, if not the oldest theory, and on a point of this sort the ancients have some claim to be deferred to. They seem to have felt instinctively that the intellectual atmosphere of Koheleth (as well as of the Chronicler) was that of the later Judaism. The following story is related in a Talmudic treatise.[330] ‘The Emperor asked R. Joshua ben Hananyah, “How is it that you do not go to the house of Abidan (a place of learned discussions)?” He said to him, “The mountain is snow (my head is white); the hoar frosts surround me (my whiskers and my beard are also hoary); its dogs do not bark (I have lost my wonted power of voice); its millers do not grind (I have no teeth); the scholars ask me whether I am looking for something I have not lost (referring probably to the old man feeling here and there).”’

Once more (see i. 2) the mournful motto, ‘Vanity of vanities! saith the Koheleth; all is vanity’ (xii. 8), and the book in its original form closes.[331] Did the author himself attach this motto? Surely not, if the preceding words on the return of the spirit to its God (see above, on iii. 21) are genuine, for then ‘Vanity of vanities’ would be a patent misrepresentation. All is not ‘vanity,’ if there is in human nature a point connecting a man with that world, most distant and yet most near, where in the highest sense God is. If Koheleth wrote xii. 7b, he cannot have written xii. 8, any more than the author of the Imitation could have written Vanitas vanitatum both on his first page and on his last. Yet who but Koheleth can be responsible for it? For the later editors of whom I have spoken, would be far from approving such a reversal of the great charter of man’s dignity in the eighth Psalm. To me, the motto simply says that all Koheleth’s wanderings had but brought him back to the point from which he started. ‘Grandissima vanità,’ as Castelli, in his dignified Italian, puts it, ‘tutto è vanità.’ All that I can assign to the editors in this verse are the parenthetic words ‘saith the Koheleth.’ Everywhere else we find ‘Koheleth;’ here alone, and perhaps vii. 17 (corrected text), ‘the Koheleth.’[332]

Let us now consider the Epilogue itself.

And moreover (it should be said) that Koheleth was a wise man; further, he taught the people wisdom, and weighed and made search, (yea) composed many proverbs. Koheleth sought to find out pleasant words, and he wrote down[333] plainly words of truth. The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails well driven in; the members of the assemblies[334] have [in the case of Ecclesiastes] given them forth from another shepherd.[335] And as for all beyond them, my son, be warned; of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.—That which the word ‘all is vanity’ comes to:[336] it is understood (thus), Fear God, and keep His commandments. For this (concerns) every man. For every work shall God bring into the judgment (which shall be) upon all that is concealed and all that is manifest, whether it be good or whether it be evil.

This translation has not been reached without some emendations of the text. It seems to me that everything in this Epilogue ought to be clear. There is but one verse which contains figurative expressions; the rest is simple prose. It is only fair, however, to give one of the current renderings of those verses in which an emendation has been attempted above.

Koheleth sought to find out pleasant words and that which was written down frankly, words of truth. Words of wise men are like goads, and like nails driven in are those which form collections [or, the well-compacted sayings, Ewald; or, the well-stored ones, Kamphausen]—they have been given by one shepherd.... Final result, all having been heard:—Fear God and keep His commandments, for this (concerns) every man.[337]

The first scholar to declare against the genuineness of the Epilogue was Döderlein (Scholia in libros V. T. poeticos, 1779), who was followed by Bertholdt (Einleitung, p. 2250 &c.), Umbreit, Knobel, and De Jong.[338] It was however a Jewish scholar, Nachman Krochmal,[339] who first developed an elaborate theory to account for the Epilogue. According to him, it was added at the final settlement of the Canon at the Synod of Jamnia, A.D. 90, and was intended as a conclusion not merely for Ecclesiastes, but for the entire body of Hagiographa. He thinks (but without any historical ground) that Ecclesiastes was added at that time to close the Canon. The correctness of this view depends partly on its author’s interpretation of vv. 11, 12, partly on his definition of the object of the Synod of Jamnia (see Appendix.) The two former verses are condensed thus,

The words of the wise are like ox-goads, and the members of the Sanhedrin are like firm nails, not to be moved. As for more than these, beware, my son; of making many books there is no end.

The ‘wise’ spoken of, thinks Krochmal, are the authors of the several books of the Hagiographa, and the warning in ver. 12 is directed against the reception of any other books into the Canon. Whether the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes were to be admitted, was, according to him, a subject of debate at the Synod referred to.

But there is no necessity whatever for this interpretation of vv. 11, 12. The phrase, ‘the words of the wise,’ is not a fit description of all the books of the Hagiographa (of Psalms, Daniel, and Chronicles for instance), and the warning in ver. 12 more probably has relation to the proverbial literature in general, such as Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Wisdom of Sirach, or at least to the Book of Proverbs, to which Kleinert conjectures that Ecclesiastes once formed an appendix. There is nothing in the Epilogue to suggest a reference to the Canon. The ‘many books’ spoken of are probably such as did not proceed from thoroughly orthodox sources. We have absolutely no information as to Jewish literature outside the Canon. That there was a heterodox literature, has been inferred by Ewald from Jer. viii. 8, Prov. xxx. 1-4; it is also clear from several passages in the Book of Enoch. Tyler and Plumptre may possibly be right in seeing here an allusion to the incipient influence of Greek literature upon the Jews. This is at any rate more justifiable than to assume an arrangement of the Hagiographa with Ecclesiastes for the closing book for which there is no ancient testimony.

Krochmal’s ingenious theory has, however, been adopted by Jost, Grätz and Renan,[340] though Renan is willing to admit that vv. 9, 10 may be from the pen of the author himself. ‘Cet épilogue complète bien la fiction qui fait la base du livre. Quel motif d’ailleurs eût amené à faire postérieurement une telle addition?’[341] I do not myself hold with Krochmal, but vv. 9-12 seem to me to hang together, and I do not think that the author himself would be at the pains to destroy his own fiction, whereas a later editor would naturally append the corrective statement that the real Koheleth was not a king, but a wise man. (Observe too that ‘Koheleth’ in ver. 8 has the article, but in vv. 9, 10 is without it, suggesting a change of writer.) I agree however with Renan that vv. 13, 14, which differ in tone and in form from the preceding verses, appear to be a later addition than the rest of the Epilogue. Renan, it is true, distrusts this appearance; he fears a too complicated hypothesis. But we must at least hold that vv. 13, 14 were added (whether by the Epilogist or by another) by an after-thought. The Epilogue should therefore be divided into two parts, vv. 9-12, and vv. 13, 14. In the first part, the real is distinguished from the fictitious author; his qualifications are described; the editors of his posthumous work are indicated; and a warning is given to the disciple of the Epilogist (to apply the words of M. Aurelius) ‘to cast away the thirst for books.’[342] In the second part, a contradiction is given to what seemed an unworthy interpretation of a characteristic expression of Koheleth’s, and the higher view of its meaning is justified—justified, that is, to those who approach the work from the practical point of view of those who have as yet no better moral ‘Enchiridion.’[343]

At what period was the Epilogue added? The consideration of its style may help us at least to a negative result. The Hebrew approaches that of the Mishna, but is yet sufficiently distinct from it to be the subject of expository paraphrase in the Talmuds.[344] It is therefore improbable that it was added long after the period of the author himself. Books like Sirach and Koheleth soon became popular, and attracted the attention of the religious authorities. Interpolation or insertion seemed the only way to counteract the spiritual danger to unsuspicious readers.

CHAPTER VII.
ECCLESIASTES AND ITS CRITICS (FROM A PHILOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW).

By comparison with Ecclesiastes, the books which we have hitherto been studying may be called easy; at any rate, they have not given rise to equally strange diversities of critical opinion. A chapter with the above heading seems therefore at this point specially necessary. Dr. Ginsburg’s masterly sketch of the principal theories of the critics down to 1860 dispenses me, it is true, from attempting an exhaustive survey.[345] It is not the duty of every teacher of Old Testament criticism to traverse the history of his subject afresh, any more than it is that of the commentator as such to begin with a catena of the opinions of previous writers. Suffice it to call attention to two of the Jewish and two of the Christian expositors mentioned by Dr. Ginsburg, viz. Mendelssohn and Luzzatto, and Ewald and Vaihinger. Mendelssohn seems important not so much by his results as by his historical position. His life marks an era in Biblical study, most of all of course among the Jews, but to some extent among Christians also. His Hebrew commentary on Koheleth deserves specially to be remembered, because with it in 1770 he broke ground anew in grammatical exegesis. To him, as also to Vaihinger, the object of Koheleth is to propound the great consolatory truth of the immortality of the soul, while Ewald, more in accordance with facts, describes it as being rather to combine all that is true, however sad, and profitable, and agreeable to the will of God in a practical handbook adapted to those troublesome times. Ewald and Vaihinger both divide the book into four sections,—(1) i. 2-ii. 26, (2) iii. 1-vi. 9, (3) vi. 10-viii. 15, (4) viii. 16-xii. 8, with the Epilogue xii. 9-14. The latter, whose view is more developed than Ewald’s, and whom I refer to as closing and summing up a period, maintains that each section consists of three parts which are again subdivided—for Koheleth, though you would not think it, is a literary artist—into strophes and half-strophes, and that the theme of each section is thrown out, seemingly by chance, but really with consummate art, in the preceding one. Thus the four sections interlace, and the unity of the book is established. The Epilogue, too, according to Vaihinger, can thus be proved to be the work of the author of Koheleth; for it does but ratify and develope what has already been indicated in xi. 9, and without it the connection of ideas would be incomplete.[346] I think that our experience of some interpreters of the Book of Job may predispose us to be sceptical of such ingenious subtleties, and I notice that more recent critics show a tendency to insist less on the logical distribution of the contents and to regard the book, not indeed as a mere collection of rules of conduct, but at any rate as a record of a practical and not a scholastic philosopher. This tendency is not indeed of recent origin, though it has increased in favour of late years. Prior the poet had already said that Ecclesiastes ‘is not a regular and perfect treatise, but that in it great treasures are “heaped up together in a confused magnificence;”’[347] Bishop Lowth, that ‘the connection of the arguments is involved in much obscurity;’[348] while Herder, in his letters to a theological student, had penned this wise though too enthusiastic sentence, which cuts at the root of all attempts at logical analysis,

Kein Buch ist mir aus dem Alterthum bekannt, welches die Summe des menschlichen Lebens, seine Abwechselungen und Nichtigkeiten in Geschäften, Entwürfen, Speculationen und Vergnügen, zugleich mit dem was einzig in ihm wahr, daurend, fortgehend, wechselnd, lohnend ist, reicher, eindringlicher, kürzer beschriebe, als dieses.[349]

But I must retrace my steps. One of my four critics has yet to be briefly characterised—S. D. Luzzatto of Padua, best known as the author of a Hebrew commentary on Isaiah, but also a master in later Hebrew and Aramaic scholarship. As a youth of twenty-four he wrote a deeply felt and somewhat eccentrically ingenious treatise on Koheleth, which he kept by him till 1860, when it appeared in one of the annual volumes of essays and reviews called Ozar Nechmad. In it he maintains, with profound indignation at the unworthy post-Exile writer, that the Book of Ecclesiastes denies the immortality of the soul, and recommends a life of sensuous pleasure. The writer’s name, however, was, he thinks, Koheleth, and his fraud in assuming the name of Solomon was detected by the wise men of his time, who struck out the assumed name and substituted Koheleth (leaving however the words ‘son of David, king in Jerusalem,’ as a record of the imposture). Later students, however, were unsuspicious enough to accept the work as Solomon’s, and being unable to exclude a Solomonic writing from the Canon, they inserted three qualifying half-verses of an orthodox character, viz. ‘and know that for all this God will bring thee into judgment’ (xi. 6b); ‘and remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth’ (xii. 1a); ‘and the spirit shall return to God who gave it’ (xii. 8b). This latter view, which has the doubtful support of a Talmudic passage,[350] appears to me, though from the nature of the case uncertain, and susceptible, as I think, of modification, yet in itself probable as restoring harmony to the book, and in accordance with the treatment of other Biblical texts by the Soferim (or students and editors of Scripture). Geiger may have fallen into infinite extravagances, but he has at any rate shown that the early Soferim modified many passages in the interests of orthodoxy and edification.[351] If so, they did but carry on the process already begun by the authors of the sacred books themselves; it may be enough to remind my readers of the gradual supplementing of the original Book of Job by later writers. To the three passages of Koheleth mentioned above, must be added, as Geiger saw,[352] the two postscripts which form the Epilogue. From the close of the last century a series of writers have felt the difficulties of this section so strongly that they have assigned it to one or more later writers, and in truth, although these difficulties may be partly removed, enough remains to justify the obelising of the passage.

There is no evidence that Luzzatto ever retracted the critical view mentioned above. To the character of the author, it is true, he became more charitable in his later years. I do not think the worse of him for his original antipathy. An earnest believer himself and of fiery temperament, he could not understand the cool and cautious reflective spirit of the much-tried philosopher;[353] and as a lover of the rich, and, as the result of development, comparatively flexible Hebrew tongue, he took a dislike to a writer so wanting in facility and grace as Koheleth.[354] It was an error, but a noble one, and it shows that Luzzatto found in the study of criticism a school of moral culture as well as of literary insight.

The adoption of Luzzatto’s view,[355] combined with Döderlein’s as to the epilogue, removes the temptation to interpret Koheleth as the apology of any particular philosophical or theological doctrine. The author now appears, not indeed thoroughly consistent, but at least in his true light as a thinker tossed about on the sea of speculation, and without any fixed theoretic conclusions. Without agreeing to more than the relative lateness of the epilogue, De Jong,[356] a Dutch scholar, recognises the true position of Koheleth, and in the psychological interest of the book sees a full compensation for the want of logical arrangement. De Jong indeed was not acquainted with the theory of Nachman Krochmal, which if sound throws such great light on the reason of the addition of the epilogue (see end of Chap. VI.) This has been accepted by Grätz and Renan, but, as I have ventured to think, upon insufficient grounds. The brevity of my reference to these two eminent exegetes must be excused by my inability to follow either of them in his main conclusions. The glossary of peculiar words and the excursus on the Greek translation given by the former (1871) possess a permanent value, and there is much of historical interest in his introduction. But I agree with Kuenen that the student who selects Grätz as his guide will have much to unlearn afterwards.[357] In order to show that Ecclesiastes is a politico-religious satire levelled against king Herod, with the special object of correcting certain evil tendencies among the Jews of that age, Grätz is compelled to have recourse to much perverse exegesis which I have no inclination to criticise.[358] Renan’s present view differs widely from that given in his great unfinished history of the Semitic languages. But I shall have occasion to refer to his determination of the date of our book later.

Among recent English students, no one will refuse the palm of acuteness and originality to Tyler (1874). His strength lies not in translation and exegesis, but in the consistency with which he has applied his single key, viz. the comparison of the book with Stoic and Epicurean teaching. He is fully aware that the book has no logical divisions. Antithesis and contradiction is the fundamental characteristic of the book. Not that the author contradicts himself (comp. the quotation from Ibn Ezra in Ginsburg’s Coheleth, p. 57), but that a faithful index of the contradictions of the two great philosophical schools gives a greater point to his concluding warning against philosophy. It is the ‘sacrificio dell’ intelletto’ which the author counsels. But Mr. Tyler’s theory or at least his point of view demands a separate consideration. It may however be fairly said here that by general consent Mr. Tyler has done something to make the influence of Greek philosophical ideas upon Ecclesiastes a more plausible opinion.

To a subsequent chapter I must also beg to refer the reader for a notice of Gustav Bickell’s hypothesis (1884) relative to the fortunes (or misfortunes) of the text of Koheleth. This critic is not one of those who grant that the book had from the first no logical division, and his hypothesis is one of the boldest and most plausible in the history of criticism. Its boldness is in itself no defect, but I confess I desiderate that caution which is the second indispensable requisite in a great critic. The due admixture of these two qualities nature has not yet granted. Meantime the greatest successes are perhaps attained by those who are least self-confident, least ambitious of personal distinction. Upon the whole, from the point of view of the student proper, are there more thankworthy contributions to criticism not less than to exegesis than the books of Plumptre (1881), Nowack (1883), and above all the accomplished altmeister Franz Delitzsch (1875)? Whatever has been said before profitably and well, may be known by him who will consult these three accomplished though not faultless expositors. I would not be supposed to detract from other writers,[359] but I believe that the young student will not repent limiting himself, not indeed to one, but to three commentaries.

CHAPTER VIII.
ECCLESIASTES AND ITS CRITICS (FROM A LITERARY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW).

It is not every critic of Ecclesiastes who helps the reader to enjoy the book which is criticised. Too much criticism and too little taste have before now spoiled many excellent books on the Old Testament. Ecclesiastes needs a certain preparation of the mind and character, a certain ‘elective affinity,’ in order to be appreciated as it deserves. To enjoy it, we must find our own difficulties and our own moods anticipated in it. We must be able to sympathise with its author either in his world-weariness and scepticism or in his victorious struggle (if so be it was victorious) through darkness into light. We must at any rate have a taste for the development of character, and an ear for the fragments of truth which a much-tried pilgrim gathered up in his twilight wanderings. Never so much as in our own time have this taste and this ear been so largely possessed, as a recent commentary has shown in delightful detail, and I can only add to the names furnished by the writer that of one who perhaps least of all should be omitted, Miss Christina Rossetti.[360] But to prove the point in my own way, let me again select four leading critics, as representatives not so much of philology as of that subtle and variable thing—the modern spirit, viz. Renan, Grätz, Stanley, and Plumptre. The first truly is a modern of the moderns, though it is not every modern who will subscribe to his description of Ecclesiastes as ‘livre charmant, le seul livre aimable qui ait été composé par un Juif’[361] One might excuse it perhaps if in some degree dictated by a bitter grief at the misfortunes of his country; pessimism might be natural in 1872. But alas! ten years later the same view is repeated and deliberately justified, nor can the author of Koheleth be congratulated. He is now described[362] as ‘le charmant écrivain qui nous a laissé cette délicieuse fantaisie philosophique, aimant la vie, tout en en voyant la vanité,’ or, as a French reviewer condenses the delicate phrases of his author, ‘homme du monde et de la bonne société, qui n’est, à proprement parler, ni blasé ni fatigué, mais qui sait en toutes choses garder la mesure, sans enthousiasme, sans indignation, et sans exaltation d’aucune espèce.’ A speaking portrait of a Parisian philosophe, but does it fit the author of Ecclesiastes? No; Koheleth has had too hard a battle with his own tongue to be a ‘charming writer,’ and even if not exactly blasé (see however ii. 1-11), he is ‘fatigued’ enough with the oppressive burdens of Jewish life in the second century B.C. That he has no enthusiasm, and none of those visions which are the ‘creators and feeders of the soul,’[363] is cause for pity, not for admiration; but that he has had no visitings of sæva indignatio, is an unjust inference from his acquired calmness of demeanour. He is an amiable egoïst, says M. Renan; but would Koheleth have troubled himself to write as he does, if egoïsm were the ripened fruit of his life’s experience? Why does this critic give such generous sympathy to the Ecclesiastes of the Slav race,[364] and such doubtful praise to his great original? It is true, Koheleth seems to despair of the future, but only perhaps of the immediate future (iii. 21), and Turgenieff does this too. ‘Will the right men come?’ asks one of the personages of Turgenieff’s Helen, and his friend, as the only reply, directs a questioning look into the distance. That is the Russian philosopher’s last word; Koheleth has not told us his. His literary executors, no doubt, have forced a last word upon him; but we have an equal right to imagine one for ourselves. M. Renan ‘likes to dream of a Paul become sceptical and disenchanted;’[365] his Koheleth is an only less unworthy dream. M. Renan praises Koheleth for the moderation of his philosophising; he repeatedly admits that there was an element of truth in the Utopianism of the prophets; why not ‘dream’ that Koheleth felt, though he either ventured not or had no time left to express it, some degree of belief in the destiny of his country?

M. Renan, in fact, seems to me at once to admire Koheleth too much, and to justify his admiration on questionable grounds. It might have been hoped that the unlikeness of this book to the other books of the Canon would have been the occasion of a worthy and a satisfying estimate from this accomplished master. A critic of narrower experience represents Koheleth partly as a cynical Hebrew Pasquin, who satirises the hated foreigner, Herod the Great, and the minions of his court, partly as an earnest opponent of a dangerous and growing school of ascetics. I refer to this theory here, not to criticise it, but to call attention to its worthier conception of Koheleth’s character. The tendency of Ecclesiastes Dr. Grätz considers to be opposed to the moral and religious principles of Judaism and Christianity, but to the man as distinguished from his book he does full justice. It is a mistake when this writer’s theory is represented by Dean Plumptre as making Koheleth teach ‘a license like that of a St. Simonian rehabilitation of the flesh.’[366] Koheleth’s choice of language is not indeed in good taste, but it was only a crude way of emphasising his opposition to a dangerous spirit of asceticism. Such at least is Dr. Grätz’s view. ‘Koheleth is not the slave of an egoïstic eudemonism, but merely seeks to counteract pietistic self-mortification.’[367] Dr. Grätz thinks, too, and rightly, that he can detect an old-fashioned Judaism in the supposed sceptical philosopher: Koheleth controverts the new tenet of immortality, but not that of the resurrection. I am anticipating again, but do so in order to contrast the sympathetic treatment of the Breslau professor with the unsympathetic or at least unsuitable portraiture of Koheleth given by the Parisian critic.

Of all writers known to me, however, none is so sympathetic to Koheleth as Dr. Plumptre, in whose pleasing article in Smith’s Dictionary we have the germ of the most interesting commentary in the language. A still wider popularity was given to the Herder-Plumptre theory by Dr. Stanley, who eloquently describes Ecclesiastes as ‘an interchange of voices, higher and lower, within a single human soul.’ ‘It is like,’ he continues, ‘the perpetual strophe and antistrophe of Pascal’s Pensées. But it is more complicated, more entangled, than any of these, in proportion as the circumstances from which it grows are more perplexing, as the character which it represents is vaster, and grander, and more distracted.’[368] In his later work, Dr. Plumptre aptly compares the ‘Two Voices’ of our own poet (strictly, he remarks, there are three voices in Ecclesiastes), in which, as in Koheleth, though more decidedly, the voice of faith at last prevails over that of pessimism.[369] I fear, however, that Dr. Plumptre’s generous impulse carries him farther than sober criticism can justify. The aim of writing an ‘ideal biography’ closing with the ‘victory of faith’ seems to me to have robbed his pen of that point which, though sometimes dangerous, is yet indispensable to the critic. The theory of the ‘alternate voices,’ of which Dr. Plumptre is, not the first,[370] but the most eloquent advocate, seems to me to be an offspring of the modern spirit. It is so very like their own case—the dual nature[371] which a series of refined critics has attributed to Koheleth, that they involuntarily invest Koheleth with the peculiar qualities of modern seekers after truth. To them, in a different sense from M. Renan’s, Ecclesiastes is ‘un livre aimable,’ just as Marcus Aurelius and Omar Khayyâm are the favourite companions of those who prefer more consistent thinking.

Certainly the author of Ecclesiastes might well be satisfied with the interest so widely felt in his very touching confidences. It is the contents, of course, which attract so many of our contemporaries—not the form: only a student of Hebrew can appreciate the toilsome pleasure of solving philosophical enigmas. And yet M. Renan has made it possible even for an exigeant Parisian to enjoy, not indeed the process, but the results, of philological inquiry, in so far as they reveal the literary characteristics of this unique work; he has, indeed, in his function of artistic translator, done Koheleth even more than justice. In particular, his translations of the rhythmic passages of Koheleth which relieve the surrounding prose are real tours de force. These passages M. Renan, following M. Derenbourg,[372] regards as quotations from lost poetical works, reminding us that such poetical quotations are common in Arabic literature. To represent in his translation the character of the Hebrew rhythm, which is ‘dancing, light, and pretentiously elegant,’ M. Renan adopts the metres of Old French poetry. ‘Il s’agissait de calquer en français des sentences conçues dans le ton dégagé, goguenard et pru-d’homme à la fois de Pibrac, de Marculfe ou de Chatonnet, de produire un saveur analogue à celle de nos quatrains de moralités ou de nos vieux proverbes en bouts-rimés.’ Of the poem on old age he says that it is ‘une sorte de joujou funèbre qu’on dirait ciselé par Banville ou par Théophile Gautier et que je trouve supérieur même aux quatrains de Khayyâm.’[373] I should have thought the comparison very unjust to the Persian poet. To me, I confess, the prelude or overture (i. 4-8), though not in rhythmic Hebrew, is the gem of the book. Questionable though its tendency may seem, if we look at the context, its poetry is of elemental force, and appeals to the modern reader in some of his moods more than almost anything else in the Old Testament outside the Book of Job. I cannot help alluding to Carlyle’s fine application of its imagery in Sartor Resartus, ‘Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind: Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that summon mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new advancement.’ How differently Koheleth,—