§ OJ0>^ '%0JI1V3J0^ '^/Sa3AINn-3WV' ^lOSANCElf/^ o -v^lllBRARY^^ ^^l•llBRARYa^ l_3 "^aaAiNrt-awv ^«!/ojnv>jo'^ .H;OFCAIIFO% ^OFCAllFOfiUj, ARYQr -s>^UIBRARYQ^ ,\WEUNIVER5"/^ ^JIIVJJO^' %a3AiNrtmv^ ^WEl]NIVER% ^lOSANCElf/^ > ^^Aavaan^' AWEUNIVERI/a ^lOSANCElfXx -n Q VER% ^lOSANCElfj^. -^UIBRARYQ^. C_9 /SOV^^ ■^/5a3AINa]yLV^ "^tJOJlWOJO^ ^^ojitvd-jo^ ^ o ^OFCAIIFO%, oe _ ^OF-CAIIFO%- > vm^ %a3AiNa-3WV^ '^ Q A /r-*c: ian# "^MvaaiH^ ., that Koheletli was not canonical, and therefore did not pollute the hands, while that of Hillel with its wider culture, and sympathy with Greek thought, was ready to admit its claim, and finally turned the balance of opinion in its favour (Gemara, Megiia 7, a, Shabbath 30, b, quoted by Ginsburg, p. 15). An inference of a like kind may be drawn, if I mistake not, from the existence of the Apocryphal Book known as the Wis- dom of Solomon, written, beyond the shadow of a doubt, by an Alexandrian and probably not long before, or possibly after, the Christian era. If the book Ecclesiastcs were, at the time when that author wrote, generally recognized as having the authority which attached to the name of Solomon, there would have been something like a bold irreverence in the act of writing a book which at least seemed to put itself in something like a position of rivalry, and in some places, to be a kind of corrective com- plement to its teaching. (Comp. Wisd. ii. iii. with Eccles. ii. 18 — 26, iii. 18—22, and other passages in ch. v.) If, however, INTRODUCTION. 29 it were known to be a comparatively recent work, and that the schools of Jerusalem had been divided in opinion as to its recep- tion into the Canon, it is quite intelligible than an earnest and devout Jew, such as the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon mani- festly was, should have thought himself justified in following the example that had been set of a personated authorship, and have endeavoured to make his ideal Solomon a truer representative of a wisdom which was in harmony with the faith and hope of Israel. How far he succeeded in this aim is a question which will meet us in a later stage of our enquiry. (See ch. v.) On the whole, then, weighing both the facts themselves, and the authority of the names which are arranged on either side as to the conclusions to be drawn from them, the balance seems to incline somewhat decisively to anothei* than Solomonic author- ship. Assuming this conclusion as established, we have to ask to what later period in Jewish history it is to be referred, and here the opinions of scholars divide themselves into three chief groups. I. There are those who, like Ewald, Ginsburg, and Heng- stenberg, fix its date during the period in which the Jews were subject to the rule of the Persian kings. They rest their belief on the fact that the book contains words that belong to that period, such as those for "orchards" (see Note on ch. ii. 5) and "province" (see Note on ch. ii. 8). In the use of the word "angel" apparently for "priest" (see Note on ch. V. 6), they find an indication that the writer was not far from being a contemporary of the prophet Malachi, who uses that word in the same sense (Mai. ii. 7). The tone of the book, in its questionings and perplexities, indicates, they think, a general spiritual condition of the people, like that which Malachi reproves. The "robbery" in "tithes and offerings" (Mai. iii. 8) agrees with the "vowing and not pay- ing" of ch. V. 5. The political situation described in chs. iv. I, vii. 7, viii. 2 — 4, the hierarchy of officials, the tyranny, corruption and extortion of the governors of provinces (see Note on ch. v. 8), the supreme authority of the great King practically issuing in the despotism of a queen, a minister, or a slave, the revelry and luxury of the court (see Note on ch. x. INTRODUCTION. 1 6), are all painted with a vividness which implies experience of misgovernmcnt such as that which meets us in Neh. v. 15, ix- 36, 37; Esth. i. 7, 8, iii. 9 (see Notes on ch. x. 4, 7, 16). More specific references have also been found to events in Persian history, to the influence of the eunuch Bagoas (see Note on ch. x. 5) under Artaxcrxes Ochus, to the treatment of that king's corpse in ch. vi. 3, to Artaxerxes Mnemon as one whose likeness we may recognize in the "old and foolish king" of ch. iv. 13. The facts thus stated cannot be regarded as otherwise than interesting and suggestive, but it is obvious that they are compatible with a later date, which presented the same political and social conditions, and at which the historical facts, assuming the reference to them to be sufficiently definite, would still be in the memories of men. II. And there is, it is believed, overwhelming evidence in favour of that later date. Mr Tyler, in the Introduction to his singularly interesting and able treatise on Ecclesiastes (1874), finds in the book traces not to be mistaken of the influence of the teaching both of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy. In the view of life as presenting a recurrence of the same phenomena, the thing which is being as that which hath been (see Notes on chs. i. 5 — 7, II, iii. 14, 15), he finds the Stoic teaching of the cycles of events presented by history, such as that which we find in its later form in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (xi. i). The thought of the nothingness of man's life and strivings, his ambi- tions and his pleasures (chs. i. 2, 3, 17, ii. 21 — 26, vi. 3,and^ai'i'/;;/), has its parallel in the apathy and contempt of the world which characterised the teaching of the Stoics when they taught that they were transient "as the flight of a swift-winged bird;" and that all human things (ra dv6i)co7nva.) were "as a vapour, and as nothingness"' (Marc. Aur. Mcditt. VI. 15, x. 31). The Stoic destiny {(Ifxapfifvr]), and the consequent calm acceptance of the inevitable, on which the Stoic prided himself, is echoed in the teaching of Koheleth as to the events that come to man by a power which his will cannot control, the " time and chance" that happcneth alike to all (chs. viii. 8, ix. 1 1). The stress laid on the common weaknesses of mankind as being of the nature of in- INTRODUCTION. 31 sanity, as in the frequently recurring combination of " madness and folly "(see Notes on chs. i. 17, ii. 12, vii. 25, x. 13), is altogether in harmony with the language of the Stoics (Diog. Laert. vii. 124). Nor are the traces of the teaching of Epicurus less dis- tinctly visible. We know that teaching indeed mainly through later writers, and the " many books" of the great Master himself have perished altogether, but for that very reason we know per- haps better than if we had the latter only, what were the points of his system which most impressed themselves on the minds of his followers. Lucretius and Horace are for us the representa- tives of Epicurean thought as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are of Stoic, and the parallelisms of language and idea which these writers present to the book now before us, may legitimately suggest the conclusion that they drank from a common source. We note accordingly that the Debater is acquainted with the physical -science of Epicurus as represented by Lucretius. They speak in almost identical terms of the phenomena of the daily rising and setting of the sun, of the rivers flowing into the sea, and returning to their source (see Note on i. 5, 6). Their language as to the dispersion at death of the compound ele- ments of man's nature (see Notes on chs. iii. 19, 20, xii. 7) ; as to our ignorance of all that comes after death (see Note on ch. iii. 21); as to the progress of man in the arts of civilized life (see Note on ch. vii. 29); as to the nature of man standing, as far as we know, on the same level as that of beasts (see Note on ch. iii. 18, 19), presents an identity of tone, almost even of phrase. Still more in accord with popular Epicureanism as represented by Horace is the teaching of Koheleth as to the secret of enjoyment, consisting in the drapa^la (tranquillity) of a well regulated life (chs. ii. 24, iii. 22, V. 18, ix. 7), in the avoidance of passionate emotions and vain ambitions, and anxious cares, in learning to be content with a little, but to accept and use that little with a deliberate cheer- fulness (chs. V. II, 12, 19, vii. 14). Even the pessimism of the Epicurean, from which he vainly seeks to find a refuge in this pococicrante life, is echoed by the Debater. The lamentations over the frailty and shortness of man's life (ch. vi. 4, 5, 12), over INTRODUCTION. the disorders which prevail in nature and in society (chs. v. 8, vii. 7, viii. 9, 14, ix. 16, x. 16 — 18), the ever-recurring burden of the "vanity of vanities" (chs. i. 2, 17, ii. 26, iv. 16, viii. 10, ix. 9, xi. 10, xii. 8), are all characteristic of the profounder tendencies of the same school, which culminated in the '■'iantd stat prccdita cii/pd'" of Lucretius (li. 181). But it is not only in its affinity with the later philosophical systems of Greece that we find a proof of the later date ot Ecclesiastes. It is throughout absolutely saturated with Greek thought and language. In the cliaractcristic phrase of "under tlic sun' to express the totality of human things (see Notes on chs. i. 14, iv. 15, vi. i, ix. 3), of "seeing the sun" for living (see Notes on chs. vi. 5, xi. 7), in the reference to the current maxims of Greek thought, the M^Sei/ ayau (" Nothing in excess") in ch. vii. 16, in the stress on opportuneness (xaipoy) in ch. iii. i — 8, in the "many books" of ch. xii. 12, recalling the 300 volumes of the writings of Epicurus, and the 400 of his disciple Apollodorus, and the 200,000 of the library at Alexandria, in the characteristic, "Who knows .'"' of the rising school of Scepticism in ch. iii. 21, in the cynical disparagement of women which made Euripides known as the misogynist, and cast its dark shadow over Greek social life (see Note on ch. vii. 28), in the alkisive reference to a Greek proverb in the "bird in the air" that reports secrets (see Note on ch. x. 20), in the goads as representing the stimulating effect of all true teaching (see Note on ch. xii. 11), perhaps also in the knowledge shewn (see Note on ch. xii. 5) of the Greek pharmacopoeia, — in all this evidence, in its cumulative force, we find what compels us to admit that the book could not well have been written before the schools of the Garden and the Porch had obtained a prominent position, i.e. not earlier than B.C 250. With less confidence I bring before the reader the substance of Mr Tyler's argument as to the probable limits of the period within which Ecclesiastes may have been written {/■Jir/fs/as/i's, Introd. § 5). The earlier of these limits he fixes as above, at about B.C. 250. The later he finds in the coinci- dence between it and the book known as the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach, the Ecclcsiasticus of the English Apocrypha. INTRODUCTION. 33 I present these, as he gives them, and leave the reader to judge of their evidential force ^. Eccles. vii. 13 — 15 and Ecclus. xxxiii. 13^15. Eccles. viii. r Ecclus. xiii. 25, 16. Eccles. X. n Ecclus. xii. 13. Eccles. vii. 20 — 22 Ecclus. xix. 16. Eccles. x. 2, 3, 12 — 14 Ecclus. xx. 7, xxi. 25, 26. Eccles. x. 8 Ecclus. xxvii. 26. Eccles. vii. 27 Ecclus. xxxiii. 15. Eccles. i. 7 Ecclus. xl. 11. Assuming these resemblances to imply derivation and that Ecclesiasticus was the later book of the two, and identifying the Euergetes of his grandson's Preface with Ptolemy Physcon, Mr Tyler concludes that the book now before us could not well have been written before B.C. 200 and is inclined to name B.C. I So as the most probable date. From this point of view the name given to the latter book in the earliest Latin Version, from which it passed into the Vulgate, is not altogether with- out significance. The term Ecclesiasticus presupposes that the book was looked on as following in the wake of Ecclesiastes, belonging to the same class of didactic literature. It is, of course, true that another account of the name was given by patristic writers (Rufinus, Comni. in Syinb. c. 38) and has been adopted by many modern scholars (Westcott in Smitlis Diet, of Bible, Art. Ecclesiasticus), as though it meant that the book was an "Ecclesiastical" one in the later sense of the word as con- trasted with " canonical,'' fit to be read in the Ecclesia though not of authority as a rule of faith. Looking, however, to the fact that there was a book already current in which the word Ecclesiastes was distinctly used in its pre-Christian sense, it is a more natural conclusion to infer that the old meaning was kept in view and that the book was therefore named with the significance now suggested. This is at all events in harmony with the use which the writer himself makes of the word Ecclesia, — in ch. xxxviii. '}>2>i when he says of the unlearned workers of the world that they "shall not sit high in the congregation," i.e. ^ The subject is more fully discussed in ch. iv. ECCLESIASTES -j 3+ INTRODUCTION. in the ecclesia, or academy of sages, and falls in with Mr Tyler's theory that his work was more or less influenced by Eccle- siastes. Another commentator (Ilitzig) is led to the same con- clusion on different grounds. In the picture of the political evils of which the writer complains in ch. iv. 13, vii. 10, 26, or of a young and profligate one in ch. x. 16, he finds definite allu- sions to the history of Egypt under Ptolemy Philopator and Ptolemy Epiphanes respectively, and, although it may be ad- mitted that the references are not sufficiently definite to esta- blish the point, if taken by themselves, yet, as supervening on other evidence, it will be felt, I think, that they have a con- siderable corroborating force. As the result to which these lines of inference converge we have accordingly to think of Ecclesiastcs as written somewhere between B.C. 240, the date of the death of Zeno, and B.C. 181, that of the death of Ptolemy Epiphanes. III. A recent critic (Griitz) has gone a step further, assigning the book to the reign of Herod the Great, and treats it as practi- cally in part a protest against the mal-administrationof his govern- ment, and in part a polemic against the rising asceticism of the Essenes. I cannot say, however, that the arguments which he advances in support of this hypothesis seem to me sufficiently weighty to call in this place for examination in detail (some of them will find mention in the notes), and they are, to say the least, far outweighed by the evidence that has led Tyler and Ilitzig, travelling on distinct lines of investigation, to their conclusion. It remains, with this date, thus fairly established, to enquire into the plan and purpose of the book, its relation to the en- vironment of the time, to earlier and to later teaching in the same region of thought. The peculiar character of the book, its manifest reproduction, even under the dramatic personation of its form, of a real personal experience, has led me to think that I can do this more effectively in the form of an ideal biography of the writer, based upon such data as the book itself presents, than by treating the subject in the more systematic way which would be natural in such a treatise as the present. To that biography I accordingly now invite tlie attention of the reader. INTRODUCTION. 35 CHAPTER III. AN IDEAL BIOGRAPHY. It would be a comparatively easy task, of course, to write the life of the traditional author of Ecclesiastes. The reign of Solomon "in all his glory" and with all his wisdom has often furnished a subject both for the historian and the poet. There would be a special interest, if we could treat the book before us as leading us into the region that lies below the surface of history, and find in it an autobiographical fragment in which the royal writer laid before us his own experience of life and the conclusions to which he had been led through it. The Con- fessions of Solomon would have on that assumption a fascination not less powerful than those of Augustine or Rousseau. For the reasons which have been given in the preceding chapter, I cannot adopt that conclusion, and am compelled to rest in the belief that Ecclesiastes was the work of an unknown writer about two hundred years before the Christian era. To write his life under such conditions may seem a somewhat adventurous enterprise. One is open to the charge of evolving a biography out of one's inner consciousness, of summoning a spectral form out of the cloudland of imagination. I have felt, however, looking to the special character of the book, that this would be a more satisfactory way of stating the view that I have been led to hold as to the occasion, plan, and purpose of the book than the more systematic dissertation with which the student is familiar in Commentaries and Introductions. The book has so little of a formal plan, and is so much, in spite of the personated authorship, of the nature of an autobiographical confession, partly, it is clear, deliberate, partly, perhaps, to an extent of which the writer was scarcely conscious, betraying its true nature beneath the veil of the character he had assimied, that the task of portraying the lineaments that lie beneath the veil is comparatively easy. As with the Pc/isccs of Pascal or of 36 INTRODUCTION. Joubcrt, or the Sonnets of Shakespeare, we feel that the very- life of the man stands before us, as 7>otivd...veluti descripta iabclld, in all its main characteristics. We divine the incidents of that life from the impress they have left upon his character, and from chance words in which more is meant than meets the ear. Kohclcth (I shall use the name by anticipation, as better than the constant repetition of " the writer," or " the subject of our memoir") was born, according to the view stated above, some- where about B.C. 230. He was an only son, '^^e alone and not a second," without a brother (ch. iv. 8). His father lived in Judrca', but not in Jerusalem, and to find_"the^way^jtojhe city," the way which none but the proverbial "fool" among grown-up men could miss, came before the child's mind at an early age as the test of sagacity and courage (ch. x. 18). The boy's educa- tion, however, was carried on in the synagogue school of the country town near which he lived, and was rudimentary enough in its character, stimulating a desire for knowledge which it coukl not satisfy. He learnt, as all children of Jewish parents learnt, the S/u-md or Creed of Israel, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord" (Deut. vi. 4), and the sentences that were written on the Phylacteries which boys, when they reached the age of thirteen and became Children of the Law, wore on their forehead and their arms. He was taught many of tlie Proverbs which proclaimed that " the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Prov. i. 7}, and learnt to reverence Solomon as the ideal pattern of the wisdom and largeness of heart that grow out of a wide experience (i Kings iv. 29). But it was a time of com- parative deadness in the life of Israel. The last of the prophets had spoken some two centuries before, and there were few who studied his writings or those of his predecessors. Tiie great masters of Israel and teachers of the Law had not yet raised the fabric of tradition which was afterwards embodied in the Talmud. The expectations of tlie Anointed King were for the time dormant, and few were looking for "redemption in Jeru- ^ So Ewakl, Inlrod. to Ecclcsiastcs. INTRODUCTION. salem" or for "the consolation of Israel." Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes, though the germs of their respective systems might be found in the thoughts of men, were not as yet stimulating the religious activity of the people by their rivalry as teachers. The heroic struggle of the Maccabees against the idolatry of Syria was as yet in the future, and the early history of the nation, the memories of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, did not kindle the patriotic enthusiasm which they came to kindle afterwards. There was a growing tendency to fall into the modes of thought and speech and life of the Greeks and Syrians with whom the sons of Abraham were brought into contact. Even the sacred name of Jahveh or Jehovah, so precious to their fathers, had dropped into the background, and men habitually spoke of "God," or "the Creator," after the manner of the Greeks (ch. xii. i). It was a time, such as all nations and Churches have known, of conventionality and routine. The religion of the people, such as the boy saw it, was not such as to call out any very deep enthusiasm. The wealth of his parents had attracted a knot of so-called devout persons round them, and his mother had come under their influence, and in proportion as she did so, failed to gain any hold on her son's heart, and left no memory of a true pattern of womanhood for him to reverence and love. Even she formed no exception in after years to the sweeping censure in which he declared that among all the women he had met he had never known one who satisfied his ideal of what a true woman should be (ch. vii. 28). The religionists who directed her con- science called each other by the name of "Friend," "Brother," or "Companion," and claimed to be of those of whom Malachi had spoken, " who feared the Lord and spake often one to another" (Mai. iii. 16). Koheleth saw through their hypocrisy, watched them going to the house of God, i.e., to temple or synagogue (Ps. Ixxiv. 8), and heard their long and wordy and windy prayers — the very sacrifice of fools (ch. v. i, 2). He saw how they made vows in time of sickness or danger, and then, when the peril had passed away, came before the priest, on whom they looked as the messenger or angel of the Lord, with 38 INTRODUCTION. frivolous excuses for its non-fulfilment (ch. v. 4 — 6) ; how they told their dreams as though they were an apocalypse from heaven (ch. v. 7). It was necessary to find a phrase to dis- tinguish the true worshippers from these pretenders, and just as men, under the influence of the maxim that language was given to conceal our thoughts, came to speak of la vc'rild vraie as different from the ordinary t//r///, so Koheleth could only express his scorn of the hypocrites by contrasting them, as with the emphasis of iteration, with " those who fear God, who inclccd fear before him" (ch. viii. 12). JAs Koheleth grew to years of manhood, he was called to take his part in the labours of the cornfield and the vineyard. The wealth of his father did not lead him to bring up his son to a soft-handed leisure, for men had not then ceased to recognize the blessedness of toil, and it had become a proverb that a father who does not teach his sons to labour with their hands teaches them to be thieves)?*"The teachers of Israel remembered that the "king himself was served by the field" (ch. v. 9) and " despise not husbandry " was one of the maxims of the wise. In after years, when pleasure had brought satiety and weariness, and dainties palled on the palate, Koheleth looked back regret- fully on that "sweet sleep" of the labour of earlier days, which followed on the frugal, or even scanty, meal (ch. v. 12). As he grew up to manhood, however, there came a change. Like the younger son in the parable (Luke xv. 12) he desired to see the world that lay beyond the hills, beyond the waters, and asked for his portion of goods and went his way into a far country. Among the Jews, as among the Greeks, and partly, indeed, as a consequence of their intercourse with them, this had come to be regarded as one of the paths to wisdom and. largeness of, heart. So the Son of Sirach wrote a little later: "A man that hath travelled knoweth many things." " He shall serve among great men, and appear before princes ; he will travel through strange countries ; for he hath tried the good and evil among men" (Ecclus. xxxiv. 9, xxxix. 4. Comp. Homer, Od. I. 3). And if a Jew travelled anywhere at that period, it was almost a matter of course that he should direct INTRODUCTION. his steps to Alexandria. Intercourse between the two nations of Egypt and Judah was, indeed, no new thing. Psammetichus, in the days of Manasseh, had invited Jews to settle in his kingdom^ There had been Israelites "beyond the rivers of Ethiopia" in the days of Josiah (Zeph. iii. lo). Alexander, in founding the new city which was to immortalize his name, had followed in the footsteps of Psammetichus, The first of the Ptolemies had brought over many thousands, and they occupied a distinct quarter of the city^. Philadelphus had, as the story ran, invited seventy-two of the elders of Israel to his palace that they might translate their Law as an addition to the treasures of his library, had received them with all honour, and invited them to discuss ethical ques- tions day by day with the philosophers about his court^. A wealthy Jew coming to such a city, not without introductions, was sure to be well received, and Koheleth sought and found admission to that life of courts, which the Son of Sirach pointed out as one of the paths of wisdom (Ecclus. xxxix. 4). It was a position not without its dangers. It tempted the Jew to efface his nationality and his creed, and his hopes in the far-off future. It tempted him also to exchange the purity to which he was pledged by the outward symbol of the covenant and by the teaching of his home life, for the license of the Greek. Koheleth for a time bowed his neck to the yoke of a despotic monarch, and learnt the suppleness of the slaves who dare not ask a king. What doest thou? (ch. viii. 4). He watched the way the court winds blew, and learnt to note the rise and fall of favourites and ministers (ch. x. 67). He saw or heard how under Ptolemy Philopator the reins of power had fallen into the hands of his mistress, Agathoclea, and her brother ; how the long minority of his son Epiphanes had been marked by the oppression of the poor and "violent perverting of judgment and justice" in the provinces (ch. v. 8), by all the evils which come on a land when its "king is a child" and its "princes revel in the morning" (ch. X. 16, 17)^ He had seen the pervading power of a system * Letter of Pseudo-Aristeas. - Joseph. y//?A Xii. r. ^ Letter of Pseudo-Aristeas. * Juslin, xxx. i. 40 INTRODUCTION. of police espionage, which carried what had been spoken in whispers to the ears of the ruler (ch. x. 20). A training such as this could scarcely fail to make the man who was subject to it something less of an Israelite — to turn his thoughts from con- templating the picture which the prophets had drawn of a true and righteous King, to the task of noting the humours of kings who were neither true nor righteous, and flattering them with an obsequious homage, in the belief that "yielding" in such a case "pacifieth great offences" (ch. x. 4)^ Temptations of another kind helped to complete the evil work. The wealth of Koheleth enabled him to surround himself with a certain magnificence, and he kept before himself the ideal of a glory like that of Solomon's : the wine sparkled at his ban- quets, and singing men and singing women were hired to sing songs of revelry and love, and the Greek Jictccrcc, the "delights of the sons of men," the dcmi-inotide of Alexandria, surrounded him with their fascinations (ch. ii. 3 — 8). His life became one of reckless sensuality. Like the Son in the parable, to whom I have before compared him, he wasted his substance in riotous living, and devoured his wealth with harlots (Luke xv. 13, 30). The tendency of such a life is, as all experience shews, to the bitterness of a cynical satiety. Poets have painted the Nemesis which dogs the footsteps of the man who lives for pleasure. In the Jaques-, perhaps to some extent even in the Hamlet, of Shakespeare, in the mental history, representing probably Shakespeare's own experience, of his Sonnets, yet more in the Childe Harold of Byron, in the "Palace of Art" and the "Vision of Sin," of Tennyson, we have types of the temper of meditative scorn and unsatisfied desire that uttered itself in the cry, "All is vanity and feeding upon wind" (ch. i. 14). But what is true more or less of all men except those who live — "Like a brute with lower pleasures, like a brute with lower pains," ^ So Bunsen, God in History, I. p. 159. - "T'or thou thyself hast been a liljcrtine, As sensual as the brutish slincr itself." As You Like It, 11. 7. INTRODUCTION. 41 was true then, as it has been since, in its highest measure, of the Jew who abandons the faith of his fathers and drifts upon the shoreless sea of a hfe of license. Corrupiio optwii pessima. He has inherited higher hopes and nobler memories than the men of most other nations, and when he falls he sinks even to a lower level than they sink. The "little grain of conscience" that yet remains "makes him sour," and the features are stamp- ed with the sneer of the mocker, and he hates life, and yet, with the strange inconsistency of pessimists, shrinks from death. He denies, or at least questions, the possibility of knowing that there is a life beyond the limits of this life (ch. iii. 18 — 21), and yet draws back from the journey to the undiscovered country, and clings passionately (ch. xi. 7) to the life which he declares to be intolerable (ch. ii. 17, vi. 3, vii. i). The literature of our own time presents two vivid pictures of the character and words of one who, being a Jew, has passed through this experience. In the life of the Raphael of Kingsley's Hypatia, yet more in that of Hcinrich Heine at Paris^ we have the counterpart of the life of Koheleth at Alexandria. Under the thinly veiled disguise of the person of the historic Solomon he afterwards retraced his own experience and the issue to which it had brought him. He had flattered himself that he was not making himself the slave of pleasure, but even in his wildest hours was gaining wider thoughts and enlarging his knowledge of good and evil, that even then his "wisdom remained with him" (ch.' ii. 3, 9). Like Goethe, he was philo- sophic, or, to speak more truly, artistic, in the midst of his sensuality, and watched the "madness and folly" of men, and yet more of women, with the eye of a connoisseur (ch. ii. 12). It was well for him, though it seemed evil, that he could not rest in the calmly balanced tranciuillity of the supreme artist, which Goethe, and apparently Shakespeare, attained after the '■'■ Siiirni und Draiig^'' period of their life was over. The utter weariness and satiety, the mood of a blase pessimism, into which he fell was as the first stepping-stone to higher things. The course of his life at Alexandria had been marked by two ^ Comp. Stigand's Life of Heine, 11. chap. i. INTRODUCTION. strong affections, one of which ended in the bitterness of despair, while the other, both at the time and in its memory afterwards, was as a hand stretched forth to snatch him as "a brand from the burning." He had found a friend, one of his own faith, a true Israehte, who had kept himself even in Alexandria pure from evil, and gave him kindly sympathy and faithful counsel, who realised all that he had read in the history of his own country of the friendship of David and Jonathan, or in that of Greece of Theseus and Peirithous, or Orestes and Pylades (chs. iv. 9, lo, vii. 28). He was to him what Pudcns, the disciple of St Paul, was to Martial, touching the fibres of rever- ence and admiration where the very nerve of pudicity seemed dead and the conscience seared^. The memory of that friend- ship, perhaps the actual presence of the friend, saved Koheleth from the despair into which the other passion plunged him. For he had loved, in one instance at least, with a love strong as death, with a passion fiery and fond as that of Catullus for Lesbia; had idealized the object of his love, and had awakened, as from a dream, to find that she was false beyond the average falsehood of her class — that she was "more bitter than death," her heart "as snares and nets," her hands as "bands." He shuddered at the thought of that passion, and gave thanks that he had escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; yet more, that the friend of whom he thought as one that "pleased God," had not yielded to her temptation^ (ch. vii. 26). • We ^ " O qiiam pncnc tibi Stygias ego raptus ad umlas, ElysiLu vidi niibila fusca plagne ! Quanivis lassa, tuos qusercbant lumina vultus, Atque erat in gelido plurimus ore Pudens." "Yea, all but snatched where flows the gloomy stream, I saw the clouds that wrap the Elysian plain. Still for thy face I yearned in wearied dream, And cold lips, Pudens, Pudens ! cried in vain." Mart. Epigr. vi. 58. ■^ Here, too, identity of experience produces almost identity of phrase: — "Non jam illud qurero, contra ut me diligat ilia Aut quod non potis est, esse pudica velit; Ipse valere opto, et tetrum hunc deponere morbum, O Di ! reddile mi hoc pro pietate mca.." INTRODUCTION. 43 are reminded, as we look first on this picture and then on that, of the marvellous and mysterious sonnet (cxliv.) in which Shakespeare writes — "Two loves I have of comfort and despair Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still. The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman coloured ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil. Wooing his purity with her foul pride." The life of Heine, to which I have already referred as strikingly resembling that of Koheleth, presents hardly less striking a parallel. He, too, had known one friend — "the only man in whose society I never felt enmiij on whose sweet, noble features I could see clearly the aspect of my own souP." He, too, in what seems to have been the one real passion of his life, had found himself deceived and disappointed — "She broke her faith; she broke her troth; For this I feel forgiving; Or else she had, as wedded wife, Embittered love and living"." The heart- wound thus inflicted was not easily healed. Art, culture, pleasure failed to soothe him. There fell on him the "blank misgivings" of which Wordsworth speaks, the profound sense of nothingness which John Stuart Mill describes so vividly in his Autobiography, what the Germans call the Weltschmers, the burden of the universe, or, in Koheleth's own phrase, the "world set in the heart" (ch. iii. ii); the sense of "I ask not this, that she may love me still, Or, task beyond her power, be chaste and true; I seek for health, to fVee myself from ill; For this, ye gods, I turn in prayer to you." Catui.l. Cariu. lxxvt. Stigand, Life of Ilcinc, i. p. 88. - Ibid. i. p. 47. 44 INTRODUCTION. an infinity and an eternity which man strives in vain to measure or apprehend. It was in this frame of mind that Koheleth turned to the literature and philosophy of Greece. The Hbrary founded by the first Ptolemy, enlarged by Philadclphus, arranged and catalogued by Demetrius Phalereus, and thrown open as a free library to all students, claimed^ we may well believe, not less than that of Thebes, which had the title graved upon its portals, to be the 'larpetoi/ yi^vxrji) the "Hospital for the diseases of the SouP." He had by this time gained sufficient knowledge of Greek to read at least the writings of the three previous centuries. They opened a new world of thought and language to him. He had grown weary of psalms and prophecies and chants, as men of our own time have grown weary of their Bible and Prayer- Book and Christian Year, and had not turned to them for comfort and counsel. His new reading brought him, at any rate, distraction. The lyric and dramatic poets he read indeed chiefly in the extracts which were quoted by lecturers, or the anthologies that were placed in the hands of young students ; but in these he found words that relieved and even interpreted his own feelings. He learnt from Sophocles and Theognis to look on "not being" as better than any form of life (ch. iv. 2, 3); with the misogynist Euripides, who echoed his own wailing scorn, to utter bitter sneers at women's false- hood and frailty; with the pessimist Glycon to say of life that it was Trajra yeXus, Kal iravTa kovh Kal iravTa rb fiyjdiv. " All is a jest, and all is dust, and all is nothingness." From the earlier sages he learnt the maxims that had become the ornaments of school-boys' themes, and yet were new to him — the doctrine of the 'Mrj^tv ayav, "nothing in excess" (the "Sur/ou/, point de zcle" of Talleyrand); the not being "over- much righteous or overmuch wicked" (ch. vii. 16). From Chilon he learnt to talk of the time, or Katpos, that was fixed for all things, of opportuneness, as almost the one ethical criterion 1 Diodoms, I. 49. INTRODUCTION. 45 of human action (ch. iii. i — 11). He caught up the phrase "under the sun" as expressing the totality of human life (ch. i. 9, and thirty other passages). It was, however, to the philosophy of Greece, as represented by the leading sects of Stoics and Epicureans, that he turned with most eagerness. The former had in its teaching much that attracted him. That doctrine of recurring cycles of pheno- mena, not in the world of outward nature only, but of human life, history repeating itself, so that there is nothing new under the sun (ch. i. 9, 10), gave to him, as it did afterwards to Aurelius, a sense of order in the midst of seemingly endless changes and perturbations, and led him to look with the serene tranquillity of a Nil admirari at the things that excited men's ambition or roused them to indignation. If oppression and corruption had always been the accompaniments of kingly rule, such as the world had then known it, why should he wonder at the "violent perverting of justice and judgment in a province" under an Artaxerxes or a Ptolemy.'* (ch. v. 8). From the follow- ers of Zeno he learnt also to look on virtue and vice in their intellectual aspects. The common weaknesses and follies of mankind were to him, as to them, only so many different forms and degrees of absolute insanity (chs. i. 17, ii. 12, vii. 25, ix. 3). He studied " madness and folly " in that mental hospital as he would have studied the phenomena of fever or pa.ralysis. The perfect ideal calm of the Stoic seemed a grand thing to aim at : as much above the common life of men as light is above dark- ness (ch. ii. 13). The passion, or the fashion, of Stoicism, however, soon passed away. That iteration of events, the sun rising everyday, the winds ever blowing, the rivers ever flowing, the endless repetition of the follies and vices of mankind (ch. i. 5 — 8), became to him, as the current of the Thames did to the jaded pleasure-seeking duke who looked on it from his Richmond villa^, unspeakably wearisome. It seemed to mock him with the thought of monotony where he had hoped to find the pleasure of variety. It mocked him also with the thought of the permanence of nature, or even of the mass of human e.\.istcnce 1 Co.\'s Quest of the Chief CooJ, p. 81. 46 INTRODUCTION. considered as part of nature, and the fleeting nothingness of the individual life. The voice of the rivulet — "Men may come and men may go, Eut I go on for ever " brought no pleasant music to his car. And, to say the truth, the lives of the Stoics of Alexandria did not altogether commend their system to him. They talked much of the dignity of virtue, and drew fine pictures of it ; but when he came to know them, they were as vain, irritable, egotistic, sometimes even as sordid and sensual, as the men whom they despised. Each man was, in his own eyes, and those of his little coterie, as a supreme sage and king, almost as a God. There was something in them like the mutual apotheosis of which Heine complained in the pantheistic followers of Fichte and of Schelling^ Against that system, which ended in making every man his own deity, there rose in the heart of the Israelite, who had not altogether forgotten the lessons of his earlier life, a protest which clothed itself in the words, "Fear thou God" (ch. viii. 12, 13). And so Koheleth turned from the Porch to the Garden. It was at least less pretentious, and did not mock him with its lofty ideal of an unattained and unattainable perfection. Even the physics and physiology of the school of Epicurus were not without their attractions for a mind eager in the pursuit of knowledge of all kinds. Their theory of the circulation of the elemental forces, the rivers flowing into the sea yet never filling it, but returning as through arteries and veins, filtered in their progress from the sea's saltness, to the wells and fountains from which they had first sprung to light (ch. i. 5 — 7) ; their study of the growth of the human embryo, illustrated as it was by dissections in the Museum of Alexandria-, shewing how the "bones grow in the womb of her that is with child" (ch. xi. 5); their discoveries, not quite anticipating Harvey, yet on the same track, as to the action of the heart and the lungs, the lamp of life suspended by 1 SUga;uVs Zi/c- 0/ //cin,; u. p. 162. - Dissection, and even vivisection, were first practised in the medical schools of Alexandria. — Quarhily Kcvicw, Lxvi. p. 162. INTRODUCTION. 47 its silver chain, the pitcher drawing every moment fresh draughts from the fountain of the water of life (ch. xii. 6)^; all this came to him as a new interest, a new pleasure. It was as fascinating, that wonderland of science, as a new poem or a new viythos, or, in modern phrase, as a new novel or romance. And then its theory of life and death, did not that seem to point out to him the secret of a calm repose? The life of man was as the life of brutes (ch. iii. 19). His soul was compound, and so discerptible. All things had been formed out of the eternal atoms, and into the eternal atoms all things were evermore resolved. Admitting even, for the sake of hypothesis, that there was something more than the forms of matter which are palpable and visible in man's nature, some vital force or ethereal spark, yet what had been brought together at birth was, at any rate, certain to be dissolved at death. Dust to dust, the ether which acted in man's brain to the ether of the infinite azure, was the inevitable end (ch. iii. 21, but not xii. 7). Such a view of life served at least to strip death of the terror with which the dfiaridat^ovia, the superstition, the Aberglmibe, of men had clothed it. It did not leave him to dread the passage into the dim darkness of Sheol, the land of the shadow of death, as Hezckiah (Isa. xxxviii. 11, 18) and the Psalmist (Psa. vi. 5, xxx. 9, Ixxxviii. 11) had dreaded it (ch. ix. 10). It freed him from the terrors of the Gehenna of which his countrymen were beginning to talk, from the Tartarus and Phlegethon and Cocytus, the burning and the wailing rivers, in which the Greeks who were outside the philosophic schools still continued to believe. It left him free to make the most and the best of life. And then that "best of life" was at once a pleasant and an attainable ideal. It con- firmed the lessons of his own experience as to t^e vanity and hollowness of much in which most men seek the satisfaction of their desires. Violent emotions were followed by a reaction, the night's revel by the morning headache; ambition and the favour of princes ended in disappointment. What the wise man should strive after was just the maximum of enjoyment, not over- 1 I purposely refrain from including the other anatomical references which men have found in Eccles. xii. 4, 5. 48 INTRODUCTION. balanced by the ainari aliqtiid that rises even medio de fonte lipontin — a life like that of the founder of the school — moderate and even abstemious, not disdaining the pleasures of any sense, yet carrying none to an excess. He had led a life of calm serene tranquillity, almost one of total abstinence and vegetarianism, and so the drapa^ia which had become identified with his name, had been protracted to extreme old age\ The history of men's liv-es had surely "nothing better" to show than this. This, at any rate, was good (ch. iii. 12, 14, 22, v. 18, viii. 15). In such a life there was nothing that the conscience condemned as evil. It admitted even of acts of kindness and benevolence, as bring- ing with them a moral satisfaction (chs. vii. i, 2, xi. I, 2), and therefore a new source of enjoyment. Even the sages of Israel would have approved of such a life (Prov. v. 15 — 19, xxx. 7), though it might not satisfy the heroic aspirations and high-soar- ing dreams of its prophets. Enjoyment itself might be received as a gift from God (ch. ii. 26, v. 19). Into this new form of life accordingly Kohclcth threw liimsclf, and did not find it altogether a delusion. Inwardly it made him feel that life was, after all, worth living (ch. xi. 7). He began to find the pleasure of doing good, and visiting the fatherless and widow in their affliction. He learnt that it was better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. The heart of the wise was in that house and not in the house of mirth (ch. vii. 2 — 4). Even the reputation of doing good was not to be despised, and the fragrance of a good name was better than the odorous spikenard or rose-essence of the king's luxurious banquets (ch. vii. i). And he gained, as men always do gain by any acts of kindness which are not altogether part of the ostentatious or self-calculating egotism of the Pharisee, something more than enjoyment. "Sunt lachrymae rerum, ct mcntcm mortalia tangunt." "We needs must weep for woe, and, being men, Man's sorrows touch our hearts." ViRG. yE/i. I. 462. ' Diog. Laert. X. I. p. 6. INTRODUCTION. 49 The flood-gates of sympathy were opened. His self-love was expanding ahnost unconsciously into benevolence. He began to feel that altruism and not egotism was the true law of huma- nity. He was in this point, partly, perhaps, because here too the oracle in his inmost heart once more spoke out the secret of the wisdom of Israel, " Fear thou God," wiser than his teachers (ch. V. 7). A wealthy Jew with this turn for philosophizing was not likely to be overlooked by the lecturers and litierateuis of Alexandria. From the Library of that city Koheleth passed to the Museum^, and was elected, or appointed by royal favour, a member of the august body who dined in its large hall at the public expense, and held their philosophical discussions afterwards. It was a high honour for a foreigner, almost as much so as for an Eng- lishman to be elected to the Institute of France, or a French- man to a Fellowship of the Royal Society. He became first a listener and then a sharer in those discussions, an Ecdesiastcs, a debater, and not a preacher, as we count preaching, in that Ecclcsia. Epicureans and Stoics, Platonists and Aristotelians met as in a IMetaphysical Society, and discussed the nature of hap- piness and of the supreme good, of the constitution of life and of the soul's immortality, of free will and destiny. The result of such a whirl of words and conflict of opinions was somewhat bewildering. He was almost driven back upon the formula of the scepticism of Pyrrho, "Who knows?" (ch. iii. 21). It was to him what a superficial study of Hobbes and Shaftesbury, of Voltaire and Rousseau, of Kant and Schelling, of Bentham and Mill, of Comte and Herbert Spencer, have been to English students of successive generations. One thing, at least, was clear. He saw that here also " the race was not to the swift, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding" (ch. ix. 11). The charlatan too often took precedence of the true man: silent and thoughtful wisdom was out-talked by an eloquent ^ For the fullest account of the Alexandrian Museum accessible in Englisli, see the article on Alexandria in Vol. Lxvi. of the Quai-to-ly Ncvicw. It is, I believe, no secret, that it was written by the late Rev. William Sewell. ECCLESIASTES A so INTRODUCTION. declaimer (ch. ix. 15, 16). Here also, as in his life of revelry, there was much that could only be described as vanity and much "feeding upon wind." So for a short time life passed on, looking brighter and more cheerful than it had done. There came before him the pros- pect, destined not to be realized, of the life of a happy home with wife and children round him (ch. ix. 7 — 9). But soon the evil day came in which there was no more any pleasure to be found (ch. xii. i). The life of revelry and pleasure had sapped his strength, and the strain of study and the excitement of debate had made demands upon his vital powers which they could not incet, and there crept over him the slow decay of a premature old age, of the paralysis which, while it leaves con- sciousness clear and the brain dee to think and muse over many things, attacks first one organ of sense or action and then another. The stars were darkened and the clouds of dark thoughts "returned after the rain" of idle tears, and "the keepers of the house trembled and the strong men bowed themselves." Sight failed, and he no longer saw the goodly face of nature or the comeliness of man or woman, could no longer listen with delight to the voice of the "daughters of music" (ch. xii. 2 — 4). Even the palate lost its wonted sense of flavour, and the choicest dainties became distasteful. His voice passed into the feeble tones of age (ch. xii. 4). Sleep was more and more a stranger to his eyes, and his nights were passed, as it were, under the branches of the almond tree, the "early waking tree" that was the symbol of insomnia (ch. xii. 5; Jer. i. 11, 12). Remedies were applied by the king's physicians, but even the "caper-berry," the "sovereign'st thing on earth," or in the Alexandrian pharmacopoeia, against that form of paralysis, was powerless to revive his exhausted energies. The remainder of his life — and it lasted for some six or seven years; enough time to make him feel that "the days of darkness" were indeed "many" (ch. xii. 8) — was one long struggle with disease. In the language of the Greek writers with whom he had become familiar, it was but a long voa-oT/wcpta, a ^ios d/SiWo? ("a chronic illness," a "life unlivcable "). His state, to continue INTRODUCTION. 51 the parallel already more than once suggested, was like that which made the last eight years of Heine's life a time of ceaseless suffering ^ It added to the pain and trouble which disease brought with it that he had no son to minister to his wants or to inherit his estate. House and garden and lands, books and art-treasures, all that he had stored up, as for a palace of art and a lordly pleasure-house, would pass into the hands of a stranger (ch. iv. 8). It was a sore travail, harder than any pain of body, to think of that as the outcome of all his labours. It was in itself "vanity and an evil disease" (ch. vi. 2). And beyond this there lay a further trouble, growing out of the survival, or revival, of his old. feelings as an Israelite, which neither Stoic apathy nor Epicurean serenity, though they would have smiled at it as a superstition, helped him to overcome. How was he to be buried ? (ch. vi. 3). It was, of course, out of the question that his corpse should be carried back to the land of his fathers and laid in their tomb in the valley of Jehoshaphat. The patriotic zeal which had been roused by the struggle of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes would not have allowed the body of one who was suspected of apostasy to desecrate the holy city. And even in Alexandria itself the more rigorous Jews had been alienated by his Hellenizing tendencies. He could not e.xpect that their mourners would attend at his funeral, crying, after their manner, Ah, brother! or Ah, sister! Ah, Lord! and Ah, his glory! (Jer. xxii. 18). He had before hmi the prospect of being buried as with the burial of a dog. And yet the days were not altogether evil. The friend whom he had found faithful, the "one among a thousand," did not desert him, and came and ministered to his weakness, to raise up, as far as he had the power, the brother who had fallen (ch. iv. 10). He could no longer fill his belly with the husks that ^ Heine's description of his own state, in its piteous frankness, can scarcely fail to remind us of the contrast between the pictures drawn by Kolielcth in ch. ii. and ch. xii. "I am no longer a Hellene of jovial life and somewhat portly person, who laughed cheerily down upon dismal Nazarenes. I am now only a poor death-sick Jew, an emaciated image of trouble, an unhappy man." Siigand's £!/<: 0/ I/ei/w, 11. p. 386. 52 INTRODUCTION. the swine did eat. Sensual pleasures and the fragments of a sensuous philosophy, the lower and the higher forms of popular Epicureanism, were alike unsatisfying, and the voice within once more spoke in clearer notes than ever, Fear thou God. With him, as with Heine (to refer once more to the Koheleth of our time), there was a religious reaction, a belief in a personal God, as that to which men must come when they are " sick to death," a belief not unreal even though the habitual cynicism seemed to mock it in the very act of utterance ^ It was not, indeed, like the cry of the prodigal, " I will arise and go to my father;" for that thouglit of the Divine Fatherhood was as yet but dimly revealed to him ; but the old familiar thought that God was his Creator, the Giver of life and breath and all things (ch. V. 19, xii. i), returned in its fulness and power, and in his own experience he was finding out that his pleasant vices had been made whips to scourge him, and so he learnt that, though he could not fathom the mystery of His judgments, the Creator was also the Judge (ch. xi. 9). It was in this stage of mental and spiritual growth, of strength growing out of weakness, that he was led to become a writer, and to put on record the results of his experience. He still thought in the language of his fatherland, and therefore in that language he wrote. A book written under such conditions was not likely to ^ It may be well once more to give Heine's own words. He de- clines, in his will, the services of any minister of religion, and adds, " This desire springs from no fit of a freethinker. For four years I have renounced all philosophic pride, and have returned back to re- ligious ideas and feelings. 1 die in the belief of one only God, the Eternal Creator, whose \nt.y I implore for my immortal soul" (Stigand's Life of Heine, 11. p. 398). Still more striking is the following extract from a letter to his friend Dr Kolb which is quoted in the Globe of Oct. II, 1880, from a German newspaper : "My sufferings, my physical pains are terrible, and moral ones are not wanting. When 1 think upon my own condition, a genuine horror falls over mc and 1 am compelled to fold my hands in submission to Gotl's will \Gott-crgebcn) because nothing else is lelt for me." In somewhat of the same tone he says somewhere (I iiave forgotten where), "C!od will pardon me; c'est son metier^ Elsewhere he writes, in spite of his sufferings, with the lingering love of life which we note in Koheleth (ch. ix. 4 — 9, xi. 7), "OGocl, howuijly bitter it is to die! O God, how sweetly and snugly one can live in this snug, sweet nest of earth" (Sligand's Life, II. p. 421). INTRODUCTION. 53 present the characteristics of a systematic treatise. It was, in part, hke Pascal's Pensees, in part, hke Heine's latest poems — the record of a conflict not yet over, though it was drawing near its close. The "Two Voices" of our own poet were there; or rather, the three voices of the pessimism of the satiated sen- sualist, and the wisdom, such as it was, of the Epicurean thinker, and the growing faith in God, were heard in strange alternation; now one, now another uttering itself, as in an inharmonious discord, to the very close of the book. Now his intellect questioned, now his faith affirmed, as Heine did, the continued existence of the spirit of man after death (chs. iii. 19, xii. 7). As conscious of that conflict, and feeling the vanity of fame, as Keats did, when he desired that his only epitaph might be, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," he shrank from writing in his own person, and chose as the title of his book that which at once expressed its character and em- bodied the distinction which at one time he had prized so highly. As men have written under the names of Philalethes or Phileleutheros, as a great thinker of the last century, Edward Tucker, wrote his Light of Natio'c Pursued, under the pseu- donym of Abraham Search, so he came before his readers as Koheleth, Ecclesiastes, the Debater. He was free in that character to utter varying and conflicting views. It is true he went a step further, and also came before them, as though the book recorded the experience of one greater than himself as the seeker after, and possessor of, wisdom. The son of David, king over Israel in Jerusalem, was speaking as through his lips (ch. i. i, 12, 16). It was a trick, or rather a fashion, of authorship, such as was afterwards adopted in the Wisdom of Solomon by a man of purer life and higher aim, though less real inspiration, but not a fraud, and the fashion was a dominant one and deceived no one. The students of philosophy habitually conveyed their views in the shape of treatises by Aristotle, or letters or dia- logues by Plato. There was scarcely a medical writer of eminence at Alexandria who had not published his views as to the treatment of disease under the name of H ippocrates ^ Plato ^ Sprengel, Hist, de Medecine, i. p. 430. 54 INTRODUCTION. and Xenophon had each written an Apologia which was repre- sented as coming from the lips of Socrates. The hitter had also composed an ideal biography of Cyrus. And in this case Kohclelh might well think that the analogy between his own experience and that of the sago of Israel was more than enough to justify the personation as a form of quasi-dramatic art. Both had gone through a like quest after the chief good, seek- ing first wisdom and then pleasure, and then the magnificence and the culture that comes from art, and then wisdom again. 15oth had found that all this was, in the end, unsatisfying. Might he not legitimately hold up the one experience embodied in the form of the other, and put on for the nonce the robes of Solomon, alike in his glorious apparel, and in the sackcloth and ashes, in which, as the legend ran, he had ended his days as a penitent.'' In his early youth Koheleth had gazed on the ideal picture of Solomon as a pattern which he strove to reproduce. The surroundings of his manhood, the palaces, and gardens, and groves, and museums, and libraries of the Ptolemies enabled him to picture what the monarch's kingly state had been. In his picture of the close of the life, as was natural, the subjective element predominated over the objective, and wc have belore us Koheleth himself, and not the Solomon of history. The analysis of the book itself will, it is believed, confirm the theory now suggested. It will be enough, for the present, to note that from first to last it was, on the view now taken, intensely personal, furnishing nearly all the materials for a memoir; that its main drift and purpose, broken, indeed, by many side eddies, now of cynical bitterness, now of worldly wisdom, now of keen observation, was to warn those who were yet in quest of the chief good against the shoals and rocks and quicksands on which he had well-nigh made utter shipwreck of his faith; that his desire was to deepen the fear of God in which he had at last found the anchor of his soul ; that that fear had become more and more a reality as the shadows closed around him ; that it had deepened into the conviction that the Creator was also the Judge, and that the Judge of all the earth, INTRODUCTION. 55 sooner or later, would assuredly do right. The close of the book all but coincided with the close of life. He waited, if not with the full assurance of faith, yet with a calm trustfulness, for the hour when the few mourners should "go about the street," and he should go to his eternal home (ch. xii. 6) ; when "the dust should return to the earth as it was, and the spirit should return to God who gave it" (ch. xii. 7). "Return to God" — that was his last word on the great problem, and that was at once his dread and his consolation. So the life and the book ended ; and it will remain for a distinct enquiry to trace the after history of the latter. Not without reason was it brought by the grandson of Sirach, or some other seeker after truth, from Alexandria to Palestine, and translated by him into Greek^. Not without reason did he, or some later Rabbi, add the commendatory verses with which the book now closes, truly describing its effect as that of the goad that spurs on thought, of the nails that, once driven in, cannot easily be plucked out (ch. xii. 11). Not without reason did the wiser thinkers of the school of Hillel resist the narrow scruples of those of the school of Shammai when the question was de- bated whether the new unknown book should be admitted to a place side by side with all that was noblest and most precious in their literature', and, in spite of seeming contradictions, and Epicurean or heretical tendencies, recognize that in this record of the struggle, the fall, the recovery of a child of Israel, a child of God, there was the narrative of a Divine education told with a genius and power in which they were well content, as all true and reverential thinkers have been content since, to acknow- ledge a Divine inspiration. ^ See next Chapter. * See pp. 27, 28. 56 INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER IV. ECCLESIASTES AND ECCLESIASTICUS. Some evidence tending to shew that the influence of tlie former of these books is traceable in the latter has already been laid before the reader in ch. ii. as fixing a date below which we cannot reasonably carry the date of its composition. The rela- tion between the two books requires, however, a closer scrutiny and leads to results of considerable interest. It will be seen that, making allowance for the fact that the one writer is marked by an almost exceptional originality and that the other is avow- edly a compiler, there is throughout a striking scries of parallel- isms, over and above those already noted, such as make the conclusion that the one had the work of the other in his hands all but absolutely certain. The evidence of this statement is necessarily inductive in its character, and the following instances are submitted as an adequate, though not an exhaustive, basis for the induction. Ecclus. i. 13. 'Whoso fcarcth the Lord it shall go well with him. Ecclus. iv. 6, vii. 30, xxiv. 8, xxxix. 5. " He that made " or the "Creator," as a name for God. Ecclus. iv. ■zo. Observe opporluiiity {Kaipis). Ecclcs. viii. 13. But it shall not be well with the wicked, nei- ther shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God. Eccles. xii. i. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. Eccles. iii. 1 — 8. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up tliat which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; INTRODUCTION. 57 Ecclus. vi. 6. Have but one counseller of a thousand. Ecclus. viii. 8. Of them thou shalt learn how to serve great men with ease. Ecclus. vi. 14. A faithful friend is a strong defence, and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure. a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. Eccles. vii. 28. Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. Eccles. viii. 2-4, x. 20. I counsel thee to keep the king's command- ment, and that in regard of the oath of God. Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he doeth whatso- ever pleaseth him Where the vord of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him. What doest thou?... Curse not the king, no, not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bed-chamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the •\'oice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. Eccles. iv. 9. Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. 58 INTRODUCTION. Ecclus. ix. 3. Meet not with a harlot, lest thou be taken witli her snares. Ecclus. X. 3. An unwise (a- iraidevTos) king dcstroyeth his people. Ecclus. X. 9. Why is earth and ashes proud ? Ecclus. X. 23. It is not meet to despise the poor man that hath understanding. Ecclus. xi. 5. Many kings have sat down upon the ground; and one that was never thought of halh worn the crown. Ecclus. xi. 17. The gift of the Lord remaineth with the godly, and his favour bringeth prosperity for ever. Ecclus. xi. iS, 19. There is that waxeth rich by liis wariness and pincliing, and this is the por- tion of his reward : whereas lie saith, I have found rest, and now will eat continually of my goods ; and yet he knowcth not what time shall come upon him, and that he Ecclcs. vii. 26. And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her ; but the sinner shall be taken by her. Eccles. iv. 13. Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. Eccles. X. 16. Woe to thee. O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning. Eccles. xii. 7. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was : and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Eccles. ix. 15. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city ; yet no man remembered that same poor man. Eccles. X. 7. I have seen ser- vants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth. Eccles. iii. 13. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. Eccles. ii. 18, 19, v. 13, vi. •2. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: be- cause I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knowcth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour INTRODUCTION. 59 must leave those things to others, and die. Ecclus. xii. 13. Who will pity a charmer that is bitten with a serpent? Ecclus. xiii. 23. When a rich man speakelh, every man holdeth his tongue. Ecclus. xiii. 26. The finding out of parables is a wearisome la- bour of the mind. Ecclus. xiv. 12. Remember that death will not be long in coming, and that the covenant of the grave (Hades) is not shewn to thee. wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity. ...There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.... A man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it : this is vanity, and it is an evil disease. Eccles. X. 8, rr. Whoso break- eth an hedge, a serpent shall bite him Surely the serpent will bite without enchantment ; and a bab- bler is no better. Eccles. ix. ir, 16. I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. ...Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength ; nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. Eccles xii. 12. Ofmakingmany books there is no end ; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Eccles. viii. 8. There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit ; neither hath, he power in the day of death : and there is no discharge in that 6o INTRODUCTION. Ecclus. XV. 5. In the midst of the congregation (iKK\-i]ala) shall wisdom open his mouth. Ecclus. xvi. 4. By one that hath understanding shall the city be replenished. Ecclus. xvii. 2S. Thanksgiving perisheth from the dead as from one that is not. Ecclus. xvii. 30. All things can- not be in men, because the son of man is not immortal. Ecclus. xviii. 6. As for the wondrous works of the Lord, there may be nothing taken from them, neither may anything be put unto them, neither can the ground of them be found out. Ecclus. xix. 16. \Vho is he that hath not offended with his tongue ? Ecclus. XX. 7. A wise man will hold his tongue till he see ojipor- tunity (Kaip6v). Ecclus. XXV. 7, xxvi. 5, xxvi. 28, There be nine things which I have war; neither shall wickedness de- liver those that are given to it. Eccles. xii. 10. The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words : and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. Eccles. ix. 15. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city ; yet no man remembered that same poor man. Eccles. ix. 4. For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope : for a living dog is better than a dead lion. Eccles. iii. 20, 21. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.... Who knowclli the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? Eccles. vii. 13, xi. 5. Consider the work of God : for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?... As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. Eccles. vii. 22. For oftentimes also thine own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast cursed others. Eccles. iii. 7. A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. Eccles. xi. 2. Give a. portion to seven, and also to eight; for INTRODUCTION. 6i judged in mine heart... and the tenth I will utter with my tongue. ...There be three things that mine heart feareth; and for the fourth I was sore afraid.... There be two things that grieve my heart; and the third maketh me angry. Ecclus. xxvi. 13. The grace of a wife delighteth her husband. thou knowest not \\'hat evil shall be upon the earth. Ecclus. xxvi. 23. A wicked woman is given as a portion to a wicked man : but a godly woman is given to him that feareth the Lord. Ecclus. xxvii. 25, 26. Whoso casteth a stone on high casteth it on his own head ; and a deceitful stroke shall make wounds — Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein. Ecclus. xxxiii. 15, xlii. ■24. So look upon all -the works of the most High; and there are two and two, one against another. ...All these things are double one a- gainst another. Eccles. i\'. 9. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity : for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. Eccles. vii. 26. And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands : whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her ; but the sinner shall be taken by her. Eccles. x. 8, 9. He that dig- geth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him Whoso removeth stones shall be hurt therewith; and he that cleaveth wood shall be endangered thereby. Eccles. vii. 27, iii. i — 8. Be- hold, this have I found, saith the Preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account. ...To eveiy thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven : a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted ; a time to kill, and a time to heal ; a time to break dovi^n. and a time 62 INTRODUCTION. Ecclus. xxxi%'. 7. Dreams have deceived many, and they have failed that put their trust in them. Ecclus. XXXV. 4. Thou shalt not appear empty before the Lord. Ecclus. xxxiii. 13. As the clay is in the potter's hand, to fashion it at his pleasure, so man is in the hand of him that made him. Ecclus. xxxviii. 16. Cover his body according to the custom, and neclect not his burial. Ecclus. xl. I. Great travail is created for every man, and an heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam. Ecclus. xl. II. All things that are of the earth shall return to the to build up ; a time to weep, and a time to laugh ; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together ; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose ; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak ; a time to love, and a time to hate ; a time of war, and a time of peace. Eccles. v. 7. For in the mul- titude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities : but fear thou God. Eccles. V. 5. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Eccles. vii. 13. Consider the work of God : for v/ho can make that straight, which he hath made crooked ? Eccles. vi. 3. If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial ; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he. Eccles. i. 3, 5. ^Vhat profit hath •a man of all his labour which he takelh under the sun? All things are full of labour. Eccles. i. 7, xii. 7. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the INTRODUCTION. 63 earth again : and that which is of the waters doth return into the sea. Ecckis. xli. 4. There is no in- quisition in the grave, whether thou hast lived ten, or a hundred, or a thousand years. sea is not full ; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. ...Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was : and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Eccles. vi. 3 — 6, ix. 10. If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he. For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. Moreover he hath not seen the sun, nor known any thing: this hath more rest than the other. Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good : do not all go to one place?. ..Whatsoever thy hand find- eth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no woik, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. Making all due allowance, in considering this evidence, for the fact that some at least of the passages cited are of the nature of maxims that form the common stock of well-nigh all ethical teachers, there is enough, it is submitted, to leave little doubt on the mind that the later writer was acquainted with the earlier. Essentially a compiler, and not entering into the deeper genius of Ecclesiastes, the son of Sirach found in it many epi- grammatic precepts, summing up a wide experience, and used it as he used the Proverbs of Solomon, and those of his grand- father Jesus, in the collection which he aimed at making as complete as possible. 64 INTRODUCTION. Assuming this connexion between the'two books to be proved we may find, perhaps, in the Prologue and Epilogue of the later ^vork, something that tlirows light upon the history of the earlier. In the former the son of Sirach tells his readers that he was led to the task of translating and editing the maxims which his grandfather Jesus had written by a previous experimental work of a like nature. When he had come to Egypt at the age of thirty-eights under Euergctcs II. (r-.C. 170 — 117) better known in history by his nickname of Physcon, or the Fat, he had found a MS. (d(p6noioi>, used like the Latin "cxcmplum") of no small educational value (oC fiiKpas naiSeiai) and "thought it most neces- sary to give diligence and travail to interpret it." It is obvious that this must have been altogether distinct from the "Wisdom" of his grandfather Jesus with which he must naturally have become familiar in Palestine, and the question which meets us is, what was the book? and what became of the son of Sirach's translation of it? The answer which I venture to suggest is that the book was none other than the Ecclesiastes of the Old Tes- tament Canon-. The character of the book was precisely such as would attract one who was travelling in search of wisdom, though, as we have seen, he was caught more by its outwardly gnomic character than by its treatment of the deeper under- lying problems with which it deals, and which have exercised, as with a mysterious fascination, the ingenuity of later writers. ^ This is held by most scholnrs (/•.,^. Westcott) to be the natural rendering of the sentence. By some, however, it has been taken as referring to the thirty-eighth year of the king's reign. Neither of the two Ptolemies, hnwcvcr, who liore the name of Euergetcs, had so long a reign as this, unless we include in that of Euergctcs II. the time in which he ruled conjointly with his brother Ptolemy Philomctor. Another interpretation refers the words to the thirty-eighth year of the son of Sirach's stay in Egypt. On any supposition the words bring us to a later date than that to which we have assigned the composition of Ecclesiastes. ■^ It is perhaps worth mentioning that this view of the passage in its general meaning has been maintained by Arnold in his Commentary on EcclesinUictis. He sujiposes, however, that the MS. in question w.as the Wisdom of Solomon. It will be seen in the next chapter that there are good grounds for assigning to that book a considerably later date. INTRODUCTION. 65 The context seems to imply, though the words do not necessarily involve the idea of a fixed canon, that the book had come to take its place on nearly the same level with "the law and the prophets and the other books" which had been translated from Hebrew into Greek. On this assumption then we may have in this ob- scure passage the first trace of the reception of Ecclesiastes into the Hebrew Canon, a reception which we may in part, at least, attribute to the commendatory verses in ch. xii. 9, 10 which were clearly added by some one other than the writer and which, on this assumption, may well have been written by the son of Sirach himself. Is it not, we may add, a probable inference that it was this connexion that led to the title Ecclesiasticus by which the book, which in the Hebrew MSS. that Jerome had seen bore the title of "Proverbs" and in the I.XX. that of the "Wisdom of Sirach" (a title singularly misleading, as that was the name neither of the author or the translator), was known in the Latin Version? Would it not be natural, if the Greek Version came from the pen of the son of Sirach, and if his own book presented manifest traces of its influence, that he should sooner or later come to be known as belonging to the same school, an Ecclesiasticus following in the track of an Ec- clesiastes? The common traditional view, adopted without question, from Rufinus {Cojtitn. in Symb. c. 38), that here the word has the distinctly Christian sense which is altogether absent from Ecclesiastes, and describes the character of the book as "Ecclesiastical," i.e. read in church or used in the public instruction of catechumens and young men, is surely a less probable explanation, to say nothing of the absence of any proof that it was so used', and of any sufficient reason why a name, which in this sense, must have been common to many books, should have been confined to this one. ^ The nearest approach to such a proof is found in the statement of Athanasius [Ep, Fest. s. f.) that the book was "one of those framed by the fathers for the use of those who wished to be instructed in the way of godliness," (Westcott, Art. Ecclesiasticus, in Smith's Diet, of Bible). It is obvious however that this applied to a whole class of books, not to this in particular. ECCLESIASTES C 66 INTRODUCTION. One more conjecture presents itself as throwing light on the prayer of the son of Sirach, in all probability the translator and not the original author of the book^, which forms the last chap- ter of Ecclesiasticus. The occasion of that prayer was the deliverance of the writer from some extreme peril. He had been accused to the king and his life had been in danger. He does not name the king, probably because he had already done so in the Prologue, and had fixed the time when he had come under his power. He does not name the nature of the charge, but the Apologia that follows (Ecclus. li. 13 — 30) seems to imply that in what he had done he had been pursuing the main object of his life, had been seeking wisdom and in- struction {naiSelav). May not the charge have been connected with the Greek translation of Ecclesiastes which we have seen good reason to look on as his handiwork? Those pointed words as to the corrupt and oppressive government of the king's provinces (ch. v. 8), those vivid portraits of the old and foolish, or of the young and profligate, king (chs. iv. 13, x. 16), of princes revelling in luxury while the poor were starving (ch. x. 16), might well seem to the cruel and suspicious king to be offensive and dangerous, while the turn for literature which led him to become an author, would naturally also lead him to take cognizance of a new Greek book beginning to be circulated among his Jewish subjects. That the translator's Apologia was successful may partly have been due to the fact that he could point to passages which more than balanced what had given occasion of offence by apparently enjoining the most entire and absolute submission to the king's lightest words, and prohibiting even the mere utter- ance of discontent (ch. x. 4, 20). ^ This, it may be mentioned, is the view taken by Grnlius and Prideaux. They agree in assigning the incident of the peril lo the reign of Ptolemy Physcon. INTRODUCTION. ej CHAPTER V. ECCLESIASTES AND THE WISDOM OF SOLOMOIST. The coincidences between the teaching of the unknown author of Ecclesiastes and that of the Son of Sirach are, it will be admitted, whatever estimate may be formed of the inferences drawn from them, interesting and suggestive. They at least shew that the one writer was inore or less influenced by the other. Those that present themselves on a comparison of the former book with the Wisdom of Solomon are of a very different yet not less suggestive character. Before entering on an exami- nation of them it will be well to sum up briefly all that is known as to the external history of the book to the study of which that comparison invites us. The facts are few and simple. It is not mentioned by name by any pre-Christian writer. The earliest record of its existence is found in the Muratorian Fragment (a.D. 170) where it is said to have been "ab amicis Solo- monis in honorem ipsius scripta." An ingenious conjecture of Dr Tregelles suggests, as has been stated above (Note p. 15), that this was a mistaken rendering of a Greek text on which the Latin writer of the Fragment based his Canon, and that the original ascribed the authorship of the book to Philo of Alex- andria. The statement that Philo was probably the writer of the book is repeated by Jerome. The book is found in all the great MSS. of the LXX. but these do not carry us further back than the 4th or 5th century of the Christian sra. We have, however, indirect evidence of its existence at an earlier period. Two passages are found in Clement of Rome which make it all but absolutely certain that he must have been acquainted with the book. (i) Who will say to him, What (i) For who will say. What didst thou? or who will resist the didst thou? or who will resist thy might of his strength? Clem. R. judgment? Wisd. xii. 12. !• 27. Who will resist the might' of thine arm? Wisd. xi. 22. 5-2 68 INTRODUCTION. (2) Unrighteous envy... by which also death entered into the world. Clem. R. I. 3. (2) By envy of the devil death entered into the world. Wisd. ii. 24. Among the earlier post-apostolic Fathers, and we need not go beyond these for our present purpose, Irena:us is said to have written a book "on various passages of the Wisdom of Solomon and the Epistle to the Hebrews" (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. v. 26). Clement of Alexandria quotes the teaching as "divine" {Strom. IV. 16, 17). Tertullian quotes it, sometimes without naming it {Adv. Marc. ill. 22}, sometimes as being the work of Solomon {Adv. Valent. c. 2). So far we have evidence of its being read and held in honour at the latter part of the first and throughout the second century, but not earlier. A comparison of the Book of Wisdom with some of the writ- ings of the New Testament leads, however, to the conclusion that it must have been more or less studied between a.d. 50 and A,D. 70. Dr Westcott has called attention (Smith's Vict, of the Bible. Art. Wisdom of Solomon) to some striking parallelisms with the Epistles of St Paul, and these it may be well to bring before the reader. (i) Wisd. XV. 7. The potter, tempering soft earth, fashioneth every vessel with much labour for our service : yea, of the same clay he maketh both the vessels that serve for clean uses, and likewise all such as serve to the contrary. (2) Wisd. xii. 20. If thou didst punish the enemies of thy people, and the condemned to death, with such dcliberalion, giving them time and place to repent of their malice. . . (3) Wisd. v. 17 — 19. He shall put on righteousness as a breast- plate, and true judgment instead of an helmet. He shall take holiness for an invincible shield. (i) Rom. ix. 21. Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? (2) Rom. ix. 22. What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. (3) I Thess. v. 8, Eph. vi. 13 — 17. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of sal- INTRODUCTION. 69 His severe wrath shall he sharpen vation.... Wherefore take unto you for a sword. the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. The coincidences of the Wisdom of Solomon with the thoughts and language of the Epistle to the Hebrews are yet more nume- rous. They are enough, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to shew^, to suggest the thought of identity of authorship. With that hypothesis, however, we are not now concerned, and I content myself with noting a few that are sufficient to establish the conclusion that the former book must have been known to the writer of the latter. Thus in the opening of the Epistle we have the two characteristic words TroXvfifpms ("in sundry parts," or "times") agreeing with the noKviiepii ("manifold") of Wisd. vii. 22, and anaiyaafLa ("brightness") with Wisd. vii. 26. In Wisd. xviii. 22 the "Almighty Word" is i^epresented as bring- ing "the unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword" and in Heb. iv. 12 that Word is described as "sharper than any two- edged sword." In Wisd. i. 6, "God is witness of his reins and a true beholder of his heart," and in Heb. iv. 12 the divine Word is "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." The following characteristic words are common to both : the "place of repentance" (Wisd. xii. 10; Heb. xii. 17), Moses as the servant ((^fpajrwi' = "attendant") of God (Wisd. xvii. 21; Heb. iii. 5), Enoch translated, /^erere^^ (Wisd. iv. 10 ; Heb. xi. 5), 1 See Expositor, Vol. 11. Two papers on " the Writings of Apollos." 70 INTRODUCTION. vTfoaraais ( = "substance" or "confidence" Wisd. xvi. 21 ; Heb. i. 3, iii. 14), Tf\fu')TT]s ( = "perfection" Wisd. vi. 15; Heb. vi. 1), fifjBalcoa-is (^"confirmation" Wisd. vi. 18; Heb. vi. 6), airoXei- TTfrai ( = "there remaineth" Wisd. xiv, 6; Heb. iv. 6), irpobpoixos ( = "fore-runner" Wisd. xii. 8 ; Heb. vi. 20). The above instances are but a few out of a long list, but they are sufficient for our present purpose. It may be added that both books present numerous parallelisms with the writings of Philo^. It follows from the facts thus brought together, as well as from an examination of the book itself, that the Wisdom of Solomon ■was known to Hellenistic Jews early in the Apostolic .ige, that it probably had its origin in the Jewish School of Alexandria, or that its writer was acquainted with the works of the greatest of the teachers of that school. Looking to the work itself we find that he had at least some knowledge of the ethical teaching of Greek philosophers, and enumerates the four great virtues, of "courage, temperance, justice, prudence" (di'Spfia, aaxjypocrvvij, diKaiodVPrj, (f)puvr](7ii), as they enumerated them (Wisd. viii. 7). With these data we may proceed to examine the relation in which he stands to the two books which have already been discussed in their relation to each other. The title of his book "Wisdom" indicates that he challenged comparison with the "Wisdom" of the son of Sirach. The form which he adopts for his teaching, his personation of the character of Solomon (Wisd. vii. 7 — 1 1, viii. 14, ix. 7, 8), shews that he did not shrink from challenging com- parison with Ecclesiastes. A closer scrutiny shews, if I mistake not, that a main purpose of his book was to correct either the teaching of that book, or a current misinterpretation of it. Let us remember in what light it must have presented itself to him. It had not, if our conclusion as to its authorship be right, the claim which comes from the reverence due to the authority of a remote antiquity or an unquestioned acceptance. He must have known that it had not been received as canonical without a serious opposition, that the strictest school of Pharisees had been against its reception, that it had seemed to them tainted with the heresy of Epicureanism and Sadduceeism. If it was ^ Sec the papers on "the Writings of Apollos" already referred to. INTRODUCTION. 71 interpreted then as it has often been interpreted since, it may have seemed to him to sanction a lawless sensuality, to fall in with the thoughts of those who said "let us eat and drink, for to- morrow we die," to throw doubt, if not denial, on the soul's immortality. Was this, he seems to have asked himself, the true ideal of wisdom ? Was it not his duty to bring before men another Solomon than that whose experience seemed to end in materialism and pessimism, in the scepticism of an endless doubt? And so he too adopts, without any hesitation, the form of personated authorship. He has indeed less dramatic power than his predecessor. His Solomon is more remote from the Solomon of history than that of Koheleth. The magnificence, the luxury, the voluptuousness, which the earlier writer portrays so vividly, not less than the idolatry which is so prominent in the historical Solomon, are passed over here. The Son of David, as painted by him, is simply an ideal sage, a kind of Numa Pom- pilius, consecrating his life from beginning to end to the pursuit of wisdom, blameless and undefiled (Wisd. vii. viii.). Looked at from this point of view the opening of his book is in its very form sufficiently significant. He will not call himself an Eccle- siastes ox Debater. It seems to him that the work of a teacher is to teach and not merely to discuss. The wisdom which inspires him is authoritative and queen-like. He is, what Koheleth is not, a "preacher" in the modern sense of the word, and calls on men to listen with attention (Wisd. i. i). Had his predecessor counselled submission to the tyranny of kings, and accepted the perversion of judgment and justice as inevitable (Eccles. v. 8, x. 4, 20), he, for his part, will call on the judges of the earth and kings, and rebuke them for their oppressions (Wisd. i. i, vi. i — 10). Had Koheleth spoken of seeking wisdom in wine and revelry, and the "delights" of the sons of men (Eccles. ii. i — 8), he will proclaim that "wisdom will not dwell in the body that is subject unto sin" (Wisd. i. 4) and that "the true beginning of her is the desire of discipline" (Wisd. vii. 17). Had the earlier writer spoken bitter things of men and yet more of women (ch. vii. 28), he will remind his hearers that wisdom is a "loving," a "philan- thropic," spirit {ossible to turn to the later work, which also purports to represent the IFisctom of Solomon^ without feeling that its author deliberately aimed at setting forth another aspect of things. He reproduces well nigh the very words of the prologue, "the breath of our nostrils is as smoke "..."our name shall be forgotten in time: our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud "...but he puts all this into the mouth not of his ideal Solomon but of "ungodly men,... reasoning with themselves but not aright," Wisd. ii. i — 5, and shews how it leads first to sensuous self-indulgence, and then to deliberate oppression, and persistent antagonism to God, (See Introdiictioti, chap. V.) 12. / the Preacher tvas king over Israel] Better, "I... have been king." It would, perhaps, be too much to say that this mode of intro- ducing himself, is so artificial as to exclude, as some have thought, the authorship of the historical Solomon. Louis XIV. 's way of speaking of himself '^ Qtia?td fetois 7'oi" may well have had its parallel, as Mr Bullock suggests in the Speaker's Commentary, in the old age of another king weary of the trappings and the garb of Majesty. As little, how- ever, can they be held to prove that authorship. A writer aiming at a ^ dramatic impersonation of his idea of Solomon would naturally adopt some such form as this and might, perhaps, adopt it in order to indicate that it was an impersonation. The manner in which the son of David appears in Wisd. vii. i — 15 presents at once a parallel and a contrast. 13. I gave my heart] The phrase, so expressive of^ the spirit of an earnest seeker, is eminently characteristic of this book and meets us again in ver. 17, chaps, vii. 25, viii. 9, 16. Like forms are found in Isai. xli. 42; Ps. xlviii. 14. "Heart" with the Hebrews, it may be noticed, is the seat of the intellect as well as the affections, and "togive the heart" is therefore specially expressive of an act of concentrated mental energy. The all that is done under heaven (we note the variation of phrase no ECCLESIASTES, I. [vv. 14—16. ing all things that are done under heaven : this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised there- 14 with. I have seen all the works that are done under the 15 sun; and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. T/iai 7C'/iich is crooked cannot be made straight : and that wliich 16 is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with mine from the "under the sun" of verse 9) takes in the whole range of human action as distinct from tlie cosmical phenomena of verses 5 — 7. Tlie enquiry of the seeker was throughout one of ethical rather than physical investigation. this sore travail] The words express the feeling with which the writer looked back on his inquiry. It liad led to no satisfying result, and the first occurrence of tlie name of God in the book is coupled witli the thought that tliis profitless search was His appointment, lie gave the desire but, so the preacher murmurs in his real or seeming pessim- ism, not the full Truth in which only the desire can rest. The word for "travail" is peculiar to this book. That for "exercised" is formed from the same root. 14. all is vanity and vexation of spirit] The familiar words, though they fall in with the Debater's tone and have the support of the Vulg. '''aj/iiclio spiritiis," hardly express the meaning of the Hebrew and we must read "vanity and feeding upon wind." The phrase has its parallel in Hos. xii. 2 (" Ephraim feedelh on wind") and Isai. xliv. 20 ("feedeth on ashes") and expresses, with a bold vividness, the sense of emptiness which accompanies unsatisfied desire. Most commentators, however, prefer the rendering "striving after the wind" or "windy effort," but "feeding" expresses, it is believed, the meaning of the Hebrew more closely. The LXX. gives irpoalpeffLS Trrei'/xaros (= resolve of wind, i.e. fleeting and unsubstantial). .Synimachus gives jSoaKrjcii and Aquila i>)firi ( = (ceding). The word in question occurs seven times in Eccle- siastes but is not found elsewhere. The rendering "vexation" rests apparently on a false etymology. 15. 77iat ivliick is crooked] The words are apparently a proverbial saying quoted as already current. The complaint is that tlie search after wisdom brings the seeker face to face with anomalies and defects, which yet he cannot rectify. The Hebrew words are not the same, but we may, perliajis, trace an allusive reference to the promise of Isai. xl. 4 that "the crooked shall be made straight," and the Debater in his present mood looks on this also as a delusive dream. There is nothing left but to take things as they are and "accept-the inevitable." Comp. chap. vii. 13, as expressing tlie same thought. t/iat -ivJiich is -wantini^] The second clause presents the negative aspect of the world's defects as "crooked" did the positive. Every- where, if there is nothing abAolulcly evil, there is an "incompleteness" which we cannot remedy, any more than our skill in arithmetic can make up for a deficit which stares us in the face when we look into an account, and the seeker had not as yet attained to the faith which sees 17.] ECCLESIASTES, I. own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem : yea, my heart had great experience of wis- dom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wis- 17 be3'ond that incompleteness the ultimate completeness of the Divine order. 16. Lo, I am come to great estate"] The pronoun is used emphati- cally. The verb in the Hebrew is connected closely with what follows and speaks not of outward majesty but of "becoming great," in wisdom. So taken we may read, "I became great and increased in wisdom more than all." We note again, as in verse 13, the kind of dialogue which the Debater holds with his inner consciousness. He "communes with his heart" (comp. Ps. iv. 4, Ixxvii. 6). So Marcus Aurelius gave to the book which we call his Meditations, the title ra, els iavrov — literally, "Things for myself" or "Self-communings." t/iej that have been before me in Jentsalem] Better, "over Jerusalem." Those who maintain the late origin of the book point to this apparent retrospect over a long series of predecessors as betraying, or possibly as intended to indicate, the pseudonymous authorship. The liistorical Solomon, it is said, had but one predecessor over Jerusalem. The inference is, however, scarcely conclusive. Even on the theory of personated authorship, the writer would scarcely have slipped into so glaring an anachronism, and the words admit of being referred, on either view, either to the line of unknown Jebusite rulers, including perhaps Melchizedek (Gen. xiv. 18), Adonizedek (Josh. xv. 63; 1 Sam. V. 7) and others, or to the sages "Ethan the Ezrahite and Heman and Chalcol and Darda the sons of Mahol," who are named in i Kings iv. 31, and who may, in some sense, as teachers and guides, have been "over" as well as "in" Jerusalem. Some MSS. indeed give the preposition "in" instead of "over." my heart had prat experience] More literally, and at the same time more poetically, my heart hath seen much wisdom and knowledge. The two nouns are related, like the Greek ao(pia and eTrKTrruj.-/], the former expressing the ethical, the latter the speculative, scientific side of knowledge. 17. And I gave my heart] The apparent iteration of the phrase of verse 13 expresses the concentration of purpose. The writer adds tiiat his search took a yet wider range. He sought to know wisdom through its opposite, to enlarge his experience of the diseases of human thought. He had fathomed the depths of the "madness and folly;" the former word expressmg in Hebrew as in English the wilder forms of unwisdom. There is, perhaps, a touch of self-mockery in the fact that the latter word in the Hebrew is all but identical in sound with a word which means "prudence." One, the writer seems to say, has the same issue as the other. Some critics, indeed {e.g. Ginsburg), think that tlie present text originated in an error of transcription and that we ought to read "to know wisdom and knowledge," It has 112 ECCLESIASTES, I. [v. i8. dom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that i8 this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. been thought and, as stated in the Introduction (chap. II.), with some reason, that in the use of the stronger word we have an echo of the current language of the Stoics who looked on all the weaknesses of mankind as so many forms of insanity. So Horace (Sat. II. 3. 43), "Quern mala stullitia et quemcunque inscitia vcri Cascum agit, insanum Chrysippi porticus et grex Autumat. IIa:;c populos, hive magnos formula reges, Excepto sapiente, tenet." "Ilim, whom weak folly leads in blindness on. Unknowing of the Truth, the Porch and tribe Who call (Jhrysippus Master, treat as mad. Peoples and mighty kings, all but the wise This formula embraces." So also Diog. Laert. vii. 124, 'Xiyovai. irAvra^ rots dcppovai fialveaOaL. "All that are foolish they pronounce insane." vexation of spirit] Better, feeding on wind, as before. See note on ver. 14. The word is, however, not identical in form, but expresses a more concrete idea. By some it is rendered "meditation. The fact that the writer uses a word not found elsewhere in the Old Testa- ment, suggests the thought that he wanted a new word for the expression of a new thought. 18. in viKch wisdom is muck grief] The same sad sentence was written on the study of man's nature in its greatness and its littleness, its sanity and insanity. The words have passed into a proverb, and were, perhaps, proverbial when the Debater wrote them. Tiie mere widening of the horizon, whether of ethical or of physical knowledge, brought no satisfaction. In the former case men became more conscious of their distance from the true ideal. They ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the only result was that they knew that "they were naked" (Gen. iii. 7). In the latter, the more they knew of the phenomena of nature or of human life the more they felt that the "most j^art of God's works were hid." Add to this the brain- wcarincss, the lal)orious days, the slecjilcss nights, the frustrated ambi- tions of the student, and we can understand the confession of the Debater. It has naturally been often echoetl. So Cicero (Tuse. Disp. III. 4) discusses the thesis, " Videtur viihi ccuiere in Siipientcm tcgritiido " (" Sickness seems to me to be the lot of the wise of heart"). vv. r— 3.] ECCLESIASTES, II. 113 I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with 2 mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and behold, this also is vanity. I said of laughter, // is mad: and of mirth, What 2 doeth it? I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, 3 CHAPTER II. 1. / will prove thee ivith mirtli\ The self-communinq; of the man talking ^o his soul, like the rich man in Luke xii. 18, 19, in search of happiness, leads him to yet another experiment. He will lay aside philosophy and try what pleasure will do, and live as others live. The^- clioice of Faust in Goethe's great drama, presents a striking parallel in the world of creative Art. The fall of Abelard is hardly a less striking parallel in the history of an actual life. Consciously or unconsciously (probably the former) the Debater had passed from the Hebrew and the Stoic ideals of wisdom to that of the school of Epicurus. The choice of the Hebrew word for "pleasure" (literally "good") implies that this now appeared the siiinmum homtiii of existence. But this experiment also failed. The doom of "vanity" was on this also. The "laughter" was like the crackling of burning thorns (chap. vii. 6) and left nothing but the cold grey ashes of a cynical satiety. In the "Go to now" with which the self-communing begins we trace the tone of the irony of disappointment. 2. / said of lan^c^hfa; It is »tad] The choice of a word cognate with the madness of chap. i. 17, gives a special emphasis to the judg- ment which the man thus passes on himself. There was as much in- sanity in this form of life as in the other. He was plunging into mad- ness with his eyes open and might say, "Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor." "I see the better, yet the worse pursue." Ovid, Metamorph. vii. 20. In each case the question might be asked "What does it work? What is its outcome?" And the implied answer is "Absolutely nothing." 3. io give viysdf unto ivinc\ Literally, and more vividly, to cherish my flesh with wine. The Hebrew word for "give" is unusual and obscure. The primary meaning is "to draw out," that of the word for "acquainting" is "to guide" or "drive," as in Exod. iii. r ; 2 Sam. vi. 3. Possibly, as Lewis suggests in Lange's Cominaitary, the idea is like that of the parable in the Fhadnis of Plato (p. 54) and the seeker gives the rein to pleasure, yet seeks to guide or drive the steed with his'wisdom. The words point to the next stage in the progress of the pleasure seeker. Pleasure as such, in its graceful, lighter forms, soon palls, and he seeks the lower, fiercer stimulation of the wine cup. But he did this, he is careful to state, not as most men do, drifting along the current of lower pleasures "Till the scared taste, from foulest wells Is fain to quench its iircs," ECCLESIASTES g 114 ECCLESIASTES, II. [w. 4, 5. (yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom) and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what -was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all 4 the days of their life. I made me great works; I builded 5 me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made me gardens but deliberately, "yet gliding mine heart with wisdom." This also was an experiment, and he retained, or tried to retain, his self-analysing introspection even in the midst of his revelry. All jiaths must be tried, seeming folly as well as seeming wisdom, to see if they gave any adeciuate standard by which the "sons of men" might guide tlieir conduct, any pathway to the "chief good" which was the object of the seeker's quest. 4. I made VIC great ivorI.:s\ The verse may be cither a retrospect of the details of the life of the pleasure-seeker as sketched in the jirevious verse, or, as seems more probable, the account of a new ex]ieriment in which t!ie man passed from purely sensual pleasures to the life of what we know as 'culture,' the pursuit of beauty and magnilicence in Art. Here the writer throws himself into the surroundings of the historical Solomon. We may venture to refer to Tennyson's Palace of Art as tracing the working out of a like experiment to its inevitable issue. See Appendix II. I builded mc hou!:cs\ We think of David's house of cedar (2 Chron. ii. 3) and the storehouses, oliveyards and vineyards (i Chron. xxvii. 25- — 51) which Solomon had inherited, of his own palace, and tlie house of the forest of Lebanon and the house for Pharaoh's daughter, which he built (i Kings vii. i — 9), of Tadmor and Ilaniath and lieth-horon and Baalath, the cities in far off lands which owned him as their founder (2 Chron. viii. 3 — 6). It is significant, on any theory of authorship, that we find no reference to Solomon's work in building "the house of the Lord." That was naturally outside the range of the experiments in search of happiness and too sacred to be mentioned in connexion with them here, either by the king himself or by the writer who per.s(;nates him. On the assumption of personation the writer may have drawn his pictures of kingly state from the palaces and parks of the Ptolemies, in- cluding the botanical and zoological gardens connected with the Museum at Alexandria, or from those of the Persian kings at Susa or Persepolis. I flautcd Die vineyards] Of these one, that of Baal-hamon, has been immortalised by its mention in the Song of Solomon (viii. 11). It was planted with the choicest vine, and the value of its produce esti- mated at a thousand pieces of silver. Engedi seems also to have been famous for its vineyards (Song Sol. i. 14). 6. / made me gardens and orchards] The latter word, originally Persian, and found only in the O. T. in this book, in Song Sol. iv. 13, and Nehem. ii. 8, is the "paradise" of Xenophon, of later Rabbinic writings and of the New Testament (Luke xxiii. 43; 2 Cor. xii. 4). It indicates what we call a park, with flowing streams and shady groves and fruit trees, and deer feeding on the fresh green grass, and doves flitting through the trees, such as seemed to the Eastern imagination the fittest vv. 6, 7-] ECCLESIASTES, II. 115 and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the 6 wood that bringeth forth trees: I got me servants and 7 maidens, and had servants born in viy house; also I had type of the highest blessedness. The whole sceneiy of the Song of Solomon is such a garden, planted with pomegranates and pleasant fruits, spikenards and camphire, calamus and cinnamon, and trees of frankincense, and lilies (Song Sol. iv. 13 — 15, vi. 2). The pools of Solo- mon at Etam, on the south-west of Bethlehem, described by Josephus {Ant. VIII. 7. 3) still preserve the memory of such a "paradise." Other traces of these surroundings of the palaces of Jewish kings are found in the history of Naboth's vineyard, where the "garden of herbs" can hardly be thought of as merely a "kitchen garden" (i Kings xxi. 2) and in the garden of Zedekiah (Jer. lii. 7). all kind of fndts] The horticulture of Palestine included the apple, the fig, the pomegranate, the date, the caper-tree, nuts, almonds, raisins and mandrakes. The account is in strict keeping with the character of the king who spake of trci-s "from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall" (i Kings iv. 33). 6. / made me pools of water] Those at Etam have been mentioned above. Besides these we have the fish-pools of Heshbon (Song Sol. vii. 4), the pool of the king (Neh. ii. 14), possibly also, the pools of Siloam (John ix. 7), and Beth-esda (John v. 2). In Palestine, as in India, these large tanks or reservoirs of water, as meeting the necessities of the climate, were among the favourite works of kingly munificence. Stress is laid on the fact that they were not for beauty only, but for service in irrigating the extensive park. t//e 7vood that bringeth foi'tk trees] Better, " a grove making trees to bud," i.e. in the language of modern gardening, a "nursery" lor young trees. 7. d got me sej-vants and maidens] Better, I bought. The picture of Oriental state was incomplete without this element, and the slave trade, of which the Midianites were the chief representatives in the patriarchal history (Gen. xxxvii. 28), had probably been carried on without intermission, and supplied both the household and the harem of Solomon. In the Cushi of 2 Sam. xviii. 21, in his namesake of Jer. xxxvi. 14, in Ebedmelech, the Cushite, or Ethiopian, of Jer. xxxviii. 7, we have instances of the presence of such slaves in the royal households. The history of every ancient nation shews the universality of the traffic. Of these slaves each great household had two classes : (i) those "bought M'ith money," men of other races, captives in war, often, probably, negroes (Jer. xxxviii. 7) who were employed in the more menial offices (Gen. xi. 11, 12, 23), and (2) those born in the house (t]en. xiv. 14, xv. 3; Jer. ii. 14), the 'sons of the handmaids' (Exod. xxiii. 12), who rose into more confidential service, the oiKoyfveU of the Greeks, the vernae of the Latins. On the assumption that the book was written under the Ptolemies, their court would present the same features in an even more conspicuous manner. . 8—2 ii6 ECCLESIASTES, 11. [v. 8. great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the jivovinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, great and small catllc\ Better, oxen and sheep. The daily provision for Solomon's household (i Kings iv. 22) gives some idea of the mag- nitude of his flocks and herds. See also 1 Chron. xxvii. 29; 1 Kings V- 3- , 8. I gathered me also silver and gold] Here also we find a counter- part in what is recorded of the wealth of Solomon, the ships of Hiram that brought gold from Ophir, to the amount of 420 talents (i Kings ix. 2S), the gifts from the c]ucen of Shcba (i Kings x. i), the total revenue of 666 talents (i Kings x. 15), the 200 targets and p,oo shields of beaten gold, and the throne of gold and ivc>ryand the drinking vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon, and the silver that was in Jeru- salem as stones (i Kings x. 16 — 27). the peetiliar treasure of kings and of the provinces'] The words may point to the special gifts which came to Solomon by way of tribute from other lands, fronr Seba and Shcba (Ps. Ixxii. 10), from the "kings of Arabia and the governors of the country" (i Kings ix. 15, x. 27). Many com- mentators, however, see in the phrase a description of the treasures of Solomon as being such as were the special possessions of sovereign rulers and sovereign states as distinct from the wealth of jirivate citizens. The word for " province " may be noted as a comparatively late word, hardly coming into use till the time of the Captivity (Lam. i. i ; Ezek. xix. b), and prominent chiefly in the books of the Persian period, li!zra, Nehemiah, Esther and Daniel. It probably designates here the twelve districts into which Solomon divided his empire (i Kings iv. 7—19)- men singers and women singers'] The mention of women shews that the singers meant are not those connected with the clioir of the Temple, but those who, as in the speech of I5arzillai (2 Sam. xix. 35), (igurefl at state banquets. These women, as in Isai. xxiii. 6, were commonly taken from the class of harlot aliens, and as such were condemned by the counsel of the wise of heart (Lcclus. ix. 4). For the general use of music at feasts, conip. Isai. v. 11, 12; Amos vi. 5; Lcclus. xxxii. 5, 6, xlix. I. the delights of the sons of men] The use of the word in Song Sol. vii. 6 leaves little doubt that the phrase is an euphemism for sensual pleasures, and as such it helps to determine the meaning of the words that follow. musical instruments, and that of all sorts] The Hebrew substantive, which is not found elsewhere, is lirst given in the singular and then in the jilural, as an emphatic way of expressing nudlitude, anil has been , very variously interpreted, as meaning, with the A.V., following Luther, w. 9— II-] ECCLESIASTES, II. 117 and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more 9 than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wis- dom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes de- 10 sired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the n a "musical instrument," or with the Vulgate "cups," or with the LXX. "cup-bearers," or a ''bath," or "heaps" of treasure, or a "chariot," or a "palanquin," or even "male and female demons." Most modem scholars however agree, though differing as to its etymology, some finding its root-meaning in "couch," and some in the "female breast," and others in "captives taken in war," in rendering it as a "concubine." This agrees, it is obvious, with the context and with what is recorded of Solomon's seraglio with its thousand inmates (Song Sol. vi. 8; i Kings xi. 3). It was not likely, we may add, that so characteristic a feature in that monarch's prodigal excesses should have been altogether passed over in a picture so elaborate. "Musical instruments," it maybe added, would have formed a somewhat poor climax to the long catalogue of kingly luxuries. The interpolated "iZj-" should be omitted. 9. / was great, and iiic)-cascd'[ There is something significant in the repetition of the formula of ch. i. 16. The king had surpassed all others in wisdom, he was now surpassing all others in magnificence. also i?iy wisdom 7-cinaincd tvith vic\ The thought expressed seems to be, as in verse 3, that the seeker, though he plunged into the pleasures of a sensual life, was never altogether their slave. They were for him experiments which he watched as witli an intellectual impartiality. Lilce Goethe, he analysed his voluptuousness, and studied his own faculties of enjoyment. 10. whatsoever mine eyes desiredl From such a life the idea of self- denial, even of self-control, was absolutely excluded. Money and power were but means to the end. and the end proposed was the gratification of the "desire of the eyes," not identified with the "lust of the flesh," but closely allied to it (r John ii. 16), in all its restless cravings. It was not altogether a fruitless effort. Such joy as these things could bring he had in abundant measure. It was for a time his "portion." Like the rich man in the parable of Luke xvi. 25 he had his "good things," and could not complain that the experiment failed as through imperfect apparatus. He also was tasting of the " tree of knowledge of good and evil," and found that it was "good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise" (Gen. iii. 6). 11. T/icii I lookcd'\ Here also, however, the result was as before. There came the afterthought which scrutinised the enjoyments and found them wanting. The pursuit of pleasure was as unsatisfying as the pursuit of knowledge. Like others who have trodden the same path, he had to confess that iiS ECCLESIASTES, II. [vv. 12, 13. works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and behold, all 7i'as vanity and vex- ation of spirit, and f/iere was no profit under the sun. 12 And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what can the man do that cometh after 13 the king? ez'en that which hath been already done. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth "Medio de fonte Icporum Surgit amaii aliquid." "J^'en from the centre of the fount of joys There springs an element of bitterness." LucKET., Dc Ker. Nat. iv. 11 27. All wns vanity and feeding on the wind. There was no real "profit" (see note on chap. i. 3) that could take its place among his permanent possessions, no surplus to his credit on the balance-sheet of life. In the more solemn words of Matt. xvi. 26, " What is a man profited if he shall gain the wliole world, and lose his own soul?" we have substantially the same teaching. 12. I tu7-iicd myself io behold wisdom, and madness, and follj'] We enter on yet another phase of the life of the seeker after happiness. He falls back with a cynical despair, when mere pleasure left him a prey to satiety and ennui, upon his former study of human nature in its con- trasted developments of wisdom, and madness, and folly (see note on chap. i. 17). -ivhat can the man do that cometh after the kingl'] Literally, What is the man The words are apparently a kind of proverb. No other child of man could Uy the exi^eriment under more promising conditions than a king like the Solomon of history, and therefore the answer to the question, What can such a man be or do? is simply (if we follow the construction of the A.V.) "Even that which men did before." He shall tread the same weary round with tlie same unsalisfjing results. The veisc is, however, obscure, and has been very variously rendered. So (i) the LXX., following another text, gives "What man will follow after counsel in whatsoever things they wrought it;" (2) the Vulgate, " What is man, said I, that he can follow the King, his Maker;" and (3) many modern interpreters. "What can the man do that comes after the king, wliom they made long ago?" i.e. Who can equal the time- honoured fame of Solomon? 13. / sa'ii that icisdovi excelleth folly] Better, as keeping up, in the English as in the Hebrew, tlie characteristic word of the book. There is profit in wisdom more than in folly, and so in the second clause. Something then had been gained by the experience. In language like that of the .Stoics he sings the praises of wisdom. Even the wisdom that brings sorrow (ch. i. 13) is better than the mirth of fools. A man is conscious of being more truly man when he looks before and after, and knows how to observe. Light is, after all, better than darkness, vv. 14, 1 5-1 ECCLESIASTES, II. 119 darkness. The wise maii% eyes are in his head; but tlie 14 fool waiketh in darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happen eth to them all. Then said I in my 15 heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my even if it only shews us that we are treading the path that leads to nothingness. The human heart obeys its instincts when it cries out with Aias, kv 5i (pdu Koi 6\iaaov. "And if our fate be death, give light, and let us die." HOM. //. XVII. 647. 14. The zvise man's eyes an in his head~\ The figurative language is so much of the nature of an universal parable that we need hardly look to any special source for it, but we are at least reminded of those that "walk on still in darkness," who have eyes and yet "see not" in any true sense of seeing (Isai. vi. 10). In Prov. xvii. 24 we have the oppo- site form of the same thought: "The eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth." Comp. also John xi. 10, xii. 33. and I viysclf perceived also\ Better, And yet I myself perceived. The thought of verse 13 which had given an apparent resting-place for the seeker, is traversed by another which sends him once more adrift. Wisdom is better than folly. True, but for how long? With an em- phasized stress on his own personal reflections, he goes on, "Yes, I myself, learning it for myself, and not as a topic of the schools, saw that there is one event for the wise and for the fool." In a few short years the difference in which the former exults will vanish, and both will be on the same level. So sang the Epicurean poet : "Omnes una manet nox, Et calcanda semel via lethi." "One dark black night awaits us all ; One path of death we all must tread." IIOR. Od. I. 28. 15. 15. ivhy -was I then more iuise?\ Belter, Why have I iDeen wise now overmucli? The very wisdom of the seeker might lead him to see that he has not only been wiser than others, but wiser than it was wise to be. The last word is almost identical with the "profit" which occurs so frequently. He found that he had a surplus of wisdom, and that it was but surplusage. We seem to hear an echo of the ls\r)hkv ojyav, the N'e quid nimis ("Nothing in excess ") of Greek and Roman sages. So, with the same Hebrew word, we have in chap. vii. 16, "Be not rigliteous over much." So it was that the sentence of 'Vanity' was once more written on wisdom as well as folly. It is not without signifi- cance that the man feels the bitterness of the sentence, because, even in his wisdom, he, like the Stoics, had been egoistic. That he and the fool, the man of large discourse, and the man to whom culture was an I20 ECCLESIASTES, II. [vv. i6, 17. 16 heart, that this also is vanity. For i/iere is no remembrance of the Avise more than of the fool for ever; seeing f/mf which now is, in the days to come shall all be forgotten. 17 And how dieth the wise man? as the fool. Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun unknown word, should die the same death, this made him curse his destiny. 16. f//t:re is no remembrance of the ii>ise'\ More accurately, For the Wise man as for the fool there is no remembrance for ever, the last two words being emphatic, ahiiost as if intentionally calling in question the teaching of Ps. c.xii. 6, that "the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance." The assertion seems at first too sweeping. There are sages, we say, who live yet in the memory of men whose names the world will not willingly let die. Practically, however, as regards the influence of the desire for posthumous fame as a motive, the number of such names is inappreciably small, even with the manifold resources of monuments and written records. The scribes and doctors, the artists and the poets of one age are forgotten in the next, and only here or there can any man be bold to say with Bacon that he commits his memory "to the care of future ages." (See note on ch. i. II.) Even a biographical dictionary is often but as the sepul- chre of the mouldering remains of reputations that liave been long since dead, and their jilace knowcth them no more. Then, as in later days, there were those who substituted the permanence of fame for that of personal being, and the Debater, with his incisive question shatters the unsubstantial fabric. And how dicth the wise jnanl As the fool] Literally, "with the fool," as if in partnership with him, sharing the same lot. P>eltcr, perhaps, as an exclamation, not a question, "How dieth the wise man with ( = as) the fool. The absence of any hope of an immortality beyond that of fame has been already implied. The present clause brings before us the maniier and circumstances of death. We stand, as it were, by the two death-beds, of the wise and of the fool, and note the same signs of the end, the same glazed eye, the same death-dew on the brow, the same failing power of thought. The picture of chap, xii. I — 6 is true of both. The seeker had apparently never stood by the death-bed of one whose face was lit up, and, as it were, trans- figured by a " hoi)c full of immortality." Mere also we may trace in the later personator of Solomon a deliberate i')rotest against what seemed to him the teaching of Ecclesiastcs (\Yisd. ii. i — 9). 17. Therefore I hated life] Better, And I hated. Of such a temj>er, the extremest form of pessimism, suicide would seem the natural and logical outcome. In ])ractice, however, the sages who have thus moralized, from Kohclethto .Schopenhauer, have found life worth living for, even when they were jiroving that it was hateful, liven the very utterance of the thought has been a relief, or, like Hamlet, they have been deterred by the vague terror of the "somcthiiis; after death" vv. 18—20.] ECCLESIASTES, II. 121 is grievous unto me : for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the is sun : because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise 19 ina?i or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour where/« I have laboured, and where/;^ I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity. Therefore I went 20 about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I which then- scepticism cannot quite shake off. Tlie actual self-murderers are those who cannot weave their experiences into poems and confes- sions, and find the burden of life, including its sin and shame, more than they can bear. It may be questioned whether mere weariness of life, able to find vent for itself in verse or prose, has ever led to suicide. The man, as here, seems to come to the very verge of it, and then draws back. It is suggestive that in the history of Greek and Roman philosophy suicide was more frequent and more honoured among the Stoics than the Epicureans (Zeller, Stoics and Epic. C. xii.). The recurrence of the burden "vanity and feeding upon wind" rings, as it were, the death-knell of life and hope. 18. because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after fne] The history of the great ones of the earth presents not a few parallel utter- ances. Mazarin walics through the galleries of his palace and says to himself, "" II faut quitter tout ccla^ Frederick William IV. of Prussia turns to his friend Bunsen as they stand on the terrace at Potsdam, and says, as they look out on the garden, ^^ Das aiich, das soil ich lassen,'^ ("This too I must leave behind me".) The thought recurs again and again (chs. iv. 8, v. 14, vi. 2). 19. who knoTveth whether he shall be a wise vian] We note in this rather the utterance of a generalized experience than, as some have thought, the special thought of the historical Solomon watching the growth of a character like Rehoboam. No man, whatever care he may take to entail his -possessions, can secure an entail of character. And there is something irritating at times, — the writer seems to hint, almost maddening, — in the thought that whatever may be the character of the heir, he will have power to scatter in random waste what has been brought together, as with a purpose and a policy. Lands, libraries, galleries are all liable to be scattered and brokeri up. So in Ps. xxxix. 6 we have as the doom of the mammon-worshipper, "lie heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them." .So the sting of the message that comes to the Rich Fool of the parable is "Then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" Luke xii. 20. 20. / 7t>ent about to cause my lieart to dcspaii-] The verb for despair is not a common one. Another form of it meets us in the enqihatic cry, "There is no hope" of Jer. ii. •25, xviii. T2. What he had felt had made the seeker renounce the very impulse that led to labour. In the phrase "I went about," literally, "I tiirned," we have, as it were, the 122 ECCLESIASTES, II. [vv. 21—24. ai took under the sun. For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hatli not laboured therein shall he leave it for his por- 22 tion. This also is vanity and a groat evil. For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, i5 wherein he /laih laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity. 24 There is nothing better for a man, than that he should attitude of one who looks behind him on the road on which so far he has travelled. The retrospect was so dreary that it made the prospect drearier still. 21. For (here is a viaii\ It is characteristic of the Debater that he broods over the same thought, and contemplates it as in a variety of aspects. It is not merely, as in verse 19, that another possessed his heaped up riches who may use them quite otherwise than he would have tliem used, but that the man who by his wisdom has achieved wealth (for "equity" we should rather read here and in chap. iv. 4, v. 11 ''skill" or "success," the moral character of the success not being here in question) has to leave it to one who has not worivcd at all, it may be to an alien in blood. 22. the vexation of his heart'\ The word differs from that for which ^^ feeding on wind" has been suggested, but is akin to it, and has been, as in i. 17, rendered by meditation. Here, perhaps, "corroding care" would best convey its meaning. 23. yea, his heart taketh 7iot rest in the 7iight] The verse speaks out the experience of the men who labour for that which does not jirofit. There is no real pleasure, even at the time. The "cares of this world" come together with "the jileasurcs of this life" (i.uke viii. 14). ^Ve trace the same yearning after the "sweet sleep" that lies in the far-off past as in eh. v. 12, perhaps also in the "almond tree" of ch. xii. 5. So has the great master-poet portrayed the wakefulness of successful aml)ition, the yearning for the sleep of the "smoky crib," or even of the ship-boy on the mast, the terrible conclusion, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." Shakespeare, Henry IV. Part II. Act III. i. No "poppies" or "mandragora" can restore that sleep to the slave of mammon or the worn-out sensualist. 24. There is nothing better for a man] The Hebrew, as it stands, gives a meaning which is partly represented by the LXX., "There is no good for a man which he shall cat and drink," as though the simplest form of bodily ]ileasure were condemned. Almost all interpreters how- ever are agreed in adopting a conjectural emendation, which again in its turn has given rise to two different renderings: (r) "Is it not better (or "Is it not good") for a man to eat and drink...?" or (2) "there is V. 24-] ECCLESIASTES, II. 123 eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good nothing good for a man but to eat and drink...." The two last are of course substantially the same in their teaching, and both express what we may call the higher type of Epicureanism which forms one element of the book. The pursuit of riches, state, luxury, is abandoned for the simple joys that lie within every man's reach, the ^^fallcntis sciiiita vitae'" of one who has learnt the lesson of regulating his desires. The words "to eat and drink" are closely connected with "enjoying good i]i his labour.^' What is praised is not the life of slothful self-indulgence or sesthetic refinement, but that of a man who, though with higher cul- ture, is content to live as simply as the ploughman, or the vinedresser, or artificer. Aa^e /Stwcraj, "live in the shade," was the Epicurean rule of wisdom. Pleasure was not found in feasts and sensual excess but in sobriety of mind, and the conquest of prejudice and superstition (Diog. Laert. X. i. 132). The real wants of such a life are few, and there is a ioy in working for them. Here again the thought finds multiform echoes in the utterances of men who have found the cares and pleasures and pursuits of a more ambitious life unsatisfying. It is significant that the very words "eat and drink" had been used by Jeremiah in describing the pattern life of a righteous king (Jer. xxii. 15). The type of life described is altogether different from that of the lower Epicureans who said "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" (1 Cor. xv. 32). So we have one Epicurean poet singing "Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes Lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris, Lumina nocturnis epulis ut suppeditentur. Nee domus argento fulget auroque renidet Nee citharae reboant laqueata aurataque templa, Cum tamen inter se prostrati in gramine molli Propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae Non magnis opibus iucunde corpora curant, Praesertim cum tempcstas adridet et anni Tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas." "What though no golden statues of fair boys With lamp in hand illumine all the house And cast their lustre on the nightly feast; Nor does their home with silver or with gold Dazzle the eye; nor through the ceiled roof, Bedecked with gold, the harps re-echo loud. Yet, while reclining on the soft sweet grass They lie in group;, along the river's bank, Beneath the branches of some lofty tree, And at small c0.1t find sweet refreshment there, What time the season smiles, and spring-tide weeks Re-gem the herbage green with many a flower." LucRET. De Rer. Nat. 11. 24 — 33. 124 ECCLESIASTES, II. [v. 24. in his labour. This also I saw, that it laas from the hand So Virgil sang: "O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, Agricolas," and of these good things dwelt chiefly on "At secura quies et nescia fallere vita. Dives opum variarum, at latis olia fundis, Speluncae, vivique lacus, ct frigida Tempe, Mugitusque Ixmm, mollesque sul) arboie somni Non absunt ; illic saltus ac lustra ferarum, Kt patiens operum exiguoque adsueta juventus, Sacra deum, sanctique patres; extrema per illos Justitia excedens terris vestigia fecit." " Ah ! but too happy, did they know their bliss The tillers of the soil !... Theirs the calm peace, and life that knows no fraud, Rich in its varied wealth ; and leisure their's In the broad meadows ; caves and living lakes And Ternpe cool, and lowing of the kine ; Nor want they slumber sweet beneath the trees ; There are the thickets and the wild beasts' haunts, And youth enduring toil and trained to thrift ; There Gods are worshipped, fathers held in awe, And Justice, when she parted from the earth Left there her latest foot-prints." Gc-or^. II. 467—474. So Horace, in the same strain: " Beatus ille qui procul negotiis, Ut prisca gens mortalium, Paterna rura bubus exerect suis, Solutus omni foenore." "Thrice blest is he who free from care Lives now, as lived our fathers old. And free from weight of honoured gold, With his own oxen drives the share O'er fields he owns as rightful heir." Horace, £j>ocf. 11. i. So .Shakespeare once more makes a king echo the teaching of Ecclc- siastcs : "And to conclude: the shcjiherd's homely curds, His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, Is far beyond a prince's deiicatcs, His viands sparkling in a golden cup, J5, 26.] ECCLESIASTES, II. -of God. For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, 25 more than I? For God giveth to a man that is good in his 25 His body couched in a curious bed, When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him." Henry VI., Part III. Act II. 5. This also I saiv, that it ivas from the hand of God] In the thought which is thus expressed, we find, however, something more than an echo of Greek Epicureanism. The Debater recognises a Divine Will in this apportionment of happiness, just as he had before recognised that Will in the toil and travail with which the sons of man were exercised (ch. i. 13). The apparent inequalities are thus, in part at least, redressed, and it is shewn as the teaching of experience no less than of the Divine ]\Iaster, that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth " (Luke xii. 15). 25. For zvho can eat] The sequence of thought is obscure, and many commentators follow the LXX. and the Syriac version, as im- plying an original text which gives a better meaning, Who can eat and wlio can hasten (i.e. be eager in this pursuit of pleasure), or, as some take the words, have enjoyment, without Him, i.e. without God. This, it is obvious, follows on the thought of the preceding verse, that the calm enjoyment of which it speaks as "good," is "from the hand of God." Those who keep to the received text give it very different mean- ings, of which the two most prominent are : (i) that we have, as it were, the words of the labourer whose lot the Deoater here admired, "^^■ho has a right to eat and enjoy himself, if not I ? " the thought being parallel to that of 2 Tim. ii. 6 ("The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits") ; and (2) that the Debater speaks in his own person, " Who could eat or enjoy more than I? Who therefore can better attest that it is all in vain without the gift of God." On the as- sumption that the writer was one who had come into contact with Greek thought, we may trace in this utterance partly the old failh of Israel reasserting itself and giving a higher sanction to the life of regulated enjoyment which the Greek teachers counselled, partly, perhaps, the mingling of Stoic and Epicurean counsels natural in a mind that had listened to both and attached himself definitely to neither. So in the Meditations of Aurelius we have like thoughts: irdvTa yap raura 6(wu ^07}dwv KOI Tifxij! Seirat (" all these things require the help of the Gods and of Fortune"); and again tcltuv Geciii/ npovoias fxicra. ("the works of the Gods are full of Providence" {Meditt. Ii. 3). Koheleth, of course, as an Israelite, used the language of the wiser Stoics, like Cleanthes, and spoke of one God only. 26. For God giveth] The word for God, as the italics shew, is not in the Hebrew, but it is obviously implied, and its non-appearance justifies the change in the text of the previous verse, which preserves the sequence of thought unbroken. What we get here is the recog- nition of what we have learnt to call the moral government of God in the distribution of happiness. It is found to depend not on outward but inward condition, and the chief inward condition is the character 126 ECCLESIASTES, III. [v. i. sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vex- ation of s])irit. To every thin^ there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: that God approves. The Debater practically confesses that the life of the pleasure-seeker, or the anil/uious, or the philosojiher seeking wisdom as an end, was not good before God, and therefore failed to bring contentment. -uisdoiit, and knowledge, and jo}'\ The combination forms an em- phatic contrast with ch. 1. iS, and marks a step onward in the seeker's progress. There is a wisdom wiiich is not grief, an increase of knowledge which is not an increase of sorrow. We are re- minded of the parallel thought which belongs to a higher region of the spiritual life, "The Kingdom of God. ..is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost"' (Rom. xiv. 17). Here the lesson is that the man who seeks great things fails to fmd them, that he who is content witli a little with God's blessing on it, finds in that little much. He becomes avTapKrjs ( = self-sufficing) — and has enough. iui to the sinner he giveth travail^ Tiic words point to a further perception of a moral order in the midst of the seeming disorders of the world. The fruitless labour of the sinner in heaping up his often ill-gotten gains is not altogether wasted. His treasure passes into hands that make a better use of it than he has done. So we find a like thought in Prov. xxviii. 8, "He that by usury and unjust gains in- creascth his substance, lie shall gather it for him that will pity the poor," and in Job xxvii. 16, 17, ''Though he heap up silver as tiie dust, and prepare raiment as the clay; he may prepare it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver" (comp. Prov. xiii. 22). This also is vanity] The question which we have to answer is whether this sentence is passed only on the travail of the sinner, as in verse 11, or whether it includes also the measure of joy attainalile by him who is "good" in the sight of God. From one point of view the former interpretation gives a preferable meaning, as more in harmony with what immediately precedes. On the other hand, it is character- istic of the cynical pessimism into which the Preacher has, by his own confession, fallen, that he should fall back into his despondency even after a momentary glimpse of a truth that might have raised him from it. The "Two Voices" utter themselves, as in Tennyson's poem, (see Appendix H.) in a melancholy alternation and there comes a time when the simple joys which God gives to the contented labourer, no less than the satiety of the voluptuous and the rich, seem to him but as " vanity and feeding upon wind." CHAPTER HI. 1. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every pur pose\ The vv. 2, 3.] ECCLESIASTES, III. 127 A time to be born, and a time to die; 2 A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; 3 two Hebrew nouns stand to each other in much the same relation as the Greek xpovos and Kaipos, the former expressing a period of duration, the latter the appointed time at which an event happens. Accepting this view, the words "season" and "time" in the A. V. ought, perhaps, to change places. The thought is one of which we find an echo in the maxim of Pittacus, Katpov yvuidi — "Know the right seasonfor everything" (Diog. Laert. I. 4, §6). It is significant, in connexion with the conclu- sion maintained in the Introduction, Ch. ill., that Demetrius Phalereus, the librarian of Ptolemy Philadelphus, wrote a treatise, irepi Kaipov, of opportuneness (Diog. Laert. V. 5 § 9). vSo Theognis, (402), 3I?jo«j' o.-ya.v aireiioeLv, Kaipbs 5' iirl irdaiv dpicTTos, " Do nothing in excess. In all we do is the right season precious." So here the thought with which the new section opens is that it is wisdom to do the right thing at the right time, that inopportuneness is the bane of life. The survey of human occupations and interests that follows has a striking parallel in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (iv. y.), who, from his Stoic stand- point, sees in their perpetual recurrence, evidence of the monotonous iteration of the phenomena of man's life, analogous to that of the phenomena of Nature. 2. A time to be bo?-n] Literally, a time to bear. It should be noted that in Hebrew MSS. and printed texts, the list of Times and Seasons appears in two parallel columns, as if forming a kind of rhythmical catalogue, what the Greeks called a ffvaroLxla, or Table of Contrasts. It seems at first strange that the list should begin with events which are (putting aside the exceptional case of suicide) invol- untary. It may be, however, that they were chosen for that very reason as representative instances of the fixed order on which the writer dwells. We shrink from the thought of an untimely birth (ch. vi. 3) or an untimely death; we shudder at the thought of accelerating citlier, or of hindering the former, and yet the other incidents of life have, not less than these, each of them, their aj^pointed season, if only we could discern it. a time to plan/'] Human life in its beginning and its end is seen to have a parallel in that of plants. Here also there is a time for sowing, and after the fruits of tlie earth have been gathered in (this and not a wanton destruction, which would be a violation of the natural order, is clearly meant) to pluck up that the planting may again come. It is, perhaps, over fanciful to make the words include the "planting" and "uprooting" of nations and kingdoms as in Jerem. i. 10. It is significant, however, that the word for " jduck up " is an unusual word, and, where it occurs elsewhere, in the O. T. is used figuratively of the destruction of cities as in Zcph. ii. 4. 3. a time io kill, and a tivie to heal} The first group had brought 128 ECCLESIASTES, III. [vv. 4, 5. A time to break down, and a time to build up ; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; together natural death and natural birth. This includes in the induction the death which man inflicts in battle or single combat, in attack or self-defence, or in administering justice, and with it the verb that includes all the resources of the healing art which can raise men from all but actual death. Here also there is an appointed order, and man's wisdom lies in accepting it. This, rather than a fatalistic theory ot Necessity, as being what man cannot, even if he will, resist, seems the thought expressed. The wise man knows when to .slay and when to heal. a time to break down, and a time to build tip"] The grouping reminds us as before of Jerem. i. 10 and may possibly be extended so as to take in a figurative as well as a literal building. We may perhaps trace an allusive reference, if not to the text, yet to the thought which it ex- presses, in St Paul's language in Gal. ii. 18, "If I build again the things which I destroyed I make myself a transgressor." His wisdom lay in recognising that the " fulness of lime" had come for breaking down the old structure of Judaism and building up the new structure of the kingdom of God. Of the mere literal sense we have a striking illustra- tion in the paraphrase of the words of Elisha to Gehazi {2 King^ v. 16) as given in the Christian Year. "Is this a time to plant and build, Add house to house and field to field?" 4. a time to weep] The two couples are naturally grouped together, the first taking in the natural spontaneous expression of individual feeling, the second the more formal manifestation of the feelings in the mourners and wailers of a funeral (Zech. xii. 10, where the same verb is found) and the dancers at a wedding feast. In the parable of the Children in the Market-place our Lord practically inculcates the lesson of the Debater. The Scribes who sneered at the fasts of John's dis- ciples, and condemned the disciples of Jesus for not fasting were as the children whose dramatic funerals and weddings were alike out of place and inopportune, and so the truefollowersafter the Wisdom which "is justified of her children," who recognised that the ascetic and the joyous life had each its true time and season, would not weep to their lamenting .or dance to their pijiing (Matt. xi. 16 — 19). 5. A time to cast away stones] The vagueness of the phrase has naturally given rise to conjectural interpretations. It seems obvious that the words cannot be a mere reproduction of verse 4 and therefore that the "casting away" and the "gathering" of stones must refer to something else than pulling down and building. Possibly we may think, with some interpreters, of the practice of covering fertile lands with vv. 6, 7.] ECCLESIASTES, III. 129 A time to embrace, and a time to refiain from em- bracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; > A time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rent, and a time to sew; stones as practised by an invading army (2 Kings iii. 19) and clearing out the stones of a field or vineyard before planting it (Isai. v. 2). In this case however we fail to see any link uniting the two clauses in the couplet. A possible explanation may be found (as Delitzsch half suggests) in the old Jewish practice, which has passed into the Christian Church, of flinging stones or earth into the grave at a burial, but this leaves the "gathering" unexplained, except so far as it represents the building of a house, and thus contrasts the close of a man's home life with its beginning. In this case the ceremonial of death would be contrasted with the "embracing" of friends or lovers in the second clause. 6. A time to gd, and a time to losc\ The getting or the losing refer primarily, we can scarcely doubt, to what we call property. There are times when it is better and wiser to risk the loss of all we have rather than to set our minds on acquiring more. Something like this lesson we have in our Lord's paradox "whosoever will (wills to) save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake sliall find it" (Matt. xvi. 25). In earthly, as in heavenly, things it is the note of a wise man that he knows when to be content to lose. So the Satirist condennis the folly of those who are content, " Propter vitam vivendi perdere causas." "And for mere life to lose life's noblest ends." JuvEN. Sat. VIII. 84. a time to keep, and a time to cast a7va}'] The second couplet tliough closely allied with the foregoing is not identical with it. What is brought before us here is "keeping" as distinct from "getting," and the voluntarily casting away (2 Kings vii. 15) what we know we have, as distinct from the loss of a profit more or less contingent. And here too, as life passes on, it presents occasions when now this, now that, is the choice of wisdom. So the sailor, in danger of shipwreck, casts out his cargo, his tackling, the "furniture" of his ship (Acts xxvii. iS, KJ, 38). 7. A time to roil, and a time to sciti] The words are commonly con- P'.-cted with the practice of rending the garments as a sign of sorrow (Gen. xxxvii. 29, 34, xliv. 13 ; Job i. 20; 2 Sam. i. 2) and sewing them up again when the season of mourning is past and men return again to the routine of their daily life. It is, however, somewhat against this view that it makes this generalisation practically identical with that of verse 4. The symbolic use of "rending a garment" to represent the division of a kingdom, as in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite (i Kings xi. 50) and therefore of "sewing" for the restoration of unity (so the "seam- ECCLESIASTES O 130 ECCLESIASTES, III. [v. 8. A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; A time of war, and a time of peace. less garment" of John xix. 23 has always been regarded as a type of the unity of Christ's Church) seems to suggest a more satisfying sense. There are seasons when it is wise to risk or even to cause discord and division in families (Matt. x. 34, 35) or schism in Church or State, other seasons when men should strive to restore unity and to be healers of the breach (Isai. Iviii. 12). In the parable of the New Patch upon the old Garment we have an instance of an inopportune sewing which does but make the rent worse (Matt. ix. 16). a tiine to keep silence-, atid a time to speak"] Here again the range of thought has been needlessly limited by interpreters to the silence which belongs to deep sorrow, of which we have an example in the conduct of the friends of Job (Job ii. 12, 13), of the want of which in the sons of the prophets Elisha complained bitterly (2 Kings ii. 3, 5). This is, of course, not excluded, but the range of the law is wider, and takes in on the one hand, the unseasonable talk of the "prating fool" of Prov. x. 8, and on the other the "word spoken in due season" (Prov. xv. 23), to one that is weaiy (Isai. 1. 4), the right word at the right time, in the utterance of which we rightly see a genius akin to inspiration. If it is true at times that speech is silvern and silence golden, there are times when the con- verse also is true, when the word in season is like " apples of gold ( = per- haps, oranges) in a basket of silver" (Prov. xxv. 11). 8. ^l time to love, and a time to hate'] Greek thought again supplies us with a parallel, ■riixei$ 5e Trcjy ou yvwao/j.eada (Tuxppoveiv; iyu) 6', eTrlarafiai yap aprlws on 6 T ix^P^^ rt/Luv is Tocrdvd' ixOaprios, , W5 KoL (piX-qcruu avrlLS, Is re tov cars in the English Version as "for ever," "per- petual," "everlasting," "always," "eternal," and the like. No other meaning but tliat of a duration, the end or beginning of which is hidden from us, and which therefore is infinite, or, at least, indefinite, is ever connected with it in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and this is its uniform sense in this book (chs. i. 4, 10, ii. 16, iii. 14, ix. 6, xii. 5). In post- Biblical Hebrew it passes into the sense of the Greek axQv, for the age, or the 'Morld considered in its relation to time and, on the theory of autliorsliip adopted in the Litrodiiction there is, perhaps, an approxi- mation to that sense here. We must however translate, as the nearest equivalent. He hath set eternity (or, the everlasting) in their heart. The thought expressed is not that of the hope of an immortality, but rather the sense of the Infinite which precedes it, and out of which at last it grows. Man has the sense of an order perfect in its beauty. He has also the sense of a purpose working through the ages from ever- lasting to everlasting, but "beginning" and "end" are alike hidden from him and he fails to grasp it. In modern language he sees not "the beginning and the end," the whence and the whither, of his own being, or of that of the Cosvios. He is oppressed with what German thinkers have named the Welt-Sehtiierz, the world-sorrow, the burden of the problems of the infinite and unfathomable Universe. Here again we have an echo of Stoic language as reproduced by Cicero, ^^ Ipse ante III homo tiatiis est ad mintduin contemplandiim et imitan- ditm'''' (de A'at. Deor. 11. 14. 37). All interpretations resting on later ideas of the "world," as meaning simply the material universe, or worldly pleasures, or worldly wisdom, have to be rejected as incon- sistent with lexical usage. By some writers, however, the word, with a variation in the vowels, has been taken as itself meaning "wisdom," but though this signilication is found in a cognate word in Arabic, it is unknown in Hel)rew. 12. Jor a man to rejoice, and to do good\ There is no instance in O. T. vv. 13—15.] ECCLESIASTES, III. 133 good in his life. And also that every man should eat and 13 drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for m ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it : and God doeth //, that meji should fear before him. That 15 which hath been, is now ; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requirtth that which is past. language of the phrase "do good" being used, like the Greek ev irpaTTeiv, in the sense of "prospering," or "enjoying one's self," and in ch. vii. 20 it can only have its full ethical meaning, such as it has in Ps. xxxiv. 14, xxxvii. 3; Isai. xxxviii. 3. On the whole, therefore, we are led to assign that meaning to it here. Over and above the life of honest labour and simple joys which had been recognised as good before, the seeker has learnt that "honesty is the best policy," that "doing good" (the term is more comprehensive in its range than our "beneficence") is in some sense the best way of getting good. It is not the highest ethical view of the end of life, but it was an advance on his previous conclusion. 13. And also that every mait] The addition of this clause confirms the interpretation just given of the "doing good" of the preceding verse. Had that meant simply enjoyment, this clause would have been an idle repetition. As it is, "doing good" takes its place, as it did with the nobler Epicureans, among the elements of happiness. So Epicurus himself taught that "it is not possible to live happily without also living wisely, and nobly, and justly" (Hiog. Laert. x. i, § 140). 14. I knoio that, whatsoever God doet/i] We ask once again whether we are brought face to face with the thought of an iron destiny immutably fixing even the seeming accidents of life, and excluding man's volition from any share in them, or whether the writer speaks of an order which men may, in the exercise of their freedom, transgress. And the answer, as before, is that the Debater, while he recognises man's freedom, has come to see a purpose and an order even in those accidents. So Epicurus himself taught that it was better to hold even the popular belief as to the Gods than to be in bondage to the dogma of a destiny (Diog. Laert. x. I, § 134). The Eternal Law fulfils itself, "whether men will hear or whether they will forbear." They cannot add to it or take from it, but they retain the ]5ower of obeying or resisting it. It partakes so far of the character which was afterwards ascribed to a special revelation (Rev. xxii. 18, 19). God doeth it, that men should fear before hmi] There is a profound psychological truth in the thought thus expressed. Men may dream that they can propitiate or change an arbitrary will, but no reverential awe, no fear of God, is so deep as that which rises from the contemplation of a Righteousness that does not change. So, in like manner, the unchange- ableness of the Divine Will is made a ground of confidence and hope in the midst of perturbations (Mai. iii. 6). 15. God reqidreth that which is J>ast] Better, seeks after that 134 ECCLESIASTES, III. [vv. i6, 17. 16 And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, ihat wickedness tvas there; and the place of righteousness, 1; that iniquity was there. 1 said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for tlicrc is a time there for every purpose and for every work. wMcli is put to flight. The old thought of the uniformity of sequence in nature and in history which had before seemed oppressive in its monotony, has been balanced by the thought of God's perfection and the beauty of His order, and by the "fear" which grows out of it. It is followed up by a new aspect of the same truth. The past is thought of as vanishing, " put to flight," receding into the dim distance. It might seem to be passing into the abyss of olilivion, but God recalls it (this is obviously the meaning of "require" as used by the translators of the A. V. in its strict etymological sense), brings back the same order, or an analogous order of events, and so history repeats itself. The strange rendering adopted by the Targum and some modern inter- preters, '''God seeks the persecuted" i.e. visits and protects them, though tenable as a translation, introduces an idea quite foreign to the train of thought. 16. I sa~L< binder the Situ the place of judgmeiit'\ The Hebrew gives slightly different forms of the same noun, so as to gain the emphasis, without the monotony, of iteration, where the A.V. has the needless variation of "wickedness" and "iniquity." Either word will do, but it should be the same in both clauses. We enter on another phase of the seeker's thoughts. The moral disorder of the world, its oppressive rulers, its unjust judges, its religious hypocrisies, oppress him even more than the failure of his own schemes of happiness. In ]iart the feeling im- plies a ste]) out of selfishness, sympathy with the sufferers, the percep- tion of what ought to be, as contraste had no conifortei-] The iteration rings like a knell of doom. The words have sometimes been taken as if they meant "they had no advocate, none to plead tlieir cause," but there is no sufficient reason for abandoning the more natural meaning. It was tlie bitterest drop in tiieir cuji, that men met with no sympathy, no visits of consolation such as Job's friends paid him. They found none to pity or to comfort them. So the absence of comforters is the crown of sorrow in Ps. Ixix. 20; Lam. i. 2; Jer. xvi. 7, as its presence was one of the consokations of the bereaved houseliold of Bethany (John xi. 19). It may be noted, that, as far as it goes, tliis picture of the social state in which the Debater found himself is in favour of a later date tlian tliat of Solomon. The picture of that king's reign was, like that of the days of "good (,)ueen I'ess " in our own liistory, one of almost proverbial prosperity; tlie peojile "eating, drinking and making merry" (i Kings iv. 20), and his administration, as far as liis own subjects were concerned, one of "judgment and justice" (i Kings x. 9). It was prol)ably equally true of tire Persian kings and of the Ptolemies that their rule was cruel and oppressive. The picture which Justin gives of the state of Egypt under I'tolemy Philopalor (XXIX. i) and Ptolemy Epiphanes exactly corresponds with that drawn by Koheleth. 3. Yea, better is he than both they] As the utterance of a personal V. 4.] ECCLESIASTES, IV. 139 Again, I considered all travail, and every right work, that 4 for this a man is envied of his neighbour. This is also feeling of despair we have a parallel in the words of Job (iii. ii — 16). As expressing a more generahsed view of life we have multiform echoes of the thought in the Greek writers, of whose intiuence, direct or indirect, the book presents so many traces. Thus we have in Theognis : HavTijJV fikv fj.7J (pduai eirixdovloLffLv dpiarov, fxrjS' ecTiOeij' 01)7015 d^eos rjeXiov' vvTa 5" OTTus uiKiaTa wvXas 'A'tSao ireprjcrac, Kal KeicrduL TroWrjv yrjv iTrapirjadfievoi', " Best lot for men is never to be born, Nor ever see the bright rays of the morn : Next best, when born, to liaste with quickest tread Where Hades' gates are open for the dead. And rest with much earth gathered for our bed." 425—428. Or in Sophocles : /J.7] (pvvai rhv airavra VLKq. \6yov to 5', eVet (pavVf firjvai KeWtv odev wep rjnti, TToXi) divrepov, cjs to.X'-'^to.. " Never to be at all Excels all fame ; Quickly, next best, to pass From whence we came." Ocd. Col. 122 i. More remote but of yet deeper significance is the fact that the same feeling lies at the root of Buddhism and its search after Nirvana (an- nihilation or unconsciousness) as the one refuge from the burden of existence. Terrible as the depression thus indicated is, it is one step higher than the hatred of life which appeared in chs. i. 14, ii. 17, 18. That was simply the weariness of a selfish satiety; this, like the feeling of-C^akya Mouni when he saw the miseries of old age and disease and death, and of the Greek Chorus just quoted, rose from the contempla- tion of the sorrows of humanity at large. It was better not to be than to see the evil work that was done under the sun. In marked contrast with this dark view of life we have the words : " Good were it for that man not to have been born" in Matt. xxvi. 24, as marking out an altogether exceptional instance of guilt and therefore of misery. 4. I considered all travail, andrc'cry right work] The "right work," as in ch. ii. 21, is that which is dexterous and successful, without any marked reference to its moral character. Men exult in such work at the time, but they find it has the drawback of drawing on them the envy and ill-will of their less successful neighbours, and this therefore is also vanity and feeding on wind. I40 ECCLESIASTES, IV. [vv. 5—8. 5 vanity and vexation of spirit. The fool foldeth his hands 6 together, and eateth his own flesh. Better is a handful 7C'i//i quietness, than both the hands full taif/i travail and vexation of spirit. s Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun. There 5. The fool foldeth his hands to^efhcr'\ Simple as the words seem they have received very dilTerent interpretations : (i) The fool (liie word is the same as in ch. ii. 14 — 16, and is that, the prominence of which in both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes serve as a connecting link between the two Books), the man without aim or insii^ht, leading a half brutish life, "folds his hands" in the attitude of indolence (Prov. vi. 10, xxiv. 3,^), and yet even he, with his limited desires, attains to the fruition of those desires, "eats his meat" and rejoices more than the wise and far-sighted who finds liis dexterous and successful work empty and unsatisfying. (So Ginsburg.) For this sense of the words "eateth his flesh," we have the usage of Exod. xvi. 8, xxi. i%\ Isai. xxii. 13; Ezek. xxxix. 17. So taken, this thought coheres with the con- text, and expresses the sense of contrast between the failure of aspiring activity and skill to attain the happiness they aim at, and the fact that those who do not even work for enjoyment get as full a share of it— perhaps, even a fuller — as those who do. (2) The last clause has been interpreted, as in the A.V., as meaning literally that the slothful man "consumes his own flesh," i.e. reduces himself literally to the poverty and starvation which culminates in horrors such as this, as in Isai. ix. 10 ; Jer. xix. 9, or, figuratively, pines away under the corroding canker of envy and discontent. I""or the latter meaning, however, we have no authority in the language of the Old Testament, and so taken, the passage becomes only a warning, after the manner of the Proverbs, against the sin of sloth, and as such, is not in harmony with the dominant despondency of this stage of the writer's experience. The view which sees in verse 5, the writer's condemnation of sloth, and in verse 6 the answer of the slothful, seems out of keeping with the context. 6. Better is a handful with quietness'] The preposition is in both clauses an interpolation, and we should read " a handful of repose, ... two handfuls of travail and feeding on wind." In form the saying pre- sents a parallel to I'rov. xv. 17, '' licttcr is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith ;" but the thought is obviously of a less ethical character. The feeling exjiressed in verses 5 and 6 (the latter confirming the interpretation just given of the former) is such as we may think of as rising in the mind of an ambitious statesman or artist striving after fame, as he looks on iha doke far niente o{ 0. lazzaronc at Naples, half-naked, basking in the sun, and revelling in the enjoy- ment of his water-melon. The one would at such a time, almost change places with the -\ The words have been differently inter- preted : (i) "And to draw near to hear is better than to offer tlie sacrifice... ;" and (2) "To he?-r ( = ol)ey) is nearer (i.e. is the truer way for thy foot to take) than to offer the sacrifice..." The general spirit of the maxim or precept is identical with that of r Sam. .\v. 22; Ps. xl. 6 — 8, 1. 8 — 14, li. 16, 17. The "sacrifice of fools" as in Prov. xxi. 27 is that offered by the ungodly, and therefore an abomination. for they consider not that they do e-ji/] The A. V. is perhaps sufficiently expressive of the meaning, hut the following various renderings have been .suggested : (i) "they know not, so that they do evil." /.(■. their ignorance leads them to sin ; (2) "they (those whoobey, hear) know not to do evil," i.e. their obedience keeps them from it. Of tiiese (i) seems preferable. Protests against a superstition that was not godliness, the ECCLESIASTES TO 146 ECCLESIASTES, V. [v. 3. thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God : for God is in heaven, and thou upon 3 earth : therefore let thy words be few. For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool's voice is SeKTiSaifiovia of Ihe Greeks (Acts xvii. ■22), were, it need scarcely be said, part of the current teaching of Epicurus and his fol'owers. So Lucretius ; " Nee pietas ullast velatum soepe videri Vertier ad lapidem atque omnes acccdere ad aras, Nee procumliere humi prostratuni ct panderc palnias Ante deum dehd^ra, nee aras sanguine muUo Spargere quadrupedum, ncc votis nectere vota, Sed mage pacata posse omnia mcnte tueri." "True worship is not found' in veiled heads Turned to a statue, nor in drawing near To many an altar, nor in form laid low Upon the ground, nor sprinkling it with blood Of bulls and goats, nor piling vows on vows ; But rather in the power which all surveys With mind at rest and calm." Dt' Rer. Nat. V. 1 1 98— 1203. 2. Be not rash with thy mouthy The rule follows the worshipper from the threshold into the Temple-court and tells him how he is to act there. We are reminded of our Lord's warning against "vain repeti- tions," after the manner of the heathen (Matt. vi. 7). The second clause, though parallel to the first, carries the thought further. The "heart" or mind of the worshipper also is to be calm and deliiierate. We are not to turn every hasty wish into a prayer, but to ask ourselves whether it is one of the things for which we ought to pray. Here also • the precept has its analogies in the counsels of the wise of heart outside the covenant of Israel. See especially Juven. Sat. x. therefore let thy luords be few\ The Son of Sirach gives the same rule for our speech when in the presence of the "great men" of eartii (Ecclus. xxxii. 9), and a fortiori the reverence due to God should shew itself in the same form as our reverence for them. In a Talmudic jirecept we find the rule in nearly the same words, "the words of a man should always be few in the presence of God" {Berachoth, 61 a, quoted by Ginsburg). Comp. also Hooker E. P. I. 2. § 3. 3. For a dream cometh throti<;h the iiitdtitiidc of business] The one psychological fact is meant to illustrate the other. The mind that has lost the power to re-collect itself, haunted and harassed by the cares of many things, cannot enjoy the sweet and calm repose of a dreamless slumber, and that fevered state with its hot thoughts and wild fancies is but too faithful a picture of the worshipper who jiours out a multi- tude of wishes in a "multiturle of words." His very prayers are those of a dreamer. It seems oljvious, from the ])arlicle that connects this with the preceding verse, that the maxim refers specially to these 4-6.] ECCLESIASTES, V. 147 known by multitude of words. When thou vowest a vow 4 unto God, defer not to pay it ; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that s thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin ; 6 utterances of the fool and not merely to the folly of his speech in general. The words "is known," as the italics shew, have nothing answering to them in the Hebrew. The same verb was meant to serve for both the clauses. 4. IVIicn thou z'ozvesf a vozu imto God\ The words are almost a reproduction of Deut. xxiii. 11 — 24. They point to a time when vows, such as are here referred to, entered largely into men's personal religion. Memorable instances of such vows are found in the lives of Jacob (Gen. xxviii. 20), Jephthah (Judg. xi. 30), Saul (i Sam. xiv. 24). In later Judaism they came into a fresh prominence, as seen especially in the Corban of Mark vii. 11, the revival of the Nazarite vow (Acts xviii. 18, XX. 23; Joseph. Wars il. 15, p. i), and the oath or anathema of Acts xxiii. 21; and one of the treatises of the Mishna {N'cdarim) w2iS devoted to an exhaustive casuistic treatment of the whole subject. In Matt. V. 23 we find the recognised rule of the Pharisees, "Thou shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths," as the conclusion of the whole matter. This the Debater also affirmed, but he, in his deeper wisdom, \\cnt further, and bade men to consider well what kind of vows they made. for he hath no pleasure in fools'] The construction of the sentence in the Hebrew is ambiguous, and may give either (i) that suggested by the interpolated words in the A. V., or (2) "there is no pleasure in fools," i.e. they please neither God nor man, or (3) "there is no fixed purpose in fools," i.e. they are unstable in their vows as in everything else. Of these interpretations (2) has most to commend it. In Prov. xx. 25, "It is a snare... after vows to make inquiry," we have a striking parallel. 5. Better is it thai thoic shouldest not voiv\ The point which the Teacher seeks to press is obviously the optional character of vows. They form no part of the essentials of religion, they are to be deprecated rather than otherwise; but to make them, and then delay or evade their fulfdment, is to tamper with veracity and play fast and loose with conscience, and so is fatally injurious. The casuistry condemned by our Lord (Matt, v. 33, xxiii. 16 — 22) shews how fertile was the ingenuity of Scribes in devising expedients of this nature. 6. Suffer not thy mouth to eausc thy flesh to sin] The "mouth" may refer either to the thoughtless utterance of the rash vow, such as tliat of Jephlhah (Jutlg. xi. 30) or Saul (i Sam. xiv. 24), or to the ajipetite which leads the man who has made a vow, sav of the Nazarite lyjie, to indulge in the drink or food wliicii he had bound himself to renounce. The former mearung seems more in harmony with the con- text. The latter clause is translated by many Commentators to bring punishment (the expiation for sin) tipon thy flesh, but the A.V. is ECCLESIASTES, V. [v. 7. neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error : wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy 7 the work of thine hands? For in the multitude of dreams probably correct. The "flcsli" stands as in Gen. vi. 3; Ps. Ixxviii. 39, and in New Testament language (Rom. vii. 18, 25), for the corrupt sensuous element in man's nature. The context forbids the extension of the precept to sins of speech in general, as in tlie wider teacliing of James iii. i — 12. ncillicr say thou bcfovf the aiii;cl\ The words have been taken by most Jewish and some Christian interpreters as referring to tlie "angel" in tiic strict sense ot the term, who was belicveil in Rabbinic traditions to preside over the Temple or the altar, and who, it is assumed, would punish the evasion of the vow on the frivolous excuse that it had been spoken inconsiderately, i Cor. xi. 13 and i Tim. v. 21 are referred to as illustrations of the same thought. This interpretation, however, seems scarcely in harmony with the generally Hellenised tone of the book, and in Ilagg. i. 13 and Mai. ii. 7 we have distinct evidence that the term had come to be applied to prophets and priests, as in 2 Cor. viii. 23 and Rev. i. 20 it is used of ministers in the Christian Church, and this, it is obvious, gives a tenable, and. on the whole, a preferable meaning. The man comes to the priest with an oflering less in value than he had vowed, or postpones the fullilment of his vow indefinitely, and using the technical language of Num. xv. 25, cxi)lains that the vow had been made in ignorance, and therefore that he was not bound to fulfil it to the letter. Other commentators again (GriitzJ look on the word as describing a subordinate officer of the Temple. ivhercforc should God be angry at thy voice] The question is in form like those of Ezra iv. 22, vii. 23, and is rhetorically more emphatic than a direct assertion. The words are a more distinct assertion of a Divine Government seen in earthly rewards and punishments than the book has as yet i)resented. The vow made, as was common, to secure safety or pro>jpcriiy, could have no other result than loss and, it might be, ruin, if it were vitiated from the first l)y a rashness which took refuge in dishonesty. 7. For in the multitude of dreams] The order of tlie words in the A. V. is not that of the Hebrew, which gives For in the multitude of dreams and 7'anities and many coords, but is adojiled by many commenta- tors as representing a more correct text. The iiUroducli(jn of the word "vanities" (the "divers"' of the A. V. has, as the italics shew, nothing answering to it in the Hebrew,) indicates the purpose of the writer in thus noting, the weak points of jicjpular religionism. They also, the dreams which seemed to them as messages from heaven, the "many words" of long and resounding prayers, took their |)lacc in the induction which was to prove that "all is vanity." .So Theophrastus (Charael. XVI.) describes the superstitious man (SetaiSa^/awf) as agitated when he sees a vision and straightway going off to consult a soothsayer. In con- trast with the garrulous rashness and the inconsiderate vows and the unwise reliance on dreams which Judaism was learning from heathenism :.] ECCLESIASTES, V. 149 and many words there are also divers vanities : but fear thou God. If thou seest the oppression of the poor, ancj violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there he higher than they. (Matt. vi. 7) Koheleth falls back on the "fear of God," the temper of reverential and silent awe, which was "the beginning of wisdom" (Prov. i. 7; Job xxviii. 28). It is significant that here again the teaching of Koheleth has a parallel in that of the Epicurean poet who traces the "religions" of mankind (in his sense of the word) in no small measure to the influence of dreams. "Quippe etenim jam tum divum mortalia SKcla Egregias animo facies vigilante videbant, Et magis in somnis mirando corporis auctu." "Even then the race of mortal men would see With waking soul the mighty forms of Gods, And in their dreams with shapes of wondrous size." LucRET. De Rer. Nat. v. 1169 — 71. 8. If thoii seest the oppression of the foot-] From the follies of the religious life we jjass to the disorders of the political. As in eh. iv. 16, the thinker looks on those disorders of the world, "the poor man's wrong, the proud man's contumely," and teaches others how he has learnt to think of them. The words "wonder not" tells us with scarcely the shadow of a doubt who had been his teachers. In that counsel we have a distinct echo from one of the floating maxims of Greek proverbial wisdom, from the '}slrib^v Oaufxl^eiv (" wonder at nothing") of Pythagoras, and Cebes {Tabitla, p. 2,^2), which has become more widely known through the Nil adniirari of Horace {Epist. I. 6. i). Why men were not to wonder at the prevalence of oppression is explained afterwards. The word for " province" may be noted as one disunclly belonging to later Hebrew, found chiefly in the books of the Persian period, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and Daniel ; once only in those of earlier date, i Kings xx. 14 — 17. for hi that is higlicr than the hi!^hest'\ The first impression made by the Verse is that the Debater tells men not to wonder or be dismayed at the prevalence of wrong, on the ground that God is higher than the highest of the tyrants of the earth and will in the end punisli their wrong-doing. 80 understood, the first and the last "higher" both refer to " God," or, as some take it, the last only, the first referring to the king as distinct from satra[)S or other officers, and the train of tliought is supposed to be ." Wonder not with the wonder of despair, at the seeming triumph of evil. The Supreme Judge (ch. iii. 17) will one day set all things right." The list " higher" is however plural in the Hebrew, and if it be understood of God, it must be by a somewhat unusual construction connecting it with the plural form (Elohim) of the I50 ECCLESIASTES, V. [w. 9, lo. 9 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all : the king him- lo sc/f is served by the field. He that loveth silver shall not name of God. We have, it may be noted, another example of a like construction in the use of the plural form for Creator in ch. xii. i, and for " the Holy" in Prov. ix. 10, xxx. 3. Over and above the grammatical difficulties, however (which, as has been shevVn, are not insuperable), it may be said that this thought is hardly in keeping wilh the tone of the Debater's mind at this stage of his progress. Belief in the righteous government of God can hardly remove, though it may perhaps silence, the wonder which men feel at the prevalence of evil. It seems better accordingly to fall back upon another interpretation. The observer looks upon the State of the Persian or Syrian or Eg^'ptian Monarchy and sees a system of Satraps and Governors which works like that of the Pachas in modern Asiatic Turkey. There is one higher than the high one, the king who is despotic over the satraps : there are others (the court favourites, king's friends, eunuchs, chamberlains) who are higher or, at least, of more power, than both together, each jealously watching the others, and bent on self-aggrandisement. Who can wonder that the result should be injustice and oppression? The system of government was rotten from the highest to the lowest, suspicion and distrust pervading its whole administration. Comp. Aristotle's description of Asiatic monarchies as suppressing all public spirit and mutual confidence [Pol. V. 11). It may be suggested, lastly, that the enigmatic form of the maxim may have been de!il)erately chosen, so that men might read either the higher or the lower inter- pretation into it, according to their capacities. It was a "word to the wise" after the measure of their wisdom. The grave irony of such an ambiguous utterance was quite after the Teacher's method. See notes on ch. xi. i, 2. 9. Moreover the profit of the earth is for all] The verse is difficult and has been very variously interpreted. The most satisfactory render- ings follow : But the profit of a land every way is a king for the field under tillage, or, as some take the words, a king devoted to the field. In either case the main sense is the same. The writer contrasts the misery of the Oriental government of his time with the condition of Judah under the model kings who gave themselves chiefly to the develop- ment of the resources of the country by agriculture, such ct^. as Uzziah who "loved husbandry" (2 Chron. xxvi. 10). This gives, it is obvious, a much better sense than the rendering that "the king is served by the field" or "is subject to the field," i.e. dependent on it. Assuming the Alexandrian origin of the liook, we may perhaps see in the maxim a gentle hint to the Ptolemy of the time being to improve his agricultural administration and to foster the growing export-trade in corn. 10. lie that loveth silver] The sequence of thought led the Debater from the evils of the love of money as seen in mis-government to those which are seen in the life of the individual man. The con- spicuous fact was the insatiableness of that passion for money; vv. II, 12.] ECCLESIASTES, V. 151 be satisfied with silver ; nor he that loveth abundance with increase : this is also vanity. When goods increase, they n are increased that eat them : and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes ? The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he 12 "Semper avarus eget; hunc nulla pecunia replet." "The miser still is poor, no money fills his purse." JuvEN. Sat. XIV. 139. The second clause may be taken either as in the A. V. as a maxim He who clings to wealth (the word implies the luxury that accompanies weallh as in Ps. xxxvii. 16; i Chron. xxix. 16; Isai. Ix. 5), there is no fruit thereof, or as a question, Who clings to wealth? There is no fruit thereof, i. e. no real revemie or return for the labour of acquiring it. In this the Teacher found another illustration of his text that "all is vanity." 11. When goods increase, they are increased that eat them] The fact is one which has met the gaze of the moralists of all countries. A large household, numerous retainers, these are but so many elements of trouble. In the dialogue of Croesus and Solon (Herod. I. 32), yet more closely in that of Pheraulas and Sacian (quoted by Ginsburg) in Xeno- phon [Cyrop. VIII. 3, pp. 35 — 44), we have distinct parallels. The latter presents so striking a resemblance as to be worth quoting, "Do you think, Sacian, that I live with the more pleasure the more I possess.... By having this abundance, I gain merely this, that I have to guard more, to distribute more to others, and to have the trouble of taking care of more; for a great many domestics now demand of me their food, their drink, and their clothes. ..Whosoever, therefore, is greatly pleased with the possession of riches will, be assured, feel much annoyed at the expenditure of them." saving the beholding of them zvith their eyes\ So Horace paints the miser : "Congestis undique saccis Indormis inhians, et tanquam parcere sacris Cogeris, aut pictis tanquam gaudere tabellis." "Sleepless thou gazest on thy heaped-up bags. And yet art forced to hold thy hand from them, As though they were too sacred to be touched, Or were but painted pictures for thine eyes." Sat. I. I. (>S. 12. The sleep of a labouring man is sweet] We may probably, as suggested in the "Ideal Biography" of the Introaiiction ch. ni., see in this reflection the reminiscence of a state with which the writer had once been familiar, and alter which, now that it had passed away, he yearned regretfully. Again we get on the track of the maxims of Epicurean teachers. So Horace; 152 ECCLESIASTES, V. [w. 13—15. eat little or much : but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. 13 There is a sore evil ivJiich I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. M But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a J.S son, and tJiere is nothing in his liand. As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he "Somnus agicstium Lenis virorum non humiles donios Fastidit umbrosamque rijiam, Non Zephyris agitata Tenipe." " Gentle slumber scorneth not The ploughman's poor and lowly cot, Nor yet the bank with sheltering shade, Nor Tempo with its breezy glade." Od. HI. I. i\ — 24. See the passage from Virgil, Gcorg. iv., already quoted in the note on ch. ii. 24, and "Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, Than doth a rich cmbroider'd canopy To kings that fear their subjects' treachery? O, yes, it doth ; a thousand-fold it doth. And to conclude, the shepherd's homely curds, His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle. His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade. All which secure and sweetly he enjoys, Is far beyond a prince's delicates. His viantls sparkling in a golden cup. His body couched in a curious bed, When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him." SHAKtsPEARE, Ilcnry VI. Act ii. Sc 5. 13. riches kept for the clutters thereof '\ Yet another aspect of the evils attendant on riches is brought before us, as in ch. ii. 18, 19. Not only do they fail to give any satisfying joy, but tire man who reckoned on founding a family and leaving his heaped-up treasures to his son gains nothing but anxieties and cares, loses his wealth by some unfore- seen chance, and leaves his son a pauper. By some commentators the possessive pronoun in " ///> hand " (verse I4) is referred to the father. The crowning sorrow for him is that he begets a son and then dies himself in poverty. The upshot of tiie two constructions is, of course, practically the same. 16. As he came forth of his mother s tuomU] The words so closely resemble those of Job i. 21 that it is natural to infer that the writer hail that history in his mind as an example of a sudden reverse of fortune. vv. 16-20.] ECCLESIASTES, V. 153 came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may- carry away in his hand. And this also t's a sore evil, t/mf in i5 all points as he came, so shall he go : and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind? All his days also 17 he eateth in darkness, and /le hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness. Behold that which I have seen : it is good and comely is for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him : for it is his portion. Every man 19 also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God. For 20 In hoth, earth, as the mother of all living, is thought of as the womb out of which each man comes (Ps. cxxxix. i.s) and to which he must return at last, carrying none of his earthly possessions with him. Comp. a striking parallel in Ecclus. xl. i. 16. what profit hath he that hath laboured for the tvind?^ The ever- recurring question (ch. i. 3, ii. 11, iii. 9) rises once again, "What profit?" In "labouring for the wind" we have a phrase almost identi- cal with the "feeding on wind" or, as some render it, the "striving after the wind" which is the key-note of the whole book. As in Prov. xi. 29; Isai. xxvi. iS; Job xvi. 3 the "wind" is the emblem of emptiness and nothingness. 17. he eateth in darhiicss] The words are so natural a figure of a cheerless life with no "sweetness and light" in it (comp. l\Iic. vii. 8), tliat there is something almost ludicrous in the prosaic literalism which interprets them, either (i) of the miser as eating in the dark to save candlelight, or (2) working all day and waiting till nightfall before he sits down to a meal. much sorrow and wrath with his sichness'\ Better, and sickness and wrath. The Heljrew gives a conjunction and not a preposition. The words have been variously taken, (i) "u much disturbed and hath grief and Z'exation," (2) ^\s;rieveth himself much, and oh ! for his sorrow and hatred,'" but the general meaning remains the same. Koheleth teaches, as St Paul does, that " they that will be [i.e. set their hearts on being) rich, pierce themselves through with many sorrows" (i Tim. vi. 6). 18. Behold that which I have scen\ The thinker returns to the maxim of a calm regulated Epicureanism, as before in chs. ii. 24, iii. 22. If a man has little, let him be content with that little. If he has much, let him enjoy it without excess, and without seeking more. In the combination of "good" and "comely" we have perhaps an endeavour to reproduce the familiar Greek combination of the ar^atov and the fcaXov. 19. this is the gift of God^ The words indicate a return to the sense of dependence on the Divine bounty, which we have seen in 154 FXCLESIASTES, VI. [v. i. he shall not much remember the days of his life ; because God answeretli ////;/ in the joy of his heart. C There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it clis. ii. ■24, iii. 13. Life it'iclf, and the outward goods of life, few or many, and the power to enjoy these, all are alike God's gifts. 20. lie shall n.ot muck renumber the days of his life] This follows the order of the Hebrew and gives a satisfying meaning: Tiie man who lias learnt the secret of enjoyment is not anxious about the days of his life, does not brood even over its transitoriness, but takes each day tranquilly, as it comes, as God's gift to him. By some commentators, however, the sentence is construed so as to give just the opposite sense, ^' He remcnibcrcth (or should remember) that the days of his life arc vot vuiny,''' i.e. never loses' sight of the shortness of human life. It is diffi- cult to see how the translators of the A. V. could have been led to their marginal reading " 'J'houi^h he give not much, yet he remembereth the days of his life." because Godanszverethhim in the Joy of his hearf] The verb has been very variously rendered, (i) ^^ God occupies him loith thejoy...," or (2) '^God makes }iim sing wit h the joy...,'''' or (3) "God caiisctk him to work for the enjoyment...," or (4) " God makes all amrwer (i.e. correspond with) his wishes," or (5) ^'God himself co/yesponds to his joy" i.e. is felt to approve it as harmonizing, in its calm evemiess, with His own blessed- ness. The last is, ])erhaps, that which has most to commend it. So taken, the words find a parallel in the teaching of Kpicurus, "The Blessed and the Immortal neither knows trouble of its own nor causeth it to others. Wherefore it is not influenced either by wrath or favour," (Diog. Laert. x. i. 139). The tranquillity of the wise man mirrors, the Teacher implies, the tranquillity of God. So Lucretius; •'Omnis enim per se divum natura necessest, Immortali ccvo summa cum pace fruatur, Semota ab nostris rebus sejunctaque longe ; Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis, Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nil indiga nostri. Nee bene promeritis capitur neque tangitur ira." "The nature of the Gods must need enjoy Life everlasting in supreme repose, Far from our poor concerns and separate : For from all jmin exempt, exempt from risks, Kich in its own wealth, neetling nought of ours, 'Tis neither soothed by gifts nor stirred by wrath." Dc Rer. A'at. II. 646 — 651. CIIArTER VI. 1. Tho-e is an ct'il which I have seen under the .?//«] The picture is substantially the same as that of ch. iv. 7, 8. The repetition is charac- vv. 2, 3-] ECCLESIASTES, VI. 155 is common among men : a man to whom God hath given a riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it : this is vanity, and it is an evil disease. If a man beget an hundred chil- 3 dreti, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial ; I say, that an untimely birth is better than teristic, consciously or unconsciously, of the pessimism from which the writer has not yet emancipated himself. He broods over the same thought, chews, as it were, the "cud of bitter fancies" only, '"'' semper eandcin canens caniilcnain." Here the picture is that of a man who has all outward goods in abundance, but he just lacks that capacity for enjoyment which is (as in ch. v. 20) the '"gift of God," and he dies childless and a stranger becomes the heir. We are reminded of the aged patriarch's exclamation, " I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus" (Gen. xv. 2). 3. If a man beget an hundred children\ A case is put, the very opposite of that described in the preceding verse. Instead of being childless the i^ich man may have children, and children's children ; may live out all his days. What then? Unless his "soul be filled with good," unless there is the capacity for enjoyment, life is not worth living. Still, as before, "it were good never to have been born." We may probably trace an allusive reference to Artaxerxes Mnemon, who is reported to have had 1 15 children, and who died of grief at the age of 94, at the suicide of one of his sons, and the murder of another, both caused by a third son, Ochus, who succeeded him (Justin, X. i). and also that he liave no l>iiriaf\ The sequence of thought seems at first strange. Why should this be, from the writer's standpoint, as tiie climax of sorrow? Why should he who had noted so keenly the vanities of life put seemingly so high a value on that which comes when life is over and done with ? Some writers have felt this so strongly, that they have suggested the interpretation, '■'■even if there be no grave ■waiting for him,'''' i.e. even if he were to live for ever. The natural meaning is, however, tenable enough, and we have once more an echo of Greek teaching. Solon had taught that we are not to call any man happy before his death, and by implication, in his story of the sons of Tellus, had made the prospect of posthumous honour an element of happiness (Herod. I. 30). So, in like manner, it was the direst of woes for a man to know that he "should be buried with the burial of an ass" (Jer. xxii. 19), or, in Homeric phrase, that his body should be "cast out to dogs and vultures." How could any man, however rich and powerful, be sure that that fate might not be in store for him ? On the assumption of the late date of the book, there may be a reference to the death of Artaxerxes Ochus, who was murdered by the eunuch Bagoas, and his body thrown to the cats. Possibly, Koheleth himself may have had some reason for an anxious doubt, whether the honours 156 ECCLESIASTES, VI. [vv. 4—7. 4 hev For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in dark- 5 ness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. More- over he hath not seen the sun, nor known ony thing: this 6 hath more rest than the other. Yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, yet hath he seen no good : do not all go to one place ? 7 All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appe- of sepulture would be his. If, as seems likely, he was a stranger in a strange land, alone and with no child to succeed him, periia]is with a name cast out as evil or heretical, there was small chance of his being laid to rest in the sepulchre of his fathers. See the "Ideal Biography," Introduction, ch. III. an untimely birth is better than he] The thought of ch. iv. 3 is reproduced, but in a somewhat less generalized form. There, never to have been born, is asserted, after the manner of the Greek maxims quoted in the notes, to be better than existence of any kind. Here the assertion is limited to the comparison with the joyless pursuit of wealth. The "untimely birth" was the natural emblem of all abortive enter- prise (Job iii. 16; Ps. Iviii. 8). 4. he comdh in with 7'anity'\ The pronoun in the English Version refers the clause to the man who has heaped up riches, and had a long life with no real enjoyment. Probalily, however, the words describe, in harmony with the thought of the preceding verse, the portion of the still-born child. It comes and goes, and is forgotten, and never sees the sun, and tastes not the misery of life. The last clause of verse 5, there is rest to this rather than to that ("rest" idealised, as in Job iii. 13, as in itself all luit the supreme good that man can strive after), seems to make this construction certain. Possibly, however, the de- scription of verse 4 is made to apply in part to both terms of the comparison, so that it may be seen, on which side, both having so much in common, the Iwlance of advantage lies. On "seeing the sun" as an equivalent for living, see chs. vii. 11, xi. 7; Job iii, 16 j I's. xlix. 20. 6. Yea, thotii^h he live a thousand years twice told] The ■w'eari- ness of life carries the thinker yet furtJier. Carry it to the furthest point conceivable, and still the residt is the same. The longer it is, the fuller of misery and woe. The thought finds, as before, a parallel in the speech of Solon to Crcesus (Herod, i. 32). The man goes to the same place, — to the dark, dreary world of Sheol, perhaps even to a more entire anniiiilation than was im]ilied in the Hebrew thought of that imscen world, — as the abortive birth, with nothing but an accumulated experience of wretchedness. Dejiression could go no further. See the poem of Omar Khayyam in the Appendix. 7. All the labour 0/ man is fir his mouth'] i.e. for self-preservation and enjoyment. That is assumeil to be the universal aim, and yet even that is not satisfied. The " appetite, " literally soul (not the higher, vv. 8— lo.] ECCLESIASTES, VI. 157 tite is not filled. For what hath the wise more than the s fool ? what hath the poor, that knoweth to walk before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering 9 of the desire : this is also vanity and vexation of spirit. That' which hath been is named already, and it is known 10 but the sensuous, element in man's nature), still craves for more. Desire is progressive, and insatiable. 8. J-'or what hath the wise more than the fool ?^ The question so far is easy. In this matter, the gifts of intellect make no difference. The wise, no less than the fool, is subject to the pressure of bodily necessities, and has to labour for them. The second clause is some- what less clear. Of the many interpretations that have been given, two have most to commend them, (i) supplying the subject of com- parison from the first clause, what advantage bath the poor that knows to walk before the living [i.e. that has learnt the art to live) over the fool {uho is the mere slave of appetite)! what does • wisdom and self-control and f-cedom from the snares of wealth really profit him ? and (2), treating the sentence as elliptical, What advantage hath the poor over him who knows how to walk before the living [i.e. the man of high birih or station, who lives in public, ivith the eyes of men on hiin)'i The latter explanation has the merit of giving a more balanced symmetry to the two clauses. The question, with its implied answer, seems at first at variance with the praise of the lot of the labouring poor in ch. v. 12, "Don't trust," the writer seems to say in his half-cynical, half-ironical mood, "even to poverty, as a condition of happiness. I'he poor man is as open to cares and anxieties as the man of culture and refinement. After all, poor and rich stand on nearly the same level." 9. Better is the sight of the tyes than the wandering of the desire] Literally; than the wandering of the sovil. The truth is substantially that embodied in the fable of "the dog and his shadow" and in proverbs like "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." To enjoy what we actually see, i.e. present opportunities, however limited, is better than the cravings of a limitless desire, "wandering" at will through all the region of possibilities. In that wandering, there is once more the feeding upon wind. Perhaps, however, that sentence is passed with an intentional ambiguity, characteristic of the writer (see note on verse 9), upon the actual present enjoyment, as well as on the unsatisfied desire, or upon the bare fact that the former with its lower aims is Ijctler than the latter with its higher ones. 10. 7'hat xvliich hath been is named already'] The maxim is enig- matic. As viewed by many commentators, it asserts that man is the creature of a destiny, which he cannot resist. Long ago, in the far eternity, his name has been writtten, and what he will be. He cannot plead against the Power that is mightier than himself, i.e. against God. There is nothing left but submission. So taken, the words have a parallel in all utterances in the Bible, or out of it, that assert, or seem 158 ECCLESIASTES, VI. [w. 11,12. that it IS man : neither may he contend with him that is 11 mightier than he. Seeing there be many things that in- 12 crease vanity, what ts man the better? For who knoweth what z's good for man in //i/s Vil'c, all the days of his vain to assert, an absolutely predestinating fatalism (Isai. xlv. 9; Acts xv. 18; Rom. ix. 20). In such a fatalism, reconciled in some way or other with man's freedom and responsibility, both the Stoics ancl Pharisees believed, and so far there would be nothing strange in finding a like maxim in a book which contains so many mingled and heterogeneous elements, both Greek and Jewish, of oscillating thought. There are, however, what seem sufficient reasons for rejecting this interpretation. The word for "already," which occurs only in this book (chs. i. 10, ii. 12, iii. 15), is never used of the eternity of the Divine decrees, but, as the passages referred to shew, of "that which belongs essentially to human history; that for "mightier," found in the O. T. only here and in Ezr. iv. 20; Dan. ii. 40, 42, iv. 3, vii. 7, is not used, in any of these passages, of God. The sequence of thought leads the writer to dwell on the shortness of man's life, rather than on its subjection to a destiny. The follow ing explanation gives that secjuence more clearly. What he is, long ago his name was called. In the last words we find a reference to Gen. ii. 7, where the name of Adaju (=man) is connected wx'Ca Adamah(^ — X\^& ground), as homo was, by older philo- logists, derived ex humo. The very name of man bore witness to his frailty. This being so, he cannot take his stand in the cause, which one "mightier" than himself pleads against him. Death is that mightier one, and will assert his power. So taken, the thought is continuous and harmonious throughout. 11. there be viany thiiii^s that increase vanityi\ The Hebrew noun, as so often throughout the book, may stand either for thiiv:;s or wonts. In the former case, the maxim points to the pressure of alTairs, what we call "business," the cares about many things, which make men feel the hollowness of life. In the latter, it probably refers to the specu- lative discussions on the chief good, destiny, and tlie like, which were rife in the schools both of Jews and Greeks, and finds a parallel in ch. xii. 12, and in Milton's description of like debates, as to "Fixed fate, freewill, fore-knowledge absolute; Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy." The latter fits in best with the exjilanation which refers the previous verse to the Divine decrees, the former wiih that which has been atlopted here. luhat is man the better"] Literally, what profit (the word is another form of that which occurs so frequently), what outcome, is there for man? 12. who kno'veth what is good for man] We have once more the distinctive formula of Pyrrhonism. " Who knows?" was the sceptic's question, then as at all times. See note on ch. iii. ". i. Alter all discussions on the supreme good, some pointing to pleasure, and some V. I.] ECCLESIASTES, VII. 159 life which he spendeth as a shadow? for who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun? A good name is better than precious ointment ; and the 7 to virtue, and some to apathy, who can give a definite and decisive answer? Life remained alter all vain, and not worth living. See again the poem of Omar Khayyam in the Appendix. which he spendeth as a shadow^ The thought was so natural as to be all but universal. It had been uttered by Job (viii. 9), and by David (i Chron.xxix. 15). It was uttered also by Sophocles : opia yap tj/jlus ovoii> ovras aXXo, TrA?}!* et'SwX', oaoLTrep ^iJofiev, rj Koixprjv CKidv. "In this I see that we, all we that live. Are but vain shadows, unsubstantial dreams." Aias, 127. fo7- who can tell a ?nan] Man's ignorance of the future, of what may become of children or estate, is, as before in chs. ii. 18, 19 ; iv. 7, another element in the "vanity" of human life. Granted that it is long and prosperous to the end, still the man is vexed or harassed with the thought that his work may be all undone, his treasures wasted, his plans frustrated. CHAPTER VII. 1. A ^ood name is better than precious ointmenti The sequence of thought is interrupted, and the writer, instead of carrying on the induc- tion which is to prove that all is vanity, moralizes on the other results of his experience. He has learnt to take a relative estimate of m hat men count good or evil, truer than that which commonly prevails among them. It lies almost in the nature of the case, that these moralizings should take a somewhat discontinuous form, like that, e.g. of the Fensee's of Pascal or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the entries, let us say, which the thinker entered, day by day, in his tablets or on his codex. They are marked, however, by a sufticient unity of tone. The same pensive cast of thought is found in all, and it raises the thinker out of a mere self-seeking, self-indulgent Epicureanism into a wider and nobler sympathy. He rises as on the "stepping-stones" of his "dead self" to higher things. Nor are the maxims indeed without a certain unity of form, and the three words "it is better" in verses i, 5, 8 serve as a connecting link. The words and the maxims that follow in verses 2 — 5 have naturally been a stumblingblock to those who saw in Koheleth nothing but the advocate of a sensual voluptuousness, and with the desperate courage of men maintaining a theory, they argue (I take Griitz as the representative of a school) that these are not the thoughts of the Debater himself, but of some imaginary opponent of the ascetic Essene type, against whom he afterwartis enters his protest. The view is, it is believed, just as untenable as that of the interpreters of the l6o ECCLESIASTES, VII. [v. 2. 2 day of death than the day of one's birth. // is better to opposite school, who see in the oft-rcpcated precepts counselling mode- rate enjoyment nothing but the utterances of an ideal Epicurean, set up for the purpose of being knocked down. In the maxim which opens the series there is an alliterative em- phasis, which is fairly represented by the German translation (Knobel) "Besser gtit Gaik/it ah giiti; GcrUche. The good name [sZ/cm) is better than good ointment {shemeit), echoing in this respect the words of Song Sol. i. 3, "A good name is better than good nard," is perliaps the nearest English approximation in this respect. The maxim itself indicates a craving for something higher than tlie per- fumed oil, which was the crowning luxury of Eastern life (Ps. xlv. 8; Amos vi. 6; Luke vii. 37; Matt. xxvi. 7), even the praise and ad- miration of our fellow-men. To live in their memories, our name as a sweet odour that fills the house, is better than the most refined enjoyment. The student of the Gospel history will recall the contrast between .the rich man who fared sumptuously every day"tl-idhontes, iSei yap tJ^oSx avWoyov trotov^ih'ovs Tov (piivra Oprjvelv, els ua^ ipx^Tai ko-kA' rov 5' au Oavdvra Kai irbvuiv Tmra\itJ.ivov Xa.lpovTa.% €vTa% {KTr^fxirttv So/j-wv. . " It were well done, comparing things aright, To wail the new-born cliild for all the ills On which he enters ; and for him who dies And so has rest from labour, to rejoice . And with glad words to bear him from his home." Strabo, who quotes the lines (xi. c. 12, p. 144), attributes the practice to w. 3, 4.] ECCLESIASTES, VII. 161 go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting : for that is the end of all men ; and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter : for by 3 the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the 4 Asiatic nations, possibly to those who had come under the influence of that Buddhist teaching as to the vanity and misery of life of which even the partial pessimism of Koheleth may be as a far-off echo. 2. li is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feastingi The customs of Jewish mourning must be borne in mind to appreciate the full force of the maxim. The lamentation lasting for seven (Ecclus. xxii. 10) or even for thirty, days, as in the case of Aaron (Num. XX. 29), and Moses (Deut. xxiv. 8), the loud wailing of the hired mourners (Jer. xxii. iS; Matt. ix. 23; Mark v. 38), the visits of consola- tion (John xi. 31), the sad meals of the bread and wine of affliction (Jer. xvi. 7; Hos. ix. 4; Job iv. 17), — the sight of these things checked the pride of life and called out sympathy, and reminded the visitor of the nearness of his own end, " Sunt lachrymcE rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt." "We needs must weep the chance and change of life, And mortal sorrows touch a mortal's heart." ViRG. yEn. I. 462. The words manifestly record a personal experience, and lead us to think of the writer as having learnt to " visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction" (Jas. i. 27), and having found that there was some "profit" at least in this. 3. Sorraiu is better than laughter'] The thought is essentially the same as that of the preceding verse, but is somewhat more generalized. We are reminded of the Greek axiom, ■jraOeti', /xadelv ("Pain is gain"), of the teaching of yEschylus. Zr^ra rbv (ppovHV f-ipoToiiS oSui- aavTa, tov iraihi fj.dOos difTa Kvpius ^X^'-"- " Yea, Zeus, who leadeth men in wisdom's way And fixeth fast the law That pain is gain." Again. 170. There is a moral improvement rising out of sorrow which is not gained from enjoyment however blameless. The " Penseroso" is after all a character of nobler stamp than the "Allegro." 4. 7'he heart of the wise] This follows as the natural sequel. Tike goes to like. The impulse of the fool takes him to that which promises enjoyment ; that of the wise leatls him to that which has the promise of a higher wisdom and therefore of a more lasting gain. ECCLESIASTES T I i62 ECCLESIASTES, Vir. [w. 5— 7. 5 heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of 6 fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool : this also is vanity. 7 Surely oppression maketh a wise f/ian mad ; and a gift 5. li is belter to hear the rehiihe of the ivise^ The word for " relnike" is characterislic of the sapiential books of the Old Testament (I'rov. xiii. 1, xvii. 10). Here also the teacher finds the moral tiiat " pain is gain." The " rebuke" is not pleasant, but it acts with a power to heal. The "song of fools" points to the type of lyric poetry of which we have examples in Anacreon, perhaps to the more wanton and impure poems which entered so largely into Greek life, and are preserved in such abundance in the Aiiihologia Gmca. The comic drinking songs of a people represent at all times the lowest form of its animal life, and with these also, either in his own country or in Greek-speaking lands, the writer of the book had become acquainted. Amos vi. 5 indicates the existence of a like form of revelry in the older life of Israel. Such songs left a taint behind them and the man was permanently the worse for it. In Eph. v. 4 we may probably trace a reference to the same form of literature. 6. As the craekling of thorns under a pof\ As in verse i the epi- grammatic proverb is pointed by a play of alliterative assonance (sirint = thorns, j/'-^pot). "As crackling nettles under kettles," "As crackling stubble makes the pot bubble" are the nearest English equi- valents. The image is drawn from the Eastern use of hay, stubble, and thorns for fuel (Matt. vi. 30; I's. cxviii. 12). A fire of such material, burnt up more quickly than the charcoal embers (Jer. xxvi. 22; Johnxviii. 18), which were also in common use, but then it also died out quickly and left nothing Ijut cold dead ashes. So it would be with the mirth which was merely frivolous or foul. That also would take its place in the catalogue of vanities. 7. Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad^ Literally, For oppres- sion... The sequence of thought is obscure and the English rendering is an attempt to evade the difficulty by making what follo\vs the beginning of a new section. One commentator (Delitzsch) cuts the knot by supposing the (irst half of the verse to have been lost, and supplies it conjecturally from J'rov. xxxvii. 16 or xvi. 8, " ISetter is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right," after which the conjunction "for" comes in natural order. Taking the text as it stands we may yet trace a latent connexion. The ' song ' and ' laughter' of fools, i.e. of evil-doers, like those of Prov. i. 10 — 18 ; Wisd. ii. i — 20, leads to selfish luxury, and therefore to all forms of unjust gain. The mirth of fools, /'. e. of the godless, is vanity, for it ifsucs in oppression and in bribery. It is a question whether the "wise man" who is thus mad- dened by oppression is the opjiressor or the oppressed. The balance seems to turn in favour of the former. The opjiressive exercise of power is so demoralising that even the wise man, skilled in slate-craft, vv. 8— lo.] ECCLESIASTES, VII. 163 destroyeth the heart. Better is the end of a thing than the 8 beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: 9 for anger resteth in the bosom of fools. Say not thou, 10 What is the cause that the former days were better than loses his wisdom. There comes upon him, as the history of crime so often shews, something lilce a mania of tyrannous cruelty. And the same effect follows on the practice of corruption. It is true of the giver as well as the receiver of a bribe, that he loses his "heart," i.e. his power of moral discernment. 8. Better is the end of a thing thaii the beginning thereof'\ As in ch. vi. II, the noun translated "thing" may mean "word" and this gives a preferable meaning. It cannot be said of everything, good and bad alike, that its "end is better than its beginning" (comp. Prov. V. 3, 4, xvi. 25, xxiii. 32), and those who so interpret the maxim are obliged to limit its meaning to good things, or to assume that the end must be a good one. Some (as Ginsburg) give to the "word" the sense of "reproof," but this limitation is scarcely needed. It may be said of well-nigh every form of speech, for silence is better than speech, and "in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin." It is obvious that this furnishes a closer parallel to the second clause. The " patient in spirit" is the man who knows how to check and control his speech, and to listen to reproof. The " proud " (literally, the lofty or exalted) is one who has not learnt to curb his tongue, and to wait for the end that is better than the beginning. So interpreted the whole maxim finds a parallel in James iii. 1 — 18, in the precepts of a thousand sages of all times and countries. 9. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry\ From sins of speech in general, the teacher passes oh to that which is the source from which they most often flow. Anger, alike from the Stoic and Epi- curean stand-point (and the writer, as we have seen, had points of contact with each of them), was the note of unwisdom. If it be right at all, it is when it is calm and deliberate, an indignation against moral evil. The hasty anger of wounded self-love is, as in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 22), destructive of the tran- quillity of true wisdom, antl, transient and impulsive as it seems at first, may harden "in the bosom of the fool" into a settled antipathy or malignant scorn. 10. llliat is the cause that the former days were better than these] It would be a mistake to treat this as describing merely the temper of one who is a ''^laudator teiuporis acti, se piiero.'''' That is, as the poet noted (Hor. Epist. ad Pis. 173), but the infirmity of age. What is condemned as unwise, as we should call it in modern phrase, unphilosophical, is the temper so common in the decay and decadence of national life (and pointing therefore to the age in which the Debater lived) which looks back upon the past as an age of heroes or an age of faith, idealizing the distant time with a barren admiration, i64 ECCLESIASTES, VII. [vv. ii, 12. these ? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this. 11 Wisdom is good with an inheritance: and Itjy it there is 12 profit to them that see the sun. For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence : but the excellency of knowledge apathetic and discontented with the present, des]")onding as to the future. .Sucli coniphiints are in fact (and this is the link wliicli connects this maxim with the preceding) but another form of the spirit which is hasty to be angry, as with indivithial men that tliwart its wishes, so witli the drift and tendency of the times in wliich it lives. The Avise man will rather accept that tendency and make the best of it. Below the surface there lies perhaps the suggestion of a previous question, Were the times really better? Ilmi not each age had its own s])ecial evils, its own special gains? Illustrations crowd upon one's memory. Greeks looking back to the age of those who fought at Marathon; Romans under the Empire recalling the vanished great- ness of the Republic ; Frenchmen mourning over the ancicn rcgiiite, or Englishmen over the good old days of the Tudors, are all examples of the same unwisdom. 11. IVisdont is good -with an inheritance^ The words fall on our cars with something like a ring of cynicism, as though the teacher said with a sneer, "wisdom is all very well if you have property to fall back upon." If that sense were however admissible at all, it could only l)c by emphasizing the word "inheritance," as contrasted with the treasure which a man heaps up for himself. The inherited estate, be it great or small, does not interfere with wisdom as money-making does. The ct/jxatoTrXoiiToi ("rich with ancestral wealth ") are, as Aris- totle taught, of a nobler stamp than those who :nake their fortunes (Rhi't. 11. 9. 9). Comp. Aesch. Aga/ii. 1043. Even so taken, however, the tone is entirely out of harmony with the immediate context, and a far more satisfactory meaning is obtained by taking the preposition as a particle of comparison (it is often so used, as in ch. ii. 17 ; Ps. Ixxiii. 5, cxx. 4 (probably); Job ix. 20); and so we get "Wisdom is good as an inheritance." and by it tlicrc is profit to tJicni that sec the stat\ Better, And it Is profitable for them that see the sun. It stands instead of both inlicrited and acquired wealth. In the use of the term " those that see the sun" as an eciuivalent we note again an echo of Greek poetic feeling. The very phrase opciv 0aos TjeXLoio ("to see the light of the sun") is essentially Homeric. Here, as in chap. xii. 7, it seems chosen as half conveying the thought that there is after all a bright side of life. 12. /-'or -wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence'] Better, as a shadow, or, as a shelter, in both cl.auses. The Hebrew, as the italics shew, has no "and." "Shadow" as in Ps. xvii. 8, xci. i, stands for shelter and protection. This, the writer says, not without a touch of his wonted irony in coupling the two things together, to those who looked to wealth as their only means of safety (Prov. xiii. 8), is found not less effectually in wisdom. vv. 13, 14.] ECCLESIASTES, VII. 165 is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it. Consider the work of God : for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider : God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him. but thi excellency of kno'wledge'] Better, the profit, thus keeping up what we may call the catch-word of the book. Wisdom, the Debater says, does more than give shelter, as money, in its way, does. It quickens those who have it to a new and higher life. The use of the word ^£Jo7roc7;cret ("shall quicken"), by the LXX. connects the maxim with the higher teaching of John v. 21, vi. 63; 2 Cor. iii. 6. The Spirit which alone gives the wisdom that " cometh from above" does the work which is liere ascribed to wisdom as an abstract quality. It is clearly out of harmony with the whole train of thought to see in the "life" which wisdom gives only that of the body which is pre- served by the prudence that avoids dangers. It is as much beside the point to interpret it of the "life" of the resurrection. 13. who can make thai straight, luhich he hath made crooked^ The sequence of thought is as follows. To "consider the work of God" intelligently is one application of the wisdom which has been praised in verses 11, 12. In so considering, the mind of the Debater goes back to verse 10, and he bids men accept the outward facts of life as they come. If they are "crooked," i.e. crossing and thwarting our inclinations, we cannot alter them. It is idle, to take up a Christian phrase that expresses the same thought, to seek to "change our cross." We cannot alter the events of life, and our wisdom is not merely to accept them as inevitable, but to adapt ourselves to them. It is a striking example of Rabbinic literalism that the Chaldee Targum refers the words to the impossibility of removing bodily deformities, such as those of the blind, the hunchback, and the lame. The word and the thought are clearly the same as in ch. i. 15. 14. In the day of prosperity be joyful^ Literally, In the day of good, be in good, i.e. use it as it should be used. True wisdom, the teacher urges, is found in a man's enjoying whatever good actually comes to him. The warning is against the temper which " takinsj thought for the morrow, is "over exquisite To cast the fashion of uncertain evils." And on the other hand he adds In the day .of evU, look ■well, i.e. consider why it comes, and what may lie gained from it. God also hath set the one over ai^ainst the other'\ The words assert what we should call the doctrine of averages in the distribution of outward good and evil. God has made one like (or parallel with) the other, balances this against that and this in order that man may find nothing at all after him. The last words may mean either i66 ECCLESIASTES, VII. [v. 15. 15 All things have I seen in the days of my vanity : there is (r) that man may have nothing more to learn or discover in his own hereafter; or (2) that man may fail to forecast what shall come to pass on earth after he has left it, as in ch. vi. 12, and may look to the future calmly, free from the idle dreams of pessimism or optimism. The last meaning seems most in harmony with the dominant tone of the book, and has parallels in the teaching of moralists who have given counsel based on like data. In the noble hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus (18) we have the Stoic view in language presenting a striking parallel to that of verses 13, 14. dXXa cv Koi TO. Trfpiaaa eViVratrat apria OeTvat, Kal Kocrfieif ra. aKoa/xa, Kai ov y some interpreters a like iteration is supplied in the first clause, far off is that which is far, but there does not seem adequate ground for thus altering tlic text. Rather are the first words to be taken of substantial being, far off from us is that which Is (the TO. ovTo. of Greek thought, the sum total of things past and present). So in another and later Jewish book imjiregnated, like this, with Greek thought, wisdom is described as a riDj/ fivrajv 71'wtriS di/'eu5]7s (" a true knowledge of the things that are" Wisd. vii. 17). Comp. Job. xi. 7, 8; Rom. xi. 33. for like language as to the Divine Counsels. 25. / applied mine heart to know] Tiie juesent text and punc- tuation give, as in the marginal reading of the A. V., I and my heart. The expression has no exact parallel in O. T. language, but harmonizes with the common mode of sjieech, familiar enough in the poetry of all times and countries, furnishing a title (" My Soul and I") to a poem of Whittier's, in which a man addresses his heart or soul (comp. Luke xii. 19), as something distinguishable from himself. So in ch. i. 13 we have "I gave my" heart." Here the thought implied seems to be that of an intense retrospective consciousness of the experience, or experiment, of life which the seeker is about to narrate. V. 26.] ECCLESIASTES, VII. 171 reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness a>id madness : and I find more bitter than 26 death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her The words indicate another return to the results of that experience and the lessons it had taught him. He turned to ask the '■'■ rcasim" better perhaps, the plan or ratio)iale, of the prevalence of madness and folly. We note, as before in ch. ii. 12, the Stoic manner of dealing with the follies of men as a kind of mental aberration. 26. And I find more bitter than deatJi\ The result is a strange one in its contrast to the dominant tendency of Hebrew thought ; especially we may add to that thought as represented by the Son of David with whom the Debater identifies himself. We think of the praises of the Shulamite in the Song of Solomon; of the language of Prov. V. 13; and (though that is probably of later date) of the acrostic panegyric on the virtuous woman in Prov. xxxi. 10 — 31 ; and we find here nothing like an echo of them, but rather a tone of scorn, cul- minating in verse 28 in that which reminds us of the misogyny of the later maxim-makers of Greece, or of the Eastern king who never heard of any great calamity or crime without asking, Who is she? Such a change might, it is true, be explained as the result of the satiety into which the historical Solomon might have fallen as the penalty of his sensuality; and has its parallel in the cynical scorn of Catullus for the Lesbia whom he had once loved so tenderly (see Introduction, ch. III.) and in that of a thousand others. Doubtless the words speak of such a personal experience on the part of the Debater. He had found no wickedness like that of the "strange woman," such as she is painted in Prov. ii. 16 — 19, vii. i — 27. But we can scarcely fail to trace the influence of the Greek thought with which, as we have seen, the writer had come into contact. Of this the following may serve as samples out of a somewhat large collection. Mecrro;' KaKwy irirpvKe (popriou ywrj. *' A woman is a burden full of ills." "Owou yvvaiKes dai, ttcli't' fKel KaKO.. " Where women are, all evils there are found." QitpQiv airdvTuv dypKaripa yvvT], " Woman is fiercer than all beasts of prey." Poet. Grace. Gnomiei, Ed. Tauchnitz, p. 182. It might, perhaps, be pleaded in reference to this verse that the writer speaks of one class of women only, probably that represented in the pictures of Prov. ii. or vii. and that the ^'' corrupt io optiini est pessima," but the next verse makes the condemnation yet more sweeping. The suggestion that the writer allegorizes, and means by " the woman " here the abstract ideal of sensuality is quite untenable. In the imagery of "snares" and "nets" and "bands" some critics 172 ECCLESIASTES, VII. [vv. 27, 28. hands as bands : whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; 27 but the sinner shall be taken by her. Behold, this have I found, saith the Preacher, counting one by one,, to find out 28 the account : which yet my soul sceketh, but I find not : one man among a thousand have I found ; but a woman (Tyler) liave traced a reminiscence of the history of Samson and Delilah (Judg. xvi.). Such a reference to Hebrew history is however not at all after the writer's manner, and it is far more natural to sec in U the result of his own personal experience [sq.q: Introduction, ch. III.). The Son of Sirach follows, it may be noted, in the same track of thought, though with a somewhat less sweeping condemnation (Ecclus. xxv. 15 — 26, xxvi. 6 — 12). ivhoso pleaseth God] The marginal reading, whoso is good before God should be noted as closer to the Hebrew. 27. saitk the Frcac/icj-] The passage is remarkable as being the solitary instance in the book in which the name Kohcldh, feminine in form, yet elsewhere treated as masculine, is joined with the feminine form of the verb. It is possible, however, that this may be only an error of transcription, the transfer of a single letter from the end of one word to the beginning of another, restoring the verse to the more common construction, as found, e.g. in chap. xii. 8, where, as here, adopting this reading, the article is i^refixed to the word Koheleth, else- where treated as a proper name. counting one by one\ The words remind us, on the one hand, of Diogenes the Cynic, with his lantern, looking for an honest man at Athens, and answering, when asked where such men might be found, that good men were to be found nowhere, and good boys only in Sparta (Diog. Laert. vi. 2. 27); and on the other, of Jeremiah's search to see "if there were any in Jerusalem that sought after God" (Jer. V. I — 5). The words, as it were, drag their slow length along, as if expressing the toil and weariness of the search. And after all he had failed to find. 28. one man among a thousand have I fotind\ We have, in the absence of an adjective, to supply the thought "a man such as he ought to be, truthful and righteous." The form in which the rare exceptional discovery is given is as an echo from Job ix. 3, xxxiii. 23. It represents we can- not doubt the ca]iacily of the writer for a warm and earnest friendship. It shews that he had found one such friend. But what the seeker found among men, he souglit m vain among women. Corruption there was, from his point of view, absolutely without exception. The interesting parallelism of Heine's language has been noticed in the Introduction, ch. III. The words may be received as recording the writer's personal experience of the corrupt social state under the government of Persian or Eg)'ptian kings. CJne commentator (llit/dg) has even ventured to identify the " woman more bitter than death " with a historical character, Agathuclca, the mistress of Ptolemy Philopator. Justin (XXX. i) describes the King's life *^ Aleretricis illeccbris capitur... nodes in stupris, dies in conviviis consumit." V. 29-] • ECCLESIASTES, VII. 173 among all those have I not found. Lo, this only have 1 29 found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. Here also we have an echo of the darker side of Greek thought. The Debater catches the tone of the woman-hater Euripides. ctXX' tlir rb ixQipov dvopdaty fxkv ovk Ivt, yvvaL^l 5' i/xwecpVKev. "But folly does not find its home with men, But roots in women's hearts." EuRiP. Hippol. 920. So a later Rabbinic proverb gives a like judgment : " woe to the age whose leader is a woman" (Dukes, Rabbin. Blumenl. No. 32). 29. They have sought out many invcntions\ The Hebrew word implies an ingenuity exercised mainly for evil but takes within its range, as in 2 Chron. xxvi. 15, the varied acts of life which are in themselves neither good nor evil. This inventive faculty, non-moral at the best, often absolutely immoral, was what struck the thinker as characterising mankind at large. In this thought again we have an unmistakable echo of the language of Greek thinkers. Of this the most memorable example is, perhaps, the well-known chorus in the Antigone 332 — 5 TToXXa TO. Ziiva. kov5^v dvdpujirov SeLvoripov treXei, ****** cofpbv Ti rb firjxavoev r^xi'as inrkp eXTrid' ^X'^^t TTori jx^v KUKOv, dWoT ctt' effOXov 'ipirei. "Many the things that strange and wondrous are, None stranger and more wonderful than man. ****** And lo, with all this skill. Wise and inventive still Beyond hope's dream, He now to good inclines And now to ill." Looking to the relation in which the poem of Lucretius stands to the system of Epicurus it is probable that the history of human inventions in the De Kernm Natura, V. 1281 — 1435 had its fore-runner in some of the Greek writings with which the author oi Ecclesiastes appears to have been acquainted. The student will find another parallel in the narrative of the progress of mankind in the rrotnciluus Boioid of /Eschylus (450 — 514). Both these passages are somewhat too long to quote. 174 ECCLESIASTES, VIII. [vv. i, 2. 8 Who t's as the wise man ? and who knoweth the interpre- tation of a thing? a man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, 2 and the boldness of his face shall be changed. I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of CHAPTER VIII. 1. W/w is as the wise matt?] The question comes in abruptly as from a teacher who calls the attention of his scholars to things that are (pwvrjtvra cvviroiffi-v (" significant to those who understand") and remind us of the "lie that hath ears to hear let him hear" in our Lord's teaching (Matt. xi. 15, xiii. 9; Mark iv. 9). Something there was in what he is about to add, to be read between the lines. It required a a man to "know the interpretation" (the noun is Chaldaean and is found, with a slight variation, as the prominent word in Dan. iv. v. vii.) of the "thing" or better, "of the word." We find the probable ex- planation of this suggestive question in the fact that the writer veils a protest against despotism in the garb of the maxims of ser- vility. a man's ivisdom inahetk his face to shine] Literally, illuminates his face. The word paints with a wonderful vividness the almost trans- figuring efiect of the "sweetness and light" of a serene wisdom, or of the joy that brightens a man's countenance when he utters his Eureka over the solution of a long-pondered problem. the boldness of his face shall be chans;ed\ Literally, the stren^h of face, i.e. its sternness. The words have been very variously trans- lated, (i) as in the LXX. "his shameless face sliall be haled," (2) as by Ewald "the brightness of his countenance shall be doubled." There is no ground, however, for rejecting the Authorised Version. The "bold- ness of the face" is, as in the "fierce countenance" of Deut. xxviii. 50; Dan. viii. 23, the "inipudent face" of Prov. vii. r^, the coarse ferocity of ignorance, and this is transformed by culture. The maxim is like that of the familiar lines of Ovid, "Adde quod ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, Emollit mores nee sinit esse feros." "To learn in truth the nobler arts of life, Makes manners gentle, rescues them from strife." Epp. ex Ponto ir. 9. 47, 2. / counsel thee to keep the hint's cowniandment] The words in Italics "counsel thee," have nothing answering to them in the Hebrew, and the grammar of the sentence does not allow us to translate with the Vulgate, "I keep the king's commandment." The pronoun on the other hand is cmjihatic and it introduces a series of precepts. We have therefore to sujiply a verb, E for my part, say, which is practically etiuivalent to the English Version. The reference to the king is not without its bearing on the political surroundings of the writer and therefore on the date of the book. It is a natural inference from it that V. 3-1 ECCLESIASTES, VIII. 175 the oath of God. Be not hasty to go out of his sight : ; stand not in an evil thing ; for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth the writer, whether living in Palestine or elsewhere, was actually under a kingly government and not under that of a Satrap or Governor under the Persian King, and that the book must therefore have been written after the Persian rule had become a thing of the past. On this view Ptolemy Philopator has been suggested by one writer (Hitzig) ; Herod the Great by another (Griitz). See Introduction, c\\. 11. The interpretation which explains the word as referring to the Divine King must be rejected as allegorising and unreal. The whole tone of the passage, it may be added, is against the Solomonic authorship of the book. The writer speaks as an obsers'er studying the life of courts from without, not as a king asserting his own prerogative. Even on the assumption that Prov. XXV. 2 — 6 came from the li]5s of Solomon, they are pitched in a very diflcrent key from that which we find here. and tliat in rega7-d of the oath of God\ It is not without significance as bearing on the question of the date and authorship of the book, that Josephus relates {Ant. Xil. i) that Ptolemy Soter, the Son of Lagus, carried into Egypt a large number of captives from Judaea and Samaria, and settled them at Alexandria, and knowing their scrupulous reverence for oaths, bound them by a solemn covenant to obey him and his successors. Such an oath the Debater bids men observe, as St Paul bade Christians obey the Emperor, "not only for wrath but also for conscience' sake" (Rom. xiii. 5). Submission was the part of a wise man seeking for tranquillity, however bad the government might be. Of such covenants between a people and their king we have an example in I Chron. xxix. 24. 3. Be not hasty to go ont of his sight] The phrase is explained by Gen. iv. 16; PIos. xi. 2 as implying flight or desertion. Such a flight the Teacher looks on as an act of impatient unwisdom. It is better to bear the yoke, than to seek an unattainable independence. So those who have grown grey in politics warn younger and more impetuous men against the folly of a premature resignation of their office. stand not in an evil thing] The Hebrew noun (as so often else- where) may mean either "word" or "thing:" the verb may mean "standing" either in the attitude (i) of persistence, or (2) protest, or (3) of hesitation, or (4) of obedient compliance. Hence we get as possible renderings, (i) "Persist not in an evil thing;" i.e. in con- spiracies against the king's life or power. (2) Protest not against an evil {i.e. angry) word. (.^) Stand not, hesitate not, at an evil thing, i.e. comply with the king's commands however unrighteous. (4) Obey not in an evil thing, i.e. obey, but let the higher law of conscience limit thy obedience. Of these (i) seems most in harmony with the context, and with O. T. usage as in Ps. i. i. Perhaps, however, after the manner of an enigmatic oracle, not without a touch of irony, recjuiring the discernment of a wise interpreter, there is an intentional amliiguity, allowing the reader if he likes, to adopt (3) or (4) and so acting as a test of character. 176 ECCLESIASTES, VIII. [w. 4, 5. 4 him. Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who 5 may say unto him, What doest thou ? W' hoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing : and a wise j>ians heart discerneth both time and judgment. he docth whatsoever plcascth Jiiml The words paint a sovereignty such as Greek poets loved to hold up for men's abhorence, oXX' 7) Tvpavuls TToWd t aW ivSainoifi, Ka^effTiv avTy 5pdt> 'K^yeiv 5' d /SoJXerai. "The tyrant's might in mucli besides excels, And it may do and say whate'er it wills." .Soril. Aniig. 507. Here also we have an echo of the pi"udcntial counsel of Epicurus, who deliberately preferred a desjiotic to a democratic government (Sen. .£■/. XXIX. 10), and laid it down as a rule, that the wise man should at every ojiportune season court the favour of the monarch (koX ixbvapxov iv KOLipw Oepairevaei), Diog. Laert. X. I, § I'lT. 4. IV/ierc the wcrd of a kiii;^ is, there is power'] Eetter, Forasmuch as the word of a king is power, or rather authority. The latter word in the llelirew text is used in Chaldee as meaning a ruler, or potentate. In the last clause, '' Who may say unto him, What doest thou?" we have an echo of Job xxxiv. it,, where the question is asked in reference to the sovereignty of God. The covert protest of the writer shews itself in thus transferring, as with a grave irony, what belonged to the Divine King to tlie earthly ruler who claimed a like authority. TheMespot stands, or thinks he stands, as much above the questionings and complaints of his subjects, as the Supreme Ruler of the Universe does abbve those of men in general. 6. IVkoso keepeth the eomviaiidment shall feel no evil thi>i!f\ The •words are once again ambiguous. If the "commandment" is that of the king, they enjoin unhesitating servile obedience as in the interpreta- tion (3) of verse 3. If, according to the all but invariable use of the word in the O. T., we take it as the " commandment" of God, the meaning is in harmony with the interjiretation (4) of the previous precept, and parallel with the French motto, '' Fais ton devoir, avienue (jne poiirra" (" Do thy duty, come what may"). Here again, it seems natural to as- sume an intentional ambiguity. A like doubt hangs over the words "shall feel (literally know) no evil thing" which may mean cither "shall be anxious about no moral evil," or more probably "shall suffer no physical evil as the penally of moral." Can we not imagine the writer here also with a grave irony, uttering his Delphic oracles, and leaving men to choose their intcr|-)retation, according as their character was servile or noble, moved by "the fear of the Lord," or only by the fear of men ? a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment] The "heart" as, for the most part, elsewhere in the Old Testament, includes the intellectual as well as the moral element in man's nature. In the word "time" we have, as in ch. iii. i, the Kaip6% or "season" on which Greek sages laid so great a stress. What is meant is that the w. 6—8.] ECCLESIASTES, VIII. 177 Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, 6 therefore the misery of man is great upon him. For he 7 knoweth not that which shall be : for who can tell him when it shall be ? T/ie7'e is no man that hath power over 8 the spirit to retain the spirit ; neither /laf/i he power in the wise man, understanding the trae meaning of the previous maxim, will not be impatient under oppression, but will bide his time, and wait in patience for the working of tlie Divine Law of retribution. This meaning is, however, as before, partially veiled, and the sentence might seem to imply that he should let his action depend on opportunities and be a time-server in the bad sense. 6. Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore] The English conjunctions misrepresent the sequence of thought, and we should read "For to every purpose there is time and judgment, for the misery (or, better, the wic/cedncss) of man..." The wise man waits for the time of judgment, for he knows that such a time must come, and that the evil of the man {i.e. of the tyrant) is great upon him, weighs on him as a burden under which he must at last sink. This seems the most natural and legitimate interpretation, but the sentence is obscure, and has been very differently interpreted. ( i) The evil of man (of the oppressor) is heavy upon him (the oppressed). (2) Though there is a time and a judgment, yet the misery of man is great, because (as in the next verse) he knows not when it is to come. 7. I^or he kiio7vcth not that 'which shall be] The subject of the sentence is apparently the wicked and tyrannous ruler. He goes on with infatuated blindness to the doom that lies before him. The same thought appears in the mediaeval proverb, " Quern Deiis 7'ult ^erdere prills dementat" or, in our modern condemnation of the rulers or the parties, who "learn nothing, and forget nothing." The temper con- demned is that (i) of the cynical egoism, which says, '''' Apixs moi, Ic deluge," (2) of those who act, because judgment is delayed, as if it would never come. 8. There isno man that hath potver over the spirit] The word for ' ' spirit," may mean either "the wind" or the "spirit," the "breath of life" in man, and each sense has been adopted by many commentators. Taking the former, which seems preferal)Ie, the latter involving a repetition of the same thought in the two clauses of the verse, we have a parallel in Prov. XXX. 4, perhaps also in John iii. 8. Man is powerless to control the course of the wind, so also is he powerless (the words, though general in form, point especially to the tyrannous oppressor,) to control the drift of things, that is liearing him on to his inevitable doom. The worst despotism is, as Talleyrand said of Russia, "tempered by assas- sination." neither hath he power in the day of death"] Better, over the day of death. The analogy of the previous clause, as to man's impotence to control or direct the wind, suggests that which is its counterpart. When "the day of death" comes, whether by the hand of the assassin, ECCLESIASTES 12 178 ECCLESIASTES, VIII. [vv. 9, 10. day of death : and there is no discharge in that war ; neither 9 shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it. All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun : there is a time wherein one 10 man rulcth over another to his own hurt. And so I saw or by disease and decay, man (in this case again the generalized thought appHcs especially to the oppressor) has no power, by any exercise of will, to avert the end. The word for " power" in the second clause is, as in ])an. iii. 3, the concrete of the abstract form in the first, There is no ruler in tiie day of death. there is 7to discliarge hi that iuar'\ The word for "discharge" occurs elsewhere only in Ps. Ixxviii. 49, where it is rendered "sending," and as the marginal reading ("no casting of weapons") shews has been variously interpreted. That reading suggests the meaning that " in that war (against death), there is no weapon that will avail." The victorious leader of armies must at last succumb to a conqueror mightier than himself. The text of the Knglish version is probably, however, correct as a whole, and the interpolated "///a/," though not wanted, is perhaps excusable. The reference is to the law (Deut. xx. 5 — 8) which allowed a furlough, or release from military duty, in certain cases, and which the writer contrasts with the inexorable sternness which summons men to their battle with the king of terrors, and that a battle with a foregone and inevitable conclusion. Here the strict rigour of Persian rule under Darius and Xerxes, which permitted no exemption from service in time of war, was the true parallel (Ilerod. iv. 84, vii. 38). neither shall luickeclihss deliver those that arc f^iveti to ?'/] Better, neither shall -wickedness deliver its lord. The last word is the same as IJaal, in the sense of a "lord" or " ]iossessor," and is joined with words expressing qualities to denote that they are ]5ossessed in the highest degree. Thus "a lord of tongue" is a "babbler" (ch. x. 11), "lord of hair" is "a hairy man" (2 Kings i. 8), and so on. Plere, therefore, it means those who are specially conspicuous for their ■wickedness. The thought is as before, that a time comes at last, when all the schemes and plans of the ojipressor fail to avert his punishment, as surely as all efforts to prolong life fail at last to avert death. 9. All this have I seen] The formula which had been used before (chs. V. 18, vii. ■23) to enforce the results of the Debater's exjierience of life in general, is now employed to emphasize the wide range of the political induction on which the conclusions of the previous verses rested. there is a time wherein one man nileth over another to his own hurt] The Hebrew is, as in so many other instances, ambiguous. The English reflexive pronoun, in which our Version follows the Vulgate, misrepre- sents the purport of the sentence. What is described is, as before, the misrule of the tyrant-king who rules over others (the indefinite "another" standing for the plural) to their hurt. The wide induction had not been uniform in its results. The law of Nemesis was traversed by V. lo.] ECCLESIASTES, VIII. 179 the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done : this is also vanity. the law of apparent impunity. We have the "two voices" once again, and the writer passes, like Abelard in his Sic et N^on, from atlirmation to denial. The English version seems to have originated in the wish to make this verse also repeat the affirmation of the preceding. The immediate context that follows shews however that this is not now the writer's thought, and that he is troubled by the apparent exceptions to it. 10. And so I saw the wicked buried] The English version is scarcely intelligible, and as far as it is so, goes altogether astray. We must therefore begin with a new translation, And so I have seen the wicked buried and they went their way (i.e. died a natural death and were carried to the grave) ; hut from the holy place they de- parted [i. e. were treated with shame and contumely, in some way counted unholy and put under a ban), and were forgotten in the city, even such as acted rightly. The verse will require, however, some explanation in details. In the burial of the wicked we have a parallel to the pregnant sig- nificance of the word in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, where "the rich man died and was buried" (Luke xvi. 22). This, from the Jewish standpoint, was the fit close of a prosperous and honoured life (comp. 1 Chron. xvi. 14, xxvi. 23, xxviii. 27 ; Jer. xxii. 18, 19). It implied a public and stately ceremonial. The words "they are gone" are not, as some have thought, equivalent to "they have entered into rest" (Isai. Ivii. 2), but, as in ch. i. 4, are given as the way in which men speak respectfully of the dead as "gone" or "gathered to their fathers." So the Latins said Abiit ad pliircs. So we speak, half-pityingly, of the dead, "Ah, he's gone!" The "holy place" may possibly mean the consecrated ground (I do not use the word in its modern technical sense) of sejndture, but there is no evidence that the term was ever so used among the Jews, and it is more natural to take it, as explained by the use of the same term in Matt. xxiv. 15, as referring to the Temple. The writer has in his mind those whose names had been cast out as evil, who had been, as it were, excommunicated, "put out of the synagogue" (as in John ix. 22, xii. 42), compelled to leave the Temple ihcy had loved and worshipped in, departing with slow and sorrowing tread (comp. Ps. xxxviii." 6; Job xxx. 28). And soon their place knows them no more. A generation rises up that knows them not, and they are forgotten in the very city where they had once been honoured. The reflection was, perhaps, the result of a personal experience. The Debater himself may have liecn so treated. The hypocrites whom he condemned (ch. v. i — 7) may have passed their sentence upon him as heretical, as some did afterwards upon his writings (see Introduction, ch. III.). If he was suspected of being in any way a follower of Epicurus, that would seem to them a sufficient ground for their i8o ECCLESIASTES, VIII. [vv. ii, 12. .1 Because sentence agaifist an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set 12 in them to do evil. Though a sinner do evil an hundred nnathcnias. Epicureanism was, as it were, to the later Rabbis the deadliest of all heresies, and when they wanted to brand the be- lievers in Christ with the last stigma of opprobrium, they called them not Christians, or even Nazarenes, but Epicureans. Something of this feeling may be traced, as has been shewn in the IntrodiiC' Hon, ch. v., even in the Wisdom of Solomon. The main thought, so far as it refers only to the perishableness of human fame, has been common to the observers of the mutability of human things in all ages, and the Debater had himself dwelt on it (chaps, i. 1 1, vi. 4). It finds, perhaps, its most striking echo in a book which has much in common with one aspect of Ecclesiastes, the Dc Imitalionc Christi of a Kempis (B. I. 3). In substituting "such as acted rightly" for "where they had so done," I follow the use of the word which the A. V. translates as "so" {ken); in 1 Kings vii. 9 ("we do not zucll") ; Num. xxvii. 7 ("speak right"); Exod. x. 29 ("thou hast spoken 7C'c//"); Josh. ii. 4; Prov. XV. 7; Isai. xvi. 6 ; Jer. viii. 6, xxiii. 10, and other passages. I have given what seems to me (following wholly, or in part, on the lines of Ginsburg, Dclitzsch. Knobel, and liullock), the true meaning of this somewhat difficult verse, and it does not seem expedient, in a work of this nature, to enter at length into a discussion of the ten or twelve conflicting and complicated interpretations which seem to me, on various grounds, untenable. The chief points at issue are (i) whether the "departing from the place of the holy" belongs to "the wicked" of the first clause, or to those who are referred to in the second; (2) whether it describes that which was looked on as honourable or dishonourable, a stately funeral procession from temple or synagogue, or a penal and disgraceful expulsion ; and (3) whether the latter are those who "act so," i.e. as the wicked, or, as above, those who act rightly; and out of the varying combinations of the answers to these cpiestions and of the various meanings attached to the phrases themselves, we get an almost indefinite number of theories as to the writer's meaning. i/iis is also vanity^ Ihe recurrence of the refrain of the book at this point is interesting. It is precisely the survey of the moral ano- malies of the world that originates and sustains the feeliiig so ex- pressed. 11. Because sentence against an evil 7vork\ The v.'ord for "sen- tence" is only found here and in Esth. i. 20, where it is translated "decree" and is probably of Persian origin. Its primary meaning seems to be "a thing sent" and so the king's missive or edict. The ]ioint of the reflection is that the anomaly noted in the previous verse was not only evil in itself, but the cause of further evil by leading men to think they could go on transgressing with impunity. is fully set in them to do ez'il] Literally, tbelr heart is full in them. V. 13-] ECCLESIASTES, VIII. l8l times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him : but it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall 13 he prolong his days, wiiich are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God. 12. Though a sinner do evil an hundred timesi The definite number is used, of course, as in Prov. xvii. 10; or the '"hundred years" of Isaiah Ixv. 20; or the "seventy times seven" of Matt, xviii. 22, for the indefinite. There is no adequate reason for inserting "years" instead of " times." By some grammarians it is maintained that the conjunctions should be read '''' Because a sinner..." and "although I know," but the Authorised Version is supported by high authority. yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God] The adverb " surely " has nothing answering to it in the Hebrew, and seems an attempt to represent the emphasis of the Hebrew pronoun. Better, perhaps, I for my part. We may compare the manner in which ^schylus utters a like truth on the moral government of the world : Si'x'* 5* dWuv fiovlxppwv eifxl. to yap 5i/<7ffe/3^s Ipyov /jLera, p-ev TrXeiova tLktel, acperepq, 5' tUdra yivvq.. "But I, apart from all. Hold this my creed alone : For impious act it is that offspring breeds, Like to their parent stock." Agam. 757, 8. There is an obviously intentional contrast between what the thinker has seen (verse 9), and what he now says he knoivs as by an intuitive conviction. His faith is gaining strength, and he believes, though, it may be, with no sharply defined notion as to time and manner, tliat the righteousness of God, which seems to be thwarted by the anomalies of the world, will in the long run assert itself There is at least an inward peace with those who fear God, which no tyrant or oppressor can interfere with. The seeming tautology of the last clause is best explained by supposing that the term "God-fearers" had become (as in Mai. iii. 16) the distinctive name of a religious class, such as the Chasidiin (the "Assideans"of i Mace. ii. 42, vii. 13; 2 Mace. xiv. 6), or " devout ones " were in the time of the Maccabees. The Debater, with the keen scent for the weaknesses of a hypocritical formalism, which we have seen in ch. v. i — 7, says with emphatic iteration, as it were, "when I say 'God-fearing' I mean those that do fear God in reality as well as name." So in French men talk of la verite vraie, or we might speak of "a liberal indeed liberal," "religious people who are religious," and so on. 13. neither shall he prolong his days, ivhich are as a shado'i'l The words seem at first in direct contradiction to the admission of the previous verse. But it is of the nature of the method of the book to leach by i82 ECCLESIASTES, VIII. [vv. 14—16. 14 There is a vanity which is done upon the earth ; that there be just incn, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked ; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous : 13 I said that this also is vanity. Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry : for that shall abide with liim of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun. 16 When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see jjaradoxes, and to let the actual contradictions of the world reflect themselves in his teaching. ^Vhat is meant is that the wicked does not gain by a prolonged life; that, as Isaiah had taught of old, "the sinner though he die a hundred years old, is as one accursed " (Isal. Ixv. 20). His life is still a shadow and "he disquieteth himself in vain" (Ps. xxxix. 6). So the writer of the Wisiioin of Solomon (iv. 8) writes, probably not without a reference to this very passage, that "honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by the number of the years." In the " days which are as a shadow," so far as they refer to the shortness of human life in general, we find, as before in ch. vi. 11, echoes of Greek thought. It is noticeable that in \Visd. ii. 5, in accordance with what one may call the polemic tendency of the writer, the thought and the phrase are put into the mouth of the "ungodly, who reasoned not aright." The universal fact, however, has become a universal thought and finds echoes everywhere (Ps. cii. 11, cxliv. 4). 14. Tlicre is a vanity} There is something almost painful in the iteration of the ever-recurring thought that after all there are disorders in the world. A modern writer, we feel, would have pruned, con- densed, and avoided such a repetition of himself. We are dealing, however, with "Thoughts" like Pascal's Pc/istYs, rather than with a treatise, jotted down, it may be, day by day, as has been said before, on his tablets or his papyrus, and there is, as has been said l)efore, something significant in the fact that, wherever the thinker turns, the same anomalies stare him in the face. 15. T/wn I coDiiiicndcd inirthl As before in chs. ii. I4, iii. 12, 12, V. 18, the Epicurean element of thought mingles with the higher fear of God, to which the seeker had just risen. There, at least, in regulated enjoyment, free from vices, and not without tiie fear of God which keeps men from them, there was something tangible, and it was better to make the best of that than to pine, with unsatisfied desires, after the impossible ideal of a perfectly righteous government in which there are no anomalies. For "of his labour" read in his labour. 16. IVhcn I applied vtinc heart to l-ito-w wisdom] The opening formula has met us before in ch. i. 13. Tlie jiarenthctical clause expresses, with a familiar imagery, the sleepless meditation that had vv. 17; I.] ECCLESIASTES, VIII. IX. 1S3 the business that is done upon the earth : (for also there is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes :) then ^.^ I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun : because though a man labour to seek // out, yet he shall not find /// yea further, though a Avise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it. For all this I considered in my heart even to declare all 9 this, that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are sought in vain the solution of the problem which the order and disorder of the world presented. So Cicero {ad Fam.xu. 30) says ^' Fuit tuiri- Jicd vigilantid qui toto stto cottsulatii sointuim non vidit. " 17. then I beheld all the -work of God] The confession is like that which we have had before in chap. vii. 23, 24: perhaps, also, we may add, like that of a very different writer dealing with a very different question, "How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out" (Rom. xi. 33). The English reader may be reminded of Bishop Butler's vSermon (XV.) on the "Ignorance of Man," of which these verses supply the text. What is noticeable here is that the ignorance (we may use a modern term and say the Agnosticism) is not atheistic. That which the seeker contemplates he recognises as the work of God. Before that work, the wise man bows in reverence with the confession that it lies beyond him. The Finite cannot grasp the Infinite. We may compare Hooker's noble words "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name ; yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable. His greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon earth ; therefore it behovelh our words to be wary and few" [Eccl. Fol. I. 2, § 3). CHAPTER IX. For all this I considered in my heart] More literally, For to all this I gave my heart to dig through, i.e. to explain and penetrate to the secret of the great enigma of life. that the righteous, and the wise, and their tuorks, are in the hand of God] The words hover, as it were, between the thought of Destiny and Providence, the latter, perhaps, slightly predominating. The wise and good need not despair, though they remain in ignorance of the working of the Divine Will. It is enough for them to know that they are in Its power, under Its care, and that It is in its essence as righteous as It is almighty. l84 ECCLESIASTES, IX. [v. 2. in the hand of God : no man knoweth either love or hatred ! by all that is before them. All things come alike to all : no man kuo'ucth cither love or Jiaire9lvei, niv Iffx^i 717s, (pBlvei Zk ffwfxaros, 6vr}i\oLS ^i^7}Kiv, oiSre Trpos irdXiv TroXei. TOfS fi^f yap ijdr], roh S' iv vcrr^ptp XP°'"i' tA TepTTva TriKpd ylyverai KavOis T€i TOV 5'" 6'Tt TovTo (7TL\j3ei Kara yav. 5t' aireipoavvav dWou I3i6tov, KOVK aTTodei^iv twv virb yalas. " Yea, every life of man is full of grief, Nor is there any respite from his toils: But whatsoe'er is dearer than our life, Darkness comes o'er it, covering all with clouds; And yet of this we seem all madly fond, For this at least is bright upon the earth, Through utter nescience of a life elsewhere. And the 'no-proof of all beneath the earth." 5. J^or the liviiii^ kncnu that they shall dii-\ The writer in one of the strange paradoxes of the mood of pessimism finds that though life is vanity, it is yet better than the death which he looks upon as its only outcome. 'Phere is a greatness in the very consciousness of the coming doom. Man, knowing he must perish and lamenting over his fate, is nobler than those that are already numbered with the dead. There is a pride even in the cry with which those who enter on the arena as doomed to death greet the sovereign Power that dooms them: "Ave, Cccsar; morituri te salutamus." " Ilail to thee Caesar, hail ! on our way to our death-doom we greet thee. " vv. 6, 7.] ECCLESIASTES, IX. 187 ther have they any more a reward ; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their 6 envy, is now perished ; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine 7 They were noisier then than when their bleeding and mangled car- cases on the arena were all that was left of them. neither have they any more a rczuard\ The words exclude the thought (in the then phase of the Debater's feeling) of reward in a life after death, but the primary meaning of the word is that of "hire" and "wages" (Gen. xxx. 28; Exod. ii. 9), and the idea conveyed is that the dead no longer find, as on earth, that which rewards their labour. There is no longer even death to look forward to as the wages of his life. So we have in Shakespeare : "Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta'en thy wages." Cytiibccine, Act iv., So. 2. for the memory of them is forgotteii\ The Hebrew gives an assonance between "reward" {sheker) and "memory" (zekcr), which it is hard to reproduce in English. "Reward" and " record " suggest themselves as the nearest approximation. For the thought see note on ch. i. 11. Even the immortality of living in the memory of others, which modern thinkers have substituted for the Christian hope, is denied to the vast majority of mankind. 6. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished\ The three passions are named as strongest and most vehement in their action. Even these are all hushed in the calm of the grave. There are no passions there, and the deadliest foes, rival statesmen and bitter controversialists, rest side by side together. The thought of the state of the dead stands on nearly the same level as that of the elegy of Hezekiah (Isai. xxxviii.9 — 20). 7. 6^1? thy way, eat thy bread with joy] The Debater falls back, as before, on the Epicurean rule of tranquil regulated enjoyment, as in chs. ii. 24, iii. 12, 22, v, 18. Life was after all liveable, if a man would but set himself to look at its brighter side. The specific mention of "wine" for the first time in this connexion does not imply anything more than the moderate use of it commended in Prov. xxxi. 67 ; Ps. civ. 15. What is asserted, is that asceticism is not the right remedy for pessimism. Experience indeed seems to shew that too often it does but intensify it. Whatever else might be doubtful, if such a life were accepted as God's gift (chs. ii. 24, viii. 15), He approved of the deeds of the man who so lived. The "other, and more cheerful, voice" utters a protest against the mere gloom of despair. We have oscilla- tions of thought, but not, as some have supposed, the maxims of a sensualist introduced only to be condemned. r88 ECCLESIASTES, IX. • [w. 8, 9. with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. 8 Let thy garments be always white ; and let thy head lack no 9 ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity : for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest 8. Let thy garments he always •itig is a chihf] The pjnomic temper which we liave seen in verse 7 still continues, and passes Irom the weak- nesses of subjects and popular leaders to those of rulers. It is, of course, probable that the writer had a specific instance in his thoughts, but as the Hebrew word for "child" has a wide range including any age from infancy (Ex. ii. 6; Judg. xiii. 5) to manhood (Gen. xxxiv. 19; i Kings iii. 7), it is not easy to fix the reference. In Isai. iii. 12 a. like word appears to be used of Ahaz. The old school of interpreters saw in it Solomon's prophetic foresight of the folly of Rehoboam (i Kings xii. i — 11). One commentator (llitzig) connects it, with some plausibility, with the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes who was but fifteen years of age on his father's accession to the throne (Justin X.\X. 2) and whose government, as described by Justin ('■' tril'iniatiis, prefect tiras et ducattis vtulicrcs ordiita- />ai!t") resembled that painted by Isaiah (iii. 12), the queen mother Agathoclea (see Note on ch. vii. 26) and her brother being the real rulers. Gratz, adapting the words to his theory of the date of the book takes the word child as =; servant, and refers it to the ignoble origin of llerod the Great. thy frivccs cat in the momiiijf] The word "eat" is, of course, equivalent to " feast " or " banquet," and the kind of life condemned is the profligate luxury which begins the day with revels, instead of giving the morning hours to "sitting in the gate" and doing justice and judg- ment. Morning revelling was looked upon naturally as the extreme of profligacy. So St Peter repudiates the charge of drunkenness on the ground that it was but "the third hour of the day" i.e. 9A.M. (.'\cts ii. 15). So Cicero {Philipp. 11. 41) emphasizes the fact "a^ hard tcrtid bibebatur." So Catullus (XLVii. 5) " Vos convivia lauta sumtuose De die facitis." "Ye from daybreak onward make Your sumptuous feasts and revelry." So Juvenal (Sat. i. 49) '■'■ Exsul ah octavd Marius hibit" ("In exile Marius from the eighth hour drinks "). So Isaiah (v. 11) utters his woe against those that "rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink." 17. Blessed art thou, land, ivhcn thy hinc^ is the son ofnobIcs\ Tlie epithet has been taken as instance of the Hebrew of expressing cha- racter by the phrase "the son of...," and hence as having a meaning here like that of the Latin s^enerosiis. Probably, however, the maxim reflects the thought of Greek political writers that they "are truly noble who can point to ancestors distinguished for both excellence and wealth" (Aristot. Po/it. v. 17) that if there were any one family with •an hereditary character for excellence, it was just that it should lie recognised as kingly, and that the king should be chosen from it {/bid. III. 16). Such, the writer may have meant covertly to imply, ought a vv. iS, 19.] ECCLESIASTES, X. 201 when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness. By much slothfulness the building decayeth ; and through is idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: 19 but money answereth all things. true descendant of the Ptolemies to have been instead of sinking into a degenerate profligacy. tliy princes eat in due seasoni The word " season " reminds us of the sense in which in chap. iii. i — 8 it is said that every thing, feasting included, has its proper "time." In the case supposed the character of the king is reflected in the princes that rule imder him. The words "for strength" may, perhaps, mean "in strength," i.e. with the self- control of temperance, the iyKpareia of Greek ethics, and not in the drunkenness which accom.panies the morning revels. 18. Bf mncli slothfulness the hiilding decayetkX The maxim, though generalised in form, and applicable to every form of the evil which it condemns, may fairly be contemplated, in relation to its context, as having a political bearing. There, laissez-faire, the policy of indolent procrastination, may be as fatal to the good government and prosperity of a slate as the most reckless profligacy. The figure is singularly apt. The fabric of a state, like that of the house (Amos ix. 11), needs from time to time to be surveyed and repaired. "Time," as Bacon has said, "alters all things" (houses of both kinds included) "for the worse." "The timber framework of the house decays." The decay may be hidden at first (this seems the point implied in the relation of the two parts of the proverb) but the latent cause soon shews itself in a verv patent effect, "The house lets in the rain," there is the "continual dropping," the "drip, drip, drip," which, to the householder seeking comfort, is the type of all extremest discomfort (Prov. xix. 13). Delitzsch quotes a curious Arab proverb that "there are three things that make a house intolerable, rain leaking through ,the roof, an ill-tempered wife, and the eiviex lecti-iiis.^^ So is it with the state. The timbers are the funda- mental laws or principles by which its fabric is supported. Corruption or discord (the "beginning of strife" which is "as when one lettcth out of water," Prov. xvii. 14) is the visible token that these are worm- eaten and decayed through long neglect. 19. money ansivercth all things] The maxim as it stands in the English Version, has a somewhat cynical ring, reminding us only too closely of the counsel condemned by the Roman satirist, "O cives, cives, qujerenda pecunia primum est; Virtus post nummos." "Money, my townsmen, must be sought for first; Virtue comes after guineas," 232 ECCLESIASTES, X. [v. 20. 8o Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse "Tsne tihi melius suadet, qui rem facias; rem, Si possis, rectc; si non, quocunque modo rem?" "Does he give better counsel whom we hear, 'Make money, money; justly if you can, But if not, then in any way, make money?'" IIOR. Epp. I. r. 53, 65. So Menandcr (quoted by Delilzsch) "Silver and gold — these are the Gods who profit most. If these are in thy house pray for what thuu wilt and it shall be thine," and Horace: "Scilicet uxorem cum dote, fidemque, ct amicos, Et genus, et formam, regina pccunia donat ; Ac bene nummatum decorat Suadela Venusque." "Seek'st thou a dowricd wife, or friends, or trust, Beauty or rank. Queen Money gives thee all ; Put money in thy purse, and thou shalt lack Nor suasivc jjower nor comeliness of form." Epp. r. 6. Sfj— 38. The truer rendering of the Hebrew, however, gives not so much a maxim as the statement of a fact and is entirely in harmony with the pre- ceding verses. For revelry they {i.e. " man," indefinitely) prepare food (literally, bread) and wine that rejoices life, and money answeretb all things, i.e. meets all they want. The words obviously point to the conduct of the luxurious and slothful princes condemned in verses 16, 18. Regardless of their duty as rulers and of the sufferings of their people, they aim only at self-indulgence and they look to money, how- ever gained, as the means of satisfying their desires. So, in our own times, Armenians or P\'llaheen may die by thousands of famine or pestilence, but the palaces of the Sultan and the Khedive are as full of luxury and magnificence as ever". The State may be bankrupt and creditors unpaid, but they manage somehow to get what they want. The money which they sq^lceze out from a starving province is for them as the God they worship who grants all they wish. 20. Curse not the /dug, no not in thy thought] The words paint, as from a painful experience, the all-pervading espionage, which, as in the delatores of the Roman Empire, associates itself naturally with the police of a despotic government. The wise man must recognise that espionage as a fact and gives his counsel accordingly, but it is not the less clear that the counsel itself conveys, in its grave irony, a condem- nation of the practice. It may be noted that the atldition of "curse not the rich" makes the irony clearer, and takes the maxim out of the hands of those who would read in it the serious condemnation of all indepen- dence of thought and s])eech in face of the "right tlivine of kings to govern wrong." For the purposes of the teacher, in the maxims in which the irony of intlignalion veils itself in the garb of a servile prudence, the rich man and the king stand on the same level. V. 20.] ECCLESIASTES, X. 203 not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. i}i thy bedchamber'] This is, as in 2 Kings vi. 12, like the "closet" of Matt. vi. 6, proverbial for the extremest retirement. a bird of the air shall carry the voice] The figure is so natural, answering to the "walls have ears" of the Rabbinic, German, English proverbs, that any more special reference scarcely need to be sought for, but it is interesting to note the close parallel presented by the familiar Greek proverb of " the cranes of Ibycos." For the reader who does not know the stoiy it may be well to tell it. Ibycos was a lyric poet of Rhegium, circ. B.C. 540. He was murdered by robbers near Corinth and, as he died, called on a flock of cranes that chanced to fly over him, to avenge his death. His murderers went with their plunder to Corinth, and mingled with the crowd in the theatre. It chanced that the cranes appeared and hovered over the heads of the spectators, and one of the murderers betrayed himself by the terror- stricken cry " Behold the avengers of Ibycos !" (Suidas T/Swes. Apollon. Sidon in the Anthol. Graec. B. VII. 745, ed, Tauchnitz). Suggestive parallels are also found in Greek comedy, ,oi55eiS oiSev top drjcravphv tov efxhv ttXtjv el' Tis dp 6pvLS. "No one knows of my treasure, save, it may be, a bird." Aristoph. Birds, 575. •q KOpu>vq fiol vaXai, avu Ti (ppd^et. *'Long smce the raven tells me from on high.'' Aristoph. Birds, 50. Possibly, however, the words may refer to the employment of carrier pigeons in the police espionage of despots. Their use goes back to a remote antiquity and is at least as old as Anacreon's "Ode to a pigeon." The pigeon speaks : 'Eyci 5' KvaKpiovTL AiaKovw Toaavra, Kal vvv opas eKelvov 'iJTTiaToXds KO.Ulj'W. "Now I render service due To Anacreon, Master true. And I bear his billets-dou.x." Frequently they were emjiloyed to keep up communication between generals, as in the case of iSrutus and Hirtius at the battle of Muiina. " What availed it," says Pliny, in words that coincide almost verbally with the te.\t(///^/. A^at. X. 37), "that nets were stretched across the river while the messenger was cleaving the air" ("fer ccchiin cunte nuiitio"). 204 ECCLESIASTES, XI. [v. i. 11 Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it CHAPTER XL 1. Cast thy bread upon the rvaters] The book, as it draws nearer to its close, becomes more and more enigmatic, and each single verse is as a parable and dark saying. It is not to be wondered at, in such a case, that interpreters should, after their nature, read their own thoughts between the lines and so "fmd what they have sought." This precept accordingly has been taken by some commentators (t'.;'. Griitz) as recom- mending an unrestrained licentiousness. By others it has been raised almost to the level of the counsel which bids us "do good, hoping for nothing again, even to the unthankful and the evil" (Matt. v. 44 — 46; Luke vi. 32 — 35). The latter is, it need hardly be said, infinitely more in accordance with the context and with the conclusion to which the writer is drawing near. Here again we find guidance in the parallelism of Greek thought. As Lowlh pointed out {J)e Sac. Poes. Ilcb. X.) the words refer to the Greek proverbial phrase crweipau eirl irovrifi ("to sow in the ocean") as indicating a thankless labour. So Theognis, V. 105, AfiXoi)s 5' ei7 fpSovri ixaTaioTdrr) x^P'-^ icFTiv, 'laov yap aneipeiv ttovtov d\6s ttoXltJ^. OvT€ yap dv ttovtov cnreLpuv j3a9d \r]l'civ duQi, Oure KaKous ev 5pw ev wdXiv avTiXajSois. " Vain is thy bounty, giving to the base, Like scattering seed ujion the salt sea's plain; Sowing the sea, thou shalt no harvest reaj-), Nor, giving to the vile, reward shalt gain." Other parallels are found (i) in the Aramaic version of the proverbs of Sirach "Cast thy bread upon the water and the land, and at last thou shalt find it aga'in " (Dukes, Pahbin. B/iiiiienl. -p- 1?>)- (-) I" -i" Arabic proverb, the moral of a long legend narrating how Mohammed the son of Hassan had been in the daUy habit of throwing loaves into a river, how the life of an adopted son of the Caliph Mutewekjil, who had narrowly escaped drowning by clambering to a rock, was thus pre- served, and how Mohammed saw in this a jiroof of the ]iroverb he had learnt in his youth "Do good; cast thy bread upon the waters, and one day thou shall lie rewarded" (Diez, Denku>iir,iii^I;citen von Asicn, I. ]■>. 106, quoted by Dukes, iit supra). {3) In a Turkish proverb, also quoted by Dukes from Diez, "Do good, cast thy bread upon the water. If the fish know it not, yet the Creator knows." The writer holds himself aloof from the selfish prudence of the maxim of Theognis, and bids men not to be afraid "to cast their bread (the generic term stands for "corn," as in Gen. xli. 54 ; Isai. xxviii. •2S) even upon the face of the thankless waters." Sooner or later they shall reap as they have sown. Comp. 2 Cor. ix. 6 — 10. It is iiot without interest to note that this interpretation is adopted by Voltaire in his Precis de CEcclesiaste, V. 2.] ECCLESIASTES, XI. 205 after many days. Give a portion to seven, and also to 2 eight ; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the " Repandez vos bienfaits avec magnificence, Meme aux moins vertueux ne les refusez pas." Other interpretations may be briefly noted, but have not much to commend them: (r) that the figure is drawn from agriculture, and that the corn is to be sown in a well irrigated field, but this gives a mean- ing precisely the opposite of the true one; (2) that it is drawn from commerce and commends a venturous spirit of enterprise like that of exporting com, which is certain to bring profit in the long run ; but this again, unless we make the venture one of benevolence, is foreign to the spirit of the context; (3) that it speaks of throwing cakes of bread upon the water, that float away and seem to be wasted ; but this, though leading to the same result as the interpretation here adopted, and having the support of the Arab legend quoted above, lacks the point of the refer- ence to the Greek proverb ; (4) last and basest, the imagination of one interpreter mentioned above that the precept sanctions a boundless sensual indulgence. 2. Give a porlioji to seven, and also to eight] The precept is clearly a pendant to verse i and has received the same variety of inter- pretations. Following the same line of thought as before, we find in it the counsel to give freely as opportunities present themselves. The combination of "to seven and also to eight," is, like that of "six and seven" in Job v. 19, of "three and four" in Amos i. ii., like the "seventy times seven " of Matt, xviii. 22, a Hebrew form of the definite for the indefinite. There is, in our acts of kindness, to be no grudging narrowness. In such things "Kind heaven disdains the lore Of nicely calculated less or more." And the reason given fits in with the counsel, "Thou knowest not what evil shall be on earth." "Hard times may come, when thou shalt have no means for giving ; therefore waste not the present opportunity. Help those to whom thou givest to meet the hazards of the uncertain future." Here again men interpret according to their character, and so, we have, as before, the licentious moralist finding a plea for unlimited voluptuousness, while the prudential adviser sees in the precept, which he renders "Divide the portion into seven, yea eight parts," a caution like that which led Jacoi) to divide his caravan into two portions for the sake of safety (Gen. xxxii. 7, 8). Taken in this last sense the precept stands on a level with the current saying of the Stock Exchange that it isn't wise to " put all your eggs into one basket," with the " heilging " of those who bet on more than one horse at the Derby and other races. It may well be left to the student to decide which of these interpre- tations has most to commend it. It may be admitted, however, as it is the enigmatic form of the precept which has given rise to these discordant views as to its meaning, 2o6 ECCLESIASTES, XI. [vv. 3—5. earth. If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth : and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. He that observeth the wind shall not sow ; and he tliat regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou know- est not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do that the grave irony of the writer, which we have ah-eady traced in ch. X. 4, 20 may have led him to adopt that form l^ecause it served as a test of character, each scholar finding what he sought. Here also it might be added " Who hath ears to hear, let him hear" (Malt. xiii. 9). 3. If the clouds be full of rain] The thought is linked to tiiat which precedes it by the mention of the " evil coming upon the earth." In regard to that evil, the sweeping calamities that lie beyond man's control, he is as powerless as he is when the black clouds gather and the winds rush wildly. He knows only that the clouds will pour down their rain, that the tree will lie as the tempest has blown it down. Is he therefore to pause, and hesitate and stand still, indulging the temper "over exquisite To cast the fashion of uncertain evils"? That question is answered in the next verse. It may be noted, as an illustration of the way in which the after-thoughts of theology have worked their way into the interpretation of Scripture, that tlie latter clause has been expounded as meaning that the state in which men chance to be when death comes on them is unalterable, that there is " no repentance in the grave." So far as it exjiresses the general truth that our efforts to alter the character of others for the better must cease when the man dies, that when the tree falls to south or north, towards the region of light or that of darkness, we, who are still on earth, cannot prune, or dig about, or dung it (Luke xiii. 8), the inference may be legitimate enough, but it is clear that it is not that thought which was prominent in the mind of the writer. 4. //e that obscix'dh the luind shall not soio] This is, as lias been said above, the answer to the question suggested in verse 3. Our ignorance of the future is not to put a stop to action. If we allowed that "taking thought for the morrow" (Matt. vi. 25) to hinder us from doing good, we sliould be as the husbandman who is always observing the clouds and lets the time of sowing pass by ; who when harvest comes, watches the wind as it blows round him, till "the harvest is past, and the summer ended " (Jcr. viii. -20) and he can no longer reap. The very watching for opportunities may end in missing them. There are times when it is our wisdom to " be instant out of season " (2 Tim. iv. 2). 6. As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit] The Hebrew word for "spirit" has also the meaning of "wind" as in the verse immediately preceding, antl tins has led many commentators (as with the corresponding Greek word in John iii. 8) to prefer that meaning, V. 6.] ECCLESIASTES, XI. 207 grow in the womb of her that is with child : even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not here. Two different examples of man's ignorance of the processes of the common phenomena of nature are adduced on this view as analogous to his ignorance of the "work of God," of what we call the Divine Government of the Universe. It may be questioned however whether, both here and in John iii. 8, a more adequate meaning is not given by retaining the idea of "spirit" as the "breath of life" of Gen. ii. 7. The growth of the human embryo was for the early observers of nature an impenetrable mystery (Job x. 11; Ps. cxxxix. 13 — 17). It became yet more mysterious when men thought of life, with all its phenomena of sensation and consciousness entering into the material structure thus "fearfully and wonderfully made." This sense of the word agrees it will be seen, with its use in chaps, iii. 21, xii. 7. The word "nor" has nothing answering to it in the Hebrew and the sentence should run thus, describing not two distinct phenomena but one complex fact, "as thou knowest not the way of the spirit (the breath of life) how the framework of the body (literally the bones, but the word is used commonly for the whole body as in Lam. iv. 7; Job vii. 15; Prov. XV. ^o, xvi. 24 and elsewhere) is in the womb of her that is with child. the ivorhs of God who mnketh all] So in ch. vii. 13, we had " Consider the work of God." Here the addition of " who maketh all " indicates a higher stage of faith. That " never-failing Providence orders all things both in heaven and earth." The agnosticism of the Debater is, like that of Hooker {Eal. Pol. i. 2. § 3), the utterance of a devout Theism, content to keep within the limits of the Knowable, but not placing the object of its adoration in the category of the Unknown and Unknowable. 6. In the morning so7v thy seed] Once again the enigmatic form, as in verse 2, is the touchstone of interpreters. It has been held to mean (i) that men are to seek sensual pleasures not in the morning of their youth only, but in the eventide of age, not to be afraid of begetting children, in or out of wedlock, in any period of their life; or (2) that man is to work, as we say, early and late, doing his appointed task, regardless of the chances of life; or (3) with a more specific application of the same general principle, that he is to sow the seed of good and kindly deeds, and wait for the harvest, the prospect of which is hidden from him. Of these (3) seems every way the truest and most satisfying interpretation. In "withdraw not thy hand," and in the use of the two demonstrative pronouns (in the Hebrew, however, the same pronoun is repeated, this or this), we have a parallel to the thought and language of ch. vii. 1 S. The whole precept is a call to activity in good, not unlike that of Him who said " I must •work the works of Him that sent me, while it is called to day : the night cometh, when no man can work" (John ix. 4); who taught men to labour in the vineyard, even though they were not called to begin 2oS ECCLESIASTES, XI. . [vv. 7, 8. thine hand : for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall he alike good. 7 Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant tiling it is for the 8 eyes to behold the sun : but if a man live many years, and their work till the eleventh hour when it was "toward evening, and the day far spent" (Matt. XX. i — 16). thou knaivcst not whether shall prosper'\ The ignorance of men as to the ixsults of their labour, still more the apparent or the actual failure of their earlier efforts, tempts them too often to despondency and indolence. The ma\im, like that of verse 6, bids them take comfort from that very ignorance. The seed sown in the morning of life may bear its harvest at once, or not till the evening of age. The man may reap at one and the same time the fruits of his earlier and his later sowing, and may find that "both are alike good." 7. Truly the light is sivecl] Better, And the light is sweet. The conjunction is simply the usual copulative particle. The word for "sweet" is that used of honey in Judg. xiv. 14; of the honeycomb in Prov. xxiv. 13. The pessimism of the thinker is passing away under the sunshine of the wiser plan of life in which he at last finds guidance. Tife may after all, riglitly ordered, be pleasant and comely, not without the " sweetness and light " on which the modern preachers of wisdom lay stress. A remarkable parallel to the form of the maxim (quoted by Ginsburg) is found in Eurii)ides: JIt; IX, dTro\eari^ dij}pov r]ou yap to 0a;s 'Keuffcrai', to, d' virb yrjv /xt] /jl' I5eii> dvayKd(Trii. "Dtstroy me not before my youth is ripe: For pleasant sure it is to see the sun ; Compel me not to see what lies below." Iphig. in Aul. 12 19. So Theognis contemplating death: Kiiaoixai (Hare \l9oi dcpOoyyos, Xfty^a; 5' iparbv rcachers of "sweetness and light," have contrasted the gloomy plodding Phi- listinism or Puritanism of the English as a people, " (/iii s'amusent moult (=bi£n) iristement" (Froissart), with the brightness and gaietjr V. 9-1 ECCLESIASTES, XI. 211 cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, of the French, and have urged us to learn wisdom from the comparison. In good faith he tells the young man to " rejoice in his youth," to study the bent of his character, what we should call his aesthetic tastes, but all this is not to be the reckless indulgence of each sensuous impulse, but to be subject to the thought "God will bring thee into judgment." What the judgment may be the Debater does not define. It may come in the physical suffering, the disease, or the poverty, or the shame, that are the portion of the drunkard and the sensualist. It may come in the pangs of self-reproach, and the memory of the " mala mentis gaitdia.^'' "The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make whips to scourge us." It is singularly significant to find an echo of the precept so given in the teaching of the great Poet of the more atheistic type of Epicureanism, obliged, as in spite of himself, to re- cognise the fact of a moral order in the world: " Inde metus maculat poenarum praemia vitse. Circumretit enim vis atque injuria quemque, Atque, imde exorta est, ad eum plerumque revertit; Nee facile est placidam ac pacatam degere vitam, Qui violat facteis communia foedera pacis. Etsi fallit enim divom genus humanumque, Perpetuo tamen id fore clam diffidere debet." " Hence fear of vengeance life's best prizes mars ; For violence and wrong take him who works them, As in a net, and to their source return. Nor is it easy found for him who breaks By deeds the common covenants of peace To lead a placid and a peaceful life. For grant he cheat the gods and all mankind, He cannot hope the evil done will be For ever secret." LucR. De Rcr. Nat. V. 1151. Did the judgment of which the thinker speaks go beyond this ? That question also has been variously answered. The Debater, it is obvious, does not draw the pictures of the Tartarus and Elysian Fields of the Greek, or of the Gehenna and the Paradise of which his countrymen were learning to speak, it may be, all too lightly. He will not map out a country he has not seen. Put the facts on which he dwells, the life of ignoble pleasure, or tyranny, or fraud carried on successfully to tlie last, the unequal distribution of the pleasures and the pains of life, the obvious retort on the part of the evil-doer that if this life were all, men could lake their fill of pleasure and evade the judgment of man, or the misery of self-made reproach and failure, by suicide, all this leads to the conclusion that tlie "judgment" which the young man is to remember is " e.\cecding broad," stretching far into the unseen future 14—2 212 ECCLESIASTES, XI. XI I. [w. lo; i. that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. lo Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh : for childhood and youth are vanity. 12 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when of the eternal years. Faith at last comes in where Reason fails, and the man is bidden to remember, in all the (lush of life and joy, that "judgment" comes at last, if not in man's present stage of being, yet in tiie great hereafter. 10. Tlicrefore remove sorrow from thy hcari\ Tiic two clauses recognise the two conditions of happiness so far as happiness is attain- able by man on earth. "Sorrow," better perhajrs, discontent or vexation, is by a deliberate effort to be put away Irom our " heart," i.e. from our mind. We are not to look on the dark side of things, but to cultivate cheerfulness, to be "content" (aurapxTj?) with whatever life brings us (Phil. iv. ii). And the " flesh" too has its claims which may legitimately be recognised. We need not ve.\ it with the self- inflicted tortures of the ascetic, but, in a sense as far as possible diflerent from "the rehabilitation of the flesh" which has been made the plea for an unrivalled sensuality, consider and meet its capacities for pure and innocent enjoyment. childhood and youth arc vanity^ The Hebrew word for " youth" is an unusual one and is not found elsewhere in the Old Testament. It has been differently explained : ( i ) as the dawn or morning of life, tiie period of its brightness; and (2) as the time when the hair is black as con- trasted with the grey hair of age. Of these (i) seems preferable. The prominent idea of "vanity" here is that of transitoriness. The morning will not last. It is wise to use it while we can. CHAPTER XII. 1. Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth'\ The word for "Creator" is strictly the participle of the verb which is translated "create" in Gen. i. i, 21, I'l, and as a Divine Name is exceptionally rare, occurring only here and in Isai. xl. 23, xiiv. 15. It is plural in its form, as Elohini (the word for God) is plural, as the " Holy One" is plural in Prov. ix. 10, xxx. 3; Hos. xii. i, as expressing the majesty of God. The explanations which have been given of the words as /meaning (i) "thy fountain" in the sense of Prov. v. 18, "thy well- spring of sensuous joy," or (2) "thy existence," are scarcely tenable philologically, and are altogether at variance with the context. while the evil days come not^ The description which follows forms in some respects the most difficult of all the enigmas of the Book. That it represents the decay of old age, or of disease anticipating age, ending at last in death, lies beyontl the shadow of a doubt; but the figurative language in which that decay is represented abounds in allusive references which were at the time full of meaning for those V. 2.] ECCLESIASTES, XII. 213 thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them ; while the sun, 2 or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor that had ears to hear, but which now present riddles which it is not easy to solve. Briefly, the two chief lines on which commentators have travelled have been (i) that which starts as in the comment of Gregory Thaumaturgus (see Introduction, ch. Vii.) from the idea of the approach of death as the on-coming of a storm ; (2) that which assumes that we have as it were a diagnosis of the physical phenomena of old age and its infirmities, and loses itself in discussions as to what bodily J organ, heart, brain, liver, gall-duct, or the like, is specially in the author's mind. It will be seen, as the imagery comes before us in detail, how far either solution is satisfactory, how far they admit of being combined, or what other, if any, presents itself with stronger clamis on our attention. The "evil days" are those which are painted in the verses that follow, not necessarily the special forms of evil that come as the punishment of sensual sins, but the inevitable accompaniment of declining years or of disease. There is the implied warning that unless a man has rememljered his Creator in his youth, it will not then be easy to remember Him as for the first time in the "evil days" of age or infirmity. In those days it will be emphatically true that there will be no pleasure in them. 2. ivhih the sun, or the light'] The imagery falls in naturally with the thought that the approach of death is represented by the gathering of a tempest. It does not follow, however, that this excludes the thought of a latent symbolism in detail as well as in the general idea. The thought that man was as a microcosm, and that each element in the universe had its analogue in his nature, was a familiar one to the Greek and Oriental mind, and was susceptible of many applications. So, to take an instance belonging to a different age or country, we find an Eastern poet thus writing, circ. a.d. 1339, "Of all that finds its being in the world Man in himself the symbol true may find. **•*»■* His body is as earth, and as the Heaven His head, with signs and wonders manifold, And the five senses shine therein as stars. The Spirit, like the sun, pours light on all. The limbs, that bear the body's burden up. Are as the hills that raise their height to heaven. Hair covers all his limbs, as grass the earth, And moisture flows, as flow the streams and brooks. So on the day when soul and body part, And from the body's load the soul is freed, Then canst thou see the body all a-tremble. As earth shall tremble at the last great day; The Spirit with its senses fall away. As stars extinguished fall on earth below; 2T4 ECCLESIASTES, XII. [v. 3. 3 the clouds return after the rain : in the day when the keepers The last dcath-?i<;h with which the body dies Thrill through the bones, like teniiK-st-blast and storm. As on that clay the hills shall pass away, So does death's storm break up our mortal frame. A sea of death-damps flows from every pore : Thou plungcst in, and art as drowned therein : So is thy dying like the great world's death; In life and death it is thy parallel." From the Giihchcn Ras of Mahmud, quoted in Tholuck's Bliithen- Samiiilini^ aiis dcr morgntlaiidischcn A/ysti/c, p. 2 13. It will be admitted that the parallelism is singularly striking and suggestive. \\'ith this clue to guide us we may admit all that has been urged by Umbreit, Ginsburg and others in favour of the "storm" inter- jjrelation and yet not reject the more detailed symbolic meaning of Jewish and other commentators. We may have the broad outline of the phenomena that precede a tempest, sun, moon and stars, hidden by the gathering blackness. A like imagery meets us as representing both personal and national calamity in Isai. xiii. 10; Jer. xv. 9; Amos viii. 9. The sun may be the Spirit, the Divine light of the body, the moon as the Reason that reflects that light, the stars as the senses ths't give but a dim light in the absence of sun and moon. The clouds that return after rain are the natural symbol of sorrows, cares, misfortunes, that obscure the shining of the inward light, perhaps of the showers of tears which they cause, but after which in the melancholy and gloom of age and weakness they too commonly "return." The mere anato- mical interpretation which interprets the first four symbols as re- ferring to the eyes, the brow, the nose, the cheeks, and finds in the "clouds after rain" the symptoms of the catarrh of old age, may be looked upon as a morbid outgrowth of prosaic fancy in men in whom the sense of true poetic imagination was extinct. 3. i>i the day when the keepers of the house shall trcinhle'\ Here, as before, there is a vivid picture which is also an allegory. The words represent (i) the effect of terror, such as that produced by tempest, or by earthquake, in the population of the city; and (2) the fact which corresponds to these in the breaking up of life. As in the previous verse the phenomena of the fnmament answered to those of the higher region of man's nature, so these represent the changes that pass over the parts of his bodily structure. Here accordingly the mode of inter- l^retation which was rejected before becomes admissible. The error of the allegorizers was that they had not the discernment to see that the decay of mental j^owers would naturally take jirecedence of that of the bodily organs and that they would as naturally be symbolized by sun, moon and stars. The "keepers" or "watchers" of the houses are in the picture those who stand at the gate as sentinels or go round about the house to see that there are none approaching with the intention to attack. In the allegory they represent the legs which support the frame at rest or give it the power of movement. The trembling is that of the V. 3.] ECCLESIASTES, XII. 215 of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, unsteady gait of age, perhaps even of paralysis. Not a few feature^; in the picture seem to indicate experience rather than observation, and this fits in with the tliought, suggested in the Ideal Biography {Intro- duction, ch. III.), of a form of creeping paralysis depriving one organ after another of its functional activity yet leaving the brain free to note the gradual decay of the whole organism. and the strong men shall boiu theinselvesl As the previous clause painted the effect of terror on the slave sentinels of the house, so this represents its action on the men of might, the wealthy and the noble. They too cower in their panic before the advancing storm. Interpreting the parable, they are the symbol of the arms as man's great instrument of action. They too, once strong to wield sword, or axe, to drive plough, or pen, become flaccid and feeble. The "hands that hang down" (Job iv. 3, 4; Isai. xxxv. 3; Heb. xii. 12) become the pro- verbial type of weakness as well as the "feeble knees." It should be added that the allegorizing commentators for the most part invert the order of interpretation which has been here adopted, finding the arms in the "keepers" and the legs in the "strong man." Something may, of course, be said for this view, but the balance of probabilities turns in favour of that here adopted. and the grinders cease because they are fccv\ Both this noun and " they that look out " are in the feminine, and this determines theii position in the picture. As we found slaves and nobles in the first half of the verse, so here we have women at the opposite extremes of social ranks. To "grind at the mill" was the type of the humblest form of female slave labour (Judg. xvi. 21; Isai. xlvii. 2; Exod. xi. 5; Job xxxi. 10; Matt. xxiv. 41 ; Homer, Od. XX. 105 — 8). To "look out of the windows" (/. e. the latticed openings, glazed windows being as yet unknown) was as naturally the occupation of the wealthy and luxurious women of the upper class. So the ladies of Sisera (Judg. v. 28), and Michal, Saul's daughter (2 Sam. vi. 16), and the observing sage, or probably. Wisdom personified (Prov. vii. 6), and Jezebel (2 Kings ix. 30), and the kingly lover of the Shulamite (Song Sol. ii. 9) are all represented in this attitude. The interpretation of the parable is here not far to seek. The grinders (as the very term "molar" suggests) can be none other than the teeth, \ doing, as it were, their menial work of masticating food. They that look out of the windows can be none other than the eyes with their • nobler function as organs of perception. So Cicero describes the eyes as "ta9t(juam in arce collocati . . .tanquani speculatores altissimum locuvi obtincnt." "Placed as in a citadel, like watchmen, they hold the highest places" {de Nat. Dcor. 11. 140). The symbolism which thus draws, as it were, distinctions of dignity and honour between different parts of the body will remind a thoughtful student of the analogy on which St Paul lays stress in i Cor. xii. 12 — 26. Each member of 2i6 ECCLESIASTES, XII. [v. 4. 4 and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of tliat analogy may, of course, thus be used as a symbol of the other. Here the gradations of society represent the organs of the body, and the Apostle inverts the comparison. 4. and the doors shall be shut in the streets'] The picture of the city under the terror of the storm is continued. The gates of all houses are closed. None leave their houses; the noise of the mill ceases. The bird (probably the crane or the swallow) rises in the air with sharp cries {literally, for a cry). Even the "daughters of song " (the birds that sing most sweetly, the nightingale or thrush, or possibly the "singing women" of ch. ii. J>, whose occuiiation is gone in a time of terror and dismay) crouch silently, or perhaps, chirp in a low tone. Few will dispute the vividness of the picture. The interpretation of the symbols becomes, however, more difficult than ever. The key is probably to be found in the thought that as we had the decay of bodily 07-x-is in the previous verse, so here we have that of bodily /uneticms. i'he "doors" (the Hebrew is dual as represent- ing what we call "folding iloors") are the apertures by which the life of processes of sensation and nutrition from its beginning to its end is carried on, and the failure of those processes in extreme age, or in the prostration of paralysis, is indicated by the "shutting" of the doors. What we may call the dual organs of the body, lips, eyes, ears, alike lose their old energies. The mill (a better rendering than "grinding") is that which contains the "grinders" of verse 3, i.e. the mouth, by which that process begins, can no longer do its work of vocal utterance rightly. The words "he shall rise up at the voice of the binl " have for the most part been taken as describing the sleeplessness of age, the old man waking at a sparrow's chirp, but this interpretation is open to the objections (i) that it abruptly introduces the old man as a personal subject in the sentence, while up to this point all has been figurative; and (2) that it makes the clause unmeaning in its relation to the picture of the terror-stricken city, below which we see that of the decay of man's physical framework. Adopting the construction given above, we get that which answers to the "childish treble" of the old inan's voice, and find a distinct parallel to it in the elegy of Hezekiah "Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter" (Isai. xxxviii. 14); the querulous moaning which in his case was the accompaniment of disease becoming, with the old or the paralysed, normal and continuous. The "daughters of song" are, according to the common Hebrew idiom, those that sing, birds or women, as the case may be. Here, their being "brought low," i.e. their withdrawal from the stage of life, may syndiolise the failure cither of the power to sing, or of the power to enjoy the song of others. The words of Barzillai in 2 .Sam. xix. 35 paint the infirmities of age in nearly the same form, though in less figurative language. " Can thy- servant taste what I eat or drink? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men or singing women?" The interpretations which find in the "daughters of song" either (i) the lips as employed in singing, or V. 4] ECCLESIASTES, XII. 217 the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low ; (2) the ears as drinking in the sounds of song, though each has found favour with many commentators, have less to commend them, and are open to the charge of introducing a needless and tame repetition of phenomena already described. With the picture of old age thus far we may compare that, almost cynical in its unsparing minuteness, of Juvenal Saf. X. 200 — 239. A few of the more striking parallels may be selected as examples : "Frangendus misero gingiva panis inermi." " Bread must be broken for the toothless gums." " Xon eadem vini, atque cibi, torpente palato, Gaudia." " For the dulled palate wine and food have lost Their former savours." "Adspice partis Nunc damnum alterius; nam qute cantante voluptas, Sit licet eximius citharoedus, siive Seleucus, Et quibus aurata mos est fulgere lacerna? Quid refert, magni sedeat qua parte theatri. Qui vix cornicines exaudiet, atque tubarum Concentus." " Now mark the loss of yet another sense : What pleasure now is his at voice of song. How choice soe'er the minstrel, artist famed, Or those who love to walk in golden robes ? What matters where he sits in all the space Of the wide theatre, who scarce can hear The crash of horns and trumpets?" Or again " Ille humero, hie lumbis, hie coxa debilis; ambos Perdidit ille oculos, et luscis invidet ; hujus Pallida labra cibum accipiunt digitis alienis. Ipse ad conspectum coenas diducere rictum Suetus, hiat tantiim, ceu pullus hirundinis, ad quern Ore volat pleno mater jejuna." " Shoulders, loins, hip, each failing in its strength Now this man finds, now that, and one shall lose Both eyes, and envy those that boast but one.... And he who used, at sight of supper spread, To grin with wide-oped jaw, now feebly gapes, Like a young swallow, whom its mother bird Feeds from her mouth filled, though she fast herself." 2i8 ECCLESIASTES, XII. [v. 5. 5 also ivhen they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, 6. also when ihey shall be afraid of that tvhich is hi^A'\ The description becomes more and more enigmatic, possibly, as some have lliought, because tlie special forms of intirmity referred to called for a veil. The first clause, however, is fairly clear if we omit the interpolated "7C'hni." They (the indefinite plinal, with the force of the French on) shall be afraid of a height, or hill. The new form of the sentence, the opening words also, indicate that the picture of the storm has been com- pleted, and that symbolism of another kind comes in. We see, as it were, another slide in the magic lantern of the exhibiter. To be "afraid of a hill" expresses not merely or chiefly the failure of strength of limbs to climb mountains, but the temper that, as we say, makes "mountains out of molehills," which, like the slothful man of Prov. xxii. 13, sees "a lion in the path." There are "fears in the way." Imaginary terrors haunt the aged. Here again we have a parallel in Latin poetry : "Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda; vel quod Qurerit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti, "Vel quod res omnes timide gelideque ministrat." "Many the troubles that attend the old; For either still he sets his mind on gains And dares not touch, and fears to use his gains, Or deals with all things as with chill of fear." Horace, £/>. ad Pis. 169 — 71. So Aristotle among the characteristics of age notes that the old are SetXol KoX iravra irpo modern _;'w/^;-W(V might swear by some favourite sauce. So understood the mej.ning of the passage seems fairly clear. Tlie caper-berry shall 220 ECCLESIASTES, XII. [v. 6. because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go 6 about the streets : or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the fail, i.e. shall no longer rouse the flagging appetite of age. There shall be a /oiiga oblivio of what the man liad most delighted in. It would seem indeed from the account of the capparis given by Pliny (I/isl. iVa/. XX. 59) that its medicinal virtues were of a very varied character. It was a remedy for paralysis and diseases of the kidneys and the liver, for tooth-ache and ear-ache, for scrofula and phagedenic ulcers. The words describe accordingly the intirmity which no drugs, however potent, can cure. It is as when Shakespeare says that "poppy and mandragora" shall fail to minister the "sweet sleep" of yesterday, as when we say of a man in the last stage of decrepitude that "no quinine or phosphorus will help him now." See the Itical Bioi^-ap/iy in the Introduction, ch. HI. So understood the Debater speaks with a scorn like that of Euripides [Suppl. 1060) of the attempts of the old to revive their flagging desires and avert the approach of death. XovTpoiffi, Kai arpujfiva.'tai koX /xayivfiaciv. "1 hate them, those who seek to lengthen life With baths, and pillows, and quack-doctor's drugs." Substantially most commentators agree in this meaning. The anato- mical school, however, identify it, as before, with this or that bodily organ affected by old age, and one writer (Rosenmiiller) thinks that the ]-)oint of comparison is found in the fact that the caper-berry as it ripens, bends the stalk with its weight, and then splits open and lets the seeds fall out. because man gocth to his Ions' home] Literally, to the house of his eternity, i.e. to his eternal home. The description of the decay of age is followed by that of death as the close of all, and for a time, perhaps to link together the two symbolical descriptions, the language of figura- tive imagery is dropped. The "eternal home" is, of course, the grave (the phrase is stated by Ginsburg to be in common use among modern lews), or more probably, Shcol, or Hades, the dwelling-jilnceof the dead, "in Tobit iii. 6, "the everlasting place" seems used of the felicity of Paradise, and it is, at least, obvious that the thought of immortality, though not prominent, is not excluded here. The term Domus 5' eKacTOV is to (puis d. suggested a parallelism between the thoughts which have found expression in the writings of Shakespeare and Tennyson, and those that meet us in the Book with which this Volume deals. That parallelism is, I believe, deserving of more than a passing sentence, and I accordingly purpose to treat of it, as far as my limits permit, in the two following Essays. T. SHAKESPEARE AND KOHELETH. It lies almost in the nature of the case that the standpoint of a supreme dramatic artist involves the contemplation of the chances and changes of human life, of the shifting moods of human character, in something like the temper of a half-melancholy, half-genial irony. Poets, who, like /Eschylus or Calderon, write in earnest to enforce what they look upon as a high and solemn truth, and to present to men the consequences of obeying or resisting it, who seek to present the working of a higher order, and characters of a loftier nobleness, than the world actually presents, have, in the nature of the case, little of that element. Those who write, as Sophocles did, impressed with the strange contrasts which human life presents in its ideal and its reality, its plans and their frustration, its aims and its results, who cannot bring themselves to think that it is the duty of the artist to present a false, even though it be a fairer, picture than what the world actually exhibits, manliest the irony of which we speak, as Bishop Thirlwall has slievvn in his masterly Essay ^ in its graver forms, restrained, in part, it may be, by the dignity of their own character, in part by the conditions under which they work as artists, from dealing with its applications to the lighter follies of mankind. One who, like Shakespeare, worked with greater freedom, and, it may be, out of the resources of a wider experience, was free to present that irony in both its applications. That sense of the nothingness of life, which manifests itself in the melan- choly refrain of "Vanity of vanities" in Koheleth, would be sure to shew itself in such a poet, in proportion, perhaps, as he had ceased to strive after a high ideal, and learnt to look with an Epicurean tran- 1 Cp. Thirlw.iU, "The Irony of Suphocles," Philolosical Museum, ii. 483. Remains, v,i. i. 232 APPENDIX. quillity on the passions of those who, though puppets in his mimic (irama, had yet found their aiclietypes in the characters of the men and women with whom lie had lived, and whose weaknesses he had noted. If the story of his own life had been that of one who had sought to find satisfaction in the impulses of sense, or in affections fixed on an unworthy object, we might expect to find the tendency to dwell on the various forms of the ironical, or the pessimist, view of life, which is the natural outcome of the disa]ipointment to which all such attempts are doomed. And this, it is believed, is what we find in Shakespeare, as the result of his personal experience, reproduced now in this aspect, now in that, according as each fitted in best with his purpose as an artist. I have already shewn in the " Ideal Biography" of ch. in. that the Sonnets of Shakespeare present a striking parallelism to the i^ersonal experience that lay at the root of the pessimist tone of thought which the confessions of Koheleth present to us. There had been the element of a friendship which he thought to be ennobling, of a love which he felt to be debasing. But we may go further than this, and say that they manifest also, and not in that passage only, the tone and temper to which that experience naturally leads. Without discussing the many problems which those mysterious poems bring before us, this at least is clear, that they speak of a life which had not been free from the taint of sensuality, of a friendship which, beginning in an almost idolatrous admiration, ended in a terrible disappointment, and that the echoes of that disappointment are heard again and again in their plaintive and marvellous sweetness. The resemblance between their utterances and those of Ecclesiastes is all the more striking, because there is not a single trace that Shakespeare had studied the book that bears that title. He does not use its peculiar watchwords, or quote its maxims. Despite of all that has been written of Shakespeare's know- ledge of the Bible by Archbishop Trench, Bishop Charles Wordsworth, and others, it does not seem to have been more than a man might gain, without study, by hearing lessons and sermons when he went to Church on Sundays, and as Ecclesiastes was not prominent in the calendar of Sunday lessons, and not a favourite book with the preachers of the sixteenth century, he probably knew but little of it. We have to deal, ac- cordingly, with the phenomena of parallelism and not of derivation. But the parallelism is, it will be admitted, sufliciently suggestive. Does Koheleth teach that "there is nothing new under the sun," that "if there is anything whereof it may be said, See this is new; it hath been already of old time, which was before us" (Eccl. i. lo), Shakespeare writes "No, Time, thou shalt not boast that T do change, 'i'hy pyramids built up with newer might. They are but dressings of a former siglit. Our dates are brief, and, therefore we admire What thou dost foist upf)n us that is old : And rather make them born to our desire, Than think that we before have heard them told. APPENDIX. 233 Thy registers and thee I both defy, Kot wondering at the present and the past." Sonn. 123. Does Koheleth utter his belief that "the day of death is better than the day of one's birth" (Eccl. vii. i), "that an untimely birth is better than the longest life" (Eccl. vi. 3), as growing out of the anomalies of a world in which "the race is not to the swift, nor the Imttle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise... but time and chance happeneth alike to all" (Eccl. i.x. 11) ; Shakespeare echoes the cry of that weariness of life : "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry. As, to behold desert a beggar born. And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily foresworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced. And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced. And strength by limping sway disabled. And art made tongue-tied by authority. And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity: Tired with all these, from these I would be gone. Save that to die, I leave my love alone." Sonn. 66. The tendency which thus utters itself as in a personal subjective monologue took naturally another form, when, rising out of the feverish unrest which the Sonnets indicate, the writer passed into the true work of the poet-creator, contemplating man's nature as from without, and embodying the results of his boundless observation in the characters of his dramas, as if he had lived in each of them, identified at once with Coriolanus and with Falstaff, with Macbeth and with Malvolio. But the tendency, in such a case, remains. The man's experience determines the greater or less frequency of his choice of characters in which he can embody it. And what I seek to shew is that such a choice is traceable in the dramas of Shakespeare, and that no type of character appears so frequently, or is so conspicuously the reflection of what the poet himself had once been, as that of the contemplative half-sad, half- cynical temper which we find in Ecclesiastes. He has risen on the "stepping-stones of his dead self" to higher things, but he surveys that dead self with a certain loving complacency, and is not unwilling that (or a time it should live again. He will shew that he understands the inner depths of the character that seems to many so inexplicable, and not seldom wins from them the reverence which of right is due only to that which is far worthier. Take, for example, the two types of character represented by the Duke and by Jaques, in " As You Like It." The former speaks in the nobler tones of Koheleth, the latter in the baser. The one has learnt that "sorrow is better than laughter," that "the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning" (Eccl. vii. 3), 234 APPENDIX. "Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head. And this our life, exempt from public haunt. Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything." As You Like It, 1 1 . i . Jaques, on the other hand, is emphatically "melancholy," but the temper is one which finds not "good" but evil in eveiything. For him, the sons of men are "as fishes taken in an evil net" (Eccl. ix. 12). His meditations on the sufferings of the wounded stag reveal but little of real humanity, but "he moralizes" the spectacle into "a thousand similes." All forms of life present to him the same picture of injustice and of wrong. "Thus most invectively he passeth through The body of the country, city, court, Yea, and of this our life." As You Like It, il. i. As the sight of brute suffering, so that of men, stirs him to no healthy sympathy. The Duke speaking as before, in the loftier moods of Koheleth, learns the lesson that " This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in," but this is preceded by his kindly ministrations to tlie old and weary Adam, the very type of the "labouring man who^e sleep is sweet to him" of Eccl. v. 12. Jaques joins in no such minist rations, but in the mem.orable S])eech of the Seven Ages, moralizes once more on the hoUowness of human life, and paints, almost in the very colours of Fccles. xii. 3, 4, the decay and death in which it ends. "The sixth age glides Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank ; and his big manly voice Turning again towards childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, Satis teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." As You Like It, II. 7. And the secret of this evil cynicism is found in the previous life of this jireacher of endless homilies on the " vanity of vanities." Of such homilies, the Duke tells him, no good can come. He will work "Most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin. For thou thyself hast been a libertine, APPENDIX. As sensual as the brutish sting itself, And all the embossed sores and headed evils, That thou with licence of free foot hast caught, Wouldst thou discharge into the general world." As Vote Like It, li. 7. In "Timon of Athens" we have a variation on the same theme. He has sought happiness, as Koheleth did, in the life of wealth, magnifi- cence, and culture. Poets and painters have ministered to his tastes and caprices. But among the thousand friends of his prosperity he finds but one faithful in adversity, and he loathes the very sight of the gold, with the absence or presence of which the friendship of the world wanes or waxes. He has used his wealth "unwisely, not ig- nobly," thinking that thus he will gather round him true and loving hearts, and finds that this also, as his wiser counsellor foretold, is ''vanity of vanities. " "Ah! when the means are gone that buy this praise, The breath is gone whereof this praise is made. Fast won, fast lost; one cloud of winter showers, These flies are couched." Timoii o/Aihens, 11. 2. And so when he finds that the prediction is fulfilled, his love turns to gall and bitterness. The philanthropist becomes the misanthrope. As with Koheleth, men were hateful to him, and much more, women (Eccl. vii. 26 — 28). " Let no assembly of twenty be without a score of villains ; if there sit twelve women at the table, let a dozen of them be as they are." Timon of Athens, III. 6. Henceforward there is nothing for him but the moody curse of a solitary bitterness, and his faithful friends moralize on the transforma- tion. " O, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us ! Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt. Since riches point to misery and contempt. Who would be so mocked with glory ? or to live But in a dream of friendship ? To have his pomp and all what state compounds, But only painted, like his varnished friends? Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart. Undone by goodness." Timon of Athens, iv. 7.. Timon himself, however, cannot so moralize. The element of selfish- ness that had mingled with his seemingly limitless benevolence, seeking its reward in the praise and gratitude of men, turns to malignant scorn. He rails, as Shakespeare in his own person had railed, as in the Sonnet already quoted, at the disorders of society, in terms which again remind us of Ecclesiastes. 236 APPENDIX. "Twinned brothers of one womb, Whose procreation, residence, and birth, Scarce is dividant : touch them with several fortunes. The greater scorns the lesser : not nature, To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune But by contempt of nature. The senator shall bear contempt hereditary ; The beggar native honour. It is the pasture lards the rother's^ sides, The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares, In purity of manliootl stand upright And say, ' This vtaiCs a Jlatlcrerl' If one be, So are they all; for every grise- of fortune Is smoothed by that below : the learned pate Ducks to the golden fool : all is oblique, There's nothing level in our cursed nature But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorred All feasts, societies, and throngs of men ! His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains." Tiinon of Athens, IV. 3. Is not this almost as the very echo of the words which tell us how beggars had been seen riding on horseback, how the "poor man who had saved the city" was "no more remembered," how "time and chance happen alike to all" (Eccl. ix. 11 — 15), "how scarcely among a thousand men was one found faithful" (Eccl. vii. 28)? The one fact that kept him from utter despair was that he had such a friend. " I do proclaim One honest man — mistake me not — but one." Timon of Athens, IV. 3. In the account which Timon gives himself of this terrible transforma- tion we trace the confession of an experience like that which Koheleth narrates in Eccles. ii. Apemantus, the cynic, who has not passed through that experience, whose moroseness is that of the man soured by the world's oppression and his own poverty rather than of one satiated with self-indulgence, taunts him with this extreme sensitiveness. He has a pessimism of his own, but it is that of apathy and scorn, and not of hatred. " This in thee is a nature but infected, A poor unmanly melancholy sprung From change of fortune." Timon allows that it is so, and makes that his Apologia. Apemantus does but "Compound for sins he is inclined to. By damning those he has no mind to.' ' Apparently a Warwickshire name for ox. s Grise = the " step " of fortune's ladder. APPENDIX. lyi "Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm With favour never clasp'd; but bred a dog. Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded The sweet degrees that this brief world affords To such as may the passive drugs of it Freely command, thou would'st have plunged thyself In general riot ; melted down thy youth In different beds of lust, and never learned The icy precepts of respect, but followed The sugared game before thee. But myself, "Who had the world as my confectionary, The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, the hearts of men, At duty, more than I could frame employment; That numberless upon me stuck as leaves Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare For every storm that blows, — I, to bear this. That never knew but better, is some burden; Thy nature did commence in sufferance : time Hath made thee hard in't." Timon of Athens, IV. 3. To one in such a mood, Nature did but minister, as it did to Kohe- leth, food for his absorbing passion. The ebb and flow of the ocean was the type of the changeable monotony of misery. "Timon hath made his everlasting mansion^ Upon the beached verge of the salt flood; Which once a day with his embossed froth The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come. And let my grave-stone be your oracle. Lips, let sour words go by and language end. What is amiss, plague and infection mend ! Graves only be men's works: and death their gain! Sun, hide thy beams — Timon hath done his reign." Timon of Athens, V. r. And so, the end came, as it has to a thousand others plunged in the same wretchedness, with no outward sign of hope. Like Keats he wishes his name to be "writ in water." Like Koheleth he seeks to hide it from the memories of men. He writes his own epitaph, and it is this : "Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft; Seek not my name : a plague consume you wretched caitiffs left ! " It was, perhaps, with a subtle touch of irony that Shakespeare, working, as experts think, on the rough materials supplied by an in- ferior writer, made the last couplet of the epitaph inconsistent with the first. In spite of his hatred of mankind the pessimist could not bear to ' We are reminded of the " long home," the " doiniis ceterna'" of Eccles. .\ii. 5. 238 APPENDIX. be forgotten. The one real mortification in Schopenhauer's life was tliat men did not read his books. The desire to be remembered is tlie inera^2 APPENDIX. No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave Who, with a body iill'd and vacant mind, Gets him to rest, crammed with distressful bread, Never sees horrid nii;ht, the child of hell, But, like a lackey, from the rise to sef, Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium ; next day, after dawn. Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse; And follows so llie evcrrunning year With profitable labour to his grave: And, but for ceremony, such a wretch, Winding up days with toil, and nights with sleep, Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king; The slave, a member of the country's peace. Enjoys it ; but in gross brain little wots What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace, Whose hours the peasant best advantages." Henry V. iv. i. And in the strcnp;th of such thoughts he is able to preach to the murmurers the lesson which they need in the nearest approach to a Homily whicli the dramas of Shakespeare present to us and to tell them, as Kohelcth tells his readers, of a righteous judge who "shall bring every secret thing to light whether it be good or whether it be evil." "Every subject's duty is the king's, but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed — -wash every mote out of his conscience, and dying so, death is to him advantage ; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained : and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think, that making God so free an offer, he let him outlive that day to see His greatness, and to teach others how they should prepare." Ileiiry V., IV. i. I take it that, though there may be many other passages in which we trace the liand of the Master Artist working with a more subtle power, Shakespeare reaches here, and in the prayer that follows, almost without a parallel in his other dramas, his highest ethical elevation. The heroic soul in whom he embodied what for the time at least was an ideal like- ness of himself, has conciuercd the tcm]3tations of sense that deepen into malice, and has his faith fixed in the righteous judgment of God. And with this there is, as in a later scene of the j^lay, a healthy capacity for the purer form of enjoyment such as Kolielclh so often counsels. The reformed prodigal has found that after all there are some things that arc not altogether vanity. " A good leg will fall ; a straight back will stoop ; a black beard will turn white ; a fair face will wither ; a full eye will wax hollow ; but a APPENDIX. 243 good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon, or rather the sun and not the moon ; for it shines bright, and never changes, but keeps his course truly." Henry F"., V. 2. On more familiar illustrations of the temper that thus moralises on the hollovvness of things earthly I do not dwell. Wolsey's lamentations over his fallen greatness : " This is the state of man : to day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope : to-morrow blossoms. And bears his blushing honours thick upon him. The third day comes a frost, a killing frost ; And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root. And then he falls, as I do," Henry VIII., III. r. will occur to most readers. The thought that " as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools," finds its apt illustration alike in the imbecility of Shallow who found his " delights of the sons of men" in the merry nights of sin that he remembered in St. George's Fields (2 Henry IV. in. 3), and yet more in the death without honour of the supreme jester, " his nose as sharp as a pen and babbling of green fields" {Henry V. III. 3), his only nurse silencing the thought of God and of repentance, in the misery that taught Gloucester all too late that "The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us." King Lear, V. 3. The temper that remains unmoved "fully set to do evil, because sen- tence against an evil work is not executed speedily" (Eccl. viii. 11) is brought before us in Gloucester's confession " Heavens, deal so still ! Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly." King Lear, IV. 1. The supreme malignity of the mood that hates life because it has made life hateful is seen in Richard HI. "O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict! ****** My conscience hath a thousand several tongues And every tongue brings in a several tale. * ♦ * « * « There is no creature loves me ; And if I die, no soul will pity me: Nay, -wherefore should they? Since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself." Richard III. v. 3. 16 — 2 244 APPENDIX. It would seem however, as if the myriad-minded poet felt that he had not exhausted the many aspects of what we liavc called the Kohcleth mood of nnnd, that there yet remained to exhibit, in their highest mani- festations, the results to which it leads when man is over-maslered by it, or in his turn, masters it, and the works of the ])oet's ripest and best years, and of the supreme culmination of his art, bring before us accord- ingly the characters of Hamlet and of Prospero. 1 accept, as in part adequate, the analysis of the former character which Goelhe has given as that of a man upon whom is laid a burden which he is not strong enough to bear, and whicli therefore disturbs the balance of thought and will. From the stand-point of our present enquiry some fresh ele- ments have to l>c added to tliat analysis. In Ilamlet then, prior to the disclosure that haunts him afterwards night and day, we have the highest type of the Koheleth search after happiness in the path of culture. All perfections have met in him. He is nothing less than "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword. The expectancy and rose of the fair state. The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, The observed of all observers." Hamlet, ill. r. He has studied man's life and nature less by the personal experience of their follies and their sins than in the drama which "holds, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature." He shrinks from the coarse revehy of the princes who "drink in the morning," keeping up a custom which is " more honoured in the breach tlian in tlie observance." He seeks for wisdom, and if for folly also, only that he may see "what is that good for the sons of men which they should do under heaven" (Eccl. ii. 3). He is beginning to feel the imj)ulse of a new affection, in itself a pure and noble one, for Ophelia. I'ossibly there are memories lying behind of aflections less j3ure which justilied the warnings that Laertes gives his sister: "I am myself indifferent honest ; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me : I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious ; with more offences at my back than 1 have thouglits to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in." Hamlet, ill. i. His discovery of the terrible disorder in the world that surrounds him has wakened conscience to a discernment, perhaps a morbid exaggera- tion, of a like disorder in himself, and this becomes, in its turn, an en- j feebling element hindering him from bearing the burden that is laidj upon him bravely like a man. He represents that aspect of tlie Kohe- leth temper which had its birth in the sight of iniquity where it looked] for righteousness (Eccl. iii. 16), of power on the side of the op])ressorsl while "the poor had no comforter" (Eccl. iv. i). There is something! significant in tlie contrast between the wider yet less balanced thoughts of one on whom rests the burden of the "world in the heart" (Eccl. iii. 1 1), the unfathomable mystery of the moral anomalies of the universe APPENDIX. 245 and the calmer, more worldly precepts of prudence which come from Polonius as one who has grown grey in courts and statecraft. Such precepts, it is surely the lesson which Shakespeare meant to teach, are of little value in ministering to a mind diseased. They may do for Laertes but not for Hamlet. There is a singular resemblance between those precepts and Bacon's Essay (xviii.) on 'Travel' which half sug- gests the thought that the poet, noting the weak points which such an eye as his could not fail to discern in the character of him who was the "greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," and impatient of the pedantic moralisings that had nothing answering to them in the man's inner life, had that type of character in his mind when he drew the portrait of the " rash intruding fool" who schemes and plans, and utters his worldly maxims as if they were the oracles of God^. And what makes the burden more intolerable is that he is not allowed to bear it patiently and to refer it to the judgment of the Ruler who will bring " the secret things to light, whether they be good or evil." The "world is out of joint" and he, and none other, "is born to set it right." He must be the minister of vengeance, and in taking that office upon himself he does but make all things \vorse both for him- self and others. And so the weariness of life, the " sat/as vidcndi^'' falls on him as it did 00 Koheleth. Below his simulated madness there is the real insanity of pessimism : " It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, — this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted witii golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man ! How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form, in moving, how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a God ! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals ! and yet to me what is ■ 1 The suggestion may seem bold, almost to the verge of paradox, but is not made without a fairly close study of the original and the counterpart. The coinci- dence* which I have pointed out between the counsel of Polonius and the Essay on Travel are. it will be admitted by any one who will take the trouble to compare them, striking enough. It may be said further that the whole phraseology of Polonius, shrewd yet slightly pedantic, "full of wise saws and modern instances" corresponds to that of Bacon as the collector of apophthegms and ma.xims and rules of prudence. May we not think that Shakespeare, through Hamlet, uttered his sense of the impotence of such coimsels as applied to the deeper evils of the soul, when he makes the half-distracted prince declare " Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivi.d fond records, All saws of bonks, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there." Bacon's rise upon Raleigh's fall, about the time when Hamlet received the poet's last revision, and the part that he had taken in the proceedings against Esse.\ were not likely to win the admiration of a man of letters who had known "something of both his victims. To such a man he may well have seemed to embody the intriguing statecraft as well as the pedantry of Polonius. 246 APPENDIX. this quintessence of dust ? Man delights not me : no, nor woman neither." I la mid, II. 1. Has the theme of "Vanity of Vanities" ever been uttered in tones of profounder sadness? Has the irony of the contrast between the ideal and the actual in life ever been expressed more forcibly? And with this there comes the thought on which Koheleth rings the changes that death is better than life (Eccl. vi. 3, vii. i), traversed in its turn by the thought that life is better than death (Eccl. ix. 4, 9, 10), the known than the unknown, the certainties of the i^resent than the uncertain chances of the future. "To be, or not to be, that is the question: — • Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them? To die, — to sleep, — No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, — to sleep, — To sleep ! perchance to dream ; — ay, there's the rub, That makes calamity of so long life: For who would bear the whips and scorns of time. The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely. The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy lakes When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life ; But that the dread of something after death, — The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, — puzzles the will. And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than lly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the ]iale cast of thought ; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action." Ilamld, III. I. We feel that here, as in the case of Koheleth, the weariness of life will not end in suicide. He talks too much of it for that, contemjilates it as a spectator from without, moralises on it, like Jaques, with a thousand similies. Perhaps, we must add, as the thought of the undis- covered country has no purifying or controlling jiower, as conscience leads only to cowardice and not to courage, suicide would have been APPENDIX. 247 the lesser evil of the two. As it is, the cancer of pessimism is driven inward and eats into the inmost parts. We cannot doubt that Shake- speare had seen like phosnomena in actual insanity, had felt the possi- bility of them in his own being. The moralising melancholy becomes a cynical and brutal bitterness. It is just after the soliloquy that he treats Ophelia with an almost savage ferocity. In the churchyard scene he speaks as one in whom the reverence for humanity is extin- guished, moralises on the skulls of the lawyers, and of Alexander, and of Yorick, the well-loved friend of his boyhood, intones that remind us at once of Jaques and of Timon. There are no '■'■ lacJuyjiiae rcntin" in that survey of mortality, hardly more than the ristcs Sardoiiiais which Tennyson has painted so vividly, as we shall see, in his Vision of Sin. The ruin is complete, or seems so. But the parallelism with Koheleth and with Shakespeare himself would not have been com- plete if, in this case also, there had not been in Horatio, the presence of the faithful friend, the " man who pleaseth God" (Eccl. vii. 26), to whom, as free from the passions that have plunged him in the abyss, he clings, as the drowning man to the hand that would fain have saved him. His last words are addressed to him: "Horatio, what a wounded name, . Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain To tell my story." Hamld, V. 2. And here, as in the case of Timon, the faithful friend sees a glimmer of hope even in the thick darkness. He will not despair even though the sufferer dies and make no sign. He loves him, will not God forgive ? "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Hamlet, V. 2. The last instance to which I call attention, that of Prospero, has the special interest of giving us the last, or all but the last, utterances of the great Master on the great mystery. As in Hamlet we have the history of a shipwrecked soul, so in the Tempest, almost as if its title and its opening scenes were meant to be a parable of the gist and drift of the whole book, we have that of one who has escaped from shipwreck and reached the desired haven of a supreme tranquillity. Prospero had sougiit wisdom at first in the "many books" of the making of which there is "no end" (Eccl. xii. 12). His "library" was "dukedom large enough." That study had left him exposed to treachery and baseness. He was shut out from the world, and knew its hollowness but he did not hate it or rail at it, as Timon and Hamlet did. He had found the well-spring of a new life and hope in the purest of all affections. He owns to Miranda all that she had been to him in the unconscious helplessness of her infancy, 248 APPENDIX. "Ola chcruljim Thou wast that did preserve me ! Thou didst smile, Infused with a fortitude from heaven, When I have declvcd the sea with drops full salt ; Under my burden groan'd ; which raised in me An undergoing stomach, to bear up Against what should ensue." Tempest, I. 1. lie has learnt, — Shakespeare himself, speaking through Prospero, has learnt,— that the sensuality tliat defiles the first stirrings of youthful love is the root of all bitterness, that then only can the man " live joy- fully with the wife whom he loves" (Eccl. ix. 9), when passion has been controlled and purity preserved from stain, and "Each to other gives the virgin heart." And he too moralises on the chances and changes of life with the better form of Epicurean calmness. For him also "All the world's a stage. And all the men and women merely players," but the thought leads to no cynical revilings. It is not a Christian view of life and death. The ethics of Shakespeare are no more Chris- tian, in any real sense of the word, than those of .Sophocles or Goethe. But it is a view that commended itself not unnaturally to one who being himself the creator of the mimic drama that mirrored life, pic- tured to himself the great Workmastcr as being altogether such an one as himself, the author of the great world-drama in which men and wo- men were the puppets. " Tliese our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air; And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples ; the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded. Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." Tempest, XV. r. The pessimism which haunted Kohcleth is absent from this calm contemiilative acquiescence in the inevital)lc transitoriness of human life and of the world itself. It may be questioned perhaps whether the pessimism was not better than the calmness, testifying, even against its will, of higher possibilities, unable to satisfy itself with any belief that was, in its essence, though not formally. Pantheistic, and craving for the manifestation of a personal Will ruling the world in righteousness, and therefore "executing judgement against every evil work." APPENDIX. 249 One more instance in which the final resting-place of Shakespeare's thoughts answers to that in which Koheleth rested for a time, and I have done. There is anotlier drama, Cynibeline (a.d. 1605), wliich also belongs to the latest group of Shakespeare's writings. In that drama we have a funeral dirge sung over the supposed corpse of the disguised Imogen. It does not help to the development of any- character in the ]ilay, but comes in, as it were, by way of parenthesis, and therefore may be legitimately considered as embodying the poet's own thoughts of what, if men could get rid of the Burial Service and other conventional decorums, would be the right utterance for such a time and place. And the dirge runs thus : "Fear no more the heat o' the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages ; Thou thy worldly task hast done. Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must. Like chimney sweepers, come to dust. Fear no more the frown of the great, Thou art past the tyrant's stroke; Care no more to clothe and eat ; To thee the reed is as the oak ; The sceptre, learning, physic must All follow this and come to dust. Fear no more the lightning-flash, Nor th' all-dreaded thunder-storm. Fear not slander, censure rash, Thou hast finished joy and moan ; All lovers young, all lovers must Consign to thee and come to dust." Cynibeline, IV. 2. So Koheleth had said of old "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh" (Eccl. i. 4). "And how dieth the wise man? as the fool" (Eccl. ii. 16). "All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again" (Eccl. iii. 20). "There is no work, nor desire, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest" (Eccl. ix. 10). ISO APPENDIX. II. TENNYSON AND KOIIELETII. The conditions under which this paper is written forbid an analysis of life such as I have ventured to apply to the Sonnets and Dramas of Shakespeare in the Essay which precedes it. One may not, in the case of a living writer, remove the veil which shrouds tlie privacy ot his home life, or draw conjectural inferences as to that life, however legitimate they may seem, from his writings. We must be content with what he has actually told us. And so, in the present instance, we must rest in the pictures which he himself has drawn of the Lincolnshire home, and the happy gatherings when "The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist," /ft Mcmor. xxvill. in what we know of the brothers, three of whom shared in different measures, the gifts and tastes of the poet's vocation; of the volume of early poems published by two of those brothers in their schooldays ; of the Cambridge prize poem on Timl)uctoo; of the new friendships and companionships which the life of Cambridge brought with it. Of one of those friendships, however, the poet has himself taught us to think more freely, and to speak more fully. No one can read the In JMcmoriam witliout feeling that the world owes more than it knows to the man who will probably be scarcely remembered in the history of literature, except as having formed its subject. To that sacred inOucnce, purifying and ennobling during life, yet more puri- fying and ennobling after death, we can trace in part at least, as well as to the early impressions of a happy home, that which forms one conspicuous clement in the greatness of the poet's rijiened gi-nius, and places the name of Tennyson, along with those of Homer and of Virgil, of Dante, and Milton, and Wordsworth, in the list from which Byron and liurns, and even Siiakes]iearc are excluded, of those who being in the first order of poets in their greatness are also first in their purity. The Sonnets of Shakespeare and the In Mcnioriain will occupy a prominent place in the history of English Literature at once as parallels and as antitheses. In both we liave the outpouring of a fervent and deep affection, so profound and lasting, that we might almost ap]-)ly to it the language in which David speaks of the fricndsliip that bound to him the soul of Jonathan, " Thy love to me was won- derful, passing the love of wonian." The thought of the parallelism seems to have come before the mind of the later poet when he wrote : "I loved thee. Spirit, and love, nor can The soul of Shakespeare love thee more." In Mcmoriam, l,X. APPENDIX. 251 But what a contrast between the luscious and sensuous sweetness of what his contemporaries called those "sugared sonnets" of the one poet, and the out-poured meditations, ever-rising to a clearer and calmer serenity, of the other. In this respect at least, and it is from this point of view alone that I am now contemplating the works of the two poets, the friendship which Tennyson has made immortal, comes nearer to the type of that to which we have been led to look as one element in Koheleth's recovery. Here also there was one who did in very deed "fear God" and "pleased Him" (Eccl. vii. 26). And it may be said freely, without going beyond the record, that the In Meinoriam is itself also the histoiy of a like recovery in the poet's inner life. He too had learnt to rise out of " the confusions of a wasted youth," had "held it truth" "That men may rise on stepping stones Of their dead selves to higher things." In Memoiiam, i. The earlier poems are in the tone of the Mataiotcs Alataioteton : "From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun, And all the phantom. Nature, stands. With all the music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own, A hollow form with empty hands." In Memonai?t, in. His assured faith in the continued being and growth of the soul that has passed from earth is, as with Koheleth (Eccl. xii. 7), the triumph over a previous doubt : *' My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore. Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is." In Memoriam, xxxiv. He has communed with Nature, and her witness to him is as dreary and depressing as it was to Koheleth (Eccl. i. 2, 3, iii. 19, 20), or Hamlet : "Thou makest thine appeal to me; I bring to life, I bring to death; The spirit does but mean the breath; I know no more." In Memoriam, LV. but he has learnt to look "behind the veil" and to "trust," how- ever "faintly" the " larger hope." It lies in the nature of the case, however, that the pessimist temper, so far as it had ever entered into the poet's consciousness at all, as more than what he felt^was a possibility towards which he might drift 252 APPENDIX. as others had drifted, already lay behind him before he entered on the In Alemoriam musings, as part of the "dead self" which had been made a "stepping-stone." We must turn to the earlier poems if we want to find parallels to that aspect of the Kohcloth experience. And they are not hard to seek. In the Vision of Sin, in the Palace of Art, in the Two Voices, we may find, if I mistake not, the most suggestive of all commentaries on Kcclesiastes. The first of these poems deals with the baser, more sensuous form of the Koheleth experience of life (Eccl. ii. 8). "I had a vision when the night was late; A youth came riding towards a palace gate. He rode a horse with wings that would have flown> But that his heavy rider kept him down." In the symbolism of those two last lines we may trace something like a reminiscence, though not a direct reproduction, of the marvellous vtyihos of the Phmdrus of Plato (pp. 246, 254). The horse with wings that "would have flown" is the nature of man with its capacities and aspirations ^. The "heavy rider" is the sensuous will that represses the aspirations and yields easily to temptation. And so : " From out the palace came a child of sin. And took him by the curls and led him in, ^Vhere sat a company with heated eyes, Expecting \\hen a fountain should arise." And then follows a picture of revel and riot, like that which Ko- heleth had known (Eccl. ii. 12). The fountain of sensual pleasure flows at last. The orgiastic ecstasy reached its highest point : "Twisted hard in fierce embraces, Like to Furies, like to Graces, Dashed together in blinding dew, , Till, killed with some luxurious agony. The nerve-dissolving melody Fluttered headlong from the sky." And then the vision changes, the mirth that has blazed so brightly, like the crackling of the thorns (Eccl. vii. 6) dies out, and the slow retri- bution comes : "I saw that every morning, far withdrawn Beyond the darkness and the cataract, God made himself an awful rose of dawn Unheeded: and detaching fold by fold From those still heights, and slowly drawing near, 1 n <^UY') "■""■* TaCTOs tTTtjieAtiToi tou a'i^vxov ...•nivra Se ovpavov irfpi7roA«i...T«A«a ixiv ovf ovaa koX «;ri€ptt>/ieV>) iitTtoiponoKtl t« xai airavra TOf Koaixov fioiKCi. "The whole soul contcmpKatcs the whole that is without soul... It surveys the heavens. ..developed and with wings full grown it soars aloft and penetrates ths Universe." APPENDIX. 253 A vapour heavy, hueless, formless, cold, Came floating on for many a month and year Unheeded." That vapour is, as the sequel shews, the cynical pessimism M'hich des- troys all joy, and makes a man hate his life (Eccl. ii. 17J and find no beauty in nature, or comeliness in man or woman. The youthful reveller becomes "A gray and gap-toothed man as lean as death, Who slowly rode across a withered heath And lighted at a ruined inn." And the monologue that follows can scarcely fail to remind us of much that we have met as we have traced the many wanderings of the soul of Koheleth. There is the same sense of the transitoriness of life, tempting men to drown it in oblivion (Eccl. ii. 22, vi. 12). "Fill the cup and fill the can: Have a rouse before the mom ; Every minute dies a man, Every minute one is born." There is the same contempt for the glory of living in the memories of men, after which so many strive without profit (Eccl. i. 11). "Name and fame! to fly sublime Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools, Is to be the ball of Time, Bandied in the hands of fools." The anomalies of a world out of joint socially and politically do but stir in him the cynical "wonder not" (Eccl. v. 8) and he finds in these also, as Koheleth found, "\z.niiy a.nd. feed ittg upon wind" (Eccl. viii. 10, i. 17). "He that wars for liberty Faster binds the tyrant's power, And the tyrant's cruel glee Forces on the freer hour. Fill the can and fill the cup ; All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up, And is lightly laid again." Here also time and chance happeneth alike to all (Eccl. ix. ri) and the days of darkness are many (Eccl. xi. 8). "Drink to Fortune, drink to chance, While we keep a little breath. » * ♦ ♦ Thou art mazed : the night is long, And the longer night is near " APPENDIX. and all that remains is but "Dregs of life and lees of man." The vision receives its interpretation from the voices that come from the mystic mountain range where the judgments of God hide themselves in clouds and darkness, "Then some one said, 'Behold ! it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time.' Another said, 'The crime of sense became The crime of malice and is equal blame.' And one 'He had not wholly quenched his power, A little grain of conscience made him sour.'" The transformation presents a parallel, obviously, one would say, an unconscious parallel, to what we have seen in Shakespeare's Tiiiiou. And here too the wider thoughts of the sccr lead him to look on that pessimism of the depraved and worn-out sensualist rather with pity and terror than with absolute despair. He dares not absolve, he dares not condemn ; "At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit 'Is there any hope?* To which an answer pealed from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand. And on the glittering summit far withdrawn God made Himself an awful rose of dawn." The "Palace of Art" presents the analysis of a far nobler experiment in life, answering to that of Koheleth when he sought to "guide his heart with wisdom" and surrounded himself with the "peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces" and "whatsoever his eye desired, he kept not from them, and withheld not his heart from any joy and his heart rejoiced in his labour" (Keel. ii. S — lo). In this case the writer prologuizcs and states in advance the moral of his poem. It will scarcely be questioned that it is identical with that which we have seen to be the moral of Ecclesiastes. "I send you here a sort of allegory (For you will understand it), of a soul, A sinfid soul possessed of many gifts, A spacious garden full of flowering weeds, A glorious devil large in heart and brain, That did love Beauty only (Beauty seen In all varieties of mould and mind) And knowledge for its beauty; or if good Good only for its beauty, seeing not That Beauty, Good and Knowledge, are three sisters That doat upon each other, friends to man. Living together under the same roof, And never can be sundered without tears. And he that shuts Love out in turn shall be Shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie APPENDIX. 255 Howling in outer darkness. Not for this Was common clay ta'en from the common earth, Moulded by God and tempered with the tears Of angels to the perfect shaj^e of man." And then the allegory begins. The man communes with his soul after the manner of Koheleth (Eccl. ii. i — 3) : "I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house Wherein at ease for aye to dwell, I said, O Soul, make meriy and carouse, Dear Soul, for all is well." That "pleasure-house" is filled with all that art can represent of the varying aspects "Of living Nature, fit for every mood And change of my still soul." It is filled also with all types and symbols of the religions of humanity, regarded simply from the artist's stand-point as presenting, in greater or less measure, the element of beauty, from St Cecilia, and the houris of Islam, down to Europa and Ganymede. "Nor these alone, but every legend fair Which the supreme Caucasian mind Carved out of Nature for itself, was there Not less than life designed." And poetry also in its highest forms ministered to the soul's delight; " For there was Milton like a seraph strong. Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild; And there the world-worn Dante grasped his song. And somewhat grimly smiled." And with them were the typical representatives of divine philosophy, "Plato the wise, and large-brow'd Verulam, Masters of those who know." The highest ideal of Epicurean culture in its supreme tranquillity was at least for a time attained, and there was no contaminating ele- ment of the lower forms of baseness. The soul can say: "All these are mine. And, let the world have peace or war, Tis one to me." She found delight in tracing the evolution of organic, the development of intellectual, life, and had placed beneath her feet, as Epicurus him- self had done, the superstitions of the crowd, and, as Koheleth had at one time done, had cast aside the memories of a national and historical religion. 256 APPENDIX. "I take possession of men's mind and deed, I live in all things great and small; I sit apart, holding no form of creed, And conlemplaling all." But the germ of retribution was already planted. As with Koheleth there was "the world set in the heart" (Eccl. iii. ii), the problems of the unfathomable universe : "Full oft the riddle of the painful earth Flashed thio' her as she sate alone, Yet not the less held she her solemn mirth And intellectual throne Of full-sphered contemplation." And then, as with a stroke like that which fell on Herod, the penalty of her sellish search for happiness, her isolated eudremonism, there fell on her as in a moment, the doom of "vanity of vanities" written on all her joys, and the mood of pessimism which was its first and bitterest fruit : "When she would think, where'er she turned her sight, The airy hands confusion wrouglit, Wrote ' mene, mene ' and divided quite The kingdom of her thought. Deep dread and loathing of her solitude Fell on her, from which mood was born Scorn of herself: again from out that mood Laughter at her self-scorn." Has the picture of one who is "fcsstts satiate videndi'''' been ever drawn by a more subtle master-hand? To such a mood, as seen in Koheleth, existence is a burden, and non-existence a terror (Eccl. ii. 17, vi. 3, ix. 5), the sleep of the grave, or the dreams that may haunt that sleep are equally appalling ; "And death and life she hated equally, And nothing saw, for her despair, But dreadful time, dreadful eternity. No comfort anywhere." It was a more terrilile, if a less loathsome, form of retribution, than the cynical scorn of the " Vision of .Sin," not without a certain clement of greatness, and therefore tiiat cry out of the depths was not uttered in vain : "What is it that will take away my sin, And save me lest I die?" There is no other road to restoration than the old "king's highway" of penitence and prayer and self-renunciation. The deepest lesson of the poem is perhaps kept to the last. The joys of beauty, and culture, and art, and wisdom, are not lost utterly and for ever. The Palace APPENDIX. 257 of Art remains for the soul to dwell in, when it is purified from evil, no longer in selfish isolation, but in the blessedness of companionship. "Whatsoever things are noble, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely," are not forfeited by the discipline of repentance, but rather secured as for an everlasting habitation, withdrawn for a. season, but only that they may abide with the soul for ever : " So when four years were wholly finished, She threw her royal robes away. 'Make me a cottage in the vale,' she said, ' Where I may fast and pray. Yet pull not down my palace towers that are So lightly, beautifully built ; Perchance I may return with others there, When I have purged my guilt.'" In the "Two Voices" we have a fuller unveiling of what the poet pictured to himself as the working of the pessimist temper, to which life has become hateful, while yet it shrinks from death. Here also the unconscious echoes of the thoughts of Koheleth (Eccl. vi. 3) are dis- tinctly heard : "A still small voice spake unto me, ' Thou art so full of misery. Were it not better not to be?'" The soul makes answer to the tempter with feeble and faltering voice. It is in vain to urge the dignity of man's nature and his prerogative of thought. Nature cares for the race, not for the individual man. "One generation goeth and another generation cometh" (Eccl. i. 4). "It spake moreover in my mind ' Tho' thou wert scatter'd to the wind. Yet is there plenty of the kind.'" In the language of the French cynic, "II ti'y a pas <£ ho nunc ncccssairc.'''' "Good soul suppose I grant it thee Who'll weep for thy deficiency? Or will one beam be less intense, When thy peculiar difference Is cancelled in the world of sense?" Hope that the future may be better than the past is repressed with a like sneer : " ' Some turn this sickness yet might take, Ev'n yet.' But he ' what drug can make A withered palsy cease to shake?'" It is in vain to aim at the Epicurean tranquillity of culture or refined enjoyment (Eccl. ii. 24, v. 18). "Moreover but to seem to find, Asks what thou lackest, thought resigned, A healthy frame, a quiet mind." ECCLESIASTES 1 7 258 APPENDIX. As with Hamlet, this shrinking from the logical outcome of pessimism, lest it should tarnish his fair fame among his fellows, shews weakness and not strength. That desire to be remembered is also ' vanity,' " Such art thou, a divided will. Still heaping on the fear of ill The fear of men, a coward still. Do men love thee? Art thou so bound To men, that how thy name shall sound Shall vex thee, lying underground?" The aspirations after the heroic life are shewn to be as hollow as the search for happiness. This also is vanity. "Then comes the check, the change, the fall; I'ain rises up, old i)leasures j^all ; There is one remedy for all." The old question, who knows whether man is better than the brute creatures round him (Eccl. iii. 21) is asked and with the old answer: "If straight thy track, or if oblique. Thou know'st not, shadows thou dost strike, Embracing cloud, Ixion-like; And owning but a little more Than beasts, abidest tame and poor, Calling thyself a little lower Than angels. Cease to wail and brawl; Why inch by inch to darkness crawl ? There is one remedy for all." As with Hamlet, the voice that prompts to self-destruction is met in part by the fear of the unknown. We have no full assurance that death is the end of consciousness: "For I go, weak from suffering here; Naked I go, and void of cheer; What is it that I may not fear?" The very weariness of life, which is the outcome of pessimism, testifies to the higher capacities, and therefore the higher possibilities, of the human spirit. The Wdt-schmcrz, the ' world Set in the heart,' the thought of Infinity (Eccl. iii. 11), bears its unconscious witness, "Here sits he shaping wings to fly, His heart forebodes a mystery. He names the name Eternity." Conscious as he is of the contradictions in his inner life, of the "dead flies" that taint the fair fame even of the best and wisest (Eccl. vii. i). "He knows a baseness in his blood. At such strange war with something good. He may not do the thing he would." APPENDIX. 259 Yet with him, as with Koheleth, faith at last prevails, and the goal of his many labyrinthine wanderings of thought is hope and not despair. And the faith comes to him, not through the careful balancing of the conflicting arguments of the Voice that whispered despair and of his own soul in reply, but partly through his inner consciousness of aspira- tions after a higher blessedness, partly through the contemplation of a form of life natural and simple enough, in which that blessedness is, in part at least, realised, in a fresh sympathy with humanity, in acts, or at least thoughts, of kindness (Eccl. xi. i, 2). "Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath, Hath ever truly longed for death. 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant ; Oh, life, not death, for which we pant, More life, and fuller, that I want." And what he sees is a village Churchyard, on "the Sabbath morn,'" and "the sweet Church bells begin to peal," and among those who are so " passing the place where each must rest" are three — husband, wife and child, bound together as by "a three-fold cord that is not easily broken" (Eccl. iv. 12). "These three made unity so sweet. My frozen heart began to beat, Remembering its ancient heat." And so "the dull and bitter voice was gone" and a second voice was heard with its whisper, "A murmur 'Be of better cheer.'" He looked back, as Koheleth looked back, on his previous mood of pessimism as a thing belonging to the past, and just as the last words of the one were those that said in tones, which though a sad tender irony might mingle with them, were far from being merely ironical, "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth" (Eccl. xi. 9), so, in the new sense of life that dawned upon the thinker, this was the Voice that at last prevailed, as he looked on the blameless joys of the life of home, purified by the fear of God, and felt the calming influence of sky and Stream and meadow-land and flowers, " So variously seem'd all things wrought, I marvelled how the mind was brought To anchor by one gloomy thought. And wherefore rather I made choice To commune with that barren voice Than him that said Rejoice, rejoice." A later poem of Tennyson's, his "Lucretius," gives a new signifi- cance to these three earlier works, as shewing how deeply he had entered into that Epicurean teaching both in its higher and its lower aspects, of which we have seen so many traces in the words of Kohe- 17—2 26o APPENDIX. lelh. With the profound insight which that study had given him he paints, on the one hand, the insane impurities wiiich arc the outcome of the soul's disease, and haunt the mind that has rested in sensuous pleasure as its goal, and of which the Poet's fourth Book presents but too full and terrible a picture; and, on the other, recognises the higher aim which makes the Dc Rcritrn N'atiira one of the loftiest and noblest poems of Latin, or indeed of any, literature. It had not been his aim, any more than it was that of Kohelcth, to rest in mere negations. "My Master held That Gods there are, for all men so believe. I prest my footsteps into his, and meant Surely to lead my Memmius in a train Of flowery clauses onward to the thought That Gods there are, and deathless." He too has known 'the two Voices' that tempt to self-slaughter and resist the temptation, as a man looks out at "all the evil that is done under the sun" (Eccl. iv. i), of which he says: "And here he glances on an eye new born, And gels for greeting but a wail of pain; And here he stays upon a freezing orb That fain would gaze upon him to the last; And here upon a yellow eyelid fall'n. And closed by those who mourn a friend in vain, Not thankful that his troubles are no more. And me, altho' his fire is on my face, Blinding, he sees not, nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato, where he says, That men, like soldiers, may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods : but he that holds The Gods are careless, wherefore need he care Greatly for them, nor rather plunge at once. Being troubled, wholly out of sight, and sink Past earthquake — ay, and gout and stone, that break Body towards death, and palsy, death-in-life And wretched age...?" The student will have noticed how singidarly all this coincides with Koheleth's view of the 'vanity' of human life, one generation going and another coming (Eccl. i. 4), and with the picture of disease and decay in Eccl. -xii. 3 — 6. Lucretius, like Koheleth, had aimed at the higher ideal of the life of the Garden of Epicurus. He turns to the Gods and says: "I thought I lived securely as yourselves — No lewdness, narrowing envy, monkey spite, No madness of ambition, avarice, none: No larger feast than under plane or pine APPENDIX. 261 With neighbours laid along the grass, to lake Only such cups as left us friendly warm, Affirming each his own philosophy — Nothing to mar the sober majesties Of settled, sweet Epicurean life." The agony which drove him to self-slaughter was that he had fallen from that ideal into the sensuous baseness with which he had made himself but too fatally familiar. He too had his "Vision of Sin," the "crime of sense avenged by sense," and found the haunting burden of it unendurable, and in words which again remind us of Koheleth (Eccl. i. 9, II, iii. 20), utters his resolve, "And therefore now Let her that is the womb and tomb of all, Great Nature, take, and forcing far* apart Those blind beginnings that have made me man, Dash them anew together at her will, Thro' all her cycles — into man once more, Or beast, or bird, or fish, or opulent flower:" And doing this, he looks forward to the time "When momentary man Shall seem no more a something to himself. But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes, And even his bones long laid within the grave, The very sides of the grave itself shall pass Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void, Into the unseen for ever." With Tennyson, as with Shakespeare, there are few, if any, traces, that this striking parallelism with the Confessions of the Debater, is the result of any deliberate study of, or attempt to reproduce, them. The phrases of Ecclesiastes are not borrowed, admirably as they might have served to express his thoughts; there is no reference, however distant, to his experience. We have to do once more with parallelism pure and simjjle and not with derivation. What I have attempted to shew is that under every extremest variation in circumstances and culture the outcome of the pursuit of happiness, what we have learnt to call cuda;monism, after the Epicurean ideal, is sooner or later, that, in the absence of a clearer faith and loftier aim, the ideal breaks down and leaves the man struggling with the question 'Is life worth living?' l^erhaps finding the answer to that question in some form of a pessimist view of life and of the Universe. It will be admitted, I think, that, so far as I have proved this, I have added to the arguments which I have urged in favour of the view that I have maintained, both in the Notes and in the "Ideal Biography," as to the ^ciiais and plan of Eccle- siastes. 262 APPENDIX. III. A PERSIAN KOHELETH OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. I have yet another instance of unconscious parallelism with the expe- rience and the thought of Koheleth to bring before the student's notice. It comes from a far off land and from a more distant age than the two which I have already discussed. Omar Khayyam ( = ()mar, the Tent maker) ^ was born in the latter half of the eleventh century at Naishapur in Khorasan. He was in his youth the friend and fellow-student of Nizam ul Mulk, the Vizier of Al[) Arslan, the son of Togliriil Bey. They read the Koran sitting at the feet of the Imam Mowaffek, the greatest teacher of his age and city. Another fellow-student became afterwards a name of terror as Hasan, the Old Man of the Moun- tains, the head of the Assassins whose name and fame became a word of terror to the Crusaders. Omar, as acting on the Epicurean counsel, Xa^e ^iuiaas (=:live as hidden from view), asked his Vizier friend to "let him live in a corner under the shadow of his fortune," giving his life to the pursuit of wisdom. Like the Greek and Roman Epicureans, he devoted himself chiefly to astronomy and physical science. He was employed in reforming the Persian Calendar, and died, as the paragon of his age, in A.D. 1123. It was characteristic of the mood of thought, the workings of which we are about to trace, that his wish as to his grave was that it might be "where the North wind might scatter roses over him." Like the Koheleth of the "Idcnl Biography," in his rela- tion to the Jewish Rabbis of his time, he startleil alike the orthodox Imams of Islam and the mystics of the Sufi sect, by the half-voluptuous, half-cynical strain which found utterance in his poems and his conversa- tion. The writer of an article in the Ca/ciitta I\cvit~io, No. 59, draws an elaborate parallel between his poetry and that of Lucretius, but it does not seem to have occurred to him to carry the line of thought further and to note the many coincidences which the Kulmiyat {■= Te- trastichs) presents to the thoughts and language of Ecclesiastes, as well as to those of the later Epicurean poet. To these the attention of the student is now invited. The poem opens with the dawn of a New Year's day, and a voice calls as from a tavern where revellers are carousing, and summons to enjoyment "Come fdl the Cup, and in the fire of Sjiring Your winter garment of Repentance fling, The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter — and the Bird is on the wing. ' I owe my knowledge of the poet to the " Rubaiyat of Om.ir Khayy.im," pub- lished by Quaritch, 1879. The name of the translator is not given. APPENDIX. 263 Whether at Naishapur or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one. Each morn a thousand Roses brings, you say, Yes, but where leaves the Rose of yesterday ? And this first summer-month that brings the Rose, Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away. Well, let it take them." The lesson drawn from that thought of the transitoriness of enjoyment is the old lesson of a calm and tranquil Epicureanism such as that of Keel, ii. 24, V. 8, ix. 7. "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a loaf of Bread — and thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness, Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow. Some for the Glories of this World, and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go. Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum ! Look to the blowing Rose about us; — 'Lo! 'Laughing' she says 'into the world I blow, 'At once the silken tassel of my Purse Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw ; ' * ♦ ♦ • « The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns ashes, or it prospers; and anon Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty face, Lighting a little hour or two — was gone. Think — in this battered Caravanserai Whose portals are alternate Night and Day, How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp Abode his destin'd Hour, and went his way." And this sense of the transitoriness of all things human (Eccl. i. 4 — 7, ii. 16) leads, as with the Epicureans of all times and countries, to the Carpe dicin of Horace, the "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" of I Cor. XV. 34, to the belief that there is "nothing better for a man than that he should thus eat, drink and be merry." "Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears To-Day of past Regret and future Fears. «♦**** Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend. Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie. Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and sans End." 264 APPENDIX. Man's aspirations after immortality are met with the scepticism of the "who knowclh?" of Pyrrho and of Kohelcth (Eccl. iii. 21), or even with a more definite denial. " Alike for those who for To-Day prepare, And those that after some to-morrow stare, A Muezzin from the towers of darkness cries ''Fools, your reward is neither Here nor There.'" The discussions of the Sages of his land, the making of many books without end, were for him but as the "feeding upon wind" (Eccl. xii. 2) and brought no satisfying answer. "Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument, About it and about : but evermore Came out by the same door where in I went. With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow. And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow; And this was all the Harvest that I reaped : 'I came like Water and like Wind I go." The problem of Life, the enigma of the Universe, found no solution. God had "set the world in the heart" of man to the intent that they might not "find out his work from the beginning to the end" (liccl. iii. 1 1). "Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate, And many a Knot unravell'd by the Road, . But not the Master-knot of Human Fate. There was the Door to which I found no Key, There was the Veil through which I might not see: Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee, There was, — and then no more of Thee and Me. Earth could not answer: nor the Seas that mourn In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn ; Nor rolling Heaven, with all his Signs revealed, And hidden by the Sleeve of Night and Morn^" Agnosticism has, perhaps, never spoken in the tones of a more terrible des|iondency than in the words that follow, though the language of Kohelcth in Eccl. iii. 13, ix. 3, falls not far short of it. "Then of the tmee in me who works behind The Veil, I lifted up my hands to find A Lamp amid the Darkness; and I heard As from Without, 'The me within thee blind.'" ' We are reminded of the grand laniajiuige of Job xxviii. 13, 14, but tlicrc the questioner, like Kuheluth, was led to rest in a very dilTcrent conclusion. APPENDIX. 265 The sense of the infinite littleness of the individual life (Eccl. i. 4, 11), is expressed in words which remind us (once more a case of uncon- scious parallelism) of Tennyson's gloomier Voice, "When you and I behind the Veil are past, Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last, Which of our Coming and Departure heeds, As the Sea's self should heed a pebble-cast. A Moment's Halt — a momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the Waste — • And Lo! the phantom Caravan has reacht The NOTHING it set out from. Oh, make haste," He takes refuge, like Koheleth (Eccl. ii. 3, ix. 7), from this despair, in the juice of the "fruitful Grape," "The Sovereign Alchemist that in a trice Life's leaden metal into Gold transmutes." He is not deterred from that sweet balm by the Prophet's prohibition, or fears of Hell, or hopes of Paradise, "One thing is certain, and the rest is lies. The Flower that once has blown, for ever dies." None have come back from the bourne of that " undiscovered country" that lies behind the veil, "Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who Before us pass'd the doors of Darkness through. Not one returns to tell us of the Road, Which to discover we must travel too." Like Milton's Satan he has come to the conviction that, "The Soul is its own place and of itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven," and gives utterance to the conviction : "I sent my Soul through the Invisible Some letter of that After life to spell, And by and by my Soul return'd to me And answered, 'I myself am Heaven and Hell.' Heaven but the Vision of fulfilled Desire, And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on fire, Cast on the darkness into which ourselves So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire." In words which remind us of Prospero's "We are such stuff As dreams are made of," 266 APPENDIX, or of Jaques' "All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players," he writes his view of the world's great drama as seen from the half- pessimist, half-pantheistic, stand-point, "We are no other than a moving row Of Magic .Shadow-shapes that come and go, Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held In Midnight by the Master of the Show; But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days, Hither and thither moves, and checks and stays, And one by one back in the Closet lays." Koheleth^s complaint that there is "no new thing under the sun" (Eccl. i. 9), that the course of Nature and of human life presents but a dreary monotony of iteration (Eccl. i. 5, 6, 14), oppresses him once more with a despair for which the wine-cup seems the only remedy : he knows not either »the 'whence?' the 'whither?' or the 'why?' of life. "Yesterday, this Day's Madness did prepare; To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair: Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why: Drink ! for you know not why you go, nor where." In words which remind us of Heine, at once in their faint hope, and in the bold despair which equals almost the " Tau/d stat proedita citl/'cV^ of Lucretius, he utters his last words to the Eternal, whom he can nei- ther wholly deny nor yet trust in and adore, "What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke A conscious Something to resent the Yoke Of unpermitted I'leasurc, under pain Of Everlasting Penalties if broke ! What ! from his helpless Creature be repaid Pure Gold, for what He lent him dross-allay'd — Sue for a debt he never did contract And cannot answer — Oh the sorry trade ! Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin Beset the Road I was to wander in. Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to sin ! Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake: For all the Sin whcrewiih the Face of Man Is blackcn'd,— Man's forgiveness give — and take." APPENDIX. 267 In this instance also, as in those of Koheleth, Jaques, Hamlet, Heine, Schopenhauer, and a thousand others, the pessimism, self- conscious and self-contemplative, finding free utterance in the play of imagination or of humour, did not lead to suicide, but to the effort, after the manner of Epicureans less noble than Lucretius, to narcotise the sense of wretchedness by the stimulation of the wine-cup. In words which half remind us of some of Heine's most cynical utterances and half of the epitaph said to have been placed on the tomb of Sophocles, he gives free vent to his thoughts as to the hard theory of destiny that had been pressed upon him under the form of the old parable of the Potter and the clay, and his refuge from those thoughts in the revelry which was rounded by the sleep of death, "'Why,' said another, 'Some there are who tell Of One who threatens He will send to Hell The luckless Pots He marred in making; — Pish! He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well'^ 'Well,' murmured one. 'Let whoso make or buy, My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry: But fill me with the old familiar juice; Methinks I might recover by and by. ****** 'Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide. Ah, wash the Body whence the Life has died, And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf, By some not-unfrequented Garden-side. That ev'n my buried Ashes such a snare Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air As not a true believer passing by But shall be overtaken unaware." Beyond this we need not go. The life of Omar Khayyam, so far as we know, did not end, as we have seen reason to believe that that of Koheleth, and even of Heine, did, in a return to truer thoughts of the great enigma. It will be admitted, however, that it is not without interest to trace, under so many varieties of form and culture, the iden- tity of thought and feeling to which an undisciplined imagination, brooding over that enigma and seeking refuge, in sensual indulgence, from the thought that it is insoluble, sooner or later leads. The poets and thinkers of the world might, indeed, almost be classified according to the relation in which they stand, to that world-problem which Reason finds itself thus impotent to solve. Some there are, like Homer, and the unknown author of the Nibehini^cn Lied, who in their healthy objectivity seem never to have known its burden. Some, like ^tschylus, Dante, Milton, Keble, have been protected against its perilous attacks by the faith which they had inherited and to which they clung without the shadow of a doubt. Some, like Epicurus hini- ' Comp. Heine's words not long before his death " Dieu me pardonnera; c'est son metier." 268 APPENDIX. self, and Montaigne, have rested in a supreme tranquillity. Some, like Sophocles, Virgil, Shakespeare, Goethe, have passed through it, not to the serenity of a clearer faith, but to the tranf|uillity of the Supreme Artist, dealing with it as an element in their enlarged experience. Some, like Lucretius, Omar Khayyam, Lcopardi, anil in jiart Heine, have yielded to its fatal sjiell, and have "died and made no sign" after nobler or ignobler fashion. Others, to whom the world owes more, have fought and overcome, and have rested in the faith of a Divine Order which will at last assert itself, of a Divine Education, of which the existence of the enigma, as forming part of man's probation and discipline, is itself a material element. Of this victory, the writer of the Book of Job, and Tennyson, present the earliest and the latest phases. An intermediate position may be claimed, not the less poetical in essence because its outward form was not that of poetry, for the writer of Ecclesiastes as in later times for the FiitsJcs of Pascal. INDEX. Alerglauhe, 47 abiit ad plures, lyg acceptable words, 226, 227 adder, deaf, 198 iEschylus quoted, 161, 181, 190 Alexandria, museum of, 49, 114 all is vanity, no, 224 almond tree, 218 always white, 188 Anima mundi, 224 another generation cometh, 104 Antiochus Epiplianes, 120 Antiochus Sidetes, 191 apothecary, 195 Aristophanes, quoted, 106, 203 Aristotle, quoted, 17 dpxaioTrAouTOi, 195 Artaxerxes Mnemon, 15^ assemblies, masters of, 2^7 Athanasius, 65 bedchamber, 203 Blaesilla, 95 breaketh a hedge, iq6 Browning, quoted, 189 bulwarks, 191 caper-berry, 219 cast thy bread, 204 Catullus, quoted, 43, 200 charming of serpents, 198 Chasidim, 181 child, 200 " Christian Year," quoted, 128 Cicero, quoted, 132, 183, 200, 215 cistern, 222 cleaveth wood, 196 comforter, 138 consumes his own flesh, 140 crackling of thorns, 162 Croesus, 151 cranes of Ibycos, 203 commended mirth, 182 considered in my heart, 1S3 Creator, 212 dahar, 107 day of birth, 160 day of prosperity, 1(^5 day of death, 177, 178 delirantiiim somnia, 1S5 dead lion, 186 dead flies, 192, 258 deaf adder, ig8 days of darkness, 209 daughters of song, 216 doors, 216 desire, 219 dust, 222 duty of man, 22V9 eateth in darkness, 153 eat in the morning, 200 Ecclesiastes, meaning of word, 15; date and authorship of, 19 — 32; compared with Ecclesiasticus, 56 — 63; with the Wisdom of Solomon, 67 — 75; Jewish interpreters of, 75 ; parables in, 77, 78; meanings of phrases in. 78; com- pared with Targum, 79 ff. ; patristic interpreters of, 88 ; analysis of, 97 ff.; parallel between Shakespeare and, 231 fF. ; parallel between Tennyson and, 250 ff. ; parallel between poem of Omar Khayyam and, 262 ff. rj9iK>j ttiVtis, 198 estate, 135 Euripides, quoted, 104, 134, 137, 160, 173, 186, 208, 220, 223 Eternal Commandment, 230 evil days, 213 face to shine, 174 feedeth on wind, no, 229, 253, 264 folding doors, 216 fountain of life, 222 full of words, 199 Gamaliel, 226 gardens and orchards, 115 gave good heed, 226 170 INDEX. gave my lieart, 109, 170 Gebini ben Charbon, 77 Gehenna, tires of, 210 Gemara, the, 75, 228 Ginsburg, quoted, t)o, gi golden bi)wl, 221 good name, 159, 160 gracious words, 198 grasshopper, 219 great dignity, 195 Gregory of Nyssa, 91, 94 Gregory Thauinaturgus, 89, 92, 94 Gregory the Great, 99 Gulschen Ras, by Mahmud, quoted, 214 grinders, 215 Hades, 136 Haggadah, the, 75 Halachah, the, 75 have all one breath, 136 have no burial, 155 Herodotus, quoted, 135 hia;her, 149, 130 Hillel, 226 home, 220 Homer, quoted, 105, 118, 141, 193 Hood, quoted, 238 Horace, quoted, 112, 119, 124, 151, 152, 166 ,200, 201, 209, 218, 223 horses, keeping of, 195 house, keepers of, 214 house, of God, 145 Hospital of the soul, 228 Ibycos, cranes of, 203 In Mcmoriaiu, quoted, 250, 251 Irenacus, 68 judgment, place of, 134, 212 Juvenal, quoted, 129, 151, i8g, 191, 200, 217 Keble's " Christian Year," quoted, 128 keep thy feet, 145 keepers of the house, 214 king over Israel, 109 Koheleth, 16; biography of, 36; parallel between Shakespeare and, 2-51 ff. ; parallel between Tennyson and, 250 ff. ; parallel between poem of Oinar Khayyam and, 262 ff. lamp of life, 221 Latui P'athers, the, 92 let thy words be few, 146 life, fountain of, 222 light is sweet, 208 little city, 191 little folly, 193 long home, 220 love or hatred, 184 Lucretius, quoted, io6, 107, 117, 123, 132, 136, 137, 146, 149, 154, 211, 223, 226 madness, 185 Mahmud, Gulschen Ras of, quoted, 214 mandragora, 220 Martial quoted, 42 nia-iters of assemblies, 227 Jilataiotcs Mataioteton, 251 matter, 229 AlTjSej' aydj', 167 Metaphrasis, the, 89, 94 Miiirashim, the, 75 Milion, quoted, 158, 265 Mishna, the, 75, 169, 218 moral suasion, 198 mourners, 221 Muratorian Fragments, 67 mischievous maJness, 199 my son, 228 nails, 227 nard, 188 ne quid rtimis, 119, 167 N ibelungen Lied, 267 Nirvana, 139 nobles, 200 no new thing, io3 oath of God, 17s ointment, 1S8 Omar Khayyam, biography of, 262; parallel between Ecclesiastes and, 202 ff. ; poem of, quoted, 262 ff. over much wicked, 167, 168 over the spirit, 177 Ovid, quoted, 131, 174 Paradise Lost, quoted, 158, 265 Pelagianism, 93 Pheraulas, 151 pitcher, 222 place of judgment, 134, 21a Plato, quoted, 17, 221, 252 Pliny, quoted, 203 Ptolemy, 64 Pyrrhonism, 137 ready to hear, 145 rebuke of the wise, 162 rejoice in thy youth, 210, 211 remembrance of the wise, 120 reward, 163 rich, 195 right hand, 19^ right work, 139 righteous over much, 167, 168 Kutinus, 65 Sacian, 151 Sanhedrin, 226 iatiiu vidcudi, 345 INDEX. 271 season, 201 see the sun, 164, 208 Seneca, quoted, 141 sentence, i8o serpents, charming of, 198 set in order, 226 Shakespeare, quoted, 40, 43, 122, 124, 131, 187, 199, 223, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 265, 266 Shcchinah, 86 Sheked, 218 Sheol, 136, i8g, 2og Shepherd, the Good, 228 silver cord, 22X sinister, 194 slaves, 115 slothfulness, 201 Solomon, Wisdom of, 67; compared with Ecclesiastes, 68, 69 Solon, 151 song, daughters of, 216 song of fools, 162 Sophocles, quoted, 128, 130, 139, 159, 173, 176, 1S4, 187, 193 sorrow, 212 sow thy seed, 207 Si^irit of the ruler, 194 spirit shall return, 223 "sprung from the soil," 219 storm, 214 study, 229 suicide, 120 swallow up, igS Targum, the, 75 Tennyson, parallel drawn between Ko- heleth and, 250 ff. ; quoted, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255. 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 265 threefold cord, 143, 144 thy hand findeth, 189 time and chance, 190 to do good, 133 " Two Voices," 126, 179, 252, 257, 25o unto one place, 136 vanity, 212, 229, 253 vanity of vanities, 102, 224, 223, 231, 234 vexation of spirit, 112, 122, ^25 Virgil, quoted, 48, 105, loS, 123, 124, 152, 161, 224 Voltaire, quoted, 205 IVeli-schmerz, the, 258 wheel, 222 wisdom is good, 164 wise, remembrance of, 120: rebuke of, 162 wonder not, 149 work of God, 183, 207 youth, 213 CAMBRIDGE: PKINTED liY C. 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