Bibelkommentare

1. The words of the Preacher] For the title of the Book and the meaning of the word translated “Preacher” (better, Debater, or, perhaps, as the Hebrew noun has no article, Koheleth, as a proper name, carrying with it the meaning of Debater), see Introduction. The description “king in Jerusalem” is in apposition with “the Preacher” not with “David.” It is noticeable that the name of Solomon is not mentioned as it is in the titles of the other two books ascribed to him (Proverbs 1:1; Song of Solomon 1:1).

2. Vanity of vanities] The form is the highest type (as in the “servant of servants” of Genesis 9:25, the “chief over the chief” of Numbers 3:32) of the Hebrew superlative. The word translated “vanity,” identical with the name Abel or Hebel (Genesis 4:2) means primarily a “breath,” or “vapour,” and as such becomes the type of all that is fleeting and perishable (Psalm 62:9; Psalm 144:4). It is uniformily translated by “vanity” in the English Version of this book, which is moulded on the Vulgate as that was upon the LXX. The other Greek versions gave “vapour of vapours” (Hieron. in loc.) and this may perhaps be regarded as, in some respects, a preferable rendering. The watchword of the book, the key-note of its melancholy music, meeting us not less than thirty-nine times, is therefore, whether we take it as a proposition or an exclamation, like that of the Epicurean poet “Pulvis et umbra sumus” (Hor. Od. iv. 7. 9), like that also, we may add, of St James (James 3:14) and the Psalmist (Psalm 90:3-10). In the Wisdom of Solomon apparently written (see Introduction, chap. v.) as a corrective complement to Ecclesiastes we have a like series of comparisons, the “dust,” the “thin froth,” the “smoke,” but there the idea of ‘vanity’ is limited to the “hope of the ungodly” and the writer, as if of set purpose, avoids the sweeping generalizations of the Debater, who extends the assertion to the “all” of human life, and human aims. It is not without significance that St Paul, in what is, perhaps, the solitary reference in his writings to this book, uses the word which the LXX. employs here, when he affirms that “the creature was made subject to vanity” and seeks to place that fact in its right relation to the future restitution of the Universe (Romans 8:20).

3. What profit hath a man] The question is, it is obvious, as in the analogous question of Matthew 16:26, the most emphatic form of a negation. For “all his labour which he taketh” read all his toil which he toileth, the Hebrew giving the emphasis of the combination of the verb with its cognate substantive. The Debater sums up his experience of life in this, “There is toil, and the toil is profitless.” The word for “profit,” not meeting us elsewhere in the Hebrew of the O. T., occurs ten times in Ecclesiastes. Its strict meaning is “that which remains,”—the surplus, if any, of the balance-sheet of life. It was, probably, one of the words which the commerce of the Jews, after the Captivity, had brought into common use. The question is in substance, almost in form, identical with that of our times “Is life worth living?”

under the sun] The phrase thus used, occurring 29 times in Ecclesiastes, has nothing like it in the language of other books of the Old Testament. It is essentially Greek in character. Thus we have in Euripides, Hippol. 1220,

ὅσα τε γᾶ τρέφει

τὰν Ἅλιος αἰθομέναν δέρκεται

ἄνδρας τε.

“All creatures that the wide earth nourisheth

Which the sun looks on radiant, and mankind.”

And Theognis, 168,

τὸ δʼ ἀτρεκές, ὄλβιος αὐδεὶς

ἀνθρώπων, ὁπόσους ἤελιος καθορᾷ.

“One thing is certain, none of all mankind,

On whom the sun looks down, gains happiness.”

Our English “sublunary” may be noted as conveying an analogous idea.

4. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh] The sentence loses in strength by the words inserted in italics. Better, generation passeth and generation cometh. This is, as it were, the first note of vanity. Man, in idea the lord of the earth, is but as a stranger tarrying for a day. As in the touching parable of the Saxon chief, he comes from the darkness as into the light of a festive hall, and then passes into the darkness once again (Bede, Eccl. Hist. ii. c. 14), but the earth which is in idea subject to him boasts a permanence which he cannot claim. In the Hebrew word which answers to “for ever” we have, as elsewhere, an undefined rather than an absolutely infinite duration.

Parallelisms of thought present themselves in Sir 14:19; Job 10:21; Psalm 39:13, and, we may add, in Homer, Il. vi. 146,

οἴη περ φύλλων γενεή, τοιήδε καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

φύλλα τὰ μέν τʼ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θʼ ὓλη

τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἒαρος δʼ ἐπιγίγνεται ὣρη•

ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἡ μὲν φύει, ἡ δʼ ἀπολήγει.

“As are the leaves, so is the race of men;

Some the wind scatters on the ground, and some

The fruitful forest, when the springtide comes,

Puts forth; so note we also with mankind;

One comes to life, another falls away.”

It is significant that these lines were ever in the mouth of Pyrrho, the founder of the Greek school of Sceptics (Diog. Laert. ix. 11. 6).

5. The sun also ariseth] From the standpoint of modern thought the sun might seem even more than the earth to be the type of permanent existence, but with the Hebrew, who looked on it in its phenomenal aspect, it was not so, and the sun accordingly appears as presenting not a contrast, but a parallel, to human mutability and resultless labour. We are reminded of the Rabbinic legend of Abraham’s looking on the sun, and, when half tempted to adore it, repressing the temptation by watching its going down and saying “The God whom I worship must be a God that does not set.” Koran, Sur. 6. Stanley’s Jewish Church, 1. Lect. 1.

hasteth to his place where he arose] The primary meaning of the first of the two verbs is that of the panting of one who travels quickly. Here again we have to think of the belief that, between the sunset and the sunrise, the sun had a long journey to perform, as the Greeks thought, by the great Ocean river, till it returned to the point where it had risen the day before. Possibly the clouds and mists of the morning were thought of as the panting of the sun, as of “the strong man” who “runs his race” (Psalm 19:5).

Parallels present themselves in Psalm 19:5 (“rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race”) and yet more strikingly in Virgil, Georg. i. 250,

Nosque ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis,

Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.

“And when to us the sun with panting steeds

Hastens at dawn, far off the star of eve

There lights her glowing lamp.”

Comp. also Æn. xii. 113.

6. The wind goeth toward the south] This comes after the sun as exhibiting a like, though more irregular, law of mutability. “South and north” only are named, partly, perhaps, because east and west were implied in the sunrise and sunset of the previous verse, more probably because these were the prevailing currents of air in Palestine. Comp. “Awake, O north wind; blow, O south,” in Song of Solomon 4:16; Sir 43:20; Luke 12:55.

It whirleth about continually] The whole verse gains in poetic emphasis by a more literal rendering, It goeth to the south, and it circleth to the north, circling, circling goeth the wind, and on its circlings returneth the wind. The iteration and order of the words seem to breathe the languor of one who was weary with watching the endless and yet monotonous changes. (Comp. the illustration in Introduction, chap. iii.)

7. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full] The words express the wonder of the earliest observers of the phenomena of nature: as they observed, the poet described.

So we have in Aristophanes (Clouds, 1248),

αὕτη μὲν (ἡ θάλαττα) οὐδὲν γίγνεται

ἐπιῤῥεοντων τῶν ποταμῶν, πλείων.

“The sea, though all the rivers flow to it,

Increaseth not in volume.”

Lucretius, representing the physical science of the school of Epicurus, thought it worth his while to give a scientific explanation of the fact:

“Principio, mare mirantur non reddere majus

Naturam, quo sit tantus decursus aquarum.”

“And first men wonder Nature leaves the sea

Not greater than before, though to it flows

So great a rush of waters.”

Lucret. vi. 608.

thither they return again] We are apt to read into the words the theories of modern science as to the evaporation from the sea, the clouds formed by evaporation, the rain falling from the clouds and replenishing the streams. It may be questioned, however, whether that theory, which Lucretius states almost as if it were a discovery, were present to the mind of the Debater and whether he did not rather think of the waters of the ocean filtering through the crevices of the earth and so feeding its wells and fountains. The Epicurean poet himself accepts this as a partial solution of phenomena, and on the view taken in the Introduction as to the date of Ecclesiastes it may well have been known to the author as one of the physical theories of the school of Epicurus. We can scarcely fail, at any rate, to be struck with the close parallelism of expression.

“Postremo quoniam raro cum corpore tellus

Est, et conjuncta est, oras maris undique cingens,

Debet, ut in mare de terris venit umor aquai,

In terras itidem manare ex aequore salso;

Percolatur enim virus, retroque remanat

Materies humoris, et ad caput amnibus omnis

Confluit; inde super terras redit agmine dulci.”

“Lastly since earth has open pores and rare,

And borders on the sea, and girds its shores,

Need must its waters, as from earth to sea

They flow, flow back again from sea to earth,

And so the brackish taint is filtered off

And to the source the water back distils,

And from fresh fountains streams o’er all the fields.”

Lucret. vi. 631–637.

The same thought is found in Homer, Il. xxi. 96,

“Ocean’s strength

From which all rivers flow,”

and is definitely stated in the Chaldee paraphrase of the verse now before us. Comp. also Lucret. v. 270–273. An alternative rendering gives “to the place whither the rivers go, thither they return again” or “thence they return again.”

8. All things are full of labour] The Hebrew dabar may mean either “word” or “thing,” and so the sentence admits equally of this or the nearly equivalent rendering, All things are weary with toil and All words are feeble, and each gives, it is obvious, a fairly tenable meaning. The first generalizes as by an induction from the previous instances, that all things (especially, i. e. all human affairs) are alike “stale, flat and unprofitable.” The latter stops in the induction to say that all speech is feeble, that time and strength would fail to go through the catalogue. On the whole, looking to the fact that the verb “utter” is cognate in form with the word translated “things,” the latter seems more closely in harmony with the context. We might fairly express the force of the Hebrew by saying All speech fails; man cannot speak it. The seeming tautology gives the sentence the emphasis of iteration. So the LXX. and the Targum.

the eye is not satisfied with seeing] The thought is limited by the context. It is not that the Debater speaks of the cravings of sight and hearing for ever-new objects, true as that might be; but that wherever the eye or the ear turn, the same sad tale meets them, the same paradox of an unvarying record of endless yet monotonous version. The state which Lucretius (ii. 1037) describes, probably as echoing Epicurus, that of one “fessus satiate videndi,” presents a parallelism too striking to be passed over.