Part 5

To which, as choral responses, might be added, "Let him depart to those for whom flow the rivers of nectar. Let him depart to those who through meditation have obtained the victory, who by fixing their thoughts on the unseen have gone to heaven.... Let him depart to the mighty in battle, to the heroes who have laid down their lives for others, to those who have bestowed their goods on the poor" (Rig-Veda x. 154).

As the body was consumed on the pyre the friends of the dead chanted a hymn in which, after having bidden his body return to the various elements from which it sprang, they prayed, "As for his unborn part, do Thou, Lord (Agni), quicken it with Thy heat; let Thy flame and Thy brightness kindle it: convey it to the world of the righteous."

It was from this pure and lofty source that the Persians drew their faith in the better life to be.

Max Müller also quotes as the prayer of a dying Hindu woman, "Place me, O Pure One, in that everlasting and unchanging world where light and glory are found. Make me immortal in the world in which joys, delights, and happiness abide, where the desires are obtained" (Atharda Veda xii. 3, 17).

Cremation itself bore witness to the Hindu faith in immortality, since they held that "the fire which set free the spiritual element from the superincumbent clay, completed the third or heavenly birth," the second birth having been achieved when men set themselves to a faithful discharge of their religious duties.

This wonderfully pure creed was, however, in process of time, corrupted in many ways. First of all, "the sad antithesis of human life," the conflict between light and darkness, good and evil--the standing puzzle of the world--led the votaries of Ormazd to _dualism_. Ormazd loved and created only the good. The evil in man, and in the world, must be the work of an enemy. This enemy, Ahriman (Augrô-maniyus), has been seeking from eternity to undo, to mar and blast, the fair work of the God of heaven. He is the baleful author of all evil, and under him are spirits as malignant as himself. Between these good and evil powers there is incessant conflict, which extends to every soul and every world. It will never cease until the great Deliverer arise--for even of _Him_ the Persians had some dim prevision--who shall conquer and destroy evil at its source, all things then rounding to their final goal of good.

Another corrupting influence had its origin in a too literal interpretation of the names given to the Divine Being, or the qualities ascribed to Him, by the founders of the faith. Ormazd, for example, had been described as "true, _lucid_, _shining_, the originator of all the best things, of the spirit in nature and of the growth in nature, _of the luminaries and of the self-shining brightness which is in the luminaries_." From these epithets and ascriptions there sprang in later days the worship of the sun, then of fire, as a type of God--a worship still maintained by the disciples of Zoroaster, the Ghebers and the Parsees. And from this point onward the old sad story repeats itself; once more we have to trace a pure and lofty primitive faith along the grades through which it declines to the low, base level of a sensuous idolatry. The Magians, always the bitter enemies of Zoroastrianism, held that the four elements--fire, air, earth, and water--were the only proper objects of human reverence. It was not difficult for them to persuade those who already worshipped fire, and were beginning to forget of Whom fire was the symbol, to include in their homage air, water, and earth. Divination, incantations, the interpretation of dreams and omens soon followed, with all the dark shadows which science and religion cast behind them. And then came the lowest deep of all, that worship of the gods by sensual indulgence to which idolatry gravitates, as by a law.

Nevertheless, we must remember that, even at their worst, the Persians preserved the sacred records of their earlier faith, and that their best men steadily refused to accept the base additions to it which the Magians proposed. Corrupt as in many respects many of them became, the conquest of Babylon was the death-blow to the sensual idol-worship which had reigned for twenty centuries on the Chaldean plain; it never wholly recovered from it, though it survived it for a time. From that date it declined to its fall: "Bel bowed down; Nebo stooped; Merodach was broken in pieces" (Isa. xlvi. 1; Jer. l. 2). The nobler monarchs of Persia were true disciples of the primitive creed of their race. It was similarity of creed which won their favour for the Hebrew captives. In the decree which enfranchised them (Ezra i. 2, 3) Cyrus expressly identifies Ormazd, "the God of heaven," with Jehovah, the God of Israel; he says, "_The Lord God of heaven_ hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He hath charged me to build _Him_ a house at Jerusalem." Nor was this belief in one God, whose temple was to be defiled by no image even of Himself, the only point in common between the better Persians, such as Cyrus and Darius, and the better Jews. There were many such points. Both believed in an evil spirit tempting and accusing men; in myriads of angels, all the host of heaven, who formed the armies of God and did his pleasure; in a tree of life and a tree of knowledge, and a serpent the enemy of man; both shared the hope of a coming Deliverer from evil, the belief in an immortal and retributive life beyond the grave, and a happy Paradise in which all righteous souls would find a home and see their Father's face. These common faiths and hopes would all be points of sympathy and attachment between the two races; and it is to this agreement in religious doctrine and practice that we must ascribe the striking facts that the Persians, ordinarily the most intolerant of men, never persecuted the Jews; and that the Jews, ordinarily so impatient of foreign domination, never made a single attempt to cast off the Persian yoke, but stood by the declining empire even when the Greeks were thundering at its gates.

On one question all competent historians and commentators are agreed; viz. that the Jews gained immensely in the clearness and compass of their religious faith during the Captivity. That, which was the punishment, was also the term, of their idolatry; into that sin they never afterwards fell. Now first, too, they began to understand that the bond of their unity was not local, not national even, but spiritual and religious; they were spread over every province of a foreign empire, yet they were one people, and a sacred people, in virtue of their common service of Jehovah and their common hope of Messiah's advent. This hope had been vaguely felt before, and just previous to the Captivity Isaiah had arrayed it in an unrivalled splendour of imagery; now it sank into the popular mind, which needed it so sorely, and became a deep and ardent longing of the national heart. From this period, moreover, the immortality of the soul and the life beyond death entered distinctly and prominently into the Hebrew creed. Always latent in their Scriptures, these truths disclosed themselves to the Jews as they came into contact with the Persian doctrines of judgment and future rewards. Hitherto they had thought mainly, if not exclusively, of the temporal rewards and punishments by which the Mosaic law enforced its precepts. Henceforth they saw that, in time and on earth, human actions are not carried to their final and due results; they looked forward to a judgment in which all wrongs should be righted, all unpunished sins receive their recompense, and all the sufferings of the good be transmuted into joy and peace.

Now this, as we shall see, is the very moral of the Book Ecclesiastes, the triumphant climax to which it mounts. The endeavour of Coheleth is to show how evil and good were blended in the human lot, evil so largely preponderating in the lot of many of the good as to make life a curse unless it were sustained by hope; to give hope by assuring the Hebrew captives that "God takes cognizance of all things," and "will bring every work to judgment," good or bad; and to urge on them, as the conclusion of his Quest, and as the whole duty of man, to prepare for that supreme audit by fearing God and keeping his commandments. This was the light he was commissioned to carry into their great darkness; and if the lamp and the oil were of God, it is hardly too much to say that the spark which kindled the lamp was taken from the Persian fire, since that too was of God. Or, to vary the figure, and make it more accurate, we may say that the truths of the future life lay hidden in the Hebrew Scriptures, and that it was by the light of the Persian doctrine of the future that the Jews, stimulated by the mental culture and activity acquired in Babylon, discovered them in the Word.

It is thus, indeed, that God has taught men in all ages. The Word remains ever the same, but our conditions change, our mental posture varies, and with our posture the angle at which the light of Heaven falls on the sacred page. We are brought into contact with new races, new ideas, new forms of culture, new discoveries of science, and the familiar Word forthwith teems with new meanings, with new adaptations to our needs; truths unseen before, though they were always there, come to view, deep truths rise to the surface, mysterious truths grow simple and plain, truths that jangled on the ear melt into harmony; our new needs stretch out lame hands of faith, and find an unexpected but ample supply; and we are rapt in wonder and admiration as we afresh discover the Bible to be the Book for all races and for all ages, an inexhaustible fountain of truth and comfort and grace.

TRANSLATION.

THE PROLOGUE.

_IN WHICH THE PROBLEM OF THE BOOK IS INDIRECTLY STATED._

CHAP. I., vv. 1-11.

1 The words of the Preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,

3 Since man hath no profit from all his labour Which he laboureth under the sun![23]

[23] Just as we speak of this "sublunary world," so "under the sun" is the characteristic designation of the earth throughout this Book.

4 One generation passeth, and another generation cometh; While the earth abideth for ever.

5 The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down; And panteth toward the place at which it will rise again.

6 The wind goeth toward the south, and veereth to the north; It whirleth round and round; And the wind returneth on its course.

7 All the streams run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; To the place whence the streams came, thither they return again.

8 All things are weary with toil. Man cannot utter it. The eye can never be satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear with hearing.

9 What hath been will be, And that which is done is that which will be done; And there is no new thing under the sun.

10 If there be anything of which it is said, "Behold, this is new!" It hath been long ago, in the ages that were before us.

11 There is no remembrance of those who have been; Nor will there be any remembrance of men who are to come Among those that will live after them.

FIRST SECTION.

_THE QUEST OF THE CHIEF GOOD IN WISDOM AND IN PLEASURE._

CHAP. I., v. 12, to CHAP. II., v. 26.

[Sidenote: _The Quest in Wisdom._ Ch. i., vv. 12-18.]

12 I, the Preacher, was King over Israel, in Jerusalem:

13 And I applied my heart to survey and search by wisdom Into all that is done under heaven: This sore task hath God given to the children of men, To exercise themselves therewith.

VER. 13. _To survey and search into, etc._ The verbs indicate the broad extent which his researches covered, and the depth to which they penetrated.

14 I have considered all the works that are done under the sun, And, behold, they are all vanity and vexation of spirit.

VER. 14. _Vexation of spirit._ Literally, "striving after the wind." But the time-honoured phrase, "vexation of spirit," sufficiently expresses the writer's meaning; and it seems better to retain it than, with the Revised Version, to introduce the Hebrew metaphor, which has a somewhat novel and foreign sound.

15 That which is crooked cannot be set straight, And that which is lacking cannot be made up.

16 Therefore I spake to my heart, saying, Lo, I have acquired greater wisdom Than all who were before me in Jerusalem, My heart having seen much wisdom and knowledge;

17 For I had given my heart to find knowledge and wisdom. I perceive that even this is vexation of spirit;

VER. 17. _To find knowledge and wisdom._ Both the Authorized and Revised Versions render "to know wisdom, and to know _madness and folly_." The latter clause, however, violates both the sense and the grammatical construction. The word translated "to know" is not an infinitive, but a noun, and should be rendered "knowledge;" the word translated "folly" means "prudence," and the word translated "madness" hardly means more than "folly." The text, too, seems corrupt. The sense of the passage is against it, I think, as it now stands; for the design of the Preacher is simply to show the insufficiency of wisdom and knowledge, not to prove folly foolish. On the whole, therefore, it seems better to follow the high authority which arranges the text as it is here rendered. The Hebraist will find the question fully discussed in _Ginsburg_.

18 For in much wisdom is much sadness, And to multiply knowledge is to multiply sorrow.

[Sidenote: _The Quest in Pleasure._ Ch ii., vv. 1-11.]

1 Then I said to my heart, Go to, now let me prove thee with mirth, And thou shalt see pleasure: And, lo, this too is vanity!

2 To mirth I said, Thou art mad! And to pleasure, What canst thou do?

3 I thought in my heart to cheer my body with pleasure, While my spirit guided it wisely, And to lay hold on folly, Till I should see what it is good for the sons of men to do under heaven, Through the brief day of their life.

4 I gave myself to great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards;

5 I made me gardens and parks, And I planted in them all manner of fruit-trees;

6 I made me tanks of water, From which to water the groves:

7 I bought me men-servants and maid-servants, And had servants born in my house. I had also many herds of oxen and sheep, More than all who were before me in Jerusalem:

8 I heaped up silver and gold, And the treasures of kings and of kingdoms: I got me men-singers and women-singers; And took delight in many fair concubines:

9 So that I surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem, My wisdom abiding with me;

10 And nothing that my eyes desired did I withhold from them, I did not keep back my heart from any pleasure; For my heart took joy in all my toil, And this was my portion therefrom.

11 But when I turned to look on all the works which my hands had wrought, And at the labour which it cost me to accomplish them, Behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, And there was no profit under the sun.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Wisdom and Pleasure compared._ Ch. ii., vv. 12-23.]

12 Then I turned to compare wisdom with madness and folly-- And what can he do that cometh after the king Whom they made king long ago?--

13 And I saw that wisdom excelleth folly As far as light excelleth darkness:

14 The wise man's eyes are in his head, While the fool walketh blindly. Nevertheless I knew that the same fate will befall both.

15 Therefore I spake with my heart: "A fate like that of the fool will befall me, even me; To what end, then, am I wiser?" And I said to my heart: "This too is vanity,

16 For there is no more remembrance of the wise man than of the fool; For both will be forgotten, As in time past so also in days to come: And, alas, the wise man dieth even as the fool!"

17 So life became hateful to me, for a sore burden was upon me, Even the labour which I wrought under the sun; Since all is vanity and vexation of spirit:

18 Yea, I hated all the gain which I had gained under the sun, Because I must leave it to the man who shall come after me,

19 And who can tell whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have power over all my gain Which I have wisely gained under the sun: This too is vanity.

20 Then I turned and gave my heart up to despair Concerning all the gain which I had gained under the sun;

21 For here is a man who hath laboured wisely, and prudently, and dexterously, And he must leave it as a portion to one who hath not laboured therein: This also is vanity and a great evil;

22 For man hath nothing of all his heavy labour, And the vexation of his heart under the sun,

23 Since his task grieveth and vexeth him all his days, And even at night his heart hath no rest: This too is vanity.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _The Conclusion._ Ch. ii., vv. 24-26.]

24 There is nothing better for a man than to eat and to drink, And to let his soul take pleasure in his labour. But even this, I saw, cometh from God;

25 For who can eat, And who enjoy himself, apart from Him?

26 For to the man who is good before Him, He giveth wisdom and knowledge and joy; But to the sinner He giveth the task to gather and to heap up, That he may leave it to him who is good before God: This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.

_SECOND SECTION._

_THE QUEST OF THE CHIEF GOOD IN DEVOTION TO THE AFFAIRS OF BUSINESS._

CHAP. III., v. 1, to CHAP. V., v. 20.

[Sidenote: _The Quest obstructed by Divine Ordinances_; Ch. iii., vv. 1-15.]

1 There is a time for all things, And a season for every undertaking under heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up plants;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast stones, and a time to gather up stones; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to throw away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; A time to be silent, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; A time for war, and a time for peace:

9 He who laboureth hath therefore no profit from his labours.

10 I have considered the task which God hath given to the sons of men, To exercise themselves withal:

11 He hath made everything beautiful in its season; He hath also put eternity into their heart; Only they understand not the work of God from beginning to end.

12 I found that there was no good for them but to rejoice, And to do themselves good all their life;

13 But also that, if a man eat and drink, And take pleasure in all his labour, It is a gift of God.

14 I found too that whatever God hath ordained continueth for ever; Nothing can be added to it, And nothing taken from it: And God hath so ordered it that men may fear before Him.

15 That which is hath been, And that which is to be was long ago; For God recalleth the past.

[Sidenote: _And by Human Injustice and Perversity._ Ch. iii., v. 16. Ch. iv., v. 3.]

16 Moreover, I saw under the sun That there was iniquity in the place of justice, And in the place of equity there was iniquity.

17 I said to mine heart: "God will judge the righteous and the wicked, For there is a time for everything and for every deed with Him."

18 Yet I said to my heart of the children of men: "God hath sifted them, To show that they, even they, are but as beasts.

19 For a mere chance is man, and the beast a mere chance, And they are both subject to the same chance; As is the death of the one, so is the death of the other; And both have the same spirit: And the man hath no advantage over the beast, For both are vanity:

20 Both go to the same place; Both sprang from dust, and both turn into dust:

21 And who knoweth whether the spirit of man goeth upward, Or the spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth?"

VER. 21. The question is here, as so often in Hebrew, the strongest form of negative. As in ver. 19 the Preacher affirms of man and beast that "both have the same spirit," and, in ver. 20, that "both go to the same place," so, in this verse, he emphatically denies that there is any difference in their destination at death.

22 Wherefore I saw that there is nothing better for man Than to rejoice in his labours; For this is his portion: And who shall give him to see what will be after him?

[Sidenote: iv.]

1 Then I turned to consider once more All the oppressions that are done under the sun: I beheld the tears of the oppressed, And they had no comforter; And their oppressors were violent, Yet had they no comforter:

2 And I accounted the dead who died long ago Happier than the living who are still alive;

3 While happier than either is he who hath not been born, Who hath not seen the evil which is done under the sun.

[Sidenote: _It is rendered hopeless by the base Origin of Human Industries._ Ch. iv., vv. 4-8.]

4 Then too I saw that all this toil, And all this dexterity in toil, Spring from man's rivalry with his neighbour: This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.

5 The sluggard foldeth his hands, Yet he eateth his meat:

6 Better a handful of quiet Than two handsful of labour with vexation of spirit.

7 And again I turned, and saw a vanity under the sun:

8 Here is a man who hath no one with him, Not even a son or a brother; And yet there is no end of all his labour, Neither are his eyes satisfied with riches: For whom, then, doth he labour and deny his soul any of his wealth? This too is vanity and an evil work.

[Sidenote: _Yet these are capable of a nobler Motive and Mode._ Ch. iv., vv. 9-16.]

9 Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labour:

10 For if one fall, the other will lift up his fellow; But woe to the lonely one who falleth And hath no fellow to lift him up!

11 Moreover, if two sleep together, they are warm; But he that is alone, how can he be warm?

12 And if an enemy assail the one, two will withstand him. And a threefold cord is not easily broken.

13 Happier is a poor and wise youth Than an old and foolish king Who even yet has not learned to take warning;

14 For he goeth forth from the prison to the throne, Although he was born a poor man in the kingdom.

15 I see all the living who walk under the sun Flocking to the youth who stood up in his stead;

16 There is no end to the multitude of the people over whom he ruleth: Nevertheless those who live after him will not rejoice in him; For even this is vanity and vexation of spirit.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _So also a nobler and happier Mode of Worship is open to men:_ Ch. v., vv. 1-7.]

1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the House of God; For it is better to obey than to offer the sacrifice of fools, Who know not when they do evil.

2 Do not hurry on thy mouth, And do not force thy heart to utter words before God; For God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: Therefore let thy words be few.

3 For as a dream cometh through much occupation, So foolish talk through many words.

4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, Defer not to pay it; For he is a fool whose will is not steadfast. Pay that which thou hast vowed.

5 Better that thou shouldest not vow Than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.

6 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin, And say not before the Angel, "It was an error:" For why should God be angry at thine idle talk And destroy the work of thy hands?