CHAPTER I.

THE WISE MAN TURNED AUTHOR AND PHILOSOPHER.

... Il mondo invecchia, E invecchiando intristisce.—TASSO, _Aminta_.

In passing from the book of Ecclesiasticus to that of Ecclesiastes, we are conscious of breathing an entirely different intellectual atmosphere. ‘Seek not out the things that are too hard for thee,’ said Sirach, ‘for thou hast no need of the secret things’ (iii. 21, 22), but the book now before us is the record of a thinker, disappointed it is true, but too much in earnest to give up thinking. Of meditative minds there was no lack in this period of Israel’s history. The writers of the 119th and several other Psalms, as well as Jesus the son of Sirach, had pondered over the ideal life, but our author (the only remaining representative of a school of writers[286]) was meditative in a different sense from any of these. He could not have said with the latter, ‘I prayed for wisdom before the temple’ (Ecclus. li. 14), nor with the former, ‘Thy commandment is exceeding broad’ (Ps. cxix. 96). The idea of the religious primacy of Israel awakened in his mind no responsive enthusiasm. We cannot exactly say that he conceals the place of his residence,[287] but he has certainly no overpowering interest in the scene of his life’s troublesome drama. In this feature he resembles to a considerable extent the humanists of an earlier date (see p. 119), but in others, and those the most characteristic, he differs as widely from them as the old man from the child. They believed that virtue was crowned by prosperity; even the writer of _Job_, as some think, had not wholly cast off the consecrated dogma; but the austere and lonely thinker who has left us Ecclesiastes finds himself utterly unable to harmonise such a theory with facts (viii. 14). To him, living during one of the dreariest parts of the post-Exile period, it seemed as if the past aspirations of Israel had turned out a gigantic mistake. That home-sickness which impelled, if not the Second Isaiah himself, yet many who were stirred by his eloquence, to exchange a life of ease and luxury for one of struggle and privation—in what had it issued? In ‘vanity and pursuit of wind’ (comp. Isa. xxvi. 18). To quote a great Persian poet, who in some of his moods resembles Koheleth (see end of Chap. IX.),

The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d, Who rose before us and as Prophets burn’d, Are all but Stories, which, arose from Sleep, They told their fellows, and to Sleep return’d.

Such thoughts as these made the history of Israel an aid to scepticism rather than to faith; added to which it is probable that society in Koheleth’s[288] time seemed to him too corrupt to admit of an idealistic theory of life. For an individual to seek to put in practice such a theory would expose him to hopeless failure and misery. Therefore, ‘be not righteous overmuch,[289] neither pretend to be exceedingly wise; why wilt thou ruin (lit. desolate) thyself?’ (vii. 16). Some, no doubt, as the Soferim or Scripturists, had tried it, but they had only succeeded in making their lives ‘desolate,’ without any compensating advantage. Nor can we say that Ecclesiastes had given up theistic religion. He does not indeed believe in immortality and a future judgment, and is thus partly an exception to the rule of Lucretius,

... nam si certam finem esse viderent Aerumnarum homines, aliqua ratione valerent Religionibus atque mineis obsistere vatum. (_De rerum naturâ_, i. 108-110.)

He mentions God twenty-seven times, but under the name Elohim, which belonged to Him as the Creator, not under that of Yahveh, which an Israelite was privileged to use; and his one-sided supernaturalism obscured the sense of personal communion with God. He accepts only the first part of the great proclamation concerning the dwelling place of God in Isa. lxvii. 15 (see Eccles. v. 2). It is no doubt God who ‘worketh all’ (xi. 5), but there are nearer and almost more formidable potentates, an oppressive hierarchy of officials ranging from the taxgatherer to the king, ‘a high one watching above the high, and high ones over both’ (v. 8). True, our author seems to admit—at least if the text be sound (iii. 17; comp. viii. 12, 13)—that ‘God will judge the righteous and the wicked’ (i.e. in this life, for he does not believe in another), but the comfort of this thought is dashed with bitterness by an unspoken but distinctly implied complaint, which may perhaps be well expressed in the language of Job (xxiv. 1), ‘Why are judgments laid up (so long) by the Almighty,[290] and (why) do they that know him not see his days?’ or in other words, Why is divine retribution so tardy? It is, in fact, this extreme tardiness of God’s judicial interpositions which our author considers one of the chief causes of the prevalence of wickedness;—

‘Because sentence against the work of wickedness is not speedily executed, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil’ (viii. 11).

On the whole, we may say that the older humanists were sincere optimists, while Koheleth, though theoretically perhaps an optimist (iii. 11), constantly relapses into a more congenial ‘malism.’ I use this word designedly. Koheleth can only be called a pessimist loosely. Bad as things are, he does not believe that the world is getting worse and worse and hasting to its ruin. He believes in revolutions, some for evil, some for good, some for ‘rending’ or ‘breaking down,’ others for ‘sewing’ or ‘building up.’ He believes, in other words, that God brings about recurrent changes in human circumstances. But (like another wise man, Prov. xxv. 21) he does not trust revolutions of human origin (‘evil matters’ he calls them, viii. 3); he is no _carbonaro_ (x. 20). And so for the present he is a ‘malist,’ and having no imaginative faculty he cannot sympathise with the ‘Utopian’ prospects for the future contained in the prophetic visions.

Yet, in spite of appearances, Koheleth builds upon a true Israelitish foundation. It is already something that he cannot bear to plunge into open infidelity, that he is still (as we have seen) a theist, though his theism gives him but little light and no comforting warmth. Now and then he alludes to the religious system of his people (see v. 1-5, 17, viii. 10). A stronger proof of his Israelitish sympathies is his choice of Solomon as the representative of humanity; I say, of humanity, because the author evidently declines to place himself upon the pedestal of Israelitish privilege. (Perhaps, too, as Herzfeld thinks,[291] he would console his people by showing them that they have companions in misfortune everywhere ‘under the sun;’ and we have already seen Job snatch a brief alleviation of pain from the thought of suffering humanity.) Koheleth is not only a Jew, but a man of culture. He cannot perhaps entirely defend himself from the subtle influence of the Greek view of life, and is even willing to associate from time to time with the ministers of alien sovereigns. True, he has noted with bitter irony the absurd and capricious changes in the government of Palestine (x. 5-7), but he has no spark of the spirit of the Maccabees, unless indeed in viii. 2-5, x. 4, 20, beneath the garb of servile prudence we may (with Dr. Plumptre) detect the irony of indignation. To the simple-minded reader at any rate he appears to counsel passive obedience, and a cautious crouching attitude towards those in power. I suspect myself that either the advice is but provisional, or else Koheleth still feels the power of the prophetic Utopia: _ce peuple rêve toujours quelque chose d’international_.[292] Nay; shall we not carry our generosity even farther? That ‘last word,’ which he would have spoken had he lived longer, may possibly not have been that which the Soferim have forced upon him. Not a future judgment, but a return of prosperity to a wiser though sadder Israel, may have been his silent hope, and in this prosperity we may be sure that a wider and more philosophic culture would form a principal ingredient. This is by no means an absurd fancy. Koheleth firmly believed in recurrent historical cycles, and if there was ‘a time to break down,’ there was also ‘a time to build up’ (iii. 3). Sirach knows no future life and no Messiah; but he believes in the eternity of Israel; why, on the ground of his fragmentary remains, deny the same consolation to Koheleth? Much as I should prefer to imagine a far more satisfactory close for his troubled life (see Chap. IX.), I think we ought to admit the possibility of this hypothesis.

As an author, the characteristics of Koheleth are in the main Hebraic, though not without vague affinities to the Greek philosophic spirit. His work is without a model, but the dramatic element in it reminds us somewhat of the Book of Job. Just as the writer of that great poem delineates his own spiritual struggles—not of course without poetic amplification—under the assumed name of Job, so our author, with a similar poetical license, ascribes his difficulties to the imaginary personage Koheleth (or Ecclesiastes). There are also passages in which, like Job, he adopts the tone, style and rhythm[293] of gnomic poetry, though far from reaching the literary perfection of Job or of the proverbial collections. The attempt of Köster and Vaihinger to make him out an artist in the management of strophes is a sport of fancy. Unity and consistency in literary form were beyond the reach, if not of his powers, yet certainly of his opportunities; even his phraseology, as a rule, is in the highest degree rough and unpolished. This is the more striking by contrast with the elegant workmanship of Sirach. But the unknown author has very strong excuses. Thus, first, the negative tone of his mind must have destroyed the cheerful composure necessary to the artist. ‘The burden of the mystery’ pressed too heavily for him to think much of form and beauty. His harp, if he ever had one, he had long since hung up upon the willows. Next, it is highly probable that he was interrupted in the midst of his literary preparations. Nöldeke has remarked[294] that his object was not to produce ‘ein literarisches Schaustück.’ That is perfectly true; his primary object was ‘to scatter the doubts of his own mind.’ But he did not despise the literary craft; he was well aware that even ‘the literature of power’ may increase its influence by some attention to form. It seems to me that the ‘labour of the file’ has brought the first two chapters to a considerable degree of perfection; but the rest of the book, upon the whole, is so rough and so disjointed, that I can only suppose it to be based on certain loose notes or _adversaria_, written solely with the object of dispersing his doubts and mitigating his pains by giving them expression. The thread of thought seems to break every few verses, and attempts to restore it fail to carry conviction to the unbiassed mind. The feelings and opinions embodied in the book are often mutually inconsistent; in Ibn Ezra’s time, and long before that, the Jewish students of the book were puzzled by this phenomenon, so strange in a canonical Scripture. Not a few scattered remarks have absolutely no connection with the subject. The style, too, is rarely easy and natural, and sometimes (especially in