iii. 17, as the work of a later editor who believed in retributions

hereafter (like xi. 9_b_ xii. 7, 13, 14). I confess that consistency seems to me to require this step; the verse is in fact well fitted to be an antidote to the following verse, which seems to have suggested the opening phrase. This is how the text runs at present:—

I said in my heart, The righteous and the wicked shall God judge; for there is a time for every purpose and for every work _there_ (emphatically for ‘in the other world;’ or read, hath he appointed). I said in my heart, (It happens) on account of the sons of men, that God may test them, and that they may see that they are but beasts. For the sons of men are a chance (comp. Herod. i. 32), and beasts are a chance; yea, all have one chance: as the one dies, so dies the other; yea, they all have one spirit; and advantage of the one over the other there is none, for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward, and whether the spirit of the beast goes downward to the earth?[305] (iii. 17-21.)

Our author’s abiding conviction is that ‘the spirit does but mean the breath’ (_In Memoriam_, lvi.), so that man and the lower animals have ‘one spirit’ and alike end in dust. ‘_Pulvis et umbra sumus._’ It is true, some of his contemporaries hold the new doctrine of Immortality, but Koheleth, in his cool scepticism, hesitates to accept it. Which indeed of its enthusiastic advocates can claim to ‘know’ that which he asserts; or can prove to Koheleth’s satisfaction that God (as a psalmist in Ps. xlix. 15 puts it) will ‘receive’ the spirit of man, in spite of the fact that the vital principle of beasts loses itself in the dust of death? It is no doubt an awkward construction which Koheleth adopts: he _seems_ to express an uncertainty as to the fate of the lower animals. To convey the meaning which I have given, the construction ought to have been disjunctive, as in this line from a noble modern poem,

Friend, who knows if death indeed have life, or life have death for goal?[306]

But there is, or rather there ought to be, no doubt as to Koheleth’s meaning. Dean Plumptre frankly admits that ‘it is not till nearly the close of the book, with all its many wanderings of thought, that the seeker rests in that measure of the hope of immortality which we find’ [but this is open to considerable doubt] ‘in xii. 7.’

Footnote 300:

See the fantastic legend to account for the past tense in _Midrash Koheleth_ (transl. Wünsche), or Ginsburg (p. 268; comp. p. 38).

Footnote 301:

Dean Plumptre thinks Koheleth (like ἐκκλησιαστής), which is rendered by him ‘the Debater,’ means rather a member of an assembly, than a teacher or preacher, and compares Ecclus. xxxviii. 33, where the son of Sirach says of labourers and artisans that they ‘shall not sit high in the congregation,’ i.e. in the _ecclesia_ or academy of sages. But judging from the parallel line the ‘congregation’ is rather that of the people in general (comp. Ecclus. xv. 5). The Dean’s view that the book embodies the inward debates of a Jewish philosopher may be to a great extent true, but for all that Koheleth is throughout represented as speaking alone and with authority. On the philological explanation of the word, see Appendix.

Footnote 302:

This seems a reasonable view. Bickell boldly maintains that i. 1, 12, 16, ii. 7, 8, 9 [12] are interpolations (made presumably to facilitate the recognition of the book as canonical). Observe however that the (fictitious) author is nowhere declared to be Solomon, but only ben-David (i. 1). He claims attention merely as a private person, as an interpreter of the complaints of humanity. Though he does once expressly refer to his royal state (i. 12), it is only to suggest to his readers what ample opportunities he has enjoyed of learning the vanity of earthly grandeur. So, very plausibly, Bloch (_Ursprung des Kohelet_, p. 17).

Footnote 303:

The passage indeed is obscure and possibly corrupt (so Bickell), but the above words probably do justice to the mood described.

Footnote 304:

Among the many other interpretations of this difficult passage, two may be mentioned here. (1) ‘He has also set worldliness in their heart, without which man cannot understand the work that God does, from beginning to end.’ So Kalisch (_Path and Goal_, frequently). This is an improvement upon the translation of Gesenius and others, who render, not ‘without which’ &c., but ‘so that man may not’ &c. The objection to the latter rendering is that it gives ‘worldliness’ a New Testament sense (comp. 1 John ii. 15). Kalisch, however, in full accord with the spirit of Judaism, makes Koheleth frankly accept ‘worldliness’ as a good, understanding by ‘worldliness’ a sense of worldly duties and enjoyments. Had this however been Koheleth’s meaning, would he not have coined another of his favourite abstract terms (comp. the Peshitto’s _’olmoyuthō_ = αἰὼν in Eph. ii. 2)? (2) ‘Also he has put eternity into their heart, but so that man cannot’ &c. So Ginsburg and Delitzsch (_desiderium æternitatis_, taking ‘eternity’ in a metaphysical sense = ‘that which is beyond time’); so also Nowack (taking it in the popular sense of years following upon years without apparent limit). Ginsburg’s view is against the context, in which the continuance of the human spirit is doubted; but Nowack’s explanation is not unacceptable. Man has been enabled to form the idea of Time (for the popular view of ‘eternity’ comes practically to this), and has divided this long space into longer and shorter periods; what happens in one period or season, he can compare with what happens in another, thus finding all well-adapted and ‘beautiful.’ But he cannot grasp the whole of Time in one view. But I still prefer the explanation given in the text, as being simpler, in spite of the fact that _’ōlām_ nowhere else occurs in the sense of ‘world’ (or the present order of things), so common in later Hebrew.

Footnote 305:

This is the rendering of the four principal versions and of all the best critics, including Mercier, Ewald, Ginsburg, Grätz and Delitzsch; it agrees with the general tendency of Koheleth, and in particular with vii. 5, where the grave is called man’s ‘eternal home’ (see below). It is no doubt opposed by the vowel-points, which are followed in King James’s Bible. But it is more than probable (considering other parallel phenomena) that the authors of the points were directed by a theological and therefore uncritical motive, that, namely, of effacing as far as possible a trace of Koheleth’s opposition to the doctrine, by that time recognised as orthodox, of the immortality of the soul.

Footnote 306:

Swinburne, _On the Verge_.