CHAPTER V.

THE WISE MAN’S PARTING COUNSELS.

A new section begins at x. 16—no ingenuity avails to establish a connection with the preceding verses. We are approaching our goal, and breathe a freer air. From the very first the ideas and images presented to us are in a healthier and more objective tone. The condemnation expressed in ver. 16 does credit to the public spirit of the writer, and, I need hardly say, is not really inconsistent (as Hitzig supposed) with the advice in ver. 20. In the words—

Even among thine acquaintance[318] curse not the king, and in thy bedchambers curse not the rich; for the birds of the heaven may carry the voice [comp. the cranes of Ibycus] and that which hath wings may report the word—

Dean Plumptre perhaps rightly sees ‘the irony of indignation’ which ‘veils itself in the garb of a servile prudence.’ There is no necessity to reduce Koheleth to the moral level of Epicurus, who is said to have deliberately preferred despotism and approved courting the monarch.

It is a still freer spirit which breathes in the remainder of the book. Let courtiers waste their time in luxury (x. 18), but throw thou thyself unhesitatingly into the swift stream of life. Be not ever forecasting, for there are some contingencies which can no more be guarded against than the falling of rain or of a tree (xi. 3, 4). Act boldly, then, like the corn-merchants, who speculate on such a grand scale,—

Send forth thy bread upon the wide waters [lit. upon the face of the waters], for thou mayst find it [i.e. obtain a good return for it] after many days (xi. 1).

But since fortune is capricious, do not risk thine all on a single venture. ‘Ships are but boards, sailors but men’ &c., as Shylock says. Divide thy merchandise, and so, if one vessel is wrecked or plundered, much may still be saved; or—another possible interpretation—store thy property in various hiding-places, so that, in case of some political revolution, thine all may not be taken from thee,—

Make seven portions, and also eight; for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth (or, the land) (xi. 2).

This is not, of course, the usual explanation of these two verses, which are enigmas fairly admitting of more than one solution. Most commentators understand them as recommending beneficence, which ver. 2 requires to be of extensive range, and which ver. 1 compares to cakes of bread thrown upon the water, and gathered up no one knows by whom. So perhaps (besides Rashi, Aben Ezra, Ginsburg &c.) Goethe in the _Westöstliche Divan_—

Was willst du untersuchen Wohin die Milde fliesst! Ins Wasser wirf dein Kuchen— Wer weiss wer sie geniesst![319]

I do not think that this suits the context, which suggests activity and caution as the two good qualities recommended by Koheleth. But it is very possible that the proverb was a popular one which the author took up, giving it a fresh application.

Such is the author’s parting advice to the elder part of his readers,—not very elevated, but not without a breath of courageous faith (xi. 5). Not that he has given up his advocacy of pleasure. Side by side with work, a man should cherish, even to the very last, all those sources of joy which God Himself has provided, remembering the long dark days which await him in Sheól. Then, at ver. 9, he addresses the young, and in measured distichs intreats them to enjoy life while they may.

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart gladden thee in the flower of thine age; and walk in the ways of thy heart and according to the sight of thine eyes; And banish discontent from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh:— for youth and the prime of life are vanity.

Between lines 4 and 5 we find the received text burdened with a prosaic insertion, which is probably not due to an after-thought on the part of the writer, but to the anxiety of later students to rescue the orthodoxy of the book. The insertion consists of the words, Rabbinic in expression as well as in thought, ‘But know that for all this God will bring thee into the judgment.’[320] It was the wisdom of true charity to insert them; but it is our wisdom as literary students to ‘banish discontent’ with the discord which they introduce by restoring the passage to its original form.

At this point Koheleth turns away from the young to those (presumably) of his own age. Again there are traces at least of a series of distichs which must once have stood here, but either the author or one of his editors, or both, have so far worked over them that the series is no longer perfect. The first suspected instance of this ‘overworking’ occurs at the very outset. ‘Remember thy Creator in the flower of thine age,’ are the opening words of Koheleth’s second address. They are usually explained as taking up the idea of the last judgment expressed at the close of xi. 9. ‘Since God,’ to quote Dr. Ginsburg’s paraphrase, ‘will one day hold us accountable for all the works done in the body, we are to set the Lord always before our eyes.’ The importance of this passage, when thus interpreted, is manifest. It suggests that Koheleth had struggled through his many difficulties to an assured doctrinal and practical position, and that it is not mere rejoicing, but ‘rejoicing in the Lord,’ that Koheleth recommends in xii. 1—an edifying view of the old man’s final result which every one must desire to be true if only it be consistent with the rest of the book. I fear that this is not the case. Elsewhere in the book sensuous pleasure in moderation is praised without any reference to God, and in the immediate neighbourhood of this verse the motive given for rejoicing is not the thought of God, but that of the many days of darkness (i.e. of Sheól) which are coming. Besides, the exhortation ‘Remember thy Creator’ does not perfectly suit the close of the verse, or indeed of the section. What is the natural inference from the fact that at an advanced age life becomes physically a burden? Surely this—that man should enjoy life while his powers are fresh. Cannot an _old man_ ‘remember’ his Creator? (To ‘remember’ is to think upon; it is not a synonym for conversion.) The text therefore is almost certainly incorrect.

Has an editor, then, tampered with the text of the opening words of the exhortation? May we, for instance, follow Grätz and read, for _bōr’éka_ ‘thy Creator,’ _bōr’ka_ ‘thy fountain’ (lit. thy cistern), taking this as a metaphorical expression for ‘thy wife’ or ‘thy wedlock’ (as in Prov. v. 15-18)? The objection certain to be raised is that the text when thus corrected brings the book to a lame and impotent conclusion. It may be true, as Bishop Temple has said, that chastity and monotheism are the chief legacies which the Jewish Church has bequeathed to mankind.[321] There is nothing in an exhortation to prize a pure married life unworthy of a high-minded Jewish teacher. But in this connection it is certainly to a Western reader strange, and one is sorely tempted to suppose a displacement of the words, and, following Bickell, to make the distich—

And remember thy fountain in the flower of thine age—

the conclusion of the stanzas beginning at xi. 9. This, it is true, involves (1) the excision of the words ‘for youth and the prime of life are vanity,’ and (2) an alteration of the construction of xii. 1, 2 (reading ‘and evil days shall come’ &c.). This violent change is no doubt justified by Bickell on metrical grounds, but as I cannot unreservedly adopt his metrical theory, I have not sufficient excuse for accepting his rearrangement of the text.

I wish some better remedy than that of Grätz could be devised. I would gladly close these Meditations with admiration as well as sympathy. But at the risk of being called unimaginative, I must venture to criticise the entire conclusion of the original Book of Koheleth (xii. 1-7). Most English critics admire the poem on the evils of old age which follows on the earnest ‘Remember,’ and naturally think that it requires some specially sublime saying to introduce it. I do not join them in their admiration, and consequently find it easier to adopt what seems to some the ‘low view’ of Dr. Grätz. Observe that we have already met with an eulogy of wedded bliss side by side with a gloomy picture of death in an earlier section (ix. 9, 10).

This is the poem (if we may call it so) with which the second exhortation of Koheleth is interwoven—

Ere the evil days come, and the years approach of which thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them:

Ere the sun be darkened, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, and the clouds keep returning after heavy rains [_the winter rains_, i.e. old age]: In the day when the keepers of the house [_the hands and arms_] tremble, and the strong men [_the feet and legs_] bow themselves, and the grinding-maids [_the teeth_] cease because they are few, and the (ladies) who look out at the lattice [_the eyes_] are darkened: And the doors [_the lips_] are shut towards the street, while the sound of the grinding is low, And the voice riseth into a sparrow’s [‘_childish treble_’] and all the daughters of song [_words_] are faint. They are afraid too of a steep place, and terror besets every way; and the almond-tree is in bloom [_white hair_[322]], and the locust drags itself along, and the caper-berry fails [_to excite the appetite_], For the man is on the way to his eternal home, and the mourners go about in the street.

Ere the silver string [_the tongue_] be tied, and the golden bowl [_the head_] break, and the pitcher [_the heart_] be shivered at the fountain, and the windlass [_the breathing apparatus_] break into the pit.

With a little determination the traces of development in the Biblical literature can be more or less effaced. The pious but unphilological editors of Koheleth were not deficient in this quality. After altering the introduction of the poem on old age they proceeded to furnish it with a _finale_. Not only the opening words of ver. i., but the comfortless expression ‘his eternal house’[323] in ver. 5 gave them serious offence. One remedy would have been to transpose (with the Syriac translator) two of the letters of the Hebrew, and thus change ‘home of his eternity’ into ‘home of his travail’ (i.e. the place where ‘the weary are at rest’). They preferred, however, to add two lines—

and the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it.

This no doubt is a direct contradiction of iii. 21. But the ancients probably got over this, as most moderns still do, by supposing that the earlier passage did but express a sceptical suggestion which skimmed the surface of Koheleth’s mind.

The excision of these words would of course not be justified in a translation intended for popular use; but for the purposes of historical study seems almost inevitable. It hangs together with the view adopted as to the origin of xi. 9_b_, and implies the assumption that the Targum rightly paraphrases, ‘and thy spirit (lit. thy breath, _nishm’thāk_) will return to stand in judgment before the Lord who gave it thee.’ It ought to be mentioned, however, that some critics (accepting the clause as genuine) see in that return to God nothing more than the absorption of the human spirit into the divine (whether in a naïve popular or in a developed philosophical sense).[324] This will seem plausible at first to many readers. As a Lutheran writer says, ‘Si spes, quam nos fovemus lætissimam, Ecclesiastæ adfulsisset, non obiter ipse tetigisset et verbis ambiguis notasset rem maximi momenti’ (Winzer, ap. Hengstenberg). But if the Hebrew _rūakh_ means, as I think it does, the personal, conscious, spiritual side of man in iii. 21,[325] I fail to see why it should not bear that meaning here.

Footnote 318:

Altering the points with Klostermann.

Footnote 319:

But Goethe may have thought of the Turkish proverb, ‘Do good, throw the loaf into the water; if the fish knows it not, the Creator does,’ or the story from the life of the Caliph Mutewekyil [Mutawakkil?] quoted, with this proverb, from H. F. v. Diez by Dukes, _Rabbinische Blumenlese_, pp. 73-74. Comp. also the stories in the Midrash Koheleth on our passage.

Footnote 320:

What judgment? Present or future (i.e. after death)? The latter gives a more forcible meaning (comp. iii. 17, xii. 14).

Footnote 321:

_Essays and Reviews_ (1869), pp. 15-17.

Footnote 322:

Does the eastern sun blanch the ‘crimson broidery’ of the almond-blossom? From the language of travellers like Thomson and Bodenstedt it would seem so.

Footnote 323:

The Hebrew _’ōlām_ here expresses perpetuity (comp. Jer. li. 39, Ps. cxliii. 51, Ezek. xxvi. 20), not (as some moderns, after Aben Ezra) long continuance. It is true, that in the Targum of Isa. xlii. 11 an exit from the ‘eternal house’ is spoken of; but no one doubts that the belief in the Resurrection was general in the fourth century A.D.

Footnote 324:

Mr. Tyler interprets it in a Stoic sense of absorption in the World-Soul.

Footnote 325:

Nowack denies this meaning of _rūakh_ altogether, but this seems a _Gewaltstreich_.