Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

correctly, but further follows the impossible rendering of Jerome: multo labore exacuetur, et post industriam sequetur sapientia.

Ver. 12. “ The words of a wise man’s mouth are grace; but the lips of a fool swallow him up.” The words from a wise man’s mouth are j4, graciousness, 7.e. gracious in their contents, their form and manner of utterance, and thus also they gain favour, affection, approbation, for culture (education) produces favour, Prov. xii. 15, and its lips grace (pleasantness), which has so wide an influence that he can call a king his friend, Prov. xxii. 11, although, according to ix. 11, that does not always so happen as is to be expected. The lips of a fool, on the contrary, swallow him, 1.6. lead him to destruction. The Pih. "23, which at Prov. xix. 28 means to swallow down, and at Prov. xxi. 20 to swallow = to consume in luxury, to spend dissolutely, has here the metaphorical meaning of to destroy, to take out of the way (for that which is swallowed up disappears). nina is parallel form to ΒΨ, like the Aram.MSD. The construction is, as at Prov. xiv. 3, “the lips of the wise ‘OWN preserve them;” the idea of unity, in the conception of the lips as an instrument of speech, prevails over the idea of plurality. The words of the wise are heart-winning, and those of the fool self-destructive. This is verified in the following verse.

Ver. 13. “The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness; and the end of his mouth is mischievous madness.” From folly (absurdity) the words which are heard from a fool’s mouth rise to madness, which is compounded of presumption, wantonness, and frenzy,and which, in itself a symptom of mental and moral depravity, brings as its consequence destruction on himself (Prov. xviii. 17). The adjective 7 is as in " ὙΠ, which interchanges with ‘in ΠΡῚ vi. 2, v. 12, etc. The end of his mouth, viz. of his speaking, is = the end of the words of his mouth, viz. the end which they at last reach. Instead of holeloth, there is here, with the adj. following, holeluth, with the usual ending of abstracta. The following proverb says how the words of the fool move between these two poles of folly and wicked madness: he speaks much, and as if he knew all things.

Ver. 14. “ And the fool maketh many words: while a man yet doth not know that which shall be; and what shall be when he is no more, who can show him that?” The vav at the beginning of this verse corresponds to the Lat. accedit quod. ‘That he who in 12) was named k*stl is now named hassachal, arises from this, that meanwhile sichluth has been predicated of him. The relation of 140 to 14a, Geier has rightly defined: Probatur absurditas multiloguii a communi ignorantia ac imbecillitate humana, quae tamen praecipue dominatur apud ignaros stultos. We miss before lo-yeda an “ although” (gam,

Neh. vi. 1, or kt gam, viii. 12); the clause is, after the manner of a clause denoting state or condition, subordinated to the principal clause, as at Ps. v. 10: “an open grave is their throat ‘ny ν», although they smooth their tongue, ie. speak flatteringly.” The LXX., Syr., Symm., and Jerome seek to rectify the tautology τῶ quod futurum est et quod futurum est (cf. on the other hand, viii. 7), for they read ‘m’...mnwap. But the second guod futurum certainly preserves by ‘MN its distinguishing nearer definition. Hitzig explains: “ What is done, and what after this (that is done) is done.” Scarcely correctly: aharav of the parallel passage, vi. 12, cf. vii. 14, ix. 3, requires for the suffix a personal reference, so that thus imeaharav, as at Deut. xxix. 21, means “from his death and onwards.” Thus, first, the knowledge of the future is denied to man; then the knowledge of what will be done after his death; and generally, of what will then be done. ‘The fool, without any consciousness of human ignorance, acts as if he knew all, and utters about all and everything a multitude of words; for he uselessly fatigues himself with his ignorance, which rema ns far behind the knowledge that is possible for man.

Ver. 15. “The labour of the foolish wearieth him who knoweth not how to go to the city.” If we do not seek to explain: labour such as fools have wearies him (the fool), then we have here such a synallage numeri as at Isa. ii. 8, Hos. iv. 8, for from the plur. a transition is made to the distributive or individualizing sing. A ereater anomaly is the treatment of the noun δου as fem. (greater even than the same of the noun pithgam, viii. 11, which admitted of attractional explanation, and, besides, in a foreign word was not strange). Kimchi, Michlol 10a, supposes that Spy is thought of in the sense of ῬῸΣ ny’; impossible, for one does not use such an expression. Hitzig, and with him Hengst., sees the occasion for the synallage in the discordance of the masc. ΜῈΝ; but without hesitation we use the expressions on, Mic. v. 6, ‘DY, Josh. vi. 26, and the lke. >Amal also cannot be here fem. wnitatis (Béttch. ὃ 657. 4), for it denotes the wearisome striving of fools as a whole and individually. We have thus to suppose that the author has taken the liberty of using ’amal once as fem. (vid. on the contrary, 11. 18, 20), as the poet, Prov. iv. 13, in the introduction of the Book of Proverbs uses musar once as fem., and as the similarly formed §2¥ is used in two eenders. The fool kindles himself up and perplexes himself, as if he could enlighten the world and make it happy,—he who does not even know how to go to the city. Ewald remarks: “ Apparently proverbial, viz. to bribe the great lords in the city.” For us who, notwithstanding ver. 16, do not trouble ourselves any more with the tyrants of ver. 4, such thoughts, which do violence to the connection, are unnecessary. Hitzig also, and with him Elst. and Zockl., thinks of the city as the residence of the rulers from whom oppression proceeds, but from whom also help against oppression is to be sought. All this is to be rejected. Not to know how to go to the city, 1s = not to be able to find the open public street, and, like the Syrians, 2 Kings vi. 18 ἢ, to be smitten with blindness. The way to the city is via notissima et tritissima. Rightly Grotius, like Aben Ezra: Multec quaestionibus arduis se fatigant, cum ne obvia quidem norint, quale est iter ad urbem. YPN is vulgar for VYAHDN, In the Greek language also the word πόλις has a definite signification, and Athens is called ἄστυ, mostly without the art. But Stamboul, the name of which may seem as an illustration of the proverbial phrase, “not to know how to go to the city,” is = εἰς τὴν πόλιν. Gritz finds here an allusion to the Essenes, who avoided the city—habeat sibi!

(4. WARNINGS AGAINST IDLE REVELRY AND IMPROVIDENCE, AND A CALL TO A FRESH EFFORT AFTER A HAPPY IMPROVEMENT OF LIFE. — nx. 16-251. 7.

Interpreters have sought in every way to discover a close connection between the following proverbs of the bad and good princes, and those that precede. Hitzig, rightly dissatisfied with this forced attempt, cuts the knot by putting vers. 16-19 into the mouth of the fool, ver. 15: Koheleth, ver. 20, refers to him this rash freedom of speech, and warns him against such language; for, supposing that vers. 16-19 were the words of Koheleth, in ver. 20 he would contradict himself. This unworthy perversion of the contents of the section rectifies itself. The supposed words of the fool belong to the most peculiar, most impressive, and most beautiful utterances of the n3n which the Book of Koheleth contains, and the warning, ver. 20, against cursing the king, stands in no contradiction to the “ woe,’ ver. 16; Isaiah under Ahaz, Jeremiah under Zedekiah, actually show how the two are in harmony; and the apostles even in the times of Nero acted on their “ honour the king.” Rather it may be said that the author in ver. 16, from fools in general (ver. 15)

comes to speak of folly in the position occupied by a king and princes. But “ folly” is not the characteristic name for that which is unseemly and indecorous which is blamed in these high lords. From x. 16, the Book of Koheleth turns toward the conclusion; since it represents itself as a discourse of Solomon’s on the subject of the wisdom of life, and all through has a sharp eye on rulers and their surroundings, it is not strange that it treated of it in x. 4—7, and again now returns to the theme it had scarcely left.

Vers. 16, 17. “ Woe to thee, O land, whose king is a child, and whose princes sit at table in the early morning! Happy art thou, O land, whose king is a noble, and whose princes sit at table at the right time, in manly strength, and not in drunkenness!” Regarding ἝΝ, vid. above, p. 191. Instead of ‘2 ‘8Y, the older language would rather use the phrase i200 7Y2 WN; and instead of na’ar, we might correctly use, after Prov. xxx. 22, éved; but not as Gratz thinks, who from this verse deduces the reference of the book to Herod (the “slave of the Hasmonean house,” as the Talm. names him), in the same meaning. For naar, it is true, sometimes means—eg. as Ziba’s by-name (2 Sam. xix. 18)—a servant, but never a slave as such, so that here, in the latter sense, it might be the contrast of ΟΞ; it is to be understood after Isa. 111. 12; and Solomon, Bishop of Constance, understood this woe rightly, for he found it fulfilled at the time of the last German Karolingian Ludwig m1." Naar is a very extensively applicable word in regard to the age of a person. King Solomon and the prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah show that na’ar may be used with reference to one in a high office; but here it is one of few years of age who is meant, who is incapable of ruling, and shows himself as childish in this, that he lets himself be led by bad guides in accordance with their pleasure. In 168, the author perhaps thinks of the heads of the aristocracy who have the phantom-king in their power: intending to fatten themselves, they begin their feasting with the break of day. If we translate yochélu by “ they eat,” 16d sounds as if to breakfast were a sin.—with us such an abbreviation of the thought so open to misconception would be a fault in style, but not so with a Hebrew? 58 (for pn? ds, Ps. xiv. 4) is here eating for eating’s sake, eating as its own object, eating which, in the morning, comes in the place of fresh activity in one’s calling, consecrated by prayer. Instead of ὉΝ, 17a, there ought properly to have been ΣΝ; but (1) ‘#8 has this peculiarity, to be explained from its interjectional usage, that with the suff.

added it remains in the form of the st. constr., for we say e.g. TUS for TW; (2) the sing. form WW, inflected "WX, so substitutes itself that J"2WS, or, more correctly, WS, and YW, Prov. xxix. 19, the latter for "WN, are used (vid. under Song ii. 14). Regarding benhhorim, vid. above, p. 191; the root-word signifies to be white (vid. under Gen. xl. 16). A noble is called hhor, Isa, xxxiv. 12; and one noble by birth, more closely, or also merely descriptively (Gesen. Lehrgeb. p. 649), bén-hhorim, from his purer complexion, by which persons of rank were distinguished from the common people (Lam. iv. 7). In the passage before us, bén-hhorim is an ethical conception, as ¢.g. also generosus becomes such, for it connects with the idea of noble by birth that of noble in disposition, and the latter predominates (cf. Song vil. 2, nadiv): it is well with a land whose king is of noble mind, is a man of noble character, or, if we give to bénhhorim the Mishnic meaning, is truly a free man (cf. John viii. 36). Of princes after the pattern of such a king, the contrary of what is sald 160 is true: they do not eat early in the morning, but beet, “at the right time;” everywhere else this is expressed by b%tto (iii. 11); here the expression—corresponding to the Greek ἐν καιρῷ, the Lat. in tempore—is perhaps occasioned by the contrast baboger, “in the morning.” Eating at the right time is more closely characterized by bighvurah v'‘lo vashsh*tht. Jerome, whom Luther follows, translates: ad reficiendum et non ad luxuriam. Hitz., Ginsb., and ΖΌΟΚΙ,, “ for strengthening ” (obtaining strength), not: “for feasting;” but that beth might introduce the object aimed at (after Hitz., proceeding from the beth of exchange), we have already considered under ii. 4. The author, wishing to say this, ought to have written ‘nv xb) aay. Better, Hahn: “in strength, but not in drunkenness,’—as heroes, but not as drunkards (Isa. v. 22). Ewald’s “in virtue, and not in debauchery,” is also thus meant. But what is that: to eat in virtue, 1.6. the dignity of a man? The author much rather represents them as eating in manly strength, 1.6. as this requires it (cf. the plur. Ps. Ixxi. 16 and Ps. xc. 10), only not bashti (“in drunkenness— excess’’), so that eating and drinking become objects in themselves. Kleinert, well: as men, and not as gluttons. The Masora makes, under bashti, the note m,.6. ‘nv has here a meaning which it has not elsewhere, it signifies drunkenness; elsewhere it means the weft of aweb. The Targ. gives the word the meaning of weakness (raven), after the Midrash, which explains it by W*vna (in weakness); Menahem Ὁ. Saruk takes along with it in this sense 73, Jer. li. 30. The Talm. Shabbath 10a, however, explains it rightly by MY Twa, following proverb of the consequences of sloth receives a particular reference in the frame of this mirror for princes: “ Through being idle the roof falleth; and through laziness of the hands the house leaketh.” Ewald, Redslob, Olsh., Hitz., and Fiirst, as already Aben Ezra, understand the dual ’?8Y of the two idle hands, but a similar attribut. adject.-dual is not found in Heb.; on the contrary, ephraim, mrathaim Jer. 1. 21, rish’'athaim, and, in a certain measure, also rigmathaim, speak in favour of the intensification of the dual; ’atsaltaim is related to ’atslah,as Fuulenzen [being idle, living in idleness] to Faulheit [laziness], it means doubled, z.e. great, constant laziness (Gesen. H. Wort., and Bottch. in the WV. Aehrenl., under this passage). If ’atsaliaim were an attribut. designation of the hands, then shiphluth yadaim would be lowness, ze. the hanging down of the hands languidly by the side; the former would agree better with the second than with the first passage. Regarding the difference between hamm‘qareh (the beams and joists of a house) and hamgareh (contignans), vid. note below.* Since exceeding laziness leaves alone everything that could support the house, the beams fall (313), Wiph. 32), and the house drops, ae. lets the rain through (DT, with ο, in spite of the intrans. signification); cf. the Arab. proverb of the three things which make a house insufferable, under Prov. xix. 13. Also the community, whom the king and the nobles represent, is a ΓΞ, as eg. Israel is called the house of Jacob. If the rulers neglect their duty, abusing their high position in obeying their own lusts, then the kingdom (state) becomes as a dilapidated house, affording no longer any protection, and at last a machshelah, a ruined building, Isa. iii. 6. It becomes so by slothfulness, and the prodigal love of pleasure associated therewith.

Ver. 19. “ Meals they make into a pleasure, and wine cheereth the life, and money maketh everything serviceable.” By DY, wicked princes are without doubt thought of—but not immediately, since 16 is too remote to give the subject to ver.19. The subject which ’osim bears in itself (=’osim hém) might be syntactically definite, as e.g. Ps. xxxiii. 5, 308, He, Jahve, loves, thus: those princes, or, from ver. 18: such slothful men; but ’osim is better rendered, like e.g. omrim, Ex. v. 16 (Ewald, ὃ 200qa), and as in the Mishna we read MiP and the like with gramm. indef. subj.: they make, but so that by it the slothful just designated, and those of a princely rank are meant (cf. a similar use of the inf. abs., as here of the part. in the historical style, Isa, xxii. 13). Ginsburg’s rendering is altogether at fault: “They turn bread and wine which cheereth life into revelry.” If nyy and pn as its object stand together, the meaning is, “to prepare a feast,” Ezek. iv. 15; cf. ’avad I‘heém, Dan. v. 1. Here, as there, ’osim lehem signifies coenam faciunt (parant). The 5 of ‘wd is not the sign of the factitive obj. (as, Isa. xliv. 17), and thus not, as Hitz. supposes, the conditioning 5 with which adv. conceptions are formed,—e.g. Lam. iv. 5, ‘yd ‘280, where Jerome rightly translates, voluptuose (vid. E. Gerlach, 10), steht) which is most natural and is very appropriate, it is the 4 of the aim or purpose: non ad debitam corporis refectionem, sed ad mera ludicra et stulta gaudia (Geier). pin is laughter, as that to which he utters the sentence (ii. 2): Thou art mad. It is incorrect, moreover, to take léheém v'yaim together, and to render y’sammahh hayaim as an attribut. clause to yain: this epitheton ornans of wine would here be a most unsuitable weakening of the figure intended. It is only an apparent reason for this, that what Ps. civ. 15 says in praise of wine the author cannot here turn into a denunciatory reproach. Wine is certainly fitted to make glad the heart of a man; but here the subject of discourse is dutyforgetting idlers, to whom chiefly wine must be brought (Isa. v. 12) to cheer their life (this sluggard-life spent in feasting and revelry). The fut. ΠΡ is meant in the same modal sense as 122, 10a: wine must accomplish that for them. And they can feast and drink, for they have money, and money pan ‘y’, Luther hits the meaning: “ Money must procure everything for them;” but the clause is too general; and better thus, after Jerome, the Ziirich Bible: “unto money are all things obedient.” The old Jewish interpreters compare Hos. 11. 23f. where may, with accus. petentis, signifies, “ to answer a request, to gratify a desire.’ But in the passage before us 993 is not the obj. accus. of petentis, but petitc; for ’anah is connected with the accus. of that to which one answers as well as of that which one answers, 6.9. Job xl. 2, cf. ix. 8, It is unnecessary, with Hitzig, to interpret 72% as Hiph.: Money makes all to hear (him who has the money),—makes it that nothing is refused to his wish. It is the Kal: Money answers to every demand, hears every wish, grants whatever one longs for, helps to all; as Menander says: “Silver and gold,—these are, according to my opinion, the most useful gods; if these have a place in the house, wish what thou wilt (εὖξαι τί βούλει), all will be thine;” and Horace, Epod. i. 6. 36 5.:

“ Scilicet uxorem cum dote fidemque et amicos Et genus et formam regina pecunia donat.”

The author has now described the king who is a misfortune and him who is a blessing to the land, and princes as they ought to be and as they ought not to be, but particularly luxurious idle courtiers; there is now a warning given which has for its motive not only prudence, but also, according to viii. 2, religiousness.

Ver. 20. “ Curse not the king even in thy thought; and in thy bed-chamber curse not the rich; for the birds of the air carry away the sound, and the winged creature telleth the matter.” In the Books of Daniel and Chronicles,)V), in the sense of γνῶσις, is a synon. of San and m23n; here it is rightly translated by the LXX. by συνείδησις; it does not correspond with the moral-religious idea ~ of conscience, but yet it touches it, for it designates the quiet, inner consciousness (Psychol. p. 134) which judges according to moral criteria: even (gam, as eg. Deut. xxi. 3) in the inner region of his thoughts * one must not curse the king (cf. vii. 4 f.) nor the rich (which here, as at 6b, without distinction of the aristocracy of wealth and of birth, signifies those who are placed in a high princely position, and have wealth, the nervus rerum, at their disposal) in his bed-chamber, the innermost room of the house, where one thinks himself free from treachery, and thus may utter whatever he thinks without concealment (2 Kings vi. 12): for the birds of the air may carry forth or bring out (Lat. deferrent, whence delator) that which is rumoured, and the possessor of a pair of wings (cf. Prov. i. 17), after the Chethtb (whose Π of the art. is unnecessarily erased by the Kerf,’ as at ili. 6, 10): the possessor of wings (double-winged), shall further tell the matter. As to its meaning, it is the same as the proverb quoted by the Midrash: “ walls have ears.”*® Geier thinks of the swallows which helped to the discovery of Bessus, the murderer of his father, and the cranes which betrayed the murderer of Ibycus, as comparisons approaching that which is here said. There would certainly be no hyperbole if the author thought of carrier-pigeons (Paxton, Kitto) in the service of espionage. But the reason for the warning is hyperbolical, like an hundred others in all languages:

** Aures fert paries, oculos nemus: ergo cavere Debet qui loquitur, ne possint verba nocere.”

" Hengst., not finding the transition from scientia to conscientia natural, gives, after Hartmann, the meaning of ‘‘study-chamber” to the word yar; but neither the Heb. nor the Aram. has this meaning, although Ps, Ixviii. 13 Targ. touches it,

Act Prudently, but not too Prudently—the Future is God's; Enjoy Life—the World to come is Dark, xi. 1-8.

There are interpreters (as e.g. Zockl.) who regard the concluding part of the book as commencing with xi. 1, and do not acknowledge any connection with that which immediately precedes; but from x. 16 the book draws to its conclusion. ond, x. 19, affords an external connection for the proverb here following; but, since the proverb x. 20 lies between, the sequence after the same catchword is uncertain. Whether there is here a more inward connection, and what it is, is determined by the interpretation of xi. 1, which proceeds in two fundamentally different directions, the one finding therein recommended unscrupulous beneficence, the other an unscrupulous spirit of enterprise. We decide in favour of the latter: it is a call, derived from commercial pursuits, to engage in fresh enterprise.

xi. 1. “ Let thy bread go forth over the watery mirror: for in the course of many days shalt thou find it.” Most interpreters, chiefly the Talm., Midrash, and Targ.,’ regard this as an exhortation to charity, which although practised without expectation of reward, does not yet remain unrewarded at last. An Aram. proverb of Ben Sira’s (vid. Buxtorf’s Florilegium, p. 171) proceeds on this interpretation: “Scatter thy bread on the water and on the dry land; in the end of the days thou findest it again.” Knobel quotes a similar Arab. proverb from Diez’ Denkwirdigkeiten von Asien (Souvenirs of Asia), II. 106: “ Do good; cast thy bread into the water: thou shalt be repaid some day.” See also the proverb in Goethe’s Westést. Diwan, compared by Herzfeld. Voltaire, in his Précis de Ecclésiaste en vers, also adopts this rendering:

Repandez vos bienfaits avec magnificence, Méme aux moins vertueux ne les refusez pas.

Ne vous informez pas de leur reconnaissance— Il est grand, il est beau de faire des ingrats.

That instead of “ into the water (the sea)” of these or similar proverbs, Koheleth uses here the expression, “ on the face of (ΒΟ) the waters,” makes no difference; Eastern bread has for the most part

1 The Midrash tells the following story: Rabbi Akiba sees a ship wrecked which carried in it one learned in the law. He finds him again actively engaged in Cappadocia. What whale, he asked him, has vomited thee out upon dry land? How hast thou merited this? The scribe learned in the law thereupon related that when he went on board the ship, he gave a loaf of bread to a poor man, who thanked him for it, saying: As thou hast saved my life, may thy life be saved. Thereupon Akiba thought of the proverb in Eccles. xi. 1. Similarly the Targ.: Extend to the poor the bread for thy support; they sail in ships over the water.

the form of cakes, and is thin (especially such as is prepared hastily for guests, ’ughoth or matstsoth, Gen. xviii. 6, xix. 3); so that when thrown into the water, it remains on the surface (like a chip of wood, Hos. x. 7), and is carried away by the stream. But πριν, with this reference of the proverb to beneficence, is strange; instead of it, the word 7200 was rather to be expected; the LXX. renders by ἀπόστειλον; the Syr., shadar; Jerome, mitte; Venet. πέμπε; thus by none is the pure idea of casting forth connected with nv. And the reason given does not harmonize with this reference: “ for in the course of many days (δτου yamin, cf. mérov yamim, Isa. xxiv. 22) wilt thou find it” (not “find it again,” which would be expressed by ‘on 2Wm). This indefinite designation of time, which yet definitely points to the remote future, does not thus indicate that the subject is the recompense of noble self-renunciation which is sooner or later rewarded, and often immediately, but exactly accords with the idea of commerce carried on with foreign countries, which expects to attain its object only after a long period of waiting. In the proper sense, they send their bread over the surface of the water who, as Ps, evii. 33 expresses, “do business in great waters.” It is a figure taken from the corn trade of a seaport (vid. p. 216), an illustration of the thought: seek thy support in the way of bold, confident adventure." Bread in ‘nd is the designation of the means of making a living or gain, and bread in ¥N¥OR the designation of the gain (cf. ix. 11). Hitzig’s explanation: Throw thy bread into the water = venture thy hope, is forced; and of the same character are all the attempts to understand the word of agricultural pursuits; eg. by van der Palm: sementem fac juata aguas (or: in loca irrigua); Gratz even translates: “Throw thy corn on the surface of the water,” and understands this, with the fancy of a Martial, of begetting children. Mendelssohn. is right in remarking that the exhortation shows itself to be that of Koheleth-Solomon, whose ships traded to Tarshish and Ophir. Only the reference to self-sacrificing beneficence stands on a level with it as worthy of consideration. With Ginsburg, we may in this way say that a proverb as to our dealings with those who are above us, is followed by a proverb regarding those who are below us; with those others a proverb regarding judicious courageous venturing, ranks itself with a proverb regarding a rashness which is to be discountenanced; and the following proverb does not say: Give a portion, distribute of that which is thine, to seven and also to eight: for it is well done that thou gainest for thee friends with the unrighteous mammon for a time when thou thyself mayest unexpectedly be in want; but it is a prudent rule which is here placed by the side of counsel to bold adventure:

Ver. 2. “ Divide the portion into seven, yea, eight (parts); for thou knowest not what evil shall happen on the earth.” With that other interpretation, Ty was to be expected instead of ’al-haarets; for an evil spreading abroad over the earth, a calamity to the land, does not yet fall on every one without exception; and why was not the myn designated directly as personal? The impression of the words Ὅν»... #4, established in this general manner, is certainly this, that on the supposition of the possibility of a universal catastrophe breaking in, they advise a division of our property, so that if we are involved in it, our all may not at once be lost, but only this or that part of it, as Jacob, Gen. xxxii. 9, says. With reference to la, it is most natural to suppose that one is counselled not to venture his all in one expedition, so that if this is lost in a storm, all might not at once be lost (Mendelss., Preston, Hitz., Stuart); with the same right, since la is only an example, the counsel may be regarded as denoting that one must not commit all to one caravan; or, since in ver. 2 yond is to be represented not merely as a means of obtaining gain, that one ought not to lay up all he has gathered in one place, Judg. vi. 11, Jer. xli. 8 (Nachtigal); in short, that one ought not to put all into one business, or, as we say literally, venture all on one card. pon is either the portion which one possesses, 1.6. the measure of the possession that has fallen to him (Ps. xvi. 5), or pon 1] means to make portions, to undertake a division. In the first case, the expression? - ++ {72 follows the scheme of Gen. xvil. 20: make the part into seven, yea, into eight (parts); in the second case, the scheme of Josh. xvill. 5: make division into seven, etc. We prefer the former, because otherwise that which is to be divided remains unknown; pon is the part now in possession: make the much or the little that thou hast into seven or yet more parts. The rising from seven to eight is as at Job v. 19, and like the expression ter quaterque, etc. The same inverted order of words as in 20 is found in Esth. vi. 3; 2 Kings viii. 12.

Ver. 3. With this verse there is not now a transition, εἰς ἄλλο γένος (as when one understands ver. 1 f. of beneficence); the thoughts down to ver. 6 move in the same track. “ When the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth: and if a tree fall in the south, or in the north—the place where the tree falleth, there it lieth.” Man knows not—this is the reference of the verse backwards—what misfortune, as e.g. hurricane, flood, scarcity, will come upon the earth; for all that is done follows fixed laws, and the binding together of cause and effect is removed beyond the influence of the will of man, and also in individual cases beyond his knowledge.

The interpunction of 3aa: ὍΣ Daya aNDBY-DN (not as by v. d. Hooght, Mendelss., and elsewhere 5°30, but as the Venet. 1515, 21, Michael. 0°39, for immediately before the tone syllable Mahpach is changed into Mercha) appears on the first glance to be erroneous, and much rather it appears that the accentuation ought to be but on closer inspection ὮΝ is rightly referred to the conditional antecedent, for “ the clouds could be filled also with hail, and thus not pour down rain” (Hitz.). As in iv. 10, the fut. stands in the protasis as well as in the apodosis. If A is done, then as a consequence B will be done; the old language would prefer the words αι Νὰ. whos 05) ox, Ewald, § 355): as often as A happens, so always happens B. 3p carries (without needing an external object to be supplied), as internally transitive, its object in itself: if the clouds above fill themselves with rain, they make an emptying, 1.6. they empty themselves downwards. Man cannot, if the previous condition is fixed, change the necessary consequences of it.

The second conditioning clause: sz ceciderit lignum ad austrum aut ad aquilonem, im quocunque loco ceciderit τδὲ erit. Thus rightly Jerome (vid. above, p. 152). It might also be said: ox yy pron ypya on) ota, and if a tree falls, whether it be in the south or in the north; this sive... sive would thus be a parenthetic parallel definition. Thus regarded, the protasis as it lies before us consists in itself, as the two vim in Amos ix 3, of two correlated halves: “ And if a tree falls on the south side, and (or) if it fall on the north side,” z.e. whether it fall on the one or on the other. The Athnach, which more correctly belongs to 1p", sets off in an expressive way the protasis over against the apodosis; that a new clause begins with v°m yippol is unmistakeable; for the contrary, there was need for a chief disjunctive to'y2. M‘gom is accus. loci for bimgom, as at Esth. iv. ὃ viii. 17. Sham is rightly not connected with the relat. clause (cf. Ezek. vi. 13); the relation is the same as ati. 7. The fut. 87 is formed from mt whence ii. 22, as at Neh. vi. 6, and in the Mishna he i vi. 1;) Aboda zara, iii. μῆς the part. art As the jussive form written ΩΝ Hitzis. supposes ‘that, “according to the passage before us and Job xxxvii. 6, the word appears to have been written with x, in the sense of “ to fall.” Certainly mn has the root-signification of delabi, cadere,and derives from thence the meaning of accidere, exsistere, esse (vid. under Job xxxvil. 6); in the Book of Job, however, mn may have this meaning as an Arabism; in the wsus log. of the author of the Book of Koheleth it certainly was no longer so used. Rather it may be said that 37° had to be written with an & added to distinguish it from the abbreviated tetragramm, if the &, as in sas, Isa. xxvii 12, and on, Josh. x. 24, does not merely represent the long terminal vowel (cf. the German-Jewish x17 = thou, x7 = the, etc.).' Moreover, 837", as written, approaches the Mishnic inflection of the fut. of the verb mn; the sing. there is 8M, SOM, NON, and the plur. ὙΠ), according to “whieh Rashi, Aben Ezra, asia Kimchi interpret sam here also as plur; Luzzatto, § 670, hesitates, but in his Commentary he takes it as sing., as the context requires: there will it (the tree) be, or in accordance with the more lively meaning of the verb ΠῚΠ: there will it find itself, there it continues to he. As it is an invariable law of nature according to which the clouds discharge the masses of water that have become too heavy for them, so itis an unchangeable law of nature that the tree that has fallen before the axe or the tempest follows the direction in which it is impelled. Thus the future forms itself according to laws beyond the control of the human will, and man also has no certain knowledge of the future; wherefore he does well to be composed as to the worst, and to adopt prudent preventive measures regarding it. This is the reference of ver. 3 looking backwards. But, on the other hand, from this incalculableness of the future—this is the reference of ver. 3 looking forwards—he ought not to give up fresh venturesome activity, much rather he ought to abstain from useless and impeding calculations and scruples.

Ver. 4. “ He who observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” The proverb is not to be understood literally, but in the spirit of the whole paraenesis: it is not directed against the provident observation, guided by experience, of the monitions and warnings lying in the present condition of the weather, but against that useless, because impossible, calculation of the coming state of the weather, which waits on from day to day, from week to week, till the right time for sowing and reaping has passed away. The seed-time requires rain so as to open up and moisten the ground; he who has too much hesitation observes (ν᾽, as at Job xxxix. 1) the wind whether it will bring rain (Prov, xxv. 23), and on that account puts off the sowing of the seed till it is too late. The time of harvest requires warmth without rain (Prov. xxvi. 1); but the scrupulous and timid man, who can never be sure enough, looks at the clouds (cf. Isa. xlvii. 13), scents rainy weather, and finds now and never any security for the right weather for the gathering in of the fruits of the field. He who would accomplish and gain anything, must have confidence and courage to venture something; the conditions of success cannot be wholly reckoned upon, the future is in the hand of God, the All-Conditioning.

Ver. 5. “As thou hast no knowledge what is the way of the wind, like as the bones in the womb of her who is with child; so thou knowest not the work of God who accomplisheth all.” Luther, after Jerome, renders rightly: “ As thou knowest not the way of the wind, and how the bones in the mother’s womb do grow; so,” etc. The clause, instar ossium in ventre praegnantis, is the so-called comparatio decurtata for instar wgnorantiae tuae ossiwm, ete., like thy ignorance regarding the bones, ze. the growth of the bones. ‘S¥3,) because more closely defined by ΘΠ ‘23, has not the art. used elsewhere after 5 of comparison; an example for the regular syntax (vid. Riehm, under Ps. xvii. 12) is found at Deut. xxxu. 2. That man has no power over the wind, we read at viii. 8; the way of the wind he knows not (John 111. 8), because he has not the wind under his control: man knows fundamentally only that which he rules. Regarding the origin and development of the embryo as a secret which remained a mystery to the Israel. Chokma, vid. Psychol. p. 209 ff. For ‘oxy, cf. Ps. cxxxix. 15 and Jobx. 11. Regarding m‘leah, pregnant (like the Lat. plena), vid. above, p. 193. With fine discrimination, the fut. »ῈΠ X> in the apodosis interchanges with the particip. yi 728 in the protasis, as when we say: If thou knowest not that, as a consequence thou shalt also not know this. As a man must confess his ignorance in respect to the way of the wind, and the formation of the child in the mother’s womb; so in general the work of God the All-Working lies beyond his knowledge: he can neither penetrate it in the entireness of its connection, nor in the details of its accomplishment. The idea ’oseh kol, Isa. xliv. 24, is intentionally unfolded in a fut. relat. clause, because here the fut. in the natural world, as well as in human history, comes principally into view. For that very reason the words DSA7NN are also used, not: (as in passages where there is a reference to the world of creation in its present condition) eth-kol-elleh, Isa. lxvi. 2. Also the growth of the

1 The Targ. reads ‘yy3, and construes: What the way of the spirit in the bones, t-e. how the embryo becomes animated.

child in the mother’s womb is compared to the growth of the future in the womb of the present, out of which it is born (Prov. xxvii. 1; ef. Zeph. ii. 2). | What is established by this proof that man is not lord of the future,—viz. that in the activity of his calling he should shake off anxious concern about the future,—is once again inferred with the combination of what is said in vers. 4 and 2 (according to our interpretation, here confirmed).

Ver. 6. “In the morning sow thy seed, and towards evening withdraw not thine hand; for thou knowest not which shall prosper, whether this or that, or whether both together shall well succeed. The cultivation of the land is the prototype of all labour (Gen. ii. 15d), and sowing is therefore an emblem of all activity in one’s pursuit; this general meaning for 71’... “ON (like vil. 18; synon. with qv... τὸν, Josh. x. 6, of the older language) is to be accepted. The parallel word to baboker is not ba’érev; for the cessation from work (Judg. xix. 16; Ps. civ. 23) must not be excluded, but incessant labour (cf. Luke ix. 62) must be continued until the evening. And as ver. 2 counsels that one should not make his success depend exclusively on one enterprise, but should divide that which he has to dispose of, and at the same time make manifold trials; so here also we have the reason for restless activity of manifold labour from morning till evening: success or failure (v. 5d) is in the hand of God,—man knows not which (quid, here, according to the sense, wtrwm) will prosper (vid. regarding kasher, above, p. 193), whether (4) this or (ix) that, and whether (O85), etc.; vid. regarding the three-membered disjunctive question, Ewald, ὃ 361; and regarding k’ehhad, above, p. 192; it is in common use in the more modern language, as eg. also in the last benediction of the Shemone-Esra: 3nx3.-. - 13393, “bless us, our Father, us all together.” 073% goes back to the two mM, understood neut. (as at vu. 18; cf. on the contrary, vi. 5). The LXX. rightly: καὶ ἐὰν (better: εἴτε) τὰ δύο ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἀγαθά. Luther, who translates: “and if both together it shall be better,” has been misled by Jerome.

The proverb now following shows its connection with the preceding by the copula vav. “The tendency of the advice in vers. 1, 2, 6, to secure guarantees for life, is justified in ver. 7: life is beautiful, and worthy of being cared for.” Thus Hitzig; but the connection is simpler. It is in the spirit of the whole book that, along with the call to earnest activity, there should be the call to the pleasant enjoyment of life: he who faithfully labours has a right to enjoy his life; and this joy of life, based on fidelity to one’s calling, and consecrated by the fear of God, is the most real and the highest enjoyment here below. In this sense the fruere vita here connects itself with the labora:

Vers. 7, 8. “And sweet is the light, and pleasant it is for the eyes to see the sun: for if a man live through many years, he ought to rejoice in them all, and remember the days of darkness; that there will be many of them. All that cometh is vain.” Dale translates the copula vav introducing ver. 7 by “yes,” and Bullock by “truly,” both thus giving to it a false colouring. “ Light,” Zockler remarks, stands here for “life.” But it means only what the word denotes, viz. the light of life in this world (Ps. lvi. 14; Job xxxili. 30), to which the sun, as the source of it, is related, as TiN is to nix. Of. Eurip. Hippol., ὦ χαμπρὸς αἰθὴρ x.7.r., and Lphigen. in Aulis, 1218-19, μὴ μ᾽ ἀπολέσῃς «.7.r.: “ Destroy not my youth; to see the light is sweet,” etc. The 5 in 'y? has the short vowel Pattach, here and at 1 Sam. xvi. 7, after the Masora.'

The kt beginning ver. 8 is translated by Knobel, Hitz., Ewald, and others by “ja” (yes); by Heiligstedt, as if a negative preceded by immo; but as the vav of 7a is copulative “and,” so here the kt is causal “for.” If it had been said: man must enjoy himself as long as he lives, for the light is sweet, etc., then the joy would have its reason in the opportunity given for it. Instead of this, the occasion given for joy has its reason in this, that a man ought to rejoice, viz. according to God’s arrangement and ordinance: the light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun; for it ought thus to be, that a man, however long he may live, should continue to enjoy his fair life, especially in view of the night which awaits him. Ki am are not here, as at 111. 12, villi. 15, where a negative precedes, to be taken together; but Az assigns the reason, and im begins a hypothetical protasis, as at Ex. viii. 17, and frequently. Jm, with the conclusion following, presents something impossible, as ¢.g. Ps. 1. 12, st esurirem, or also the extreme of that which is possible as actual, 6.0. Isa. vu. 18, s¢ peccata vestra sint instar coccint. In the latter case, the clause with the concessive particle may be changed into a sentence with a concessive conjunctive, as at Isa. x. 22: “for though thy people, O Israel, be as numerous as the sand of the sea; and here: “though a man may live ever so many years.” The second kz after ἢ is the explicat. guod, as at ii. 24, iv. 4, vi. 17, etc.: he must remember the days of darkness, that there shall be many of them, and, at all events, not fewer than the many years available for the happy enjoyment of life. In this connection Xol-shebba’

denotes all that will come after this life. If Hitz. remarks that the sentence: “ All that is future is vanity,” is a false thought, this may now also be said of his own sentence extracted from the words: “ All that is, is transitory.” For all that is done, in time may pass away; but it is not actually transitory (939), But the sentence also respects not all that is future, but all that comes after this life, which must appear as vain (Aével) to him for whom, as for Koheleth, the future is not less veiled in the dark night of Hades, as it was for Horace, 14.16 οἵ “* Jam te premet nox fabulaeque Manes Et domus exilis Plutonia.”

Also, for Koheleth as for Horace, iv. 7. 16, man at last becomes pulvis et umbra, and that which thus awaits him is evel. Tyler is right, that “the shadowy and unsubstantial condition of the dead and the darkness of Sheol” is thus referred to, δ 3 signifies not that which is nascens, but futurum, eg. Sanhedrin 27a, “from the present sand and for the future” (for which, elsewhere, the expression N29 ny is used). The Venet. construes falsely: All (the days) in which vanity will overtake (him); and Luther, referring x2 as the 3d pers. to the past, follows the misleading of Jerome, Rightly the LXX. and Theod.: πᾶν τὸ ἐρχόμενον.

In xi. 7, 8, having again reached the fundamental saying of his earthly eudaemonism, the author now discontinues this his ceterum censeo, and artistically rounds off his book; for having begun it with an owverture, i. 2-11, he concludes it with a finale, xi. 9— xii. 7. Man, in view of the long night of death into which he goes forth, ought to enjoy the life granted to him. This fundamental thought of the book, to which the author has given a poetic colouring, xi. 7, 8, now amplifies itself into an animated highly poetical call to a young man to enjoy life, but not without the consciousness that he must render unto God an account for it. That the call is addressed not to a man as such, but to the young man,—including, however, after the rule a potiori fit denominatio, young women,— is explained from this, that the terminus a quo of an intelligent, responsible enjoyment of life stands over against the terminus ad quem, the night of death, with its pre-intimation in hoary old age. Without any connecting word, and thus as a new point of departure, the finale begins:

cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know, that for all this God will bring thee to judgment.” The parallel "23 shows that the beth in 3 (with 3 aspirated) does not introduce the reason of the joy, but the time suitable for it. Instead of v’yithav libb‘cha, “let thy heart be of good cheer,” as the expression might also be, the words are vithiv’cha libb’cha, “make thy heart of good cheer to thee,’—-s0, viz., that from this centre brightness may irradiate thy countenance (Prov. xv. 13) and thy whole personality, vid. Psychologie, p. 249. V°hhuroth, the period of youth, is here and at xii. 1=Num. xi. 28, vhhurim, as the only once occurring n’uroth, Jer. xxxii. 30, is = the elsewhere generally used n’urim; the form in 6th is the more modern (cf. k*luloth, Jer. ii. 2). “ Ways of the heart” are thus ways into which the impulse of the heart leads, and which satisfy the heart. Ὁ» 1, at vi. 9, designates the pleasure felt in the presence of the object before one; here, a sight which draws and fastens the eyes upon it. The Chethtb has the plur. ‘812, which is known to the language (Dan. 1. 15; Song 11. 14), and which would here designate the multitude of the objects which delight the eyes, which is not unsuitable; the Pih. 729 denotes also elsewhere, frequently, e.g. Ps. cxxxi. 1, walking, in an ethical sense; Hitz., Zockl, and others interpret the first 2 as specifying the sphere, and the second as specifying the norm (“according to the sight of thine eyes”); but they both introduce that wherein he ought to act freely and joyfully: in the ways of thy heart, into which it draws thee; and in the sight of thine eyes, towards which they direct themselves with interest. The LXX. B. renders, “and not after the sight of thine eyes.” This “not” (μή), which is wanting in A. C., is an interpolation, in view of the warning, Num. xv. 39, against following the impulse of the heart and of the eyes; the Targ. also therefore has: “be prudent with reference to the sight of thine eyes.” But this moralizing of the text is superfluous, since the call to the youthful enjoyment of life is accompanied with the nota bene: but know that God will bring thee to an account for all this; and thus it excludes sinful sensual desire. In the midst of an address, where a yet closer definition follows, ‘’3 is thus punctuated, xii. 14, Job xiv. 3, Ps. exliii. 3; here, in the conclusion of the sentence, it is 3, Hitzig supposes that there is denoted by it, that the sins of youth are punished by chronic disease and abandonment in old age; Knobel and others understand by the judgment, the self-punishment of sins by all manner of evil consequences, which the O. T. looks upon as divinely inflicted penalties, But in view of the facts of experience, that God's righteous requital is in this life too frequently escaped, viii. 14, the author, here and at iii. 17, xii. 14, postulates a final judgment, which removes the contradiction of this present time, and which must thus be in the future; he has no clear idea of the time and manner of this final judgment, but his faith in God places the certainty of it beyond all doubt. The call to rejoice is now completed by the call to avoid all that occasions inward and outward Sorrow.

Ver. 10. “And remove sorrow from thy heart, and banish evil from thy flesh: for youth and age, not yet grown to grey hairs, are vain.” Jerome translates: aufer iram a corde tuo, and remarks in his Comm.: in tra omnes perturbationes animi comprehendit; but DYD (KR. 03, contundere, confringere) does not signify anger, but includes both anger and sorrow, and thus corresponds to the specific ideas, “sadness, moroseness, fretfulness.” The clause following, Jerome translates: εἰ amove malitiam a carne tua, with the remark: in carnis malitia universas significat corporis voluptates; but ΠΡῪ is not taken in an ethical, but in a physical sense: py> is that which brings sorrow to the heart; and ΠΡ, that which brings evil to the flesh (aw, opp. 2, ii. 3, Prov. xiv. 30). More correctly than the Vulgate, Luther renders: “banish sorrow from thy heart, and put evil from thy body.” He ought to free himself from that which is injurious to the inner and the outer man, and hurtfully affects it; for youth, destined for and disposed to joy, is Aévél, we. transitory, and only too soon passes away. Almost all modern interpreters (excepting the Jewish), in view of Ps. cx. 3, give to NNN the meaning of “the dawn of the morning;” but the connection with

ΤΑῚ would then be tautological; the Mishn.-Midrash wsws log., in conformity with which the Targ. translates, “days of black hair,” proves that the word does not go back to “NW, morning dawn, morning-red, but immediately to in’, black (vid. above, p. 196), and as the contrast of 72°’ (non-bibl. MY, "2 Ὁ, 3D), canities, denotes the time of black hair, and thus, in the compass of its conception, goes beyond m5‘, since it comprehends both the period of youth and of manhood, and thus the whole period during which the strength of life remains unbroken.’

with the exclusion of women (whose hair is covered) and children. It is disputed (vid. Baer’s Abodath Jisrael, p. 279) whether ninwn, Aboth iii. 16, Derech erez ce. II., Midrash under Lam. ii. 11, is = nny, but without right; ben-tishhoréth is einai for a grown-up son in full manly strength.

instead of beginning with xi. 9) the call takes a new course, resting its argument on the transitoriness of youth: “ And remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, ere the days of evil come, and the years draw nigh, of which thou shalt say: I have no pleasure in them.” The plur. mayest. 182 is=O'WY as a designation of the Creator, Job xxxv. 10, Isa. liv. 5, Ps. cxlix. 2; in so recent a book it cannot surprise us (cf. above, p. 292), since it is also not altogether foreign to the post-bibl. language. The expression is warranted, and the Midrash ingeniously interprets the combination of its letters.’ Regarding the words ’ad asher lo, commonly used in the Mishna (e.g. Horajoth 111. 3; Nedarim x. 4), or ’ad shello (Targ. ’ad d’‘lo), antequam, vid. above, p. 195. The days of evil (viz. at least, first, of bodily evil, cf. κακία, Matt. vi. 34) are those of feeble, helpless old age, perceptibly marking the failure of bodily and mental strength; parallel to these are the years of which (asher, as at i. 10) one has to say: I have no pleasure in them (dahém for bahén, as at ii. 6, mehem for mehén). These evil days, adverse years, are now described symptomatically, and that in an allegorical manner, for the “ere” of 10 is brought to a grand unfolding.

Ver. 2. “ Ere the sun becomes dark, and the light, and the moon, and the stars, and the clouds return after the rain.” Umbreit, Elster, and Ginsburg find here the thought: ere death overtakes thee; the figure under which the approach of death is described being that of a gathering storm. But apart from other objections (vid. Gurlitt, “zur Erkl. ἃ. B. Koheleth,” in Stud. wu. Krit. 1865), this idea is opposed by the consideration that the author seeks to describe how man, having become old, goes forth (ΡΠ, 60) to death, and that not till ver. 7 does he reach it. Also Taylor’s view, that what precedes 50 is as a dirge expressing the feelings experienced on the day of a person’s death, is untenable; it is discredited already by this, that it confuses together the days of evil, 1, and the many days of darkness, 1.6. the long night of Hades, xi. 8; and besides, it leaves unanswered the question, what is the meaning of the clouds returning after the rain. Hahn replies: The rain is death, and the return is the entrance again into the nothingness which went before the entrance into this life. Knobel, as already Luther and also Winzer (who had made the exposition of the Book of Koheleth one of the labours of his life), sees in the darkening of the sun, etc., a figure of the decay of hitherto joyful prosperity; and in the clouds after the

1 It finds these things expressed in it, partly directly and partly indirectly: re- rain a figure of the cloudy days of sorrow which always anew visit those who are worn out by old age. Hitz., Ewald, Vaih., Zéckl., and Tyler, proceeding from thence, find the unity of the separate features of the figure in the comparison of advanced old age, as the winter of life to the rainy winter of the (Palestinian) year. That is right. But since in the sequel obviously the marasmus senilis of the separate parts of the body is set forth in allegorical enigmatic figures, it is asked whether this allegorical figurative discourse does not probably commence in ver. 2. Certainly the sun, moon, and stars occur also in such pictures of the night of judgment, obscuring all the lights of the heavens, as at Isa. xiii. 10; but that here, where the author thus ranks together in immediate sequence ‘D7... ‘#7, and as he joins the stars with the moon, so the light with the sun, he has not connected the idea of certain corresponding things in the nature and life of man with these four emblems of light, is yet very improbable. Even though it might be impossible to find out that which is represented, yet this would be no decisive argument against the significance of the figures; the canzones in Dante’s Convito, which he there himself interprets, are an example that the allegorical meaning which a poet attaches to his poetry may be present even where it cannot be easily understood or can only be conjectured.

The attempts at interpreting these figures have certainly been wholly or for the most part unfortunate. We satisfy ourselves by registering only the oldest: their glosses are in matter tasteless, but they are at least of linguistic interest. A Barajtha, Shabbath 151-152a, seeking to interpret this closing picture of the Book of Koheleth, says of the sun and the light: “this is the brow and the nose;” of the moon: “this is the soul;” of the stars: “this the cheeks.” Similarly, but varying a little, the Midrash to Lev. c. 18 and to Koheleth: the sun =the brightness of the countenance; light = the brow; the moon = the nose; the stars =the upper part of the cheeks (which in an old man fallin). Otherwise, but following the Midrash more than the Talmud, the Targum: the sun = the stately brightness of thy countenance; light=the light of thine eyes; the moon=the ornament of thy cheeks; the stars = the apple of thine eye. All the three understand the rain of wine (Talm. '33), and the clouds of the veil of the eyes (Targ.: “ thy eye-lashes”), but without doing justice to anx 2w; only one repulsive interpretation in the Midrash takes these words into account. In all these interpretations there is only one grain of truth, this, viz. that the moon in the Talm. is interpreted of the mw, anima, for which the more correct word would have been δ);

but it has been shown, Psychol. p. 154, that the Jewish, like the Arab. psychology, reverses terminologically the relation between nn (mows), spirit, and vw), soul.

The older Christian interpretations are also on the right track. Glassius (as also v. Meyer and Smith in “ The portraiture of old age”) sees in the sun, light, etc., emblems of the interna microcosmi lumina mentis; and yet better, Chr. Friedr. Bauer (1732) sees in 2a a representation of the thought: “ ere understanding and sense fail thee.” We have elsewhere shown that own mn (NDW3) and mn WI (for which nowhere on wp») are related to each other as the principium principians and principium principatum of life (Psychol. p. 79), and as the root distinctions of the male and female, of the predominantly active and the receptive (Psychol. p. 103). Thus the figurative language of ver. 3 is interpreted in the following manner. ‘The sun is the male spirit ny (which, like wv’, is used in both genders) or now, after Prov. xx. 27,a light of Jahve which penetrates with its light of self-examination and self-knowledge the innermost being of man, called by the Lord, Matt. vi. 23 (cf. 1 Cor. li. 11), “the light that is in thee.” The light, viz. the clear light of day proceeding from the sun, is the activity of the spirit in its unweakened intensity: sharp apprehension, clear thought, faithful and serviceable memory. The moon is the soul; for, according to the Heb. idea, the moon, whether it is called ™ or m2», is also in relation to the sun a figure of the female (cf. Gen. xxxvii. 9 ἢ, where the sun in Joseph’s dream = Jacob-‘srael, the moon = Rachel); and that the soul, viz. the animal soul, by means of which the spirit becomes the principle of the life of the body (Gen. ii. 7), is related to the spirit as female σκεῦος ἀσθενέστερον, is evident from passages such as Ps, xlii. 6, where the spirit supports the soul (animus animam) with its consolation. And the stars?) We are permitted to suppose in the author of the Book of Koheleth a knowledge, as Schrader’ has shown, of the old Babyl.-Assyr. seven astral gods, which consisted of the sun, moon, and the five planets; and thus it will not be too much to understand the stars, as representing the five planets, of the five senses (Mishn. Nv? later O'VAN, cf. the verb, ii. 25) which mediate the receptive relation of the soul to the outer world (Psychol. p. 233). But we cannot see our way further to explain 2) patholo.- anatom., as Geier is disposed to do: Nonnulli haec accommodant ad crassos wllos ac pituosos senum vapores ex debili ventriculo in cerebrum adscendentes continuo, ubi itidem wmbres (Ὁ) h. 6. destillationes creber- rumae per oculos lippientes, per nares gutlatim fluentes, per os subinde execreans cet., quae sane defluxiones, tussis ac catharri in Juvenibus non tla sunt frequentia, quippe δὲ calor multo adhuc fortior, conswmens disstpansque humores. It is enough to understand D°2Y of cases of sickness and attacks of weakness which disturb the power of thought, obscure the consciousness, darken the mind, and which ahhar haggéshém, after they have once overtaken him and then have ceased, quickly again return without permitting him long to experience health. A cloudy day is = a day of misfortune, Joel ii. 2, Zeph. i. 15; an overflowing rain is a scourge of God, Ezek. xu. 13, xxxvili. 22; and one visited by misfortune after misfortune complains, Ps. xlii. 8: “ Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.”

Ver. 3. To the thought: Ere the mind and the senses begin to be darkened, and the winter of life with its clouds and storms approaches, the further details here following stand in a subordinate relation: “That day when the watchers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves, and the grinders rest, because they have become few, and the women looking out of the windows are darkened.” Regarding 3 with art.: 60 (illo) tempore, vid. under Song viii. 8. What follows is regarded by Winzer, with Mich., Spohr, and partly Nachtigal, as a further description of the night to which old age, ver. 2, is compared: Watchers then guard the house; labourers are wearied with the labours and cares of the day; the maids who have to grind at the mill have gone to rest; and almost all have already fallen asleep; the women who look out from the windows are unrecognisable, because it has become dark. But what kind of cowardly watchers are those who “tremble,” and what kind of (per antiphrasin) strong men who “bow themselves” at evening like children when they have belly-ache! Ginsburg regards vers. 2—5 as a continuation of the description of the consequences of the storm under which human life comes to an end: the last consequence is this, that they who experience it lose the taste for almonds and the appetite for locusts. But what is the meaning of this quaint figure? it would certainly be a meaningless and aimless digression. Taylor hears in this verse the mourning for the dead from ver. 2, where death is described: the watchers of the house tremble; the strong men bow themselves, viz. from sorrow, because of the blank death has made in the house, etc.; but even supposing that this picture had a connection in ver. 2, how strange would it be!—the lookers out at the windows must be the “ ladies,’ who are fond of amusing themselves at windows, and who now—are darkened. Is there anything more comical than such little ladies having become darkened (whether externally or internally remains undetermined)? However one may judge of the figurative language of ver. 2, ver. 3 begins the allegorical description of hoary old age after its individual bodily symptoms; interpreters also, such as Knobel, Hitz, and Ewald, do not shrink from seeking out the significance of the individual figures after the old Haggadic manner. The Talm. says of shomré habbayith: these are the loins and ribs; of the anshé hehhayil: these are the bones; of harooth baartibboth: these, the eyes. The Midrash understands | the watchers of the house, of the knees of the aged man; the men of strength, of his ribs or arms; the women at the mill, of the digestive organs (DD127," the stomach, from omaswm); those who have become few, of the teeth; the women looking out at the window, of the eyes; another interpretation, which by harooth thinks of the lungs, is not worth notice.

Here also the Targ. principally follows the Midrash: it translates the watchers of the house by “ thy knees;” strong men by “ thine arms;” the women at the mill by “the teeth of thy mouth;” the women who look out at the window by “thine eyes.” These interpretations for the most part are correct, only those referable to the internal organs are in bad taste; references to these must be excluded from the interpretation, for weakness of the stomach, emphysema of the lungs, οἷο, are not appropriate as poetical figures. The most common biblical figures of the relation of the spirit or the soul to the body is, as we have shown, Psychol. p. 227, that of the body as of the house of the inner man. This house, as that of an old man, is on all sides in a ruinous condition. The skhomré habbayith are the arms terminating in the hands, which bring to the house whatever is suitable for it, and keep away from it whatever threatens to do it injury; these protectors of the house have lost their vigour and elasticity (Gen. xlix. 24), they tremble, are palsied (3, from 3%, Pulp. yivt, bibl. and Mishn.: to move violently hither and thither, to tremble, to shake’), so that they are able neither to grasp securely, to hold fast and use, nor actively to keep back and forcibly avert evil. Anshé héhhayil designates the legs, for the shogé hdish are the seat of his strength, Ps. exlvii. 10; the legs of a man in the fulness of youthful strength are like marble pillars, Song x. 15; but those of the old man hithauthu (Hithpa. only here) have bowed themselves, they

' This hamses is properly the second stomach of the ruminants, the cellular caul. * Vid. Friedr. Delitzsch’s Indogerm.-Sem. Stud. p. 65f.

have lost their tight form, they are shrunken (ΠΡ ῚΞ, Job iv. 4, etc.) and loose; 4 Mace. iv. 5 calls this τὴν ἐκ τοῦ γήρως νωθρότητα ποδῶν ἐπικύφων. To maidens who grind (οἵ, “2 ‘Nd, Num. xi. 8 and Isa. xlvii. 2) the corn by means of a hand-mill are compared the teeth, the name of which in the old language is masc., but in the modern (cf. Prov. xxix. 19), as also in the Syr. and Arab., is fem.; the reference of the figure to these instruments for grinding is not to be missed; the Arab. tahinat and the Syr. tahonto signify dens molaris, and we now call 6 of the 32 teeth Mahlzdhne (molar teeth, or grinders); the Greeks used for them the word μύλαι (Ps. lvii. 7, LXX.). Regarding 102, LXX. ἤργησαν (= ἀεργοὶ ἐγενήθησαν), vid. above, p. 191.1 The clause YD 9 (LXX. ὅτι ὠλυγώθησαν) assigns the reason that the grinders rest, i.e. are not at work, that they have become few: they stand no longer in a row; they are isolated, and (as is to be supposed) are also in themselves defective. Taylor interprets mi’etw transitively: the women grinding rest when they have wrought a little, ze. they interrupt their labour, because on account of the occurrence of death, guests are now no longer entertained; but the beautiful appropriate allegory maintains its place against this supposed lamentation for the dead; also DY does not signify to accomplish a little (Targ.), but to take away, to become few (LXX., Syr., Jerome, Venet., Luther), as such a Pih. as x. 10, nap, to become blunt. And by ‘83 Nix we are not to think, with Taylor, of women such as Sisera’s mother or Michal, who look out of the window, but of the eyes, more exactly the apples of the eyes, to which the orbita (LXX. ἐν ταῖς ὀπαῖς; Symm. διὰ τῶν ὀπῶν) and the eyelids with the eye-lashes are related as a window is to those who look out; 7298 (from 338, R. 25, to entwine firmly and closely) is the window, consisting of a lattice of wood; the eyes are, as Cicero (Tuse. i. 20) calls them, quasi fenestrae animi; the soul-eyes, so to speak, without which it could not experience what sight is, look by means of the external eyes; and these soul-bodily eyes have become darkened in the old man, the power of seeing is weakened, and the experiences of sight are indistinct, the light of the eyes is extinguished (although not without exception, Deut. xxxiv. 7).

1 We find a similar allegory in Shabbath 152a. The emperor asked the Rabbi Joshua Ὁ. Chananja why he did not visit 7.2% °2 (a place where learned conversation, particularly on religious subjects, was carried on). He answered: ‘‘ The mount is snow (= the hair of the head is white), ice surrounds me (= whiskers and beard on the chin white), its (of my body) dogs bark not (the voice fails), and its grinders (the teeth) grind not.” The proper meaning of [3 ξ °3, Levy has not been able clearly to bring to light in his Neuhebr. u. Chald. W. B.

Ver. 4. From the eyes the allegory proceeds to the mouth, and the repugnance of the old man to every noise disturbing his rest: “ And the doors to the street are closed, when the mill sounds low; and he rises up at the voice of a bird; and all the daughters of song must lower themselves.” By the door toward the street the Talm. and Midrash understand the pores or the emptying members of the body,—a meaning so far from being ignoble, that even in the Jewish morning prayer a Beracha is found in these words: “ Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the world, who hast wisely formed man, and made for him manifold apertures and cavities. It is manifest and well known before the throne of Thy Majesty, that if one of these cavities is opened, or one of these apertures closed, it is impossible for him to exist and to stand before Thee; blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Physician of the body, and who doest wondrous works!” The words which follow ὉΠ... ‘Wa are accordingly to be regarded as assigning a reason for Ἐν ἘΒΕΈΕΝ the non-appearance ny excretion has its reason in defective digestion in this, that the stomach does not grind (Talm.: "ὩΣ yapwp? Sawa). But the dual pinot suggests a pair of similar and related members, and PW a pair of members open before the eyes, and not such as modesty requires to be veiled. The Targum therefore understands the shutting of the doors properly; but tee mills, after the indication lying in ὌΠ [grinding maids], it understands of the organs of eating and tasting, for it “tein RS “ thy feet will be eine 50 that thou canst not go out into the street; and appetite will fail thee.” But that is an ewkwanl amalgamation of the literal with the allegorical, which condemns itself by this, that it separates the close connection of the two expressions required by oBwa, which also may be said of the reference of ‘nbo to the ears, into which no sound, even from the noisy market, penetrates (Gurlitt, Gritz). We have for ond a key, already found by Aben Ezra, in Job xli. 6, where the jaws of the leviathan are called 125 nba; and as Herzf. and Hitz. explain, so Samuel Aripol in his ΡΜΟΞΡΘΣΣ which appeared in Constantinople, 1855, rightly:

“ He calls the jaws ons, to denote that not two mins in two places, but in one place, are meant, after the manner of a door opening out to the street, which is large, and consists of two folds or wings, minds, which, like the lips (Ὁ ΠΡ, better: the jaws), form a whole in two parts; and the meaning is, that at the time of old age the lips are closed and drawn in, because the teeth have disappeared, or, as the

1 Cf. Berachoth 61b: The stomach (jap ip) grinds. As hamses is properly the caul of the ruminant, so this word J2P73p is the crop (bibl. nN) of the bird.

text says, because the noise of the mill is low, just because he has

no teeth to grind with.” The connection of 20 and ΡΣ is, however, closer still: the jaws of an old man are closed externally, for the sound of the mill is low; ie. since, when one masticates his food with the jaws of a toothless mouth, there is heard only a dull sound of this chewing (Mumpfelns, vid. Weigand’s Deut. W. B.), v.e. laborious masticating. He cannot any more crack or crunch and break his food, one hears only a dull munching and sucking.—The voice of the mouth (Bauer, Hitz., Gurlitt, Zockl.) cannot be the meaning of Sip ‘on; the set of teeth (Gurlitt indeed substitutes, 3b, the cavity of the mouth) is not the organ of voice, although it contributes to the formation of certain sounds of words, and is of importance for the full sound of the voice.

Pw2, “to the street,” is here = on the street side; mB is, as at Prov. xvi. 19, infin. (Symmachus: ἀχρειωθείσης τῆς φωνῆς; the Venet.: ἐν τῷ ταπεινῶσθαι τὴν φωνήν), and is to be understood after Isa. xxix. 4; 7290 stands for O°, as the vulgar Arab. takin and mathana instead of the antiquated rakéd. Winzer now supposes that the picture of the night is continued in 4b: εἰ subsistit (vox molae) ad cantum galli, et submissius canunt cantatrices (viz. molitrices). Elster, with Umbreit, supposes the description of a storm continued: the sparrow rises up to cry, and all the singing birds sink down (flutter restlessly on the ground). And Taylor supposes the lament for the dead continued, paraphrasing: But the bird of evil omen [owl, or raven] raises his dirge, and the merry voice of the singing girls is silent.

These three pictures, however, are mere fancies, and are also evidently here forced upon the text; for dp np’ cannot mean subsistit vox, but, on the contrary (cf. Hos. x. 14), surgit (tollitur) vom; and ‘p> np» cannot mean: it (the bird) raises itself to cry, which would have required sp nnd op’, or at least Sipe, after ΠΌΠΟΙ Dip, etc.; besides, it is to be presumed that Ἤν is genit., like any bp and the like, not nom. of the subj. It is natural, with Hitz., Ewald, Heiligst., Zick., to refer gol tsippor to the peeping, whispering voice (“ childish treble” of Shakespeare) of the old man (cf. tsiphtseph, Isa. xxix. 4, xxxviii. 14, x. 14, viii 19). But the translation: “ And it (the voice) approaches a sparrow’s voice,” is inadmissible, since for? ὈῚΡ the meaning, “ to pass from one state to another,’ cannot be proved from 1 Sam. xxii. 13, Mic. ii. 8; Dip signifies there always “ to rise up,” and besides, gol tahhanah is not the voice of the mouth supplied with teeth, but the sound of the chewing of a toothless mouth. If /‘gol is connected with a verb of external movement, or of that of the soul, it always denotes the occasion of this movement, Num. xvi. 34; Ezek. xxvil. 28; Job xxi. 12; Hab. 111.16. Influenced by this inalienable sense of the language, the Talm. explains ‘py... Dp by “even a bird awakes him.” Thus also literally the Midrash, and accordingly the Targ. paraphrasing: “thou shalt awaken out of thy sleep for a bird, as for thieves breaking in at night.” That is correct, only it is unnecessary to limit Ox" (or rather pipy,? which accords with the still continued subordination of ver. 4 to the eo die quo of ver. 3a) to rising up from sleep, as if it were synonymous with iy": the old man is weak (nervously weak) and easily frightened, and on account of the deadening of his senses (after the figure of ver. 2, the darkening of the five stars) is so liable to mistake, that if even a bird chirps, he is frightened by it out of his rest (cf. hékim, Isa. xiv. 9).

Also in the interpretation of the clause ὙΠ... ἈΠῈ), the ancients are in the right track. The Talm. explains: even all music and song appear to him like common chattering ("7 or, according to other readings, 7); the proper meaning of inv” is thus Haggad. twisted. Less correctly the Midrash: -wn nia are his lips, or they are the reins which think, and the heart decides (on this curious psychol. conception, cf. Chullin 11a, and particularly Berachoth 61a, together with my Psychol. p. 269). The reference to the internal organs is ἃ priori improbable throughout; the Targ. with the right tact decides in favour of the lips: “ And thy lips are untuned, so that they can no more say (sing) songs.” In this translation of the Talm. there are compounded, as frequently, two different interpretations, viz. that interpretation of ‘vin ’32, which is proved by the 53 going before to be incorrect, because impossible; and the interpretation of these “daughters of song” of “songs,” as if these were synonymous designations, as when in Arab. misfortunes are called banatu binasan, and the like (vid. Lane’s Lez. ΤΣ θ69}: ‘ip ΠΞ, which in Mish. denotes a separate voice (the voice of heaven), but in Syr. the separate word, may be compared. But 37 (fut. Niph. of MN) will not accord with this interpretation. For that ‘yin 523 denotes songs (Hitz., Heiligst.), or the sound of singing (Bottch.), or the words (Ewald) of the old man himself, which are now softened down so as to be scarcely audible, is yet

1 Vav with Cholem in H. F. Thus rightly, according to the Masora, which places it in the catalogue of those words which occur once with a higher (jp) and once with a lower vowel (xp), Mas. jin. 2a ὃ, Ochlaweochla, No. 5; cf. also Aben Ezra’s Comm. under Ps. Ixxx. 19; Zachoth 23a, Safa berura 210 (where Lipmann is uncertain as to the meaning).

too improbable; it is an insipid idea that the old man gives forth these feeble “ daughters of song” from his mouth. We explain inv of a being bowed down, which is external to the old man, and accordingly understand d‘noth hashshir not of pieces of music (Aq. πάντα τὰ τῆς ὠδῆς) which must be lowered to pianissimo, but according to the parallel already rightly acknowledged by Desvoeux, 2 Sam. xix. 36, where the aged Barzillai says that he has now no longer an ear for the voice of singing men and singing women, of singing birds (ef. NYO? 72 of a singing bird in the Syrian fables of Sophos, and banoth of the branches of a fruit tree, Gen. xlix. 22), and, indeed, so that these are a figure of all creatures skilled in singing, and taking pleasure in it: all beings that are fond of singing, and to which it has become as a second nature, must lower themselves, viz. the voice of their song (Isa. xxix. 4) (cf. the Aad, Ps. xxxv. 14, and to the modal sense of the fut. x. 10, 733’, and x. 19, M®&), ἐδ. must timidly retire, they dare not make themselves heard, because the old man, who is terrified by the twittering of a little bird, cannot bear it.

Ver. 5a. From this his repugnance to singing, and music, and all loud noises, progress in the description is made to the difficulty such aged men have in motion: “Also they are afraid of that which is high; and there are all kinds of fearful things in the way...” The description moves forward in a series of independent sentences; that & O12 to which it was subordinate in ver. 3, and still also in ver. 4, is now lost sight of. In the main it is rightly explained by the Talm., and with it the Midrash: “ Even a little hillock appears to him like a high mountain; and if he has to go on a journey, he meets something that terrifies him;” the Targ. has adopted the second part of this explanation. 433 (falsely referred by the Targ. to the time lying far back in the past) is understood neut.; cf. 1 Sam. xvi. 7. Such decrepid old men are afraid of GQ’, not vdebunt, as the LXX., Symm., Ar., and the Venet. translate, who seem to have had before them the defective 1x71’) a height, —it alarms them as something insurmountable, because their breath and their limbs fail them when they attempt it; and hathhhattim (plur. of the intensifying form of 1, consternatio, Job xli. 25), 16. all kinds of formidines (not formido, Ewald, § 179a, Bottch. § 762, for the plur. is as in salsilloth, ’aph’appim, etc., thought of as such), meet them in the way. As the sluggard says: there is a lion in the way, and under this pretence remains slothfully at home, Prov. xxiv. 13, xxii. 13, so old men do not venture out; for to them a damp road appears like a very morass; a gravelly path, as full of neck-breaking hillocks; an undulating path, as fearfully steep and precipitous; that which is not shaded, as oppressively hot and exhausting—they want strength and courage to overcome difficulties, and their anxiety pictures out dangers before them where there are none.

5b. The allegory is now continued in individual independent figures: “And the almond tree is in blossom.” The Talm. explains ‘yn '» of the haunch-bone projecting (from leanness); the Midrash, of the bones of the vertebral column, conceived of as incorruptible and as that round which will take place the future restoration of the human body,—probably the cross bone, os sacrum, inserted between the two thigh bones of the pelvis as a pointed wedge; cf. Jerome in his Comm.: quidam sacram spinam interpretantur quod decrescentibus natium cornibus spina accrescat et floreat; nd is an Old Heb., Aram., and Arab. name of the almond tree and the almond nut (vd. under Gen. xxx. 37), and this, perhaps, is the reason of this identification of the emblematic ΡΥ with nb (the os sacrum, or vertebra magna) of the spine. The Targ. follows the Midrash in translating: the ‘Ww (the top of the spine) will protrude from leanness like an almond tree (viz. from which the leaves have been stripped). In these purely arbitrary interpretations nothing is correct but (1) that 1PY is understood not of the almond fruit, but of the almond tree, as also at Jer. i.11 (the rod of an almond tree); (2) that γι)" (notwithstanding that these interpreters had it before them unpointed) is interpreted, as also by the LXX., Syr., Jerome, and the Venet., in the sense of blossoming, or the bursting out of blossoms by means of the opening up of the buds. Many interpreters understand 7?¥ of almond fruit (Winzer, Ewald, Ginsb., Rodiger, etc.), for they derive YS2? from yx), as Aben Ezra had already done, and explain by: fastidit amygdalam (nucem), or fastidium creat amygdala. But (1) 782 for 7/82 (Hiph. of 78), to disdain, to treat scornfully) is a change of vowels unexampled; we must, with such an explanation, read either 83), fastiditur (Gaab), or 782"; (2) almond nuts, indeed, belong to the more noble productions of the land and the delicacies, Gen. xliii. 11, but dainties, κατ᾽ ἐξ,, at the same time they are not, so that it would be appropriate to exemplify the blunted sensation of taste in the old man, by saying that he no more cracks and eats almonds. The explanation of Hitzig, who reads 7X)’, and interprets the almond tree as at Song vii. 9 the palm, to denote a woman, for he translates: the almond tree refuses (viz. the old man), we set aside as too ingenious; and we leave to those interpreters who derive yx> from

* The Jewish opinion of the incorruptible continuance of this bone may be connected with the designation os sacrum; the meaning of this is controverted, vid. Hyrtl’s Anatomie, § 124.

yx, and understand pen’ of the glans penis (Buttch., Fiirst, and several older interpreters), to follow their own foul and repulsive criticism. ΟΣ is an incorrect reading for 73), as at Hos. x. 14, ONP for OP, and, in Prov., ‘@* for ‘&> (Gesen. ὃ 73. 4); and besides, as at Song vi. 11, WH, regular Hiph. of ΥἹΣ (yo, Lam. iv. 15), to move tremblingly (vibrate), to glisten, blossom (cf. Dv, to flee, and 105), Assyr. nisannu, the flower- month). Thus deriving this verbal form, Ewald, and with him Heiligst., interprets the blossoming almond tree as a figure of the winter of life: “ it is as if the almond tree blossomed, which in the midst of winter has already blossoms on its dry, leafless stem.” But the blossoms of the almond tree are rather, after Num. xvii. 23, a figure of special life-strength, and we must thus, thrown back to pro from yx) (to flourish), rather explain, with Furrer (in Schenkel’s B. L.), as similarly Herzf.: the almond tree refuses, i+. ceases, to blossom; the winter of old age is followed by no spring; or also, as Dale and Taylor: the almond tree repels, i. the old man has no longer a joyful welcome for this messenger of spring. But his general thought has already found expression in ver. 2; the blossoming almond tree must be here an emblem of a more special relation. Hengst. supposes that “the juniper tree (for this is the proper meaning of 7pv’) is in bloom” is = sleeplessness in full blossom stands by the old man; but that would be a meaningless expression. Nothing is more natural than that the blossoming almond tree is intended to denote the same as is indicated by the phrase of the Latin poet: IJntempestivi funduntur vertice cani (Luther, Geiger, Grot., Vaih., Luzz., Gurlitt, Tyler, Bullock, etc.). It has been objected that the almond blossoms are not pure white, but according to the variety, they are pale-red, or also white; so that Thomson, in his beautiful Zand and the Book, can with right say: “The almond tree is the type of old age whose hair is white;” and why? “The white blossoms completely cover the whole tree.” Besides, Bauer (1732) has already remarked that the almond blossoms, at first tinged with red, when they are ready to fall off become white as snow; with which may be compared a clause cited by Ewald from Bodenstedt’s A Thousand and One Days in the Orient: “The white blossoms fall from the almond trees like snow-flakes.” Accordingly, Diachsel is right when he explains, after the example of Zéckler: “the almond tree with its reddish flower in late winter, which strews the ground with its blossoms, which have gradually become white like snow-flakes, is an emblem of the winter of old age with its falling silvery hair.”

1 Abulwalid understands apy and 33m sexually, and glosses the latter by jundub (the locust), which in Arab. is a figure of suffering and patience.

Ver. 5c. From the change in the colour of the hair, the allegory now proceeds to the impairing of the elasticity of the thighs and of their power of bearing a load, the malwm coxae senile (in a wider than the usual pathological sense): “ And the grasshopper (2.e. locust, 230, Samar. ΠΩΣ = 400, Lev. xi. 22) becomes a burden.” Many interpreters (Merc., Doderl., Gaab, Winz., Gesen., Winer, Dale) find in these words ‘Na ‘DY the meaning that locust-food, or that the chirping of grasshoppers, is burdensome to him (the old man); but even supposing that it may at once be assumed that he was a keen aeridophagus (locusts, steeped in butter, are like crabs (shrimps) spread on slices of butter and bread), or that he had formerly a particular delight in the chirping of the τέττιξ, which the ancients number among singing birds (cf. Taylor, /.c.), and that he has now no longer any joy in the song of the tettzx, although it is regarded as soothing and tending to lull to rest, and an Anacreon could in his old days even sing his μακαρίζομέν σε, τέττιξ,—γοῦ these two interpretations are impossible, because ΘΠ may mean to burden and to move with difficulty, but not “to become burdensome.” For the same reason, nothing is more absurd than the explanation of Kimchi and Gurlitt: Even a grasshopper, this small insect, burdens him; for which Zockl., more naturally: the hopping and chirping of the grasshopper is burdensome to hm; as we say, The fly on the wall annoys him. Also Ewald and Heiligstedt’s interpretation: “it is as if the locust raised itself to fly, breaking and stripping off its old husk,” is inadmissible; for 'anpn can mean se portare laboriose, but not ad evolandum eniti; the comparison (Arab.) tahmmal gains the meaning to hurry onwards, to proceed on an even way, like the Hebr. D’swn, totake upon the shoulder; it properly means, to burden oneself, ze. to take on one’s back in order to get away; but the grasshopper coming out of its case carries away with it nothing but itself. For us, such interpretations—to which, particularly, the advocates of the several hypotheses of a storm, night, and mourning, are constrained— are already set aside by this, that according to the allegory ‘wn ‘3, ‘nn “Ὁ. must also signify something characteristic of the body of an old man. The LXX., Jerome, and Ar. translate: the locust becomes fat; the Syr.: it grows. It is true, indeed, that great corpulence, or also a morbid dropsical swelling of the belly (ascites), is one of the symptoms of advanced old age; but supposing that the (voracious) locust might be an emblem of a corpulent man, yet Sanpn means neither to become fat nor to grow. But because the locust in reality suggests the idea of a corpulent man, the figure cannot at the same time be intended to mean that the old man is like a skeleton, consisting as it were of nothing but skin and bone (Lyra, Luther, Bauer, Dathe); the resemblance of a locust to the back-bone and its joints (Glassius, Kohler, Vaih.) is not in view; only the position of the locust’s feet for leaping admits the comparison of the prominent scapulae (shoulder-blades); but shoulder-blades (scapulae alatae), angular and standing out from the chest, are characteristics of a consumptive, not of a senile habit. Also we must cease, with Hitz., Bottch., Luzz., and Gratz, to understand the figure as denoting the φαλλός to be now impotent; for relaxation and shrinking do not agree with Sanon, which suggests something burdensome by being weighty. The Midrash interprets 22)ΠΠ by “ankles,” and the Targ. translates accordingly: the ankles (Πὲς, from the Pers. ustuwér, firm) of thy feet will swell—unsuitably, for “ankles” affords no point of comparison with locusts, and they have no resemblance to their springing feet. The Talm., glossing 22 ΠΠ by “these are the buttocks” (nates) (cf. Arab. ’ajab, the os coccygis, Syn. ’ajuz, as the Talm. ma3y interchanges with nay), is on the right track. There is nothing, indeed, more probable than that 13n is a figure of the coza, the hinder region of the pelvis, where the lower part of the body balances itself in the hip-joint, and the motion of standing up and going receives its impulse and direction by the muscular streneth there concentrated. This part of the body may be called the locust, because it includes in itself the mechanism which the two-membered foot for springing, placed at an acute angle, presents in the locust. Referred to this coxa, the loins, Sand’ has its most appropriate meaning: the marrow disappears from the bones, elasticity from the muscles, the cartilage and oily substance from the joints, and, as a consequence, the middle of the body drags itself along with difficulty; or: 1ὖ is with difficulty moved along (Hithpa. as pass., like viil. 10); it is stiff, particularly in the morning, and the old man is accustomed to swing his arms backwards, and to push himself on as it were from behind. In favour of this interpretation (but not deciding it) is the accord of 23n with ay = κόκκυξ (by which the os coccygis is designated as the cuckoo’s bone). Also the verbal stem (Arab.) jahab supphes an analogous name: not jahab, which denotes the air passage (but not, as Knobel supposes, the breath itself; for the verb signifies to separate, to form a partition, Mishn. ny’no), but (Arab.) jahabat, already compared by Bochart, which denotes the point (dual), the two points or projections of the two hip-bones (vid. Lane’s Lex.), which, together with the os sacrum lying between, form the ring of the pelvis.

Ver. 5d. From the weakening of the power of motion, the allegory passes on to the decay of sensual desires, and of the organs appertaining thereto: “ And the caper-berry fails”... The meaning “caper” for ‘387 is evidenced by the LXX. (ἡ κάππαρις, Arab. alkabar), the Syr., and Jerome (capparis), and this rendering is confirmed by the Mishnic ΤΊ)", which in contradistinction to nin, 1.6. the tender branches, and jo5p, ze. the rind of fruit, signifies the berry-like flower-buds of the caper bush,’ according to Buxtorf (vid. above, p. 190). This Talm. word, it is true, is pointed M228; but that makes no difference, for 72°28 is related to 7228 merely as making the word emphatic, probably to distinguish the name of the caper from the fem. of the adj. 38, which signifies avida, egena. But in the main they are both one; for that 7228 may designate “ desire ” (Abulwalid:’ aliradat; Parchon: mynn; Venet.: ἡ ὄρεξις; Luther: alle Lust), or “neediness,” “ poverty ” (the Syr. in its second translation of this clause), is impossible, because the form would be unexampled and incomprehensible; only the desiring soul, or the desiring, craving member (vid. Kimchi), could be so named. But now the caper is so named, which even to this day is used to give to food a more piquant taste (cf. Plutarch’s Sympos. vi. qu. Δ. It is also said that the caper is a means of exciting sexual desire (aphrodisiacum); and there are examples of its use for this purpose from the Middle Ages, indeed, but none from the records of antiquity; Pliny, Hist. Nat. xx. 14 (59), knew nothing of it, although he speaks at length of the uses and effects of the capparis. The Talm. explains “3x5 by mn, the Midrash by msn, the Targ. by x15wWp, interpreting the word directly without reference to the caper in this sense. If haaviyonah thus denotes the caper, we have not thence to conclude that it incites to sexual love, and still less are we, with the Jewish interpreters, whom Bottch. follows, to understand the word of the membrum virile itself; the Arab. name for the caper, αν, Which is compared by Gritz, which has an obscene meaning, designates also other aromatic plants. We shall proceed so much the more securely if we turn away from the idea of sexual impulse and hold by the idea of the impulse of self-preservation, namely, appetite for food, since j'28 (from 728, the root-meaning of which, “ to desire,”

1 The caper-bush is called in the Mish. ἢν, and is celebrated, Beza 25a, οἵ.

Shabbath 30b (where, according to J. 8. Bloch’s supposition, the disciple who meets Gamaliel is the Apostle Paul), on account of its unconquerable life-power, its quick development of fruit, and manifold products. The caper-tree is planted, says Berachoth 36a, ‘* with a view to its branches;” the eatable branches or twigs here meant are called ‘now ΓΦ). Another name for the caper-tree is AbY), Demai i. 1, Berachoth 36a, 40b; and another name for the bud of the caper-blossom is δ ΠῚ xmas, Berachoth 36b (cf. Aruch, under the words aviyonoth and ts¢laph).

2 In his Dictionary of Roots (kitab el-ustl), edited by Neubauer, Oxford 1873-4.

: undoubted *) denotes a poor man, as one who desires that which is ndispensable to the support of life; the caper is accordingly called viyonah, as being appetitiva, 1.6. exciting to appetite for food, and he meaning will not be that the old man is like a caper-berry which, yhen fully ripe, bursts its husks and scatters its seed (Rosenm., Viner in his &. W., Ewald, Taylor, etc.), as also the LXX., Symm. καὶ διαλυθῆ ἡ ἐπίπονος, 1.6. as Jerome translates it, et dissolvetur piritus fortitudo, perhaps ἐπίτονος, the strength or elasticity of the pirit), and Jerome understand the figure; but since it is to be preupposed that the name of the caper, in itself significant, will also be ignificant for the figure: capparis est writa sive vim suam non exerit 18M as inwardly trans. Hiph. of 175, to break in pieces, frustrate), e. even such means of excitement as capers, these appetite-berries, re unable to stimulate the dormant and phlegmatic stomach of the Id man (thus 6... Bullock). Hitzig, indeed, maintains that the cessaion of the enjoyment of love in old age is not to be overlooked; but 1) the use of artificial means for stimulating this natural impulse n an old man, who is here described simply as such, without eference to his previous life and its moral state, would make him a ensualist; and (2) moral statistics show that with the decay of the ody lust does not always (although this would be in accordance vith nature, Gen. xvii. 17; Rom. iv. 19) expire; moreover, the uthor of the Book of Koheleth is no Juvenal or Martial, to take leasure, like many of his interpreters, in exhibiting the res venereae.

Ver. 5e. And in view of the clause following, the ceasing from ourishment as the last symptom of the certain approach of death is nore appropriate than the cessation from sexual desire: “ For,’ thus he author continues after this description of the enfeebled condition f the hoary old man, “ man goeth to his everlasting habitation, and he mourners go about the streets.” One has to observe that the untequam of the memento Creatoris tur in drebus guventutis tuae 15 coninued in vers. 6 and 7. The words ’ad asher lo are thrice repeated. [he chief group in the description is subordinated to the second ’ad isher lo; this relation is syntactically indicated also in ver. 4 by the subjective form Dip, and continues logically in ver. 5, although withyut any g eect ba sign, for 783") and 75M) are indicative. Accordngly the clause with 3, 50, will not be definitive;; considerately the.ccentuation does not pus a new verse with 9: the symptoms of narasmus already spoken “é are here explained By this, that man is m his way to the grave, and, as we say, has already one foot in it.

The part. 727 is also here not so much the expression of the fut. instans (iturus est), like ix. 10, as of the present (Venet.: ἄπεισι); cf. Gen. xv. 2, where also these two possible renderings stand in question. “Everlasting house” is the name for the grave of the dead, according to Diodorus Sic. 1. 51, also among the Egyptians, and on old Lat. monuments also the expression domus aeterna is found (vid. Knobel); the comfortless designation, which corresponds! to the as yet darkened idea of Hades, remained with the Jews in spite of the hope of the resurrection they had meanwhile received; cf. Tob. ii. 6; Sanhedrin 19a, “the churchyard of Husal;’ “to a churchyard” (beth ’oiam); “at the door of the churchyard ” (beth ’olam), Vajikra rabba, ο. 12. Cf. also above, p. 191, and Assyr. διέ edi = sy moa of the under-world (Bab.-Assyr. Epic, “ Héllenfahrt der Istar,” 1. 4). The clause following means that mourners already go about the streets (cf. 13D, Song 11]. 3, and Pil. Song 111. 2; Ps. lix. 7) expecting the death of the dying. We would say: the undertaker tarries in the neighbourhood of the house to be at hand, and to offer his services. For hassophdim are here, as Knobel, Winz., and others rightly explain, the mourners, saphdanin (sophdanin), hired for the purpose of playing the mourning music (with the horn snaw, Moéd katan 276, or flute, δ, at the least with two, Kethuboth 460; cf. Lat. siticines) and of singing the lament for the dead, gui conducti plorant in funere (Horace, Poet. 433), along with whom were mourning women, ni3npd (Lat. praeficae) (cf. Buxtorf’s Lex. Talm. col. 1524 s.)—a custom which existed from remote antiquity, according to 2 Sam. ui. 31; Jer. xxxiv. 5. The Talm. contains several such lamentations for the dead, as e.g. that of a “ mourner” (ΝΣ ἼΒΌ δ ΠΠ) for R. Abina: “ The palms wave their heads for the palm-like just man,” etc.; and of the famed “mourner” Bar-Kippuk on the same occasion: “If the fire falls upon the cedar, what shall the hyssop of the walls do?” ete. (Moéd katan 25b’)—many of the n'y1p were accordingly elegiac poets. This section of ver. 5 does not refer to the funeral itself, for the procession of the mourners about the bier ought in that case to have been more distinctly expressed; and that they walked about in the streets before the funeral (Isa. xv. 3) was not a custom, so far as we know. They formed a component part of the procession following the bier to the grave in Judea, as Shabbath 153a remarks with

1 The Syr. renders beth ’olam by domus laboris sui, which is perhaps to be understood after Job iii. 17.

* Given in full in Wiss. Kunst Judenth. p. 230 ff. Regarding the lament for the dead among the Haurans, vid. Wetzstein’s treatise on the Syrian Threshing-Table in Bastian’s Zeitsch. fiir Ethnologie, 1873.

reference to this passage, and in Galilee going before it; to mourn over the death, to reverse it, if possible, was not the business of these mourners, but of the relatives (Hitz.), who were thus not merely called opin. The Targ. translates: “and the angels will go about, who demand an account of thee, like the mourning singers who go about the streets, to record what account of thee is to be given.” It is unnecessary to change “IDiD2 into BD (instar scribarwm). According to the idea of the Targumist, the sophdim go about to collect materials for the lament for the dead. The dirge was not always very scrupulously formed; wherefore it is said in Berachoth 62a, “as is the estimate of the dead that is given, so is the estimate of the mourners (singers and orators at the funeral), and of those who respond to their words.” It is most natural to see the object of the mourners going about in their desire to be on the spot when death takes place.’ Vers. 6, 7. A third ’ad asher lo now follows (cf. v. 1, 2); the first placed the old man in view, with his désagrément in general; the second described in detail his bodily weaknesses, presenting themselves as forerunners of death; the third brings to view the dissolution of the life of the body, by which the separation of the soul and the body, and the return of both to their original condition is completed. “ Ere the silver cord is loosed, and the golden bowl is shattered, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel is shattered in the well, and the dust returns to the earth as that which it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.’ Before entering into the contents of these verses, we shall consider the form in which some of the words are presented. The Chethib pr we readily let drop, for in any case it must be said that the silver cord is put out of action; and this word, whether we read it PM or PN (Venet. μακ- ρυνθῇ), is too indefinite, and, supposing that by the silver cord a component part of the body is meant, even inappropriate, since the organs which cease to perform their functions are not removed away from the dead body, but remain in it when dead. But the Keri ΡΠ" (“is

1 The Arab. funeral dirge furnishes at once an illustration of ‘‘ and the mourners go about the streets.” What Wetzstein wrote to me ought not, I believe, to be kept

from the reader: ‘‘ In Damascus the men certainly take part in the dirge; they go about the reservoir in the court of the house along with the mourning women, and behave themselves like women; but this does not take place in the villages. But whether the ‘ going about the streets’ might seem as an evidence that in old times in the towns, as now in the villages, the menassa (bed of state) was placed with the mourning tent in the open street without, is a question. If this were the case, the séphdim might appear publicly; only I would then understand by the word not hired mourners, but the relatives of the dead.” But then MID, 88 at Ps. xxvi. 6