97

FOURTH SECTION.

THE QUEST OF THE CHIEF GOOD ACHIEVED.

Chap. VIII., ver. 16, to Chap. XII., ver. 7.

16 As then I applied my heart to acquire wisdom,
And to see the work which is done under the sun—
And such a one seeth no sleep with his eyes by day or by night:

17 I saw that man cannot find out all the work of God
Which is done under the sun;
Though man labour to discover it,
He cannot find it out;
And though the wise may say he understandeth it
98Nevertheless he hath not found it out.

Ver. 17.: To illustrate this verse Dean Plumptre happily quotes Hooker's noble and familiar words: "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable, his greatness above our capacity and reach."

1 For all this have I taken to heart and explored,
That the righteous, and the wise, and their labours are in the hand of God:
They know not whether they shall meet love or hatred;
All lies before them.
All are treated alike;

Ver. 1.: They know not whether they shall meet love or hatred may mean that even the wisest cannot tell whether they shall meet (1) the love or the enmity of God, as shown in adverse or favourable providences; or (2) the things which they love or hate; or (3) the love or the hatred of their fellows. The last of the three seems the most likely.

All lies before them; i.e. all possible chances, changes, events. Only God can determine or foresee what is coming to meet them.

2 The same fate befalleth to the righteous and to the wicked,
To the good and pure and to the impure,
To him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not;
As with the good so is it with the sinner,
With him that sweareth as with him who feareth an oath.

3 This is the greatest evil of all that is done under the sun,
99That there is one fate for all:
And that, although the heart of the sons of men is full of evil,
And madness is in their hearts through life,
Yet, after it, they go to the dead;

Ver. 3.: The words of this verse do not, as they stand, seem to carry on the logical sequence of thought. The Preacher's complaint is that even the wise and the good are not exempted from the common fate, not that the foolish and reckless are exposed to it. The text may be corrupt; but Ginsburg is content with it. A good reading of it, however, is still wanting.

4 For who is exempted?
To all the living there is hope,
For a living dog is better than a dead lion;

5 For the living know that they shall die,
But the dead know not anything;
And there is no more any compensation to them,
For the very memory of them is gone:

6 Their love, too, no less than their hatred and rivalry, hath perished;
And there is no part for them in ought that is done under the sun.

7 Go, then, eat thy bread with gladness,
And drink thy wine with a merry heart,
Since God hath accepted thy works:

8 Let thy garments be always white;
Let no perfume be lacking to thy head:

1009 And enjoy thyself with any woman whom thou lovest
All the days of thy life
Which He giveth thee under the sun,
All thy fleeting days:
For this is thy portion in life,
And in the labour which thou labourest under the sun.

Ver. 9.: "Enjoy thyself with any woman." The word here rendered "woman" does not mean "wife." And as the Hebrew Preacher is here speaking under the mask of the lover of pleasure, this immoral maxim is at least consistent with the part he plays. More than one good critic, however, read "a wife" for "any woman."

10 Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do,
Do it whilst thou art able;
For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Hades,
Whither thou goest.

11 Then I turned and saw under the sun,
That the race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong;
Nor yet bread to the wise,
Nor riches to the intelligent,
Nor favour to the learned;

12 But time and chance happen to all,
And that man doth not even know his time:
Like fish taken in a fatal net,
101And like birds caught in a snare,
So are the sons of men entrapped in the time of their calamity,
When it falleth suddenly upon them.

13 This wisdom also have I seen under the sun,
And it seemed great to me—

14 There was a little city,
And few men in it,
And a great king came against it and besieged it,
And threw up a military causeway against it:

15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man,
And he saved that city by his wisdom;
Yet no one remembered this same poor man.

16 Therefore say I,
Though wisdom is better than strength,
Yet the wisdom of the poor is despised,
And his words are not listened to:

17 Though the quiet words of the wise have much advantage
Over the vociferations of a fool of fools,
And wisdom is better than weapons of war,
Yet one fool destroyeth much good:

1 As a dead fly maketh sweet ointment to stink,
So a little folly overpowereth (much) wisdom and honour.

1022 Nevertheless the mind of the wise man turns toward his right hand,
But the mind of the fool to his left;

3 For so soon as the fool setteth his foot in the street
He betrayeth his lack of understanding;
Yet he saith of every one (he meeteth), "He is a fool!"

Ver. 3.: Setteth his foot in the street. Literally, "walketh in the road." The sentence seems to be a proverb used to denote the extreme stupidity of the fool who, the very moment he leaves his house, is bewildered, cannot even find his way from one familiar spot to another, and sees his own folly in every face he meets.

4 If the anger of thy ruler be kindled against thee,
Resent it not:
Patience will avert a graver wrong.

Ver. 4.: Resent it not. Literally, "Quit not thy place."—See note on chapter viii., ver. 3.

5 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun,
An outrage which only a ruler can commit:

6 A great fool is lifted to high place,
While the noble sit degraded:

7 I have seen servants upon horses,
And masters walking like servants on the ground.

Ver. 7.: To ride upon a horse is still a mark of distinction in many Eastern States. In Turkish cities, till of late, no Christian was permitted to ride any nobler beast than an ass or a mule: so neither were the Jews, in the Middle Ages, in any Christian city.

103 8 Yet he that diggeth a pit shall fall into it;
And whoso breaketh down a wall a serpent shall bite him;

9 He who pulleth down stones shall be hurt therewith;
And whoso cleaveth logs shall be cut.

10 If the axe be blunt, and he do not whet the edge,
He must put on more strength;
But wisdom should teach him to sharpen it.

Ver. 10.: Ginsburg renders this difficult and much-disputed passage thus: "If the axe be blunt, and he do not sharpen it beforehand, he shall only increase the army; the advantage of repairing hath wisdom," and explains it as meaning: "If any insulted subject lift a blunt axe against the trunk of despotism, he will only make the tyrant increase his army, and thereby augment his own sufferings; but it is the prerogative of wisdom to repair the mischief which such precipitate folly occasions." I have offered what seems a simpler explanation in the comment on this passage, and have tried to give a simpler, yet not less accurate, rendering in the text. But there are almost as many readings of this difficult verse as there are critics; and it is impossible to do more than make a hesitating choice among them.

11 If the serpent bite because it is not charmed,
There is no advantage to the charmer.

Ver. 11.: The charmer. Literally, "the master of the tongue." The allusion of the phrase is of course to the subtle cantillations by which the charmer drew, or was thought to draw, serpents from their "lurk," and to render them harmless.

12 The words of the wise man's mouth win him grace;
But the lips of a fool swallow him up,

10413 For the words of his mouth are folly at the beginning,
And end in malignant madness.

14 The fool is full of words,
Though no man knoweth what shall be,
Either here or hereafter:
And who can tell him?

15 The work of a fool wearieth him,
For he cannot even find his way to the city.

Ver. 15.: He cannot even find his way to the city; a proverbial saying. It denotes the fool who has not wit enough even to keep a high road, to walk in the beaten path which leads to a capital city. The thought was evidently familiar to Jewish literature; for Isaiah (xxxv. 8) speaks of the way of holiness as a highway in which "wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err."

16 Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child,
And thy princes feast in the morning!

17 Happy art thou, O land, when thy king is noble,
And thy princes eat at due hours,
For strength and not for revelry!

18 Through slothful hands the roof falleth in,
And through lazy hands the house lets in the rain.

Vers. 18, 19.: And money pays for all; i.e. the money of the people. The slothful prodigal rulers, under whose mal-administration the whole fabric of the State was fast falling into decay, extorted the means for their profligate revelry from their toil-worn and oppressed subjects. It is significant of the caution induced by the extreme tyranny of the time, that the whole description of its political condition is conveyed in proverbs more enigmatical than usual, and capable of being interpreted in more senses than one.

19 They turn bread, and wine, which cheereth life, into revelry;
And money has to pay for all.

10520 Nevertheless revile not the king even in thy thoughts,
Nor a prince even in thy bed-chamber,
Lest the bird of the air carry the report,
And the winged tribes tell the story.

1 Cast thy bread upon the waters,
For in time thou mayest find the good of it;

2 Give a portion to seven, and even to eight,
For thou knowest not what calamity may come upon the earth.

3 When the clouds are full of rain,
They empty it upon the earth;
And when the tree falleth, toward south or north,
In the place where the tree falleth there will it lie.

4 Whoso watcheth the wind shall not sow,
And he who observeth the clouds shall not reap;

5 As thou knowest the course of the wind
As little as that of the embryo in the womb of the pregnant,
So thou knowest not the work of God,
106Who worketh all things.

6 Sow, then, thy seed in the morning,
And slack not thy hand in the evening,
Since thou knowest not which shall prosper, this or that,
Or whether both shall prove good:

7 And the light shall be sweet to thee,
And it shall be pleasant to thine eyes to behold the sun:

8 For even if a man should live many years,
He ought to rejoice in them all,
And to remember that there will be many dark days;
Yea, that all that cometh is vanity.

9 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth,
And let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth;
And pursue the ways of thine heart,
And that which thine eyes desire;
And know that for all these
God will bring thee into judgment:

10 Banish, therefore, care from thy mind,
And put away sadness from thy flesh,
For youth and manhood are vanity.

And remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth,
Before the evil days come,
107And the years approach of which thou shalt say,
"I have no pleasure in them;"

2 Before the sun groweth dark,
And the light, and the moon, and the stars;
And the clouds return after the rain:

3 When the keepers of the house shall quake,
And the men of power crouch down;
When the grinding-maids shall stop because so few are left,
And the women who look out of the lattices shall be shrouded in darkness,
And the door shall be closed on the street:

Ver. 3.: The women who look out of the lattices; i.e. the luxurious ladies of the harem looking through their windows to see what is going on outside. Compare Judges v. 28; 2 Samuel vi. 16; and 2 Kings ix. 30.

4 When the sound of the mills shall cease,
And the swallow fly shrieking to and fro,
And all the song-birds drop silently into their nests.

Ver. 4.: The swallow, etc. Literally, "the bird shall arise for a noise," i.e. the bird which flies abroad and makes a noise at the approach of a tempest: viz. the swallow. All the songbirds. Literally, "all the daughters of song," a Hebraism for birds.

5 There shall be terror at that which cometh from the height,
108And fear shall beset the highway:
The almond also shall be rejected,
And the locust be loathed,
And the caper-berry provoke no appetite;
Because man goeth to his long home,
And the mourners pace up and down the street;—

Ver. 5.: From the height, i.e. from heaven. The locust be loathed. It is commonly assumed that the locust was only eaten by the poor; but Aristotle (Hist. Anim., v. 30) names them as a delicacy, and Ginsburg affirms that they are still considered so by the cultivated and well-to-do Arabs. His long home. Literally, "his eternal home," the domus æterna of the early Christian tombs.

6 Before the silver cord snappeth asunder,
And the golden bowl escapeth;
Before the pitcher be shattered at the fountain,
And the wheel is broken at the well;

7 And the body is cast into the earth from which it came,
And the spirit returneth to God who gave it.