Keil & Delitzsch - OT Commentary on Ecclesiastes

The Book of Ecclesiastes

TRANSLATED BY M. G. EASTON

Introduction

If we look at the world without God, it appears what it is, a magnificent, graduated combination of diverse classes of beings, connected causes and effects, well-calculated means and ends. But thus contemplated, the world as a whole remains a mystery. If, with the atheist, we lay aside the idea of God, then, notwithstanding the law of causation, which is grounded in our mental nature, we abandon the question of the origin of the world. If, with the pantheist, we transfer the idea of God to the world itself, then the effect is made to be as one with the cause, not, however, without the conception of God, which is inalienable in man, reacting against it; for one cannot but distinguish between substance and its phenomena. The mysteries of the world which meet man as a moral being remain, under this view of the world, altogether without solution. For the moral order of the world presupposes an absolutely good Being, from whom it has proceeded, and who sustains it; it demands a Lawgiver and a Judge. Apart from the reference to this Being, the distinction between good and evil loses its depth and sharpness. Either there is no God, or all that is and happens is a moment in the being and life of God Himself, who is identical with the world: thus must the world-destructive power of sin remain unrecognised. The opinion as to the state of the world will, from a pantheistic point of view, rise to optimism; just as, on the other hand, from an atheistic point of view, it will sink to pessimism. The commanding power of goodness even the atheist may recognise by virtue of the inner law peculiar to man as a moral being, but the divine consecration is wanting to this goodness; and if human life is a journey from nothing to nothing, then this will be the best of all goodness: that man set himself free from the evil reality, and put his confidence in nothing. Him who views the world, says Buddhism, as a water-bubble, a phantom, the king of death does not terrify. What pleasure, what joy is in this world? Behold the changing form it is undone by old age; the diseased body it dissolves and corrupts! I have sons and treasures; here will I dwell in the season of the cold, and there in the time of the heat: thus thinks the fool; and cares not for, and sees not, the hindrances thereto. Him who is concerned about sons and treasures, the man who has his heart so entangled, death tears away, as the torrent from the forest sweeps away the slumbering village. The view taken of the world, and the judgment formed regarding it, in the Book of Ecclesiastes, are wholly different. While in the Book of Esther faith in God remains so much in the background that there is nowhere in it express mention made of God, the name of God occurs in Ecclesiastes no fewer than thirty- seven times,[footnoteRef:1] and that in such a way that the naming of Him is at the same time the confession of Him as the True God, the Exalted above the world, the Governor and the Ruler over all. And not only that: the book characterizes itself as a genuine product of the Israelitish Chokma by this, that, true to its motto, it places the command, Fear Thou God, 5:6, [7], 12:13, in the foremost rank as a fundamental moral duty; that it makes, 8:12, the happiness of man to be dependent thereon; that it makes, 7:18; 11:9; 12:14, his final destiny to be conditioned by his fearing God; and that it contemplates the world as one that was created by God very good, 3:11; 7:29, and as arranged, 3:14, and directed so that men should fear Him. These primary principles, to which the book again and again returns, are of special importance for a correct estimate of it. [1: , 2:24, 26; 3:11, 14 (twice), 15, 17, 18; 4:17; 5:1, 5, 6, 17, 18a, 19; 6:2 (twice); 7:13, 14, 26, 29; 8:15, 17; 9:1, 7; 11:5, 9; 12:7, 13, 14. , 3:10, 13; 5:3, 18b ; 7:18; 8:2, 13.]

Of like decisive importance for the right estimate of the theistic, and at the same time also the pessimistic, view of the world presented by Koheleth is this, that he knows of no future life compensating for the troubles of the present life, and resolving its mystery. It is true that he says, 12:7, that the life-spirit of the man who dies returns to God who gave it, as the body returns to the dust of which it is formed; but the question asked in 3:21 shows that this preferring of the life- spirit of man to that of a beast was not, in his regard, raised above all doubt. And what does this return to God mean? By no means such a return unto God as amounts to the annihilation of the separate existence of the spirit of man; for, in the first place, there is the supposition of this separate existence running through the Bible; in the second place, , 12:7b, does not point to an emanation; and in the third place, the idea of Hades prevailing in the consciousness of the ages before Christ, and which is also that of Koheleth, proves the contrary. Man exists also beyond the grave, but without the light and the force of thought and activity characterizing his present life, 9:5, 10. The future life is not better, but is worse than the present, a dense darkness enduring for ever, 9:6; 11:8; 12:5b . It is true, indeed, that from the justice of God, and the experiences of the present life as standing in contradiction thereto, 8:14, the conclusion is drawn, 12:14; 11:9, that there is a last decisive judgment, bringing all to light; but this great thought, in which the interest of the book in the progress of religious knowledge comes to a climax, is as yet only an abstract postulate of faith, and not powerful enough to brighten the future; and therefore, also, not powerful enough to lift us above the miseries of the present.

That the author gives utterance to such thoughts of the future as 12:7 and 11:9; 12:14, to which Wisd. 3:1 (The souls of the righteous are in God hand, and no trouble moves them) and Dan. 12:2 (Many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt) are related, as being their expansion, warrants the supposition that he disputes as little as Job does in Job. 14 the reality of a better future; but only that the knowledge of such a future was not yet given to him. In general, for the first time in the N.T. era, the hope of a better future becomes a common portion of the churchs creed, resting on the basis of faith in the history of redemption warranting it; and is advanced beyond the isolated prophetic gleams of light, the mere postulates of faith that were ventured upon, and the unconfirmed opinions, of the times preceding Christ. The N.T. Scripture shows how altogether different this world of sin and of change appears to be since a world of recompense and of glory has been revealed as its background; since the Lord has pronounced as blessed those who weep, and not those who laugh; and since, with the apostle (Rom. 8:18), we may be convinced that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed to us. The goal of human life, with its labour and its sufferings, is now carried beyond the grave. That which is done under the sun appears only as a segment of the universal and everlasting operation, governed by the wisdom of God, the separate portions of which can only be understood in their connection with the whole. The estimate taken of this present world, apart from its connection with the future, must be one-sided. There are two worlds: the future is the solution of the mystery of the present.

A N.T. believer would not be able to write such a book as that of Job, or even as that of Ecclesiastes, without sinning against revealed truth; without renouncing the better knowledge meanwhile made possible; without falling back to an O.T. standpoint. The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes is related to revealed religion in its O.T. manifestation, he is a believer before the coming of Christ; but not such an one as all, or as most were, but of peculiar character and position. There are some natures that have a tendency to joyfulness, and others to sadness. The author of this book does not belong to the latter class; for if he did, the call to rejoice, 11:9, 8; 15, etc., would not as it does pervade his book, as the , though in a deeper sense, pervades the Epistle to the Philippians. Neither does he belong to those superficial natures which see almost everything in a rosy light, which quickly and easily divest themselves of their own and of others sorrows, and on which the stern earnestness of life can make no deep and lasting impressions. Nor is he a man of feeling, whom his own weakness makes a prophet of evil; not a predominatingly passive man, who, before he could fully know the world, withdrew from it, and now criticises it from his own retired corner in a careless, inattentive mood; but a man of action, with a penetrating understanding and a faculty of keen observation; a man of the world, who, from his own experience, knows the world on all its sides; a restless spirit, who has consumed himself in striving after that which truly satisfies. That this man, who was forced to confess that all science and art, all that table dainties, and the love of women, and riches, and honour yielded him, was at last but vanity and vexation of spirit, and who gained so deep an insight into the transitoriness and vanity of all earthly things, into the sorrows of this world of sin and death, and their perplexing mysteries, does not yet conclude by resigning himself to atheism, putting Nothing (Nirvana), or blind Fate, in the place of God, but firmly holds that the fear of God is the highest duty and the condition of all true prosperity, as it is the highest truth and the surest knowledge that such is the case with him may well excite our astonishment;