Chapter VI: Introduction: § 1. on the Authorship, Form, Design, and Contents of the Book (2)

1. _The Babylonian Period._--For more than fifty years after they were carried away captive, the Jews served a Chaldean race, and were governed by Assyrian despots, of whom Nebuchadnezzar[11] was by far the greatest whether in peace or war. It is hardly too much to say that but for him the Babylonians would have had no place in history. A great soldier, a great statesman, a great builder and engineer, he knew how to consolidate and adorn his vast empire, an empire which is said to have "extended from the Atlantic to the Caspian, and from Caucasus to the Great Sahara." We owe our best conception of the personal character and public life of this great despot to the Book of Daniel. Daniel, although a Jew and a captive, was the vizier of the Babylonian monarch, and retained his post until the Persian conquest, when he became the first of "the three presidents" of the new empire. He therefore paints Nebuchadnezzar from the life. And in his Book we see the great King at the head of a magnificent court, surrounded by "princes, governors, and captains, judges, treasurers, councillors, and sheriffs," waited on by "well-favoured" eunuchs, attended by a crowd of astrologers and "wise men" who interpret to him the will of Heaven. He wields an absolute power, and disposes with a word of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, even the highest and most princely. All offices are in his gift. He can raise a slave to the second place in his kingdom (Daniel, to wit), and impose a foreigner (again, Daniel) on the priestly college as its head. Of so enormous a wealth that he makes an image of pure gold ninety feet high and nine feet broad, he lavishes it on public works--on temples, gardens, canals, fortifications--rather than on personal indulgence. Religious after a fashion, he wavers between "the God of the Jews" and the deity after whom he was named and whom he calls _his_ god. In temper he is hasty and violent, but not obstinate; he suddenly repents of his sudden resolves; he is capable of bursts of gratitude and devotion no less than of fierce accesses of fury, and displays at times a piety and self-abasement astonishing in an Oriental despot. His successors--Evil-Merodach, Neriglissar, Laborosoarchod, Nabonadius, and Belshazzar--need not detain us. Little is known of them, and, with one exception, their reigns were very short; and their main task seems to have been the erection of vast and sumptuous structures such as Nebuchadnezzar had been wont to rear. Probably none of the Babylonian monarchs save Nebuchadnezzar made any deep impression on the Hebrew mind.

[11] Instead of _Nebuchadnezzar_ Jeremiah and Ezekiel use the form
_Nebuchadrezzar_, which is nearer to the original _Nabu-Kuduri-utzur_,
_i.e._ "Nebo is the protector against misfortune."

And, indeed, the people of Babylon were much more likely than their despots to influence the Hebrew captives; for with them they would be brought into daily contact. Now the Babylonians were marked by a singular intellectual ability. Keen to know, patient to observe, exact and laborious in their researches, they could hardly fail to teach much to subject races, and to inspire them with some desire for knowledge. They had carried the sciences of mathematics and astronomy to a high pitch of perfection. They are said to have determined, within two seconds, the exact length of the solar year, and not to have been far wrong in the distances at which they computed the sun, moon and planets from the earth; and they compiled a serviceable catalogue of the fixed stars. The Hebrew prophets often refer to their "wisdom and learning." They excelled in architecture. Two of their vast works, the walls of Babylon, and the hanging gardens, were reckoned among "the seven wonders" of the ancient world. Their skill in manufacturing and arranging enamelled bricks has never yet been equalled.[12] In all mechanical arts, indeed, such as cutting stones and gems, casting gold and silver, blowing glass, modelling vases and ware, weaving carpets and muslins and linen, they take a very high place among the nations of antiquity. With manufacturing and artistic skill they combined the spirit of enterprise and adventure which leads to commerce. They were addicted to maritime pursuits; the "cry," or joy, "of the Chaldeans is in their ships," says Isaiah (xliii. 14); and Ezekiel (xvii. 4) calls Babylonia "a land of traffic," and its chief city "a city of merchants."

[12] There is a curious allusion to these enamelled bricks, and the
admiration the Jews conceived for them, in Ezekiel xxiii. 14-16.

But a larger, and probably the largest, class of the people must have busied themselves with the toils of agriculture; the broad Chaldean plain being famous, from the time of the Patriarchs to the present day, for an amazing and almost incredible fertility. Wheat, barley, millet, and sesame, all flourished with astonishing luxuriance, the ground commonly yielding a hundredfold, two hundredfold, and even ampler rewards for the toil of the husbandman.

With these abundant sources of wealth at their command, the people naturally grew luxurious and dissolute. "The daughter of the Chaldeans," says Isaiah (xlvii. 1-8), "is tender and delicate," given to pleasures, apt to live carelessly; her young men, says Ezekiel (xxiii. 15), are dandies, "exceeding in dyed attire," painting their faces, and wearing earrings. Chastity, in our modern sense of the term, was unknown.[13] The pleasures of the table and of the couch were carried to excess. Yet, like many other Eastern races, the Babylonians hid under their soft luxurious exterior a fierceness very formidable to their foes. The Hebrew Prophets (Hab. i. 6-8; Isaiah xiv. 16) describe them as "a bitter and hasty," a "terrible and dreadful" people, "fiercer than the evening wolves," a people whose tramp "made the earth tremble, and did shake kingdoms;" and all the historians of the time charge them with a thirst for blood which often took the most savage and inhuman forms.

[13] See _Herodotus_, book i., chap. 199; _Strabo_, xvi., p. 1058;
and the _Book of Baruch_, vi. 43.

Of the horrible licence and cruelty of the worship of Bel, Merodach, and Nebo, which did much to foster the fierce and cruel temper of the people, it is not necessary, it is hardly possible, to speak. Roughly taken, it was the service of the great forces of Nature by a wanton indulgence of the worst passions of man. It is enough to know that in Babylon idolatry took forms which made all forms of idolatry henceforth intolerable to the Jews; that now, once for all, they renounced that worship of strange gods to which they and their fathers had always hitherto been prone. This of itself was an immense advance, a great gain. Nor was it their only gain; for if by contact with the idolatrous Babylonians the Jews were driven back on their own Law and Scripture, their intercourse with a people of so active an intellect and a learning so deep and wide led them to study the Word of Jehovah in a new and more intelligent spirit.

Nor is it less obvious that in the social and political conditions of the Babylonians we have a key to many of the allusions to public life contained in Ecclesiastes. The great empire, indeed, presents precisely those elements which, in degenerate times and under feebler despots, must inevitably develop into the disorder, and misery, and crime which Coheleth depicts.

* * * * *

2. _The Persian Period._--The conquest of Babylon by the Persians, led by the heroic Cyrus, is, thanks to Daniel, one of the most familiar incidents of ancient history, so familiar that I need not recount it. By this conquest Cyrus--"the Shepherd, the Messiah, of the Lord," as Isaiah (xliv. 28; xlv. 1) terms him--became the undisputed master of well-nigh the whole known world of the time. Nor does he seem to have been unworthy of his extraordinary position. Of all ancient Oriental monarchs, out of the Hebrew pale, he bears the highest repute. Even the Greek authors, for the most part, represent him as energetic and patient, magnanimous and modest, and of a religious mind. Æschylus calls him "kindly" or "generous." Xenophon selected him as a model prince for all races. Plutarch says that "in wisdom, and virtue, and greatness of soul he appears to have been in advance of all kings." Diodorus makes one of his speakers say that Cyrus gained his ascendency by his self-command and good-feeling and gentleness. Simple in his habits, brave, and of a most just, humane, and clement spirit, he hated the cruel and lascivious idols of the East, and worshipped one only God, "the God of heaven." There is none like him in the antique world, none at least among the kings and princes of that world. And when, at the conquest of Babylon, he discovered in the captive Jews a race that also hated idols, and served one Lord, and knew a law of life as pure as his own, or even purer, we need feel no surprise either that he broke their bands in sunder and set them free to return to their native land, or that they saw in this pure and noble nature, this virtuous and religious prince, "a servant of Jehovah," and even a partial and shadowy resemblance to that Divine Deliverer and Redeemer for whose advent they had been taught to look.

Cyrus was sixty years of age when he took Babylon (B.C. 539), and died ten years after his conquest. He was succeeded by men utterly unlike himself, so unlike that the Persian nobles revolted from them, and placed Darius Hystaspes, the heir of an ancient dynasty, on the throne. As Cyrus was the soldier of the Persians, so Darius was their statesman. He it was who founded the "satrapial" form of administration; _i.e._ instead of governing the various provinces of his empire through native princes, he placed Persian satraps over them, these satraps being charged with the collection of the public revenue, the maintenance of order, and the administration of justice; in fact, he governed the whole Eastern world very much as we govern India. The internal organization of his vast unwieldy empire was the great work of Darius through his long reign of six-and-thirty years; but the event by which he is best remembered, and which proved to be fruitful in the most disastrous results to the State, was the opening of that fatal war with Greece, which at last, and under his feeble and degenerate successors, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and the rest, reached its close in the downfall of the Persian empire. We need not linger over the details of the story. It will be enough, for our purpose, to say that from the accession of Xerxes down to the conquest of the Persian empire by Alexander the Great--a stretch of a hundred and fifty years--that empire was declining to its fall. Its history towards the end was a mere succession of intrigues and insurrections, conspiracies and revolts. "Battle, murder, and sudden death" are its staple. The restraints of law and order grew ever weaker. The satraps were practically supreme in their several provinces, and used their power to extort enormous wealth from their miserable subjects. Eunuchs and concubines ruled in the palace. Manliness died out; the Persians were no longer taught "to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak the truth;" cunning and treachery took its place. The scene grows more and more pitiful, till at last the welcome darkness rushes down, and hides the ignoble agony of perhaps the vastest and wealthiest empire the world has seen.

* * * * *

But we must turn from the despots and their adventures to form some slight acquaintance with the people, the Persian people who, by the conquest of Cyrus, became the ruling class in the empire, always remembering, however, that the Babylonians must have remained by myriads both in the capital and in the provinces, and would continue to exert their influence on Hebrew thought and activity.

In all moral and religious qualities the Persians were far in advance of the Chaldeans, though they were probably behind them in many civilized arts and crafts. They were famous for their truthfulness and valour. The Greeks[14] confessed the Persians to be their equals in "boldness and warlike spirit"--Æschylus[15] calls them "a valiant-minded people"--while they are lavish in praise of the Persian veracity, a virtue in which they themselves were notably deficient. To the Persians God was "the Father of all truth;" to lie was shameful and irreligious. They disliked traffic because of its haggling, equivocation, and dishonest shifts. "Their chief faults," and even these were not developed till they became masters of the world, "were an addiction to self-indulgence and luxury, a passionate _abandon_ to the feeling of the hour whatever it might be, and a tameness and subservience in all their relations toward their princes which seem to moderns incompatible with self-respect and manliness." Patriotism came to mean mere loyalty to the monarch; the habit of unquestioning submission to his will, and even to his caprice, became a second nature to them. The despotic humour natural in "a ruling person" was thus nourished till it ran to the wildest excess. "He was their lord and master, absolute disposer of their lives, liberties, and property, the sole fountain of law and right, incapable himself of doing wrong, irresponsible, irresistible--a sort of God upon earth; one whose favour was happiness, at whose frown men trembled, before whom all bowed themselves down with the lowest and humblest obeisance." No subject could enter his presence save by special permission, or without a prostration like that of worship. To come unbidden was to be cut down by the royal guards, unless, as a sign of grace, he extended his golden sceptre to the culprit. To tread on the king's carpet was a grave offence; to sit, even unwittingly, on his seat a capital crime. So slavish was the submission both of nobles and of people that we are required on good authority to accredit such stories as these: wretches bastinadoed by the king's order declared themselves delighted that his majesty had condescended to remember them; a father, whose innocent son was shot by the despot in pure wantonness, had to crush down his natural indignation and grief, and to compliment the royal archer on the accuracy of his aim.

[14] _Herodotus_, ix. 62.

[15] Æschyl., _Pers._, 94.

Despising trade and commerce as menial and degrading, the ruling caste of a vast empire, with a monopoly of office and boundless means of wealth at their command, accustomed to lord it over subject races, of a high spirit and a faith comparatively pure, their very prosperity was their ruin, as it has been that of many a great nation. In their earlier times, they were noted for their sobriety and temperance. Content with simple diet, their only drink was water from the pure mountain streams; their garb was plain, their habits homely and hardy. But their temperance soon gave place to an immoderate luxury.[16] They acquired the Babylonian vices, and adopted at least the licence of the Babylonian rites. They filled their harems with wives and concubines. From the time of Xerxes onwards they grew nice and curious of appetite, eager for pleasure, effeminate, dissolute.

[16] "There is no nation which so readily adopts foreign customs as
the Persians.... As soon as they hear of any luxury they instantly
make it their own.... Each of them has several wives, and a still
larger number of concubines."--(_Herodotus_ book i., chap. 135).

With the growth of luxury on the part of the nobles and the people, the fear of the despot, at whose mercy all their acquisitions stood, grew more intense, more harassing, more degrading. Xerxes and his successors were utterly reckless in their exercise of the absolute power conceded to them, and delegated it to favourites as reckless as themselves. No noble however eminent, no servant of the State however faithful or distinguished, could be sure that he might not at any moment incur a displeasure which would strip him of all he possessed, even if it did not also condemn him to a cruel and lingering death. Out of mere sport and wantonness, to relieve the tedium of a weary hour, the despot might slay him with his own hand. For the crime, or assumed crime, of one person a whole family, or class, or race might be cut off unheard. Of the lengths to which this cruelty and caprice might go we have a sufficient example in the Book of Esther. The Ahasuerus of that singular narrative was, there can hardly be any doubt, the Xerxes of secular history--the very names, unlike as they sound, are the same name differently pronounced by two different races.[17] And all that the Book of Esther relates of the despot who repudiates a wife because she will not expose herself to the drunken admiration of a crowd of revellers, who raises a servant to the highest honours one day and hangs him the next, who commands the massacre of an entire race and then bids them inflict a horrible carnage on those who execute his decree, exactly accords with the Greek narratives which depict him as scourging the sea for having broken down his bridge over the Hellespont, beheading the engineers whose work was swept away by a storm, wantonly putting to death the sons of Pythias, his oldest friend, before their father's eyes; as first giving to his mistress the splendid robe presented to him by his queen, and then giving up to the queen's barbarous vengeance the mother of his mistress; as shamefully misusing the body of the heroic Leonidas, and, after his defeat by the Greeks, giving himself up to a criminal voluptuousness and offering a reward to the inventor of any new pleasure.

[17] Their common root is the Sanscrit _Kshatra_, a king; in the
Persepolitan inscriptions this word appears as Ksérshé, and from this
both the Hebrew _Achashuerash_ (Ahasuerus) and the Greek _Xerxes_
would easily be formed.

* * * * *

The Book Ecclesiastes was written certainly not before the reign of Xerxes (B.C. 486-465), and probably many years after it, a period in which, bad as were the conditions of his time, the times grew ever more lawless, the despotism more intolerable, the violence and licentiousness of the subordinate officials more unblushing. But at whatever period within these limits we may place it, all we have learned of the Babylonians and the Persians during the later years of the Captivity and the earlier years of the Exile (during which the Jews were still under the Persian rule) is in entire correspondence with the social and political state depicted by the Preacher. The abler and more kindly despots--as Cyrus, Darius, Artaxerxes--showed a singular favour to the Jews. Cyrus published a decree authorizing them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple, and enjoining the officials of the empire to further them in their enterprise; Darius confirmed that decree, despite the malignant misrepresentations of the Samaritan colonists; Artaxerxes held Ezra and Nehemiah in high esteem, and sent them to restore order and prosperity to the city of their fathers and its inhabitants. But a large number, apparently even a large majority, of the Jews, unable or disinclined to return, remained in the various provinces of the great empire, and were of course subject to the violence and injustice from which the Persians themselves were not exempt. "Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" cries the Preacher till we grow weary of the mournful refrain. Might he not well take that tone in a time so out of joint, so lowering, so dark?

The Book is full of allusions to the Persian luxury, to the Persian forms of administration, above all, to the corruptions of the later years of the Persian empire, and the miseries they bred. Coheleth's elaborate description (ii. 4-8) of the infinite variety of means by which he sought to allure his heart unto mirth--his palaces, vineyards, paradises, with their reservoirs and fountains, crowds of attendants, treasures of gold and silver, the harem full of beauties of all races--seems taken direct from the ample state of some luxurious Persian grandee. His picture of the public administration (v. 8, 9), in which "superior watcheth over superior, and superiors again watch over them," is a graphic sketch of the satrapial system, with its official hierarchy rising grade above grade, which was the work of Darius.[18] When the animating and controlling spirit of that system was taken away, when weak foolish despots sat on the throne, and despots just as foolish and weak ruled in every provincial divan, there ensued precisely that political state to which Coheleth perpetually refers.[19] Iniquity sat in the place of judgment, and in the place of equity there was iniquity (iii. 16); kings grew childish, and princes spent their days in revelry (x. 16); fools were lifted to high place, while nobles were degraded; and slaves rode on horses, while their quondam masters tramped through the mire (x. 6, 7). There was no fair reward for faithful service (ix. 11). Death brooded in the air, and might fall suddenly and unforeseen on any head, however high (ix. 12). To correct a public abuse was like pulling down a wall: some of the stones were sure to fall on the reformer's feet, from some cranny a serpent was sure to start out and bite him (x. 8, 9). To breathe a word against a ruler, even in the strictest privacy, was to run the hazard of destruction (x. 20). A resentful gesture, much more a rebellious word, in the divan was enough to ensure outrage. In short, the whole political fabric was fast falling into disrepair and decay, the rain leaking through the rotting roof, while the miserable people were ground down with ruinous exactions, in order that their rulers might revel on undisturbed (x. 18, 19). It is under such a pernicious and ominous maladministration of public affairs, and the appalling miseries it breeds, that there springs up in the hearts of men that fatalistic and hopeless temper to which Coheleth gives frequent expression. Better never to have been born than to live a life so cramped and thwarted, so full of perils and fears! Better to snatch at every pleasure, however poor and brief, than seek, by self-denial, by virtue, by integrity, to accumulate a store which the first petty tyrant who gets wind of it will sweep off, or a reputation for wisdom and goodness which will be no protection from, which will be only too likely to provoke, the despotic humours of men "dressed in a little brief authority."

[18] "The political condition of the people which this Book
presupposes is that in which they are placed under satraps"
(Delitzsch).

[19] It would be possible to collect from the Psalms of this date
materials for a description of the wrongs and miseries inflicted on
the Jews, and of their keen sense of them, quite as graphic and
intense as that of the Preacher. Here are a few phrases hastily culled
from them. The oppressors of Israel are described as being "clothed
with cruelty as with a garment," as "returning evil for good, and
hatred for good-will."

"Lift up thyself, thou Judge of the earth;
Render to the proud their desert.
They prate, they speak arrogantly;
All the workers of iniquity boast themselves.
They break in pieces Thy people, O Lord,
And afflict Thine heritage.
They slay the widow and the stranger,
And murder the fatherless.
And they say, The Lord shall not see,
Neither shall the God of Jacob consider" (xciv.).

"I am bowed down and brought very low;
I go mourning all the day long:
Truly I am nigh unto falling,
And my heaviness is ever before me" (xxxviii.).

"My days consume away like smoke,
And my bones are burned up like as a firebrand;
My heart is smitten down and withered like grass,
So that I forget to eat my bread" (cii.).

"I am helpless and poor,
And my heart is wounded within me" (cix.).

Most of the "imprecatory" Psalms belong to this period; and the
terrible wrongs of the Captivity, though they may not justify, in
large measure explain and excuse, that desire for vengeance which has
given so much offence to some of our modern critics.

If even Shakespeare,[20] in an unrestful and despairing mood strangely foreign to his serene temperament, beheld

"desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappy forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill;"

if, "tired with all these," he cried for "restful death," we can hardly wonder that the Preacher, who had fallen on times so evil that, compared with his, Shakespeare's were good, should prefer death to life.

[20] Sonnets, LXVI.

* * * * *

But there is another side to this sad story of the Captivity, another and a nobler side. If the Jews suffered much from Persian misrule, they learned much and gained much from the Persian faith. In its earlier form the religious creed whose documents Zoroaster afterwards collected and enlarged in the Zendavesta was probably the purest of the ancient heathen world; and even when it was corrupted by the baser additions of later times, its purer form was still preserved in songs (Gâthâs) and traditions. There can be no reasonable doubt that it largely affected the subsequent faith of the Hebrews, not indeed teaching them any truth they had not been taught before, but constraining them to recognize truths in their Scriptures which hitherto they had passed over or neglected.

In its inception the Persian creed and practice were a revolt against the sensuous and sensual worship of the great forces of Nature into which most Eastern religions, often pure enough, in their primitive forms, had degenerated, and, in especial, from the base forms into which the Hindus had degraded that primitive faith which is still to be recovered from the Rig-Veda. It acknowledged persons, real spiritual intelligences, in place of mere natural powers; and it drew moral distinctions between them, dividing these ruling intelligences into good and bad, pure and impure, benignant and malevolent,--an immense advance on the mere admiration of whatever was strong. Nay, in some sense, the Persian faith affirmed monotheism against polytheism; for it asserted that one Great Intelligence ruled over all other intelligences, and through them over the universe. This Supreme Intelligence, which the Persians called Ahura-mazda (Ormazd), is the true Creator, Preserver, Governor, of all spirits, all men, all worlds. He is "good," "holy," "pure," "true," "the Father of all truth," "the best Being of all," "the Master of Purity," "the Source and Fountain of all good." On the righteous He bestows "the good mind" and everlasting happiness; while He punishes and afflicts the evil. His worshippers were to the last degree intolerant of idolatry. They suffered no image to profane their temples; their earliest symbol of Deity is almost as pure and abstract as a mathematical sign, a circle with wings; the circle to denote the eternity of God, and the wings his omnipresence. Under this Supreme Lord, "the God of heaven," they admitted inferior beings, angels and archangels, whose names mark them out as personified Divine attributes, or as faithful servants who administer some province of the Divine empire.

To win the favour of the God of heaven it was requisite to cultivate the virtues of purity, truthfulness, industry, and a pious sense of the Divine presence; and these virtues must spring from the heart, and cover thought as well as word and deed. His worship consisted in the frequent offering of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving; in the reiteration of certain sacred hymns; in the occasional sacrifice of animals which, after being presented before Ormazd, furnished forth a feast for priest and worshipper; and in the performance of a mystic ceremony (the _Soma_), the gist of which seems to have lain in a grateful acknowledgment that the fruits of the earth, typified by the intoxicating juice of the Homa plant, were to be received as the gift of Heaven. A sentence or two from one of the hymns[21] of which there are many in the Zendavesta, will show better than many words to how high a pitch Divine worship was carried by the Persians: "We worship Thee, Ahura-mazda, the pure, the master of purity. We praise all good thoughts, all good words, all good deeds which are or shall be; and we likewise keep clean and pure all that is good. O Ahura-mazda, thou true happy Being! We strive to think, to speak, and to do only such things as may be best fitted to promote the two lives" (_i.e._ the life of the body and the life of the soul).

[21] Haug's _Essays_, pp. 162-3, quoted by Rawlinson.

In this course of well-doing the faithful were animated and confirmed by a devout belief in the immortality of the soul and a conscious future existence. They were taught that at death the souls of men, both good and bad, travelled along an appointed path to a narrow bridge which led to Paradise; over this bridge only pious souls could pass, the wicked falling from it into an awful gulf in which they received the due reward of their deeds. The happy souls of the good were helped across the long narrow arch by an angel,[22] and as they entered Paradise a great archangel rose from his throne to greet each of them with the words, "How happy art thou, who hast come to us from mortality to immortality!"

[22] This helpful angel is by no means peculiar to the Persian faith.
All the imaginative races of antiquity conceived of a being more
divine than man, though originally not equal to the gods, who guided
the departed soul on its lonely journey through the dark interspaces
of death. Theut conducted the released spirit of the Egyptian to the
judgment-seat. Hermes performed the same kind office for the Greeks,
Mercury for the Romans. Yama was the _nekropompos_ of the Hindus, and
the Persians retained the legend. The Rig-Veda represents him as the
first man who passed through death to immortality, and as therefore
the best guide of other men. Nor is it doubted that the Persians
derived their belief in a future life from the primitive Hindu creed.
If their faith was, as I have said, a revolt from the degenerate forms
of Hindu worship, it was also a return to its more ancient forms, as
religious reformations are apt to be. The fathers of the Aryan stock
had an unwavering assurance of a future life. In his Essay on the
_Funeral Rites of the Brahmans_, Max Müller cites a sort of liturgy
with which the ancient Hindu used to bid farewell to his deceased
friend while the body lay on the funeral pyre, which is, surely, very
noble and pathetic: "Depart thou, depart thou by the ancient paths, to
the place whither our fathers have departed. Meet with the ancient
ones (the Pitrs); meet with the Lord of Death; obtain thy desires in
heaven. Throw off thine imperfections; go to thy home. Become united
with a body; clothe thyself in a shining form. Go ye; depart ye;
hasten ye from hence" (Rig-Veda x. 14).

To which, as choral responses, might be added, "Let him depart to
those for whom flow the rivers of nectar. Let him depart to those who
through meditation have obtained the victory, who by fixing their
thoughts on the unseen have gone to heaven.... Let him depart to the
mighty in battle, to the heroes who have laid down their lives for
others, to those who have bestowed their goods on the poor" (Rig-Veda
x. 154).

As the body was consumed on the pyre the friends of the dead chanted a
hymn in which, after having bidden his body return to the various
elements from which it sprang, they prayed, "As for his unborn part,
do Thou, Lord (Agni), quicken it with Thy heat; let Thy flame and Thy
brightness kindle it: convey it to the world of the righteous."

It was from this pure and lofty source that the Persians drew their
faith in the better life to be.

Max Müller also quotes as the prayer of a dying Hindu woman, "Place
me, O Pure One, in that everlasting and unchanging world where light
and glory are found. Make me immortal in the world in which joys,
delights, and happiness abide, where the desires are obtained"
(Atharda Veda xii. 3, 17).

Cremation itself bore witness to the Hindu faith in immortality, since
they held that "the fire which set free the spiritual element from the
superincumbent clay, completed the third or heavenly birth," the
second birth having been achieved when men set themselves to a
faithful discharge of their religious duties.

This wonderfully pure creed was, however, in process of time, corrupted in many ways. First of all, "the sad antithesis of human life," the conflict between light and darkness, good and evil--the standing puzzle of the world--led the votaries of Ormazd to _dualism_. Ormazd loved and created only the good. The evil in man, and in the world, must be the work of an enemy. This enemy, Ahriman (Augrô-maniyus), has been seeking from eternity to undo, to mar and blast, the fair work of the God of heaven. He is the baleful author of all evil, and under him are spirits as malignant as himself. Between these good and evil powers there is incessant conflict, which extends to every soul and every world. It will never cease until the great Deliverer arise--for even of _Him_ the Persians had some dim prevision--who shall conquer and destroy evil at its source, all things then rounding to their final goal of good.

Another corrupting influence had its origin in a too literal interpretation of the names given to the Divine Being, or the qualities ascribed to Him, by the founders of the faith. Ormazd, for example, had been described as "true, _lucid_, _shining_, the originator of all the best things, of the spirit in nature and of the growth in nature, _of the luminaries and of the self-shining brightness which is in the luminaries_." From these epithets and ascriptions there sprang in later days the worship of the sun, then of fire, as a type of God--a worship still maintained by the disciples of Zoroaster, the Ghebers and the Parsees. And from this point onward the old sad story repeats itself; once more we have to trace a pure and lofty primitive faith along the grades through which it declines to the low, base level of a sensuous idolatry. The Magians, always the bitter enemies of Zoroastrianism, held that the four elements--fire, air, earth, and water--were the only proper objects of human reverence. It was not difficult for them to persuade those who already worshipped fire, and were beginning to forget of Whom fire was the symbol, to include in their homage air, water, and earth. Divination, incantations, the interpretation of dreams and omens soon followed, with all the dark shadows which science and religion cast behind them. And then came the lowest deep of all, that worship of the gods by sensual indulgence to which idolatry gravitates, as by a law.

Nevertheless, we must remember that, even at their worst, the Persians preserved the sacred records of their earlier faith, and that their best men steadily refused to accept the base additions to it which the Magians proposed. Corrupt as in many respects many of them became, the conquest of Babylon was the death-blow to the sensual idol-worship which had reigned for twenty centuries on the Chaldean plain; it never wholly recovered from it, though it survived it for a time. From that date it declined to its fall: "Bel bowed down; Nebo stooped; Merodach was broken in pieces" (Isa. xlvi. 1; Jer. l. 2). The nobler monarchs of Persia were true disciples of the primitive creed of their race. It was similarity of creed which won their favour for the Hebrew captives. In the decree which enfranchised them (Ezra i. 2, 3) Cyrus expressly identifies Ormazd, "the God of heaven," with Jehovah, the God of Israel; he says, "_The Lord God of heaven_ hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He hath charged me to build _Him_ a house at Jerusalem." Nor was this belief in one God, whose temple was to be defiled by no image even of Himself, the only point in common between the better Persians, such as Cyrus and Darius, and the better Jews. There were many such points. Both believed in an evil spirit tempting and accusing men; in myriads of angels, all the host of heaven, who formed the armies of God and did his pleasure; in a tree of life and a tree of knowledge, and a serpent the enemy of man; both shared the hope of a coming Deliverer from evil, the belief in an immortal and retributive life beyond the grave, and a happy Paradise in which all righteous souls would find a home and see their Father's face. These common faiths and hopes would all be points of sympathy and attachment between the two races; and it is to this agreement in religious doctrine and practice that we must ascribe the striking facts that the Persians, ordinarily the most intolerant of men, never persecuted the Jews; and that the Jews, ordinarily so impatient of foreign domination, never made a single attempt to cast off the Persian yoke, but stood by the declining empire even when the Greeks were thundering at its gates.

On one question all competent historians and commentators are agreed; viz. that the Jews gained immensely in the clearness and compass of their religious faith during the Captivity. That, which was the punishment, was also the term, of their idolatry; into that sin they never afterwards fell. Now first, too, they began to understand that the bond of their unity was not local, not national even, but spiritual and religious; they were spread over every province of a foreign empire, yet they were one people, and a sacred people, in virtue of their common service of Jehovah and their common hope of Messiah's advent. This hope had been vaguely felt before, and just previous to the Captivity Isaiah had arrayed it in an unrivalled splendour of imagery; now it sank into the popular mind, which needed it so sorely, and became a deep and ardent longing of the national heart. From this period, moreover, the immortality of the soul and the life beyond death entered distinctly and prominently into the Hebrew creed. Always latent in their Scriptures, these truths disclosed themselves to the Jews as they came into contact with the Persian doctrines of judgment and future rewards. Hitherto they had thought mainly, if not exclusively, of the temporal rewards and punishments by which the Mosaic law enforced its precepts. Henceforth they saw that, in time and on earth, human actions are not carried to their final and due results; they looked forward to a judgment in which all wrongs should be righted, all unpunished sins receive their recompense, and all the sufferings of the good be transmuted into joy and peace.

Now this, as we shall see, is the very moral of the Book Ecclesiastes, the triumphant climax to which it mounts. The endeavour of Coheleth is to show how evil and good were blended in the human lot, evil so largely preponderating in the lot of many of the good as to make life a curse unless it were sustained by hope; to give hope by assuring the Hebrew captives that "God takes cognizance of all things," and "will bring every work to judgment," good or bad; and to urge on them, as the conclusion of his Quest, and as the whole duty of man, to prepare for that supreme audit by fearing God and keeping his commandments. This was the light he was commissioned to carry into their great darkness; and if the lamp and the oil were of God, it is hardly too much to say that the spark which kindled the lamp was taken from the Persian fire, since that too was of God. Or, to vary the figure, and make it more accurate, we may say that the truths of the future life lay hidden in the Hebrew Scriptures, and that it was by the light of the Persian doctrine of the future that the Jews, stimulated by the mental culture and activity acquired in Babylon, discovered them in the Word.

It is thus, indeed, that God has taught men in all ages. The Word remains ever the same, but our conditions change, our mental posture varies, and with our posture the angle at which the light of Heaven falls on the sacred page. We are brought into contact with new races, new ideas, new forms of culture, new discoveries of science, and the familiar Word forthwith teems with new meanings, with new adaptations to our needs; truths unseen before, though they were always there, come to view, deep truths rise to the surface, mysterious truths grow simple and plain, truths that jangled on the ear melt into harmony; our new needs stretch out lame hands of faith, and find an unexpected but ample supply; and we are rapt in wonder and admiration as we afresh discover the Bible to be the Book for all races and for all ages, an inexhaustible fountain of truth and comfort and grace.

TRANSLATION.

THE PROLOGUE.

_IN WHICH THE PROBLEM OF THE BOOK IS INDIRECTLY STATED._

CHAP. I., vv. 1-11.

1 The words of the Preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem.

2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher;
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,

3 Since man hath no profit from all his labour
Which he laboureth under the sun![23]

[23] Just as we speak of this "sublunary world," so "under the sun" is
the characteristic designation of the earth throughout this Book.

4 One generation passeth, and another generation cometh;
While the earth abideth for ever.

5 The sun also riseth, and the sun goeth down;
And panteth toward the place at which it will rise again.

6 The wind goeth toward the south, and veereth to the north;
It whirleth round and round;
And the wind returneth on its course.

7 All the streams run into the sea, yet the sea is not full;
To the place whence the streams came, thither they return again.

8 All things are weary with toil. Man cannot utter it.
The eye can never be satisfied with seeing,
Nor the ear with hearing.

9 What hath been will be,
And that which is done is that which will be done;
And there is no new thing under the sun.

10 If there be anything of which it is said, "Behold, this is new!"
It hath been long ago, in the ages that were before us.

11 There is no remembrance of those who have been;
Nor will there be any remembrance of men who are to come
Among those that will live after them.

FIRST SECTION.

_THE QUEST OF THE CHIEF GOOD IN WISDOM AND IN PLEASURE._

CHAP. I., v. 12, to CHAP. II., v. 26.

[Sidenote: _The Quest in Wisdom._ Ch. i., vv. 12-18.]

12 I, the Preacher, was King over Israel, in Jerusalem:

13 And I applied my heart to survey and search by wisdom
Into all that is done under heaven:
This sore task hath God given to the children of men,
To exercise themselves therewith.

VER. 13. _To survey and search into, etc._ The verbs
indicate the broad extent which his researches covered, and
the depth to which they penetrated.

14 I have considered all the works that are done under the sun,
And, behold, they are all vanity and vexation of spirit.

VER. 14. _Vexation of spirit._ Literally, "striving after
the wind." But the time-honoured phrase, "vexation of
spirit," sufficiently expresses the writer's meaning; and it
seems better to retain it than, with the Revised Version, to
introduce the Hebrew metaphor, which has a somewhat novel
and foreign sound.

15 That which is crooked cannot be set straight,
And that which is lacking cannot be made up.

16 Therefore I spake to my heart, saying,
Lo, I have acquired greater wisdom
Than all who were before me in Jerusalem,
My heart having seen much wisdom and knowledge;

17 For I had given my heart to find knowledge and wisdom.
I perceive that even this is vexation of spirit;

VER. 17. _To find knowledge and wisdom._ Both the Authorized
and Revised Versions render "to know wisdom, and to know
_madness and folly_." The latter clause, however, violates
both the sense and the grammatical construction. The word
translated "to know" is not an infinitive, but a noun, and
should be rendered "knowledge;" the word translated "folly"
means "prudence," and the word translated "madness" hardly
means more than "folly." The text, too, seems corrupt. The
sense of the passage is against it, I think, as it now
stands; for the design of the Preacher is simply to show the
insufficiency of wisdom and knowledge, not to prove folly
foolish. On the whole, therefore, it seems better to follow
the high authority which arranges the text as it is here
rendered. The Hebraist will find the question fully
discussed in _Ginsburg_.

18 For in much wisdom is much sadness,
And to multiply knowledge is to multiply sorrow.

[Sidenote: _The Quest in Pleasure._ Ch ii., vv. 1-11.]

1 Then I said to my heart,
Go to, now let me prove thee with mirth,
And thou shalt see pleasure:
And, lo, this too is vanity!

2 To mirth I said, Thou art mad!
And to pleasure, What canst thou do?

3 I thought in my heart to cheer my body with pleasure,
While my spirit guided it wisely,
And to lay hold on folly,
Till I should see what it is good for the sons of men to do under heaven,
Through the brief day of their life.

4 I gave myself to great works;
I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards;

5 I made me gardens and parks,
And I planted in them all manner of fruit-trees;

6 I made me tanks of water,
From which to water the groves:

7 I bought me men-servants and maid-servants,
And had servants born in my house.
I had also many herds of oxen and sheep,
More than all who were before me in Jerusalem:

8 I heaped up silver and gold,
And the treasures of kings and of kingdoms:
I got me men-singers and women-singers;
And took delight in many fair concubines:

9 So that I surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem,
My wisdom abiding with me;

10 And nothing that my eyes desired did I withhold from them,
I did not keep back my heart from any pleasure;
For my heart took joy in all my toil,
And this was my portion therefrom.

11 But when I turned to look on all the works which my hands had wrought,
And at the labour which it cost me to accomplish them,
Behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit,
And there was no profit under the sun.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Wisdom and Pleasure compared._ Ch. ii., vv. 12-23.]

12 Then I turned to compare wisdom with madness and folly--
And what can he do that cometh after the king
Whom they made king long ago?--

13 And I saw that wisdom excelleth folly
As far as light excelleth darkness:

14 The wise man's eyes are in his head,
While the fool walketh blindly.
Nevertheless I knew that the same fate will befall both.

15 Therefore I spake with my heart:
"A fate like that of the fool will befall me, even me;
To what end, then, am I wiser?"
And I said to my heart:
"This too is vanity,

16 For there is no more remembrance of the wise man than of the fool;
For both will be forgotten,
As in time past so also in days to come:
And, alas, the wise man dieth even as the fool!"

17 So life became hateful to me, for a sore burden was upon me,
Even the labour which I wrought under the sun;
Since all is vanity and vexation of spirit:

18 Yea, I hated all the gain which I had gained under the sun,
Because I must leave it to the man who shall come after me,

19 And who can tell whether he will be a wise man or a fool?
Yet shall he have power over all my gain
Which I have wisely gained under the sun:
This too is vanity.

20 Then I turned and gave my heart up to despair
Concerning all the gain which I had gained under the sun;

21 For here is a man who hath laboured wisely, and prudently,
and dexterously,
And he must leave it as a portion to one who hath not laboured therein:
This also is vanity and a great evil;

22 For man hath nothing of all his heavy labour,
And the vexation of his heart under the sun,

23 Since his task grieveth and vexeth him all his days,
And even at night his heart hath no rest:
This too is vanity.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _The Conclusion._ Ch. ii., vv. 24-26.]

24 There is nothing better for a man than to eat and to drink,
And to let his soul take pleasure in his labour.
But even this, I saw, cometh from God;

25 For who can eat,
And who enjoy himself, apart from Him?

26 For to the man who is good before Him,
He giveth wisdom and knowledge and joy;
But to the sinner He giveth the task to gather and to heap up,
That he may leave it to him who is good before God:
This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.

_SECOND SECTION._

_THE QUEST OF THE CHIEF GOOD IN DEVOTION TO THE AFFAIRS OF BUSINESS._

CHAP. III., v. 1, to CHAP. V., v. 20.

[Sidenote: _The Quest obstructed by Divine Ordinances_; Ch. iii., vv. 1-15.]

1 There is a time for all things,
And a season for every undertaking under heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up plants;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast stones, and a time to gather up stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew;
A time to be silent, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time for war, and a time for peace:

9 He who laboureth hath therefore no profit from his labours.

10 I have considered the task which God hath given to the sons of men,
To exercise themselves withal:

11 He hath made everything beautiful in its season;
He hath also put eternity into their heart;
Only they understand not the work of God from beginning to end.

12 I found that there was no good for them but to rejoice,
And to do themselves good all their life;

13 But also that, if a man eat and drink,
And take pleasure in all his labour,
It is a gift of God.

14 I found too that whatever God hath ordained continueth for ever;
Nothing can be added to it,
And nothing taken from it:
And God hath so ordered it that men may fear before Him.

15 That which is hath been,
And that which is to be was long ago;
For God recalleth the past.

[Sidenote: _And by Human Injustice and Perversity._ Ch. iii., v. 16. Ch. iv., v. 3.]

16 Moreover, I saw under the sun
That there was iniquity in the place of justice,
And in the place of equity there was iniquity.

17 I said to mine heart:
"God will judge the righteous and the wicked,
For there is a time for everything and for every deed with Him."

18 Yet I said to my heart of the children of men:
"God hath sifted them,
To show that they, even they, are but as beasts.

19 For a mere chance is man, and the beast a mere chance,
And they are both subject to the same chance;
As is the death of the one, so is the death of the other;
And both have the same spirit:
And the man hath no advantage over the beast,
For both are vanity:

20 Both go to the same place;
Both sprang from dust, and both turn into dust:

21 And who knoweth whether the spirit of man goeth upward,
Or the spirit of the beast goeth downward to the earth?"