Chapter II: ‘truth and Fiction’ in an Autobiography

Let us now take a general survey of this strange book, regarding it as a record of the conflicting moods and experiences of a thoughtful man of the world. The author is too modest to appear in his own person (at least in i. 1-ii. 12), but, like Cicero in his dialogues, selects a mouthpiece from the heroic past. His choice could not be doubtful. Who so fit as the wisest of his age, the founder and patron of gnomic poetry, king Solomon (1 Kings iv. 30-32)? After the preluding verses, from which a quotation has been given above, Ecclesiastes continues thus:—

I Koheleth have been[300] king over Israel in Jerusalem; and I gave
my mind to making search and exploration, by wisdom, concerning all
that is done under heaven; that is a sore trouble which God hath
given to the sons of men to trouble themselves therewith! I saw all
the works which are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity
and pursuit of wind.

That which is crooked cannot be straightened,
and a deficiency cannot be reckoned (i. 12-15).

The name or title ‘Koheleth’ is obscure. According to the Epilogue ‘Koheleth was a wise man’ (xii. 9)—a statement which confirms the explanation of the name as meaning ‘one who calls an assembly.’[301] The ‘wise men’ of Israel gathered their disciples together, and such an able teacher as Koheleth would fain gather all who have ears to hear around his seat. But Koheleth is also Solomon (though only for a short time—the author did not, I suppose, live long enough thoroughly to fuse the conceptions of king and philosopher[302]). The wise king is to be imagined standing on the brink of the grave, and casting the clear-sighted glance of a dying man on past life, somewhat as Moses in parts of Deuteronomy or David in 2 Sam. xxii., xxiii. 1-7. A subtle and poetic view of Solomon’s career is thus opened before us. He is not here represented in his political relation, but as a specimen of the highest type of human being, with a boundless appetite for pleasure and every means of gratifying it. But even such a man’s deliberate verdict on all forms of pleasure is that they are utterly unsubstantial, mere vanity (lit. a vapour—Aquila, ἀτμίς; comp. James iv. 14). Neither pure speculation (i. 13-18), nor riotous mirth (ii. 1, 2), nor even the refined voluptuousness consistent with the free play of the intellect[303] (ii. 3), could satisfy his longing, or enable him, with Goethe’s Faust, to say to the flying moment, ‘Ah! linger yet, thou art so fair.’ It is true that wisdom is after all better than folly; Solomon from his ‘specular mount’ could ‘see’ this to be a truth (ii. 13); but in the end he found it as resultless as ‘the walking in darkness’ of the fool.

‘And I myself perceived that one fate befalleth them all. And I said
in my heart, As the fate of the fool will be the fate which shall
befall me, even me; and why have I then been exceeding wise? and I
said in my heart that this also is vanity’ (ii. 14_b_, 15), i.e.
that this undiscriminating fate is a fresh proof of the delusiveness
of all things.

And in this strain Koheleth runs on to nearly the end of the chapter, with an added touch of bitterness at the thought of the doubtful character of his successor (ii. 18, 19). Then occurs one of those abrupt transitions which so often puzzle the student of Ecclesiastes. In ii. 1-11 Koheleth has rejected the life of sensuous pleasure, even when wisely regulated, as ‘vanity.’ He now returns to the subject, and declares this to be, not of course the ideally highest good, but the highest good open to man, if it were only in his power to secure it. But he has seen that both sensuous enjoyment and the wisdom which regulates it come from God, who grants these blessings to the man who is good in his sight, while profitless trouble is the portion of the sinner. He repeats therefore that even wisdom and knowledge and joy, the highest attainable goods, are, by reason of their uncertainty, ‘vanity and pursuit of wind’ (ii. 26).

At the end of this long speech of Koheleth, we naturally ask how far it can be regarded as autobiographical. Only, I think, in a qualified sense. Its psychological depth points to similar experiences on the part of the author, but to experiences which have been deepened in their imaginative reproduction. It is truth mingled with fiction—_Wahrheit und Dichtung_—which we meet with in the first two chapters. A more strictly biographical narrative appears to begin in chap. iii., from which point the allusions to Solomon cease, and are replaced by scattered references to contemporary history. The confidences of the author are introduced by a passage (iii. 1-8) in the gnomic style, containing a catalogue of the various actions, emotions, and states of feeling which make up human life. Each of these, we are told, has its own allotted season in the fixed order of nature, but as this is beyond the ken and influence of man, the question arises, ‘What profit hath he that worketh in that wherewith he wearieth himself?’ (iii. 9.) Thus, the ‘wearisome trouble’ of the ‘sons of men’ has no permanent result. All that you can do is to accustom yourself to acquiesce in destiny: you will then see that every act and every state in your ever-shifting life is truly beautiful or seemly (iii. 11), even if not profitable to the individual (iii. 9). More than this, man has been endowed with the faculty of understanding this kaleidoscopic world, with the drawback that he cannot possibly embrace it all in one view:—[304]

Also he hath put the world into their heart (i.e. mind), except that
man cannot find out from beginning to end the work which God hath
made (iii. 11).

In fact, to quote Lord Bacon’s words in the _Advancement of Learning_, ‘God has framed the mind like a glass, capable of the image of the universe, and desirous to receive it, as the eye to receive the light.’ But here a dark mood interrupts the course of our author’s meditations; or perhaps it is the record of a later period which is but awkwardly attached to the previous passages. ‘To rejoice and to fare well’—sensual (or, let us say, sensuous) pleasure, in short—is now represented as the only good for man, and even that is not to be too absolutely reckoned upon, for ‘it is the gift of God’ (iii. 12, 13, 22; comp. ii. 24). Certainly our author at any rate did not succeed in drowning care in the wine-cup: he is no vulgar sensualist. His merriment is spoiled by the thought of the misery of others, and he can find nothing ‘under the sun’ (a passionate generalisation from life in Palestine) but violence and oppression. In utter despair he pronounces the dead happier than the living (iv. 1, 2). In fact, he says, neither in life nor in death has man any superiority over the other animals, which are under no providential order, and have no principle of continuance. Such is the cynical theory which tempts Koheleth; and yet he seems to have hesitated before accepting it, unless we may venture with Bickell to strike out iii. 17, as the work of a later editor who believed in retributions hereafter (like xi. 9_b_ xii. 7, 13, 14). I confess that consistency seems to me to require this step; the verse is in fact well fitted to be an antidote to the following verse, which seems to have suggested the opening phrase. This is how the text runs at present:—

I said in my heart, The righteous and the wicked shall God judge;
for there is a time for every purpose and for every work _there_
(emphatically for ‘in the other world;’ or read, hath he appointed).
I said in my heart, (It happens) on account of the sons of men, that
God may test them, and that they may see that they are but beasts.
For the sons of men are a chance (comp. Herod. i. 32), and beasts
are a chance; yea, all have one chance: as the one dies, so dies the
other; yea, they all have one spirit; and advantage of the one over
the other there is none, for all is vanity. All go unto one place;
all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether
the spirit of man goes upward, and whether the spirit of the beast
goes downward to the earth?[305] (iii. 17-21.)

Our author’s abiding conviction is that ‘the spirit does but mean the breath’ (_In Memoriam_, lvi.), so that man and the lower animals have ‘one spirit’ and alike end in dust. ‘_Pulvis et umbra sumus._’ It is true, some of his contemporaries hold the new doctrine of Immortality, but Koheleth, in his cool scepticism, hesitates to accept it. Which indeed of its enthusiastic advocates can claim to ‘know’ that which he asserts; or can prove to Koheleth’s satisfaction that God (as a psalmist in Ps. xlix. 15 puts it) will ‘receive’ the spirit of man, in spite of the fact that the vital principle of beasts loses itself in the dust of death? It is no doubt an awkward construction which Koheleth adopts: he _seems_ to express an uncertainty as to the fate of the lower animals. To convey the meaning which I have given, the construction ought to have been disjunctive, as in this line from a noble modern poem,

Friend, who knows if death indeed have life, or life have death for
goal?[306]

But there is, or rather there ought to be, no doubt as to Koheleth’s meaning. Dean Plumptre frankly admits that ‘it is not till nearly the close of the book, with all its many wanderings of thought, that the seeker rests in that measure of the hope of immortality which we find’ [but this is open to considerable doubt] ‘in xii. 7.’

Footnote 300:

See the fantastic legend to account for the past tense in _Midrash
Koheleth_ (transl. Wünsche), or Ginsburg (p. 268; comp. p. 38).

Footnote 301:

Dean Plumptre thinks Koheleth (like ἐκκλησιαστής), which is rendered
by him ‘the Debater,’ means rather a member of an assembly, than a
teacher or preacher, and compares Ecclus. xxxviii. 33, where the son
of Sirach says of labourers and artisans that they ‘shall not sit high
in the congregation,’ i.e. in the _ecclesia_ or academy of sages. But
judging from the parallel line the ‘congregation’ is rather that of
the people in general (comp. Ecclus. xv. 5). The Dean’s view that the
book embodies the inward debates of a Jewish philosopher may be to a
great extent true, but for all that Koheleth is throughout represented
as speaking alone and with authority. On the philological explanation
of the word, see Appendix.

Footnote 302:

This seems a reasonable view. Bickell boldly maintains that i. 1, 12,
16, ii. 7, 8, 9 [12] are interpolations (made presumably to facilitate
the recognition of the book as canonical). Observe however that the
(fictitious) author is nowhere declared to be Solomon, but only
ben-David (i. 1). He claims attention merely as a private person, as
an interpreter of the complaints of humanity. Though he does once
expressly refer to his royal state (i. 12), it is only to suggest to
his readers what ample opportunities he has enjoyed of learning the
vanity of earthly grandeur. So, very plausibly, Bloch (_Ursprung des
Kohelet_, p. 17).

Footnote 303:

The passage indeed is obscure and possibly corrupt (so Bickell), but
the above words probably do justice to the mood described.

Footnote 304:

Among the many other interpretations of this difficult passage, two
may be mentioned here. (1) ‘He has also set worldliness in their
heart, without which man cannot understand the work that God does,
from beginning to end.’ So Kalisch (_Path and Goal_, frequently). This
is an improvement upon the translation of Gesenius and others, who
render, not ‘without which’ &c., but ‘so that man may not’ &c. The
objection to the latter rendering is that it gives ‘worldliness’ a New
Testament sense (comp. 1 John ii. 15). Kalisch, however, in full
accord with the spirit of Judaism, makes Koheleth frankly accept
‘worldliness’ as a good, understanding by ‘worldliness’ a sense of
worldly duties and enjoyments. Had this however been Koheleth’s
meaning, would he not have coined another of his favourite abstract
terms (comp. the Peshitto’s _’olmoyuthō_ = αἰὼν in Eph. ii. 2)? (2)
‘Also he has put eternity into their heart, but so that man cannot’
&c. So Ginsburg and Delitzsch (_desiderium æternitatis_, taking
‘eternity’ in a metaphysical sense = ‘that which is beyond time’); so
also Nowack (taking it in the popular sense of years following upon
years without apparent limit). Ginsburg’s view is against the context,
in which the continuance of the human spirit is doubted; but Nowack’s
explanation is not unacceptable. Man has been enabled to form the idea
of Time (for the popular view of ‘eternity’ comes practically to
this), and has divided this long space into longer and shorter
periods; what happens in one period or season, he can compare with
what happens in another, thus finding all well-adapted and
‘beautiful.’ But he cannot grasp the whole of Time in one view. But I
still prefer the explanation given in the text, as being simpler, in
spite of the fact that _’ōlām_ nowhere else occurs in the sense of
‘world’ (or the present order of things), so common in later Hebrew.

Footnote 305:

This is the rendering of the four principal versions and of all the
best critics, including Mercier, Ewald, Ginsburg, Grätz and Delitzsch;
it agrees with the general tendency of Koheleth, and in particular
with vii. 5, where the grave is called man’s ‘eternal home’ (see
below). It is no doubt opposed by the vowel-points, which are followed
in King James’s Bible. But it is more than probable (considering other
parallel phenomena) that the authors of the points were directed by a
theological and therefore uncritical motive, that, namely, of effacing
as far as possible a trace of Koheleth’s opposition to the doctrine,
by that time recognised as orthodox, of the immortality of the soul.

Footnote 306:

Swinburne, _On the Verge_.