It is not surprising that the book of Ecclesiastes had a struggle to
maintain its place in the canon, and it was probably only its
reputed Solomonic authorship and the last two verses of the book
that permanently secured its position at the synod of Jamnia in 90
A.D. The Jewish scholars of the first century A.D. were struck by
the manner in which it contradicted itself: e.g., "I praised the
dead more than the living," iv. 2, "A living dog is better than a
dead lion," ix. 4; but they were still more distressed by the spirit
of scepticism and "heresy" which pervaded the book (cf. xi. 9 with
Num. xv. 39).
In spite of the opening verse, it is very plain that Solomon could
not have been the author of the book. Not only in i. 12 is his reign
represented as over--I _was_ king--though Solomon was on the
throne till his death, but in i. 16, ii. 7, 9, he is contrasted with
all--apparently all the kings--that were before him in Jerusalem,
though his own father was the founder of the dynasty. There is no
probability that Solomon would have so scathingly assailed the
administration of justice for which he himself was responsible, as
is done in iii. 16, iv. i, v. 8. The sigh in xii. 12 over the
multiplicity of books is thoroughly inappropriate to the age of
Solomon.
Indeed the whole manner in which the problem is attacked is
inappropriate to so early a stage of literary and religious
development. But it was by a singularly happy stroke that Solomon
was chosen by a later thinker as the mouthpiece of his reflections
on life; for Solomon, with his wealth, buildings, harem,
magnificence, had had opportunity to test life at every point, and
his exceptional wisdom would give unique value to his judgment.
Ecclesiastes is undoubtedly one of the latest books in the Old
Testament. The criteria for determining the date are chiefly three.
(1) _Linguistic_. Alike in its single words (e.g., preference
for abstract nouns ending in _ûth_) its syntax (e.g., the
almost entire absence of waw conversive) and its general linguistic
character, the book illustrates the latest development of the Hebrew
language. There are not a few words which occur elsewhere only in
Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther: there are some pure Aramaic
words, some words even which belong to the Hebrew of the Mishna.
Even if we allow an early international use of Aramaic, the corrupt
Hebrew of the book would alone compel us to place it very late. Some
have sought to strengthen the argument for a late date from the
presence of Greek influence on the _language_ of the book,
e.g., in such phrases as "under the sun," "to behold the sun," "the
good which is also beautiful," v. 18; but, probable as it may be, it
is not certain that there are Graecisms in the language of
Ecclesiastes.[1]
[Footnote 1: Cf. A. H. McNeile, _Introduction to Ecclesiastes_,
p. 43.]
(2) _Historical_. There is much interesting detail which is
clearly a transcript of the author's experience: the slaves he had
seen on horseback, x. 7, the poor youth who became king, iv. 13-16
(cf. ix. 14ff.). These incidents, however, are too lightly touched,
and we know too little of the history of the period, to be able to
locate them definitely. The woe upon the land whose king is a child,
x. 16, has been repeatedly connected with the time of Ptolemy V.
Epiphanes (205-181 B.C.), the last of his house who ruled over
Palestine and who at his father's death was little over four years
old. However that may be, the general historical background is
unmistakably that of the late post-exilic age. The book bears the
stamp of an evil time, when injustice and oppression were the order
of the day, iii. 16, iv. 1, v. 8, government was corrupt and
disorderly and speech dangerous, x. 20. The allusions would suit the
last years of the Persian empire (333); but if, as the linguistic
evidence suggests, the book is later, it can hardly be placed before
250 B.C., as during the earlier years of the Greek period, Palestine
was not unhappy.
(3) _Philosophical_. The speculative mood of the book marks it
as late. Though not an abstract discussion--the Old Testament is
never abstract--it is more abstract than the kindred discussion in
the book of Job. It is hard to believe that Ecclesiastes was not
affected by the Greek philosophical influences of the time. If it be
not necessary to trace its contempt of the world to Stoicism, or its
inculcation of the wise enjoyment of the passing moment directly to
Epicureanism, at least an indirect influence can hardly be denied.
Greek thought was spreading as the Greek language was; and the
scepticism of Ecclesiastes, though not without parallels in earlier
stages of Hebrew literature, yet here assumes a deliberate,
sustained and all but philosophic form, which finds its most natural
explanation in the profound and pervasive influence of Greek
philosophy--an influence which could hardly be escaped by an age in
which books had multiplied and study been prosecuted till it was a
burden, xii. 12.
This "charming book," as Renan calls it, has in many ways more affinity
with the modern mind than any other in the Old Testament. It is weary
with the weight of an insoluble problem. With a cold-blooded frankness,
which is not cynical, only because it is so earnest, it faces the stern
facts of human life, without being able to bring to their interpretation
the sublime inspirations of religion. More than once is the counsel
given to fear God, but it is not offered as a _solution_ of the
riddle. The world is crooked, i. 15, vii. 13, and no change is possible,
iii. 1-8. It is a weary round of contradictions, birth and death, peace
and war, the former state annihilated by the latter; and by reason of the
fixity of these contradictions and the certainty of that annihilation,
all human effort is vain, iii. 9. It is all alike vanity--not only the
meaner struggles for food and drink and pleasure (ii.) but even the
nobler ambitions of the soul, such as its yearning for wisdom and
knowledge. Whether we turn to the physical or the moral world it is
all the same. There is no goal in nature (i.): history runs on and
runs nowhere. All effort is swallowed up by death. Man is no better
than a beast, iii. 19; beyond the grave there is nothing. Everywhere
is disillusionment, and woman is the bitterest of all, vii. 26. The
moral order is turned upside down. Wrong is for ever on the throne.
Providence, if there be such a thing, seems to be on the side of
cruelty. Tears stand on many a face, but the mourners must remain
uncomforted, iv. 1. The just perish and the wicked live long, vii.
15. The good fare as the bad ought to fare, and the bad as the good,
viii. 14. Better be dead than live in such a world, iv. 2; nay,
better never have been born at all, vi. 3. For all is vanity: that
is the beginning of the matter, i. 2, it is no less the end, xii. 8.
Over every effort and aspiration is wrung this fearful knell.
Sad conclusion anywhere, but especially sad for a Jew to reach!
Indeed he contradicts some of the dearest and most fundamental
tenets of the Jewish faith. Many a devout contemporary must have
been horrified at the dictum that man had no pre-eminence above a
beast, or that the world, which he had been taught to believe was
very good (Gen. i, 31) was one great vanity. The preacher could not
share the high hopes of a Messianic kingdom to come, of resurrection
and immortality, which consoled and inspired many men of his day. To
him life was nothing but dissatisfaction ending in annihilation. If
this is not pessimism, what is?
But is this all? Not exactly. For "the light is sweet, and a pleasant
thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun," xi. 7. Over and over
again the counsel is given to eat and drink and enjoy good, ii. 24;
and despite the bitter criticism of woman already alluded to, a wife
can make life more than tolerable, ix. 9. Nor does the book display
the thorough-going rejection of religion which the previous sketch of
it would have led us to expect. It is pessimistic, but not atheistic;
nay, it believes not only in God but in a judgment, iii. 17, xi. 9_b_,
though not necessarily in the hereafter. There is considerable
extravagance in Cornill's remark that "never did Old Testament piety
celebrate a greater triumph than in the book of Ecclesiastes"; but
there is enough to show that the book is, after its own peculiar
melancholy fashion, a religious book. It is significant, however,
that the context of the word God, which only occurs some twenty times,
is often very sombre. He it is who has "given travail to the sons of
men to be exercised therewith," i. 13, iii. 10, cf. esp. iii. 18.
Again, if the writer has any real belief in a day of judgment, why
should he so persistently emphasize the resultlessness of life and
deny the divine government of the world? "The fate of all is the
same-just and unjust, pure and impure. As fares the good, so fares the
sinner," ix. 2. This is a direct and deliberate challenge of the law
of retribution in which the writer had been brought up. It may be
urged, of course, that his belief in a divine judgment is a postulate
of his faith which he retains, though he does not find it verified by
experience. But such words--and there are many such--seem to carry us
much farther. Here, then, is the essential problem of the book. Can
it be regarded as a unity?
Almost every commentator laments the impossibility of presenting a
continuous and systematic exposition of the argument in
Ecclesiastes, or Qoheleth, as the book is called in the Hebrew
Bible.
The truth is that, though the first three chapters are in the main
coherent and continuous, little order or arrangement can be detected
in the rest of the book. Various explanations have been offered.
Bickell, e.g., supposed that the leaves had by some accident become
disarranged--a supposition not wholly impossible, but highly
improbable, especially when we consider that the Greek translation
reads the book in the same order as the Hebrew text. Others suppose
with equal improbability that the book is a sort of dialogue, in
which each speaker maintains his own thesis, while the epilogue,
xii. 13f, pronounces the final word on the discussion. One thing is
certain, that various moods are represented in the book: the
question is whether they are the moods of one man or of several.
Baudissin thinks it not impossible that, "apart from smaller
interpolations, the book as a whole is the reflection of the
struggle of one and the same author towards a view of the world
which he has not yet found."
Note the phrase "apart from interpolations." Even the most cautious
and conservative scholars usually admit that the facts constrain
them to believe in the presence of interpolations: e.g., xi. 9b and
xii. la are almost universally regarded in this light. The
difficulties occasioned by the book are chiefly three. (1) Its
fragmentary character. Ch. x.; e.g., looks more like a collection of
proverbs than anything else. (2) Its abrupt transitions: e.g., vii.
19, 20. "Wisdom strengtheneth the wise more than ten men that are in
a city: for there is not a righteous man on the earth." This may be
another aspect of (1). But (3) more serious and important are the
undoubted contradictions of the book, some of which had been noted
by early Jewish scholars. E.g., there is nothing better than to eat
and drink, ii. 24; it is better to go to the house of mourning than
to the house of feasting, vii. 2. In iii. 1-8 times are so fixed and
determined that human labour is profitless, iii. 9, while in iii. 11
this inflexible order is not an oppressive but a beautiful thing. In
viii. 14, ix. 2 (cf. vii. 15) the fate of the righteous and the
wicked is the same, in viii. 12, 13, it is different: it is well
with the one and ill with the other. In iii. 16, which is radically
pessimistic (cf. _vv_. 18-21), there is no justice: in iii. 17
a judgment is coming. Better death than life, iv. 2, better life
than death, ix. 4 (cf. xi. 7). In i. 17 the search for wisdom is a
pursuit of the wind: in ii. 13 wisdom excels folly as light
darkness. Ch. ii. 22 emphasizes the utter fruitlessness of labour,
iii. 22 its joy. These contradictions are too explicit to be
ignored. Indeed sometimes their juxtaposition forces them upon the
most inattentive reader; as when viii. 12, 13 assert that it is well
with the righteous and ill with the wicked, whereas viii. 14 asserts
that the wicked often fare as the just should fare and vice versa;
and that this is the author's real opinion is made certain by the
occurrence of the melancholy refrain at the end of the verse.
Different minds will interpret these contradictions differently.
Some will say they are nothing but the reflex of the contradictions
the preacher found to run through life, others will say that they
represent him in different moods. But they are too numerous,
radical, and vital to be disposed of so easily. There can be no
doubt that the book is essentially pessimistic: it ends as well as
begins with Vanity of Vanities, xii. 8; and this must therefore have
been the ground-texture of the author's mind. Now it is not likely
to be an accident that the references to the moral order and the
certainty of divine judgment are not merely assertions: they can
usually, in their context, only be regarded as protests--as
protests, that is, against the context. That is very plain in ch.
iii., where the order of the world, _vv_. 1-8, which the
preacher lamented as profitless, _vv_. 9, 10, is maintained to
be beautiful, _v_. 11. It is equally plain in iii. 17, which
asserts the divine judgment, whereas the context, iii. 16, denies
the justice of earthly tribunals, and effectually shuts out the hope
of a brighter future by maintaining that man dies[1] like the beast,
_vv_. 18-21.
[Footnote 1: Ch. iii. 21 should read: "Who knoweth the spirit of
man, _whether_ it goeth upward?" This translation involves no
change in the consonantal text and is supported by the Septuagint.]
Of a similar kind, but on a somewhat lower religious level are the
frequent protests against the preacher's pessimistic assertions of
the emptiness of life and the vanity of effort. For the injunction
to eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of one's labour may, in their
contexts, also be fairly considered not simply as statements, but as
protests (cf. v. 18-20 with v. 13-17); for this glad love of life
was thoroughly representative of the ancient tradition of Hebrew
life (cf. Jeremiah's criticism of Josiah, xxii. 15.) Doubtless these
protests could come from the preacher's own soul; but, considering
all the phenomena, it is more natural to suppose that they were the
protests of others who were offended by the scepticism and the
pessimism of the book, which may well have had a wide circulation.
It now only remains to ask whether books regarded as Scripture ever
received such treatment as is here assumed. Every one acquainted
with the textual phenomena of the Old Testament knows that this was
a common occurrence. The Greek-speaking Jews, translating about or
before the time at which Ecclesiastes was written, altered the simple
phrase in Exodus xxiv. 10, "They saw the God of Israel," to "They saw
the place where the God of Israel stood." In Psalm lxxxiv. 11 they
altered "God is a sun (or pinnacle?) and shield" to "God loves mercy
and truth." They altered "God" to "an angel" in Job xx. 15, "God will
cast them (i.e., the riches) out of his belly"; or even to "an angel
will cast them out of his house." These alterations have no other
authority than the caprice of the translators, acting in the interests
of a purer, austerer, but more timid theology. At the end of the Greek
version of the book of Job, which adds, "It is written that Job will
rise again with those whom the Lord doth raise," we see how deliberately
an insertion could be made in theological interests. The liberties which
the Greek-speaking Jews thus demonstrably took with the text of
Scripture, we further know that the Hebrew-speaking Jews did not
hesitate to take. A careful comparison of the text of such books as
Samuel and Kings with Chronicles[1] shows that similar changes were
deliberately made, and made by pious men in theological interests. We are
thus perfectly free to suppose that the original text of Ecclesiastes,
which must have given great offence to the stricter Jews of the
second century B.C., was worked over in the same way.
[Footnote 1: Cf., e.g., the substitution of Satan in 1 Chron. xxi. 1
for Jehovah in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1.]
It would be impossible to apportion the various sections or verses
of the book with absolute definiteness among various writers; in the
nature of the case, such analyses will always be more or less
tentative. But on the whole there can be little doubt that the
original book, which can be best estimated by the more or less
continuous section, i.-iii., was pervaded by a spirit of almost, if
not altogether, unqualified pessimism. This received correction or
rather protest from two quarters: from one writer of happier soul,
who believed that the earth was Jehovah's (Ps. xxiv. 1) and, as
such, was not a vanity, but was full of His goodness; and from a
pious spirit, who was offended and alarmed by the preacher's
dangerous challenge of the moral order, and took occasion to assure
his readers of the certainty of a judgment and of the consequent
wisdom of fearing God. On any view of the book it is difficult to
see the relevance of the collection of proverbs in ch. x.
If this view be correct, the epilogue, xii. 9-14, can hardly have
formed part of the original pessimistic book. The last two verses,
in particular, are conceived in the spirit of the pious protest
which finds frequent expression in the book; and it is easy to
believe that the words saved the canonicity of Ecclesiastes, if
indeed they were not added for that very purpose. The reference to
the commandments in _v_. 13 is abrupt, and almost without
parallel, viii. 5. Again, the preacher, who speaks throughout the
book in the first person, is spoken of here in the third, _v_.
9; and, as in no other part of the book, the reader is addressed as
"my son" _v_. 12 (cf. Prov. i. 8., ii. 1, iii. 1).
The value of Ecclesiastes is negative rather than positive. It is
the nearest approach to despair possible upon the soil of Old
Testament piety. It is the voice of a faith, if faith it can be
called, which is not only perplexed with the search, but weary of
it; but it shows how deep and sore was the need of a Redeemer.