KOHELETH (ECCLESIASTES).
In the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1897, a writer, in giving his
personal reminiscences of Tennyson, relates an anecdote concerning the
poet and the Rev. F. D. Maurice. Speaking of Ecclesiastes (Koheleth),
Tennyson said it was the one book the admission of which into the
canon he could not understand, it was so utterly pessimistic--of the
earth, earthy. Maurice fired up. "Yes, if you leave out the last two
verses. But the conclusion of the whole matter is, 'Fear God and keep
His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall
bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it
be good or whether it be evil.' So long as you look only down upon
earth, all is 'vanity of vanities.' But if you look up there is a God,
the judge of good and evil." Tennyson said he would think over the
matter from that point of view.
This amusing incident must have caused a ripple of laughter in
scholastic circles, now that the labors of Cheyne, Renan, Dillon,
and others, have left little doubt that both of the verses cited
by Maurice are later editorial additions. They alone, he admitted,
could save the book, and the charm of the incident is that the verses
were placed there by ancient Maurices to induce ancient Tennysons to
"think over the matter from that point of view." The result was that
the previously rejected book was admitted into the canon by precisely
the same force which continued its work at Faringford, and continues
it to this day. Only one must not suppose that Mr. Maurice was aware
of the ungenuineness of the verses. He was an honest gentleman,
but so ingeniously mystical that had the two verses not been there
he could readily have found others of equally transcendant and holy
significance, without even resorting to other pious interpolations
in the book.
Tennyson was curiously unconscious of his own pessimism. When any one
questioned the belief in a future life in his presence his vehemence
without argument betrayed his sub-conscious misgivings, while his
indignation ran over all the conditional resentments of Job. I have
heard that he said to Tyndall that if he knew there was no future
life he would regard the creator of human beings as a demon, and
shake his fist in His eternal face. This rage was based in a more
profoundly pessimistic view of the present life than anything even
in Ecclesiastes,--by which name may be happily distinguished the
disordered, perverted, and mistranslated Koheleth.
It appears evident that the sentence which opens Koheleth,--in our
Bibles "All is vanity, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all
is vanity,"--is as mere a Jahvist chapter-heading as that of our
A. S. translators: "The Preacher showeth that all human courses are
vain." It is repeated as the second of the eight verses added at the
end of the work. Koheleth does not label the whole of things vanity;
in a majority of cases the things he calls vain are vain; and some
things he finds not vanity,--youth, and wedded love, and work that
is congenial.
Renan (Histoire du Peuple d'Israël, Tome 5, p. 158) has shown
conclusively, as I think, that the signature on this book, QHLT,
is a mere letter-play on the word "Solomon," and the eagerness
with which the letters were turned into Koheleth (which really
means Preacheress), and to make Solomon's inner spouse a preacher
of the vanities of pleasure and the wisdom of fearing God, is thus
naively indicated in the successive names of the book, "Koheleth"
and "Ecclesiastes." We are thus warned by the title to pick our way
carefully where the Jahvist and the Ecclesiastic have been before us;
remembering especially that though piety may induce men to forge
things, this is never done lightly. As people now do not commit
forgery for a shilling, so neither did those who placed spurious
sentences or phrases in nearly every chapter of the Bible do so for
anything they did not consider vital to morality or to salvation. In
Ecclesiastes we must be especially suspicious of the very serious
religious points. Fortunately the style of the book renders it
particularly subject to the critical and literary touchstone.
Is it necessary to point out to any man of literary instinct the
interpolation bracketed in the following verses? "Rejoice, O young
man, in thy youth, and let thy heart gladden thee in the flower of thy
age, and walk in the paths of thy heart, and according to the vision
of thine eyes [but know thou that for all these things God will bring
thee into judgment], and banish discontent from thy heart, and put away
evil from thy flesh; for youth and dawn are fleeting. Remember also
thy fountain in the days of thy youth, or ever the evil days come or
the years draw nigh in which thou shalt say I have no delight in them."
It is only by removing the bracketed clause that any consistency can be
found in the lyric, which Professor Cheyne compares with the following
song by the ancient Egyptian harper at the funeral feast of Neferhotap:
"Make a good day, O holy fathers!
Let odors and oils stand before thy nostril;
Wreaths and lotus are on the arms and bosom of thy sister
Dwelling in thy heart, sitting beside thee.
Let song and music be before thy face,
And leave behind thee all evil dirges!
Mind thee of joy, till cometh the day of pilgrimage,
When we draw near the land that loveth silence." [23]
There is no historical means of determining what writings of Solomon
are preserved in the Bible and even in the apocryphal books. One may
feel that Goethe recognised a brother spirit in that far epoch when
he selected for his proverb:
"Apples of gold in chased work of silver,
A word smoothly spoken."
Koheleth too appreciated this, and also (x. 12) uses almost literally
Proverbs xii. 18, "The tongue of the wise is gentleness." (Compare
Shakespeare's words, "Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.") The
lines previously cited, "Rejoice O young man, etc.," are also probably
quoted, as they are given in poetical quatrains. There are many of
these quatrains introduced into the book, from the prose context of
which they differ in style and sometimes in sense.
In none of these metrical quotations (as I believe them to be) is
there any belief in God, the only instance in which the word "God"
is mentioned being an ironical maxim about the danger coming from
monarchs because of their oaths to their God, with whom they identify
their own ways and wishes. Such seems to me the meaning of the lines
(viii. 2, 4) which Dillon translates--
"The wise man harkens to the king's command,
By reason of the oath to God.
Mighty is the word of the monarch:
Who dares ask him, 'What dost thou?'"
With this compare Proverbs xxi. 1, "The king's heart is in the hand
of the Lord (Jahveh) as the water-courses; he turneth it whithersoever
he will." This proverb is evidently by a Jahvist, and Koheleth quotes
another which signifies rather "Jahveh is in the king's caprice." But
he adopts the neighbouring proverb, "To do justice and judgment is
more acceptable to Jahveh than sacrifice." Koheleth says, and this
is not quoted--"To draw near to (God) in order to learn, is better
than the offering of sacrifices by fools."
Although the verses quoted by Maurice to Tennyson (xii. 13, 14) are not
genuinely in Koheleth they correspond with sentences in the genuine
text of very different import. Koheleth, though his quotations are
godless, believes there is a God, and a formidable one. Sometimes he
refers to him as Fate, sometimes as the unknowable, but as without
moral quality. "To the just men that happeneth which should befall
wrong-doers; and that happeneth for criminals which should be the lot
of the upright" (viii. 14), and "neither (God's) love nor hatred doth
a man foresee" (ix. 1). God has set prosperity and adversity side by
side for the express purpose of hiding Himself from human knowledge
(vii. 14); not, alas, as the Yalkut Koheleth suggests, in order that
one may help the other. God does benefit those who please him, and
punish those who displease him; this is 'good' and 'evil' to Him; but
it has no relation with the humanly good and evil (viii. 11-14). As
it is evident that God's favor is not secured by good works nor his
disfavor incurred by evil works, a prudent man will consider that
it may perhaps be a matter of etiquette, and will be punctilious,
especially "in the house of God"; he will not speak rashly and then
hope to escape by saying "it was rashness." His words had better be
few, and if he makes any vow (which may well be avoided) he should
perform it. But as for practical life and conduct, God, or fate,
is clearly indifferent to it, consequently let a man eat his bread
and quaff his wine with joy, love his wife,--the best portion of
his lot,--and whatever his hand findeth to do that do with vigor,
remembering that "there is no work, nor thought, nor knowledge,
nor wisdom, in the inevitable grave."
Such is Koheleth's conception of life, which, except so far as it
is marred by a vague notion of Fate which is fatal to philanthropy,
is not very different from the idea growing in our own time. "The
All is a never-ceasing whirl" (i. 8), and Koheleth advises that each
individual man try to make what little circle of happiness he can
around him. "O my heart!" says Omar Khayyám, "thou wilt never penetrate
the mysteries of the heavens; thou wilt never reach that culminating
point of wisdom which the intrepid omniscients have attained. Resign
thyself then to make what little paradise thou canst here below. As
for that close-barred seraglio beyond thou shalt arrive there--or
thou shalt not!"
It is, however, impossible for any church or priesthood to be
maintained on any such principles. Where mankind believe with Koheleth
that whatever God does is forever, that nothing can be superadded
to it nor aught be taken away; and that God has so contrived that
man must fear Him; they will have no use for any paraphernalia for
softening the irrevocable decrees of a Judgment Day already past. But
Koheleth's arrows, feathered with wit and eloquence, were logically
shot from the Jahvist arquebus. It was Jahveh himself who proudly
claimed that he created good and evil, and that if there were evil in
a city it was his work. It was Jahveh's own prophet, Isaiah, who cried
(lxiii. 17), "O Lord, why dost Thou make us to err from Thy ways,
and hardenest our heart from Thy fear?"
What then could Jahvism say when a time arrived wherein it must defend
itself against a Jahveh-created world?