WISDOM (ECCLESIASTICUS).
It was necessary that Koheleth should be answered, but who was
competent for this? A fable had been invented of a Solomonic serpent
who had tempted Eve to taste the fruit of knowledge which, when the
man shared it, brought a curse on the earth, but the canonical prophets
do not appear to have heard of it, and at any rate it was too late in
the day to meet fact with fable. Nor had Jahveh's whirlwind-answer
to Job proved effectual. However, some sort of answer did come,
and significantly enough it had to come from Koheleth's own quarter,
the Wisdom school. Pure Jahvism had not brains enough for the task.
The apocryphal book "Ecclesiasticus" is the antidote to
Ecclesiastes. (These are the Christian names given to the two
books.) This book, bearing the simple title "Wisdom," compiled and
partly written by Jesus Ben Sira early in the second century B. C.,
is as a whole much more than an offset to Koheleth. It is a great
though unintentional literary monument to Solomon, and it is the book
of reconciliation, or so intended, between Solomonism and Jahvism,--or,
as we should now say, between philosophy and theology.
The newly discovered original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus xxxix. 15,
xlix. 11, published by the Clarendon Press in 1897, enables us to read
correctly for the first time the portraiture of Solomon in xlvii.,
with the assistance of Wace and other scholars:
12. After him [David] rose up a wise son, and for his [David's]
sake he dwelt in quiet.
13. Solomon reigned in days of prosperity, and was honoured, and
God gave rest to him round about that he might build an house in
his name, and prepare his sanctuary for ever.
14. How wast thou wise in thy youth, and didst overflow with
instruction like the Nile!
15. The earth (was covered by thy soul) and thou didst celebrate
song in the height.
16. Thy name went far unto the islands, and for thy peace thou
wast beloved.
17. The countries marvelled at thee for thy songs, and proverbs,
and parables, and interpretations.
18. Thou wast called by the glorious name which is called over
Israel.
18a. Thou didst gather gold as tin, and didst gather silver
as lead.
19. But thou gavest thy loins unto women, and lettest them have
dominion over thy body.
20. Thou didst stain thy honour and pollute thy seed; so that
thou broughtest wrath upon thy children, that they should groan
in their beds.
21. That the kingdom should be divided: and out of Ephraim ruled
a rebel kingdom.
22. But the Lord will never leave off his mercy, neither shall
any of his words perish, neither will he abolish the posterity of
his elect, and the seed of him that loveth him he will not take
away: wherefore he gave a remnant unto Jacob, and out of him a
root unto David.
23. Thus rested Solomon with his fathers, and of his seed he left
behind him Rehoboam [of the lineage of Ammon], ample in foolishness
and lacking understanding, who by his council let loose the people.
In the last sentence I have inserted in crochets an alternative
reading of Fritzsche for the three words that follow. (Rehoboam's
Ammonite mother was Naamah.)
It will be noticed that early in the second century B. C. there
remained no trace of the anathemas on Solomon for his foreign or
his idolatrous wives. He is now simply accused of being too fond of
women,--a charge not known to the canonical books.
The verse 18 attests the correctness of the view taken of the
forty-fifth Psalm in chapter III., written before this Clarendon
Press volume appeared. It thus becomes certain that the Psalm was
recognised as written in Solomon's time, and that it was he who was
there addressed as "God" ("the glorious name").
The mention of this fact in "Wisdom," and the enthusiasm pervading
every sentence of the tribute to Solomon, despite his alleged
sensuality, supply conclusive evidence that the cult of Solomon had
for more than eight centuries been continuous, that it was at length
prevailing, and that it had become necessary for a broad wing of
Jahvism to include the Solomonic worldly wisdom and ethics.
Jesus Ben Sira states that he found a book written by his learned
grandfather, whose name was also Jesus, who had studied many works of
"our fathers," and added to them writings of his own. The anonymous
preface states that Sira, son of the first Jesus, left it to his son,
and that "this Jesus did imitate Solomon."
It is not said that Sira contributed anything to this composite work,
yet there appear to be three minds in it. There is a fine and free
philosophy which savors of the earliest traditions of the Solomonic
School; there is an exceptionally morose Jahvism; and there is also
mysticism, an attempt to rationalise and soften the Jahvism, and to
solemnise the philosophy, so as to blend them in a kind of harmonious
religion. I cannot help feeling that Sira or some friend of his must
have inserted the Jahvism between the grandfather and the grandson.
However this may be, it is evident that Jesus Ben Sira was too
reverent to seriously alter anything in the volume before him,
for the contrast is startling between the hard Jahvism and the
philosophy of life. Their inclusion in one work is like the union
of oil and vinegar. The Jahvism is curiously bald: fear Jahveh, keep
his commandments, pay your tithes, say your prayers, be severe with
your children (especially daughters), never play with them, guard
your wife vigilantly, flog your servants. The philosophy is quite
incongruous with this formalism and rigidity, most of the maxims
being elaborated with care, and only proverbs in form. Some of them
are almost Shakespearian in artistic expression:
"Pipe and harp make sweet the song, but a sincere tongue is above
them both."
"Wisdom hid, and treasure hoarded, what value is in either?"
"The fool's heart is in his mouth, the wise man's mouth is in
his heart."
"There is no riches above a sound body, and no joy above that of
the heart."
"Whoso regardeth dreams is as one who grasps at his shadow."
"The evil man cursing Satan is but cursing himself."
"The bars of Wisdom shall be thy fortress, her chains thy robe
of honour."
About the rendering of xli. 15 there is some doubt, and I give this
conjecture:
Better the (ignorant) that hideth his folly, than the (learned)
who hideth his wisdom.
In the Bible which belonged to the historian Gibbon, loaned by
the late General Meredith Read to the Gibbon exhibition in London,
I observed a pencil mark around these sentences in "Wisdom":
"He that buildeth his house with other men's money, is like one
that gathereth stones for the tomb of his own burial."
"He that is not wise will not be taught, but there is a wisdom
that multiplieth bitterness."
To Jesus Ben Sira we may, I believe, ascribe the following:
"Glorifying God, exalt him as far as your thought can reach, yet
you will never attain to his height: praising him, put forth all
your powers, be not weary, yet ever will they fall short. Who hath
seen him that he can tell us? Who can describe him as he is? Let
us still be rejoicing in him, for we shall not search him out:
he is great beyond his works."
This has an interesting correspondence with the beautiful rapture of
the Persian Sâdi:
"They who pretend to be informed are ignorant, for they who have
known him have not recovered their senses. O thou who towerest
above the heights of imagination, thought, or conjecture,
surpassing all that has been related, and excelling all that we
have heard or read, the banquet is ended, the congregation is
dismissed, and life draws to a close, and we still rest in our
first encomium of thee!"
To Jesus Ben Sira may be safely ascribed the passages that bear
witness to the pressure of problems which, though old, appear in
new forms under Hellenic influences. They grow urgent and threaten
the foundations of Jahvism. It was no longer sufficient to say that
Jahveh rewarded virtue and piety, and punished vice and impiety in
this world. Job had demanded the evidence for this, and the centuries
had brought none. Job was awarded some recompense in this world,
but that happy experience did not attend other virtuous sufferers.
The doctrine of one writer in "Wisdom" is simply predestination. Paul's
potter-and-clay similitude is anticipated, and the Parsi dualism
curiously adapted to Jahvist monotheism: "Good is set against evil,
life against death, the godly against the sinner and the sinner
against the godly: look through all the works of the Most High and
there are two and two, one against another." But the liberal son of
Sira is more optimist: "All things are double, one against another,
but he hath made nothing imperfect: one thing establisheth the good of
another." Freedom of the will is asserted: "Say not, he hath caused
me to err, for he hath no need of the evildoer. He made man from the
beginning and left him in the hand of his (own) counsel.... He hath
set fire and water before thee, stretch forth thy hand to whichever
thou wilt. Before man is the living and the not-living, and whichever
he liketh shall be given him."
But the doctrine of human free agency is pregnant with polemics;
it has so been in Christian history, as is proved by the Pelagian,
Arminian, Jesuit, and Wesleyan movements. There are indications in
Ben Sira's work that the foundations of Jahvism were threatened by
a moral scepticism. His own celebration of the Fathers was enough to
bring into dreary contrast the tragedies of his own time and glories
of the Past, when "Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man under
his vine and fig-tree, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, all the days
of Solomon." What shelter now in the divine fig-tree, which could
bear nothing but legendary or predictive leaves? The curse on the
barren tree was near at hand when Jesus Ben Sira uttered his pathetic
complaint, veiled in prayer:
"Have mercy on us, O Lord God of all, and regard us! Send thy
fear on all the nations that seek thee not; lift thy hand against
them, let them see thy power! As thou wast (of old) sanctified
in us before them, be thou (now) magnified among them before us;
and let them know thee, as we have known thee,--that there is, O
God, no God but thou alone! Show new signs, more strange wonders;
glorify thy hand and thy right arm, that they may publish thy
wondrous works! Raise up indignation, pour out wrath, remove
the adversary, destroy the enemy: hasten! remember thy covenant,
and let them witness thy wonderful works!"