manner, despising the world in itself, and also the gifts of God in it, but that he places his ultimatum as to the pure enjoyment of life within the limits of the fear of God, and extends it as widely as God permits. One might therefore call the Book of Koheleth, “The Song of the Fear of God,” rather than, as H. Heine does, “The Song of Scepticism;” for however great the sorrow of the world which is therein expressed, the religious conviction of the author remains in undiminished strength; and in the midst of all the disappointments in the present world, his faith in God, and in the rectitude of God, and in the victory of the good, stands firm as a rock, against which all the waves dash themselves into foam. “This book,” says another recent author,[1] “which contains almost as many contradictions as verses, may be regarded as the Breviary of the most modern materialism, and of extreme licentiousness.” He who can thus speak has not read the book with intelligence. The appearance of materialism arises from this, that the author sees in the death of man an end similar to that of beasts; and that is certainly so far true, but it is not the whole truth. In the knowledge of the reverse side of the matter he does not come beyond the threshold, because His hand was not yet there - viz. the hand of the Arisen One - which could help him over it. And as for the supposed licentiousness, Ecc 9:7-9 shows, by way of example, how greatly the fear of God had guarded him from concluding his search into all earthly things with the disgust of a worn-out libertine.
But there are certainly self-contradictions in the Book of Ecclesiastes. They have a twofold ground. They are, on the one hand, the reflection of the self-contradicting facts which the author affirms. Thus, e.g., Ecc 3:11, he says that God has set eternity in the heart of man, but that man cannot find out from the beginning to the end the work which God maketh; Ecc 3:12-13, that the best thing in this world is for a man to enjoy life; but to be able to do this, is a gift of God; Ecc 8:12, Ecc 8:14, that it goes well with them that fear God, but ill with the godless. But there is also the contrary - which is just the ground-tone of the book, that everything has its But; only the fear of God, after all that appertains to the world is found to be as vanitas vanitatum, remains as the kernel without the shell, but the commandment of the fear of God as a categorical imperative, the knowledge that the fear of God is in itself the highest happiness, and fellowship with God the highest good, remain unexpressed; the fear of God is not combined with the love of God, as e.g., in Ps 73 it serves only for warning and not for comfort. On the
- ↑ Hartmann's Das Lied vom Ewigen, St. Galle 1859, p. 12.
