form החי, vid., Baer in the critical remarks of our ed. of Isaiah under Isa 3:22. The phrase נתן אל־לב here and at Ecc 9:1 is synon. with שׂים אל־לב, שׂים על־לב (e.g., Isa 57:1) and שׂים בּלב. How this saying agrees with Koheleth's ultimatum: There is nothing better than to eat and drink, etc. (Ecc 2:24, etc.), the Talmudists have been utterly perplexed to discover; Manasse ben-Israel in his Conciliador (1632) loses himself in much useless discussion.[1]
The solution of the difficulty is easy. The ultimatum does not relate to an unconditional enjoyment of life, but to an enjoyment conditioned by the fear of God. When man looks death in the face, the two things occur to him, that he should make use of his brief life, but make use of it in view of the end, thus in a manner for which he is responsible before God.
Verses 3-4
The joy of life must thus be not riot and tumult, but a joy tempered with seriousness: “Better is sorrow than laughter: for with a sad countenance it is well with the heart. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, and the heart of fools in the house of mirth.” Grief and sorrow, כּעס, whether for ourselves or occasioned by others, is better, viz., morally better, than extravagant merriment; the heart is with רע פּ (inf. as רע, Jer 7:6; cf. פן ר, Gen 40:7; Neh 2:2), a sorrowful countenance, better than with laughter, which only masks the feeling of disquiet peculiar to man, Pro 14:13. Elsewhere לב ייטב = “the heart is (may be) of good cheer,” e.g., Rth 3:7; Jdg 19:6; here also joyful experience is meant, but well becoming man as a religious moral being. With a sad countenance it may be far better as regards the heart than with a merry countenance in boisterous company. Luther, in the main correct, after Jerome, who on his part follows Symmachus: “The heart is made better by sorrow.” The well-being is here meant as the reflex of a moral: bene se habere.
Sorrow penetrates the heart, draws the thought upwards, purifies, transforms. Therefore is the heart of the wise in the house of sorrow; and, on the other hand, the heart of fools is in the house of joy, i.e., the impulse of their heart goes thither, there they feel themselves at home; a house of joy is one where there are continual feasts, or where there is at the time a revelling in joy. That Ecc 7:4 is divided not by Athnach, but by Zakef, has its reason in this, that of the words following אבל, none consists of three syllables; cf. on the contrary, Ecc 7:7, חכם. From this point forward the internal relation of the contents is broken up, according to which this series of
- ↑ Vid., the English translation by Lindo (London 1842), vol. ii. pp. 306-309.
