too absolutely reckoned upon, for 'it is the gift of God' (iii. 12, 13, 22; comp. ii. 24). Certainly our author at any rate did not succeed in drowning care in the wine-cup: he is no vulgar sensualist. His merriment is spoiled by the thought of the misery of others, and he can find nothing 'under the sun' (a passionate generalisation from life in Palestine) but violence and oppression. In utter despair he pronounces the dead happier than the living (iv. 1, 2). In fact, he says, neither in life nor in death has man any superiority over the other animals, which are under no providential order, and have no principle of continuance. Such is the cynical theory which tempts Koheleth; and yet he seems to have hesitated before accepting it, unless we may venture with Bickell to strike out iii. 17, as the work of a later editor who believed in retributions hereafter (like xi. 9b, xii. 7, 13, 14). I confess that consistency seems to me to require this step; the verse is in fact well fitted to be an antidote to the following verse, which seems to have suggested the opening phrase. This is how the text runs at present:—
I said in my heart, The righteous and the wicked shall God
judge; for there is a time for every purpose and for every work there
(emphatically for 'in the other world;' or read, hath he appointed).
I said in my heart, (It happens) on account of the sons of men, that
God may test them, and that they may see that they are but beasts.
For the sons of men are a chance (comp. Herod. i. 32), and beasts
are a chance; yea, all have one chance: as the one dies, so dies the
other; yea, they all have one spirit; and advantage of the one over
the other there is none, for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all
are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the
spirit of man goes upward, and whether the spirit of the beast goes
downward to the earth?[1] (iii. 17-21.)
- ↑ This is the rendering of the four principal versions and of all the best critics, including Mercier, Ewald, Ginsburg, Grätz and Delitzsch; it agrees with the general tendency of Koheleth, and in particular with vii. 5, where the grave is called man's 'eternal home' (see below). It is no doubt opposed by the vowel-*points, which are followed in King James's Bible. But it is more than probable (considering other parallel phenomena) that the authors of the points were directed by a theological and therefore uncritical motive, that, namely, of effacing as far as possible a trace of Koheleth's opposition to the doctrine, by that time recognised as orthodox, of the immortality of the soul.
