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but it has been shown, Psychol. p. 154, that the Jewish, like the Arab. psychology, reverses terminologically the relation between רוח (נשׁמה), spirit, and נפשׁ, soul.
The older Christian interpretations are also on the right track. Glassius (as also v. Meyer and Smith in “The portraiture of old age”) sees in the sun, light, etc., emblems of the interna microcosmi lumina mentis; and yet better, Chr. Friedr. Bauer (1732) sees in Ecc 12:2 a representation of the thought: “ere understanding and sense fail thee.” We have elsewhere shown that חיים רוח (נשׁמת) and חיּה נפשׁ (from which nowhere חיים נפשׁ) are related to each other as the principium principians and principium principatum of life (Psychol. p. 79), and as the root distinctions of the male and female, of the predominantly active and the receptive (Psychol. p. 103). Thus the figurative language of Ecc 12:3 is interpreted in the following manner. The sun is the male spirit רוח (which, like שׁמשׁ, is used in both genders) or נשׁמה, after Pro 20:27, a light of Jahve which penetrates with its light of self-examination and self-knowledge the innermost being of man, called by the Lord, Mat 6:23 (cf. 1Co 2:11), “the light that is in thee.” The light, viz., the clear light of day proceeding from the sun, is the activity of the spirit in its unweakened intensity: sharp apprehension, clear thought, faithful and serviceable memory. The moon is the soul; for, according to the Heb. idea, the moon, whether it is called ירח or לבנה is also in relation to the sun a figure of the female (cf. Gen 37:9., where the sun in Joseph's dream = Jacob-Israel, the moon = Rachel); and that the soul, viz., the animal soul, by means of which the spirit becomes the principle of the life of the body (Gen 2:7), is related to the spirit as female σκεῦος ἀστηενέστερον, is evident from passages such as Psa 42:6, where the spirit supports the soul (animus animam) with its consolation. And the stars? We are permitted to suppose in the author of the book of Koheleth a knowledge, as Schrader^[1] has shown, of the old Babyl.-Assyr. seven astral gods, which consisted of the sun, moon, and the five planets; and thus it will not be too much to understand the stars, as representing the five planets, of the five senses (Mish. הרגּשׁות,^[2] later הוּשׁים, cf. the verb, Ecc 2:25) which mediate the receptive relation of the soul to the outer world (Psychol. p. 233). But we cannot see our way further to explain Ecc 12:2 patholo.-anatom., as Geier is disposed to do: Nonnulli haec accommodant ad crassos illos ac pituosos senum vapores ex debili ventriculo in cerebrum adscendentes continuo, ubi itidem imbres (נשׁם) h.e. destillationes creberrimae

1. Vid., “Sterne” in Schenkel's Bibl Lex.  and Stud. u. Krit. 1874.
2. Thus the five senses are called, e.g., Bamidbar rabba, c. 14.