Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ecclesiastes 12:8
Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all [is] vanity.
8. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity ] The recurrence at the close of the book, and after words which, taken as we have taken them, suggest a nobler view of life, of the same sad burden with which it opened, has a strange melancholy ring in it. To those who see in the preceding verse nothing more than the materialist’s thoughts of death as echoed by Epicurean poets, it seems a confirmation of what they have read into it, or inferred from it. The Debater seems to them, looking on life from the closing scene of death, to fall back into a hopeless pessimism. It may be rightly answered however that the view that all that belongs to the earthly life is “vanity of vanities” is one not only compatible with the recognition of the higher life, with all its infinite possibilities, which opens before man at death, but is the natural outcome of that recognition as at the hour of death, or during the process of decay which precedes and anticipates death. The “things that are seen and are temporal” are dwarfed, as into an infinite littleness, in the presence of those which are “not seen and are eternal” (2Co 4:18). And there would be, we may add, even a singular impressiveness in the utterance of the same judgment, at the close of the great argument, and from the higher standpoint of faith which the Debater had at last reached, as that with which he had started in his despondent scepticism. It is, in this light, not without significance that these very words form the opening sentence of the De Imitatione Christi of Kempis.
There remain, however, two previous questions to be discussed. (1) Are the words before us the conclusion of the main body of the treatise, or the beginning of what we may call its epilogue? and (2) is that epilogue the work of the author of the book or an addition by some later hand? The paragraph printing of the Authorised Version points in the case of (1) to the latter of the two conclusions, and it may be noted as confirming this view that the words occur in their full form at the beginning of the whole book, and might therefore reasonably be expected at the beginning of that which is, as it were, its summing-up and completion. In regard to the second question, the contents of the epilogue tend, it is believed, to the conclusion that they occupy a position analogous to that of the close of St John’s Gospel (Joh 21:24) and are, as it were, of the nature of a commendatory attestation. It would scarcely be natural for a writer to end with words of self-praise like those of Ecc 12:9-10. The directly didactic form of the Teacher addressing his reader as “my Son” after the fashion of the Book of Proverbs (Ecc 1:8, Ecc 2:1, Ecc 3:1; Ecc 3:11; Ecc 3:21) has no parallel in the rest of the book. The tone of Ecc 12:11 is rather that of one who takes a survey of the book as one of the many forms of wisdom, each of which had its place in the education of mankind, than of the thinker who speaks of what he himself has contributed to that store. On the whole, then, there seems sufficient reason for resting in the conclusion adopted by many commentators that the book itself ended with Ecc 12:7 and that we have in what follows, an epilogue addressed to the reader; justifying its admission into the Canon of Scripture and pointing out to him what, in the midst of apparent perplexities and inconsistencies, was the true moral of its preaching. The circumstances which were connected with that admission (see Introduction, chs. ii., iii., iv.) may well have made such a justification appear desirable.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
This passage is properly regarded as the Epilogue of the whole book; a kind of apology for the obscurity of many of its sayings. The passage serves therefore to make the book more intelligible and more acceptable.
Here, as in the beginning of the book Ecc 1:1-2, the Preacher speaks of himself Ecc 12:8-10 in the third person. He first repeats Ecc 12:8 the mournful, perplexing theme with which his musings began Ecc 1:2; and then states the encouraging practical conclusion Ecc 12:13-14 to which they have led him. It has been pointed out that the Epilogue assumes the identity of the Preacher with the writer of the Book of Proverbs.
Ecc 12:11
literally, Words of wise men are as goads, and as nails driven in (by) masters of assemblies; they are given from one shepherd: goads, because they rouse the hearer and impel him to right actions; nails (perhaps tent-spikes), because they remain fixed in the memory: masters of assemblies are simply teachers or preachers (see Ecc 1:1 note), instructors of such assemblies as Wisdom addresses Pro 1:20.
One shepherd – i. e., God, who is the supreme Giver of wisdom Pro 2:6, and the chief Shepherd Jer 23:1-4. Compare 1Co 2:12-13.
Ecc 12:12
By these – i. e., By the words of wise men.
Books – Rather, Writings. Probably the proverbs current in the Preachers age, including, though not especially indicating, his own.
The Preacher protests against the folly of protracted, unprofitable, meditation.
Ecc 12:13
literally, The conclusion of the discourse (or word, = words, Ecc 1:1), the whole, let us hear.
The whole duty of man – Rather, the whole man. To revere God and to obey Him is the whole man, constitutes mans whole being; that only is conceded to Man; all other things, as this book teaches again and again, are dependent on a Higher Incomprehensible Being.
Ecc 12:14
Judgment with – Rather, judgment (which shall be held) upon etc.: i. e., an appointed judgment which shall take place in another world, as distinct from that retribution which frequently follows mans actions in the course of this world, and which is too imperfect (compare Ecc 2:15; Ecc 4:1; Ecc 7:15; Ecc 9:2, …) to be described by these expressions. He that is fully convinced that there is no solid happiness to be found in this world, and that there is a world to come wherein God will adjudge people to happiness or misery respectively, as they have made their choice and acted here, must necessarily subscribe to the truth of Solomons conclusion, that true religion is the only way to true happiness.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Ecc 12:8
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity.
Two reviews of life
(with 2Ti 4:7-8): These two preachers were both distinguished men, aged men, men of wide experiences. Thus far they resembled each other; but the results of their experience are a perfect and a startling contrast. You would expect, with the experiences behind them, that their verdicts would be contradictory. You would expect the man for whom earth had plucked her choicest roses to present life as a gorgeous garden; and you would expect the man whose course had been a martyrdom to give a shaded view. Yet the contrast is the precise opposite of what you expect. It is from the man who has had the worlds choicest gifts lavished upon him that you hear as sad an epitaph as ever described a human life–Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. It is the man who has passed through tribulations, and experienced the worst ills of life who gives us the ring of triumph in his review.
I. The first condemns life as a failure–All is vanity, and vexation of spirit. What was there in his life which could explain this disappointment? I think if you look at Solomons life you will see it had self for its centre, earth for its circumference, human energy for its working power, and failure for its result.
II. The second reviews life as a triumph. I have fought a good fight, etc. The whole is a review of trial and triumph.
1. The trial consisted in the apostle having been able to endure to the end, to carry on the struggle without being turned aside. Men had called his faith fanaticism, but be did not let go his faith. Men called his hopes delusions, but he cherished them still. Men sneered at his motives, but no slur or scorn cast upon him could lead him to renounce Christ or the work given him to do. He reviews his life as a triumph simply because of this patience. In all this there is to me a great hope and comfort. Had the triumph lain in the works which he had wrought, you and I might well despair of reviewing a life such as his. But this we may review–fidelity to Christ.
2. Let us look now at the elements which made the apostles life such a triumph. We will place them in contrast with those we were noticing in the life of Solomon.
(1) In the apostles life Christ was the centre; everything revolved around Him.
(2) The spiritual was the sphere of life in which the apostle lived.
(3) The working power of his life was faith.
(4) Its result was a glorious triumph–a triumph which led to a crown. All true triumphs end in crowns, and this is a crown of character, not merely a reward for righteousness. Righteousness is the very material of which it is made. It is the crown of a spiritual sanctified character, and hence the crown fadeth not away. (C. B. Symes, B. A.)
The vanities
I. Official position will never give solace to a mans soul.
II. Worldly wealth cannot satisfy the souls longing.
III. Learning cannot satisfy the soul. Solomon was one of the largest contributors to the literature of the day.
IV. In the life of the voluptuary there is no comfort. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
On the proper estimate of human life
I. In what sense it is true that all human pleasures are vanity. I shall studiously avoid exaggeration, and only point out a threefold vanity in human life, which every impartial observer cannot but admit; disappointment in pursuit, dissatisfaction in enjoyment, uncertainty in possession.
1. Disappointment in pursuit. We may form our plans with the most profound sagacity, and with the most vigilant caution may guard against danger on every side. But some unforeseen occurrence comes across, which baffles our wisdom, and lays our labours in the dust. Neither the moderation of our views, nor the justice of our pretensions, can ensure success. But time and chance happen to all. Against the stream of events, both the worthy and the undeserving are obliged to struggle; and both are frequently overborne alike by the current.
2. Dissatisfaction in enjoyment is a further vanity to which the human state is subject. This is the severest of all mortifications; after having been successful in the pursuit, to be baffled in the enjoyment itself. Yet this is found to be an evil still more general than the former. Together with every wish that is gratified, a new demand arises. One void opens in the heart, as another is filled. On wishes, wishes grow; and to the end, it is rather the expectation of what they have not, than the enjoyment of what they have, which occupies and interests the most successful. This dissatisfaction, in the midst of human pleasure, springs partly from the nature of our enjoyments themselves, and partly from circumstances which corrupt them. No worldly enjoyments are adequate to the high desires and powers of an immortal spirit. Fancy paints them at a distance with splendid colours; but possession unveils the fallacy. Add to the unsatisfying nature of our pleasures, the attending circumstances which never fail to corrupt them. For, such as they are, they are at no time possessed unmixed. When external circumstances show fairest to the world, the envied man groans in private under his own burden. Some vexation disquiets, some passion corrodes him; some distress, either felt or feared, gnaws, like a worm, the root of his felicity. For worldly happiness ever tends to destroy itself, by corrupting the heart.
3. Uncertain possession and short duration. Were there in worldly things any fixed point of security which we could gain, the mind would then have some basis on which to rest. But our condition is such that everything wavers and totters around us. If your enjoyments be numerous, you lie more open on different sides to be wounded. If you have possessed them long, you have greater cause to dread an approaching change. Even supposing the accidents of life to leave us untouched, human bliss must still be transitory; for man changes of himself. No course of enjoyment can delight us long. What amused our youth, loses its charm in maturer age. As years advance, our powers are blunted, and our pleasurable feelings decline. We project great designs, entertain high hopes, and then leave our plans unfinished, and sink into oblivion.
II. How this vanity of the world can be reconciled with the perfections of its Divine Author. If God be good, whence the evil that fills the earth?
1. The present condition of man was not his original or primary state. As our nature carries plain marks of perversion and disorder, so the world which we inhabit bears the symptoms of having been convulsed in all its frame. Naturalists point out to us everywhere the traces of some violent change which it has suffered. Islands torn from the continent, burning mountains, shattered precipices, uninhabitable wastes, give it all the appearance of a mighty ruin. The physical and moral state of man in this world mutually sympathize and correspond. They indicate not a regular and orderly structure, either of matter or of mind, but the remains of somewhat that was once more fair and magnificent.
2. As this was not the original, so it is not intended to be the final, state of man. Though, in consequence of the abuse of the human powers, sin and vanity were introduced into the region of the universe, it was not the purpose of the Creator that they should be permitted to reign for ever. He hath made ample provision for the recovery of the penitent and faithful part of His subjects, by the merciful undertaking of the great Restorer of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. A future state being made known, we can account in a satisfying manner for the present distress of human life, without the smallest impeachment of Divine goodness. The sufferings we here undergo are converted into discipline and improvement. Through the blessing of Heaven, good is extracted from apparent evil; and the very misery which originated from sin is rendered the means of correcting sinful passions, and preparing us for felicity.
III. Whether there be not, in the present condition of human life, some real and solid enjoyments which come not under the general charge of vanity of vanities. The doctrine of the text is to be considered as chiefly addressed to worldly men. Then Solomon means to teach that all expectations of bliss, which rest solely on earthly possessions and pleasures, shall end in disappointment. But surely he did not intend to assert that there is no material difference in the pursuits of men, or that no real happiness of any kind could now be attained by the virtuous. For, besides the unanswerable objection which this would form against the Divine administration, it Would directly contradict what He elsewhere asserts (Ecc 2:25). How vain soever this life, considered in itself, may be, the comforts and hopes of religion are sufficient to give solidity to the enjoyments of the righteous. In the exercise of good affections, and the testimony of an approving conscience; in the sense of peace and reconciliation with God through the great Redeemer of mankind; in the firm confidence of being conducted through all the trials of life by infinite wisdom and goodness; and in the joyful prospect of arriving in the end at immortal felicity; they possess a happiness which, descending from a purer and more perfect religion than this world, partakes not of its vanity. Besides the enjoyments peculiar to religion, there are other pleasures of our present state which, though of an inferior order, must not be overlooked in the estimate of human life. Some degree of importance must be allowed to the comforts of health, to the innocent gratifications of sense, and to the entertainment afforded us by all the beautiful scenes of nature; some to the pursuits and amusements of social life; and more to the internal enjoyments of thought and reflection, and to the pleasures of affectionate intercourse with those whom we love. Were the great body of men fairly to compute the hours which they pass in ease, and even with some degree of pleasure, they would be found far to exceed the number of those which are spent in absolute pain either of body or mind. But in order to make a still more accurate estimation of the degree of satisfaction which, in the midst of earthly vanity, man is permitted to enjoy, the three following observations claim our attention:–
1. That many of the evils which occasion our complaints of the world are wholly imaginary. It is among the higher ranks of mankind that they chiefly abound; where fantastic refinements, sickly delicacy, and eager emulation, open a thousand sources of vexation peculiar to themselves.
2. That, of those evils which may be called real, because they owe not their existence to fancy, nor can be removed by rectifying opinion, a great proportion is brought upon us by our own misconduct. Diseases, poverty, disappointment and shame are far from being, in every instance, the unavoidable doom of men. They are much more frequently the offspring of their own misguided choice.
3. The third observation which I make respects those evils which are both real and unavoidable; from which neither wisdom nor goodness can procure our exemption. Under these this comfort remains, that if they cannot be prevented, there are means, however, by which they may be much alleviated. Religion is the great principle which acts under such circumstances as the corrective of human vanity. It inspires fortitude, supports patience, and, by its prospects and promises, darts a cheering ray into the darkest shade of human life.
IV. Practical conclusions.
1. It highly concerns us not to be unreasonable in our expectations of worldly felicity. Peace and contentment, not bliss and transport, is the full portion of man. Perfect joy is reserved for heaven.
2. But while we repress too sanguine hopes formed upon human life, let us guard against the other extreme, of repining and discontent. What title hast thou to find fault with the order of the universe, whose lot is so much beyond what thy virtue or merit gave thee ground to claim?
3. The view which we have taken of human life should naturally direct us to such pursuits as may have most influence for correcting its vanity. (H. Blair, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 8. This affecting and minute description of old age and death is concluded by the author with the same exclamation by which he began this book: O vanity of vanities, saith Koheleth, all is vanity. Now that man, the masterpiece of God’s creation, the delegated sovereign of this lower world, is turned to dust, what is there stable or worthy of contemplation besides? ALL – ALL is VANITY!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
This sentence, wherewith he began this book, he here repeateth in the end of it partly as that which he had proved in all the foregoing discourse, and partly as that which naturally and necessarily followed from both the branches of the assertion now laid down, Ecc 12:7.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
8-12. A summary of the firstpart.
Vanity, c.Resumptionof the sentiment with which the book began (Ecc 1:21Jn 2:17).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher,…. The wise man, or preacher, set out in the beginning of the book with this doctrine, or proposition, which he undertook to prove; and now having proved it by an induction of particulars, instanced in the wisdom, wealth, honours, pleasures, and profit of men, and shown the vanity of them, and that the happiness of men lies not in these things, but in the knowledge and fear of God; he repeats it, and most strongly asserts it, as an undoubted truth beyond all dispute and contradiction, that all things under the sun are not only vain, but vanity itself, extremely vain, vain in the superlative degree;
all [is] vanity; all things in the world are vain; all creatures are subject to vanity; man in every state, and in his best estate, is altogether vanity: this the wise man might with great confidence affirm, after he had shown that not only childhood and youth are vanity, but even old age; the infirmities, sorrows, and distresses of which he had just exposed, and observed that all issue in death, the last end of man, when his body returns to the earth, and his soul to God the giver of it.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
“O vanity of vanities, saith Koheleth, all is vain.” If we here look back to Ecc 12:7, that which is there said of the spirit can be no consolation. With right, Hofmann in his Schriftbeweis, I 490, says: “That it is the personal spirit of a man which returns to God; and that it returns to God without losing its consciousness, is an idea foreign to this proverb.” Also, Psychol. p. 410, it is willingly conceded that the author wished here to express, first, only the fact, in itself comfortless, that the component parts of the human body return whence they came. But the comfortless averse of the proverb is yet not without a consoling reverse. For what the author, Ecc 3:21, represents as an unsettled possibility, that the spirit of a dying man does not downwards like that of a beast, but upwards, he here affirms as an actual truth.
(Note: In the Rig-Veda that which is immortal in man is called manas ; the later language calls it atman ; vid., Muir in the Asiatic Journal, 1865, p. 305.)
From this, that he thus finally decides the question as an advantage to a man above a beast, it follows of necessity that the return of the spirit to God cannot be thought of as a resumption of the spirit into the essence of God (resorption or emanation), as the cessation of his independent existence, although, as also at Job 34:14; Psa 104:29, the nearest object of the expression is directed to the ruin of the soul-corporeal life of man which directly follows the return of the spirit to God. The same conclusion arises from this, that the idea of the return of the spirit to God, in which the author at last finds rest, cannot yet stand in a subordinate place with reference to the idea of Hades, above which it raises itself; with the latter the spirit remains indestructible, although it has sunk into a silent, inactive life. And in the third place, that conclusion flows from the fact that the author is forced by the present contradiction between human experience and the righteousness of God to the postulate of a judgment finally settling these contradictions, Ecc 3:17; Ecc 11:9, cf. Ecc 12:14, whence it immediately follows that the continued existence of the spirit is thought of as a well-known truth ( Psychol. p. 127). The Targ. translates, not against the spirit of the book: “the spirit will return to stand in judgment before God, who gave it to thee.” In this connection of thoughts Koheleth says more than what Lucretius says (ii. 998 ss.):
Cedit item retro, de terra quod fuit ante,
In terras, et quod missum est ex aetheris oris
Id rursum caeli rellatum templa receptant
A comforting thought lies in the words . The gifts of God are on His side (Rom 11:29). When He receives back that which was given, He receives it back to restore it again in another manner. Such thoughts connect themselves with the reference to God the Giv. Meanwhile the author next aims at showing the vanity of man, viz., of man as living here. Body and spirit are separated, and depart each in its own direction. Not only the world and the labours by which man is encompassed are “vain,” and not only is that which man has and does and experiences “vain,” but also man himself as such is vain, and thus – this is the facit – all is , “vain.”
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Conclusion of the Whole. | |
8 Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity. 9 And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. 10 The preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth. 11 The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd. 12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Solomon is here drawing towards a close, and is loth to part till he has gained his point, and prevailed with his hearers, with his readers, to seek for that satisfaction in God only and in their duty to him which they can never find in the creature.
I. He repeats his text (v. 8), 1. As that which he had fully demonstrated the truth of, and so made good his undertaking in this sermon, wherein he had kept closely to his text, and both his reasons and his application were to the purpose. 2. As that which he desired to inculcate both upon others and upon himself, to have it ready, and to make use of it upon all occasions. We see it daily proved; let it therefore be daily improved: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
II. He recommends what he had written upon this subject by divine direction and inspiration to our serious consideration. The words of this book are faithful, and well worthy our acceptance, for,
1. They are the words of one that was a convert, a penitent, that could speak by dear-bought experience of the vanity of the world and the folly of expecting great things from it. He was Coheleth, one gathered in from his wanderings and gathered home to that God from whom he had revolted. Vanity of vanities, saith the penitent. All true penitents are convinced of the vanity of the world, for they find it can do nothing to ease them of the burden of sin, which they complain of.
2. They are the words of one that was wise, wiser than any, endued with extraordinary measures of wisdom, famous for it among his neighbours, who all sought unto him to hear his wisdom, and therefore a competent judge of this matter, not only wise as a prince, but wise as a preacher–and preachers have need of wisdom to win souls.
3. He was one that made it his business to do good, and to use wisdom aright. Because he was himself wise, but knew he had not his wisdom for himself, any more than he had it from himself, he still taught the people that knowledge which he had found useful to himself, and hoped might be so to them too. It is the interest of princes to have their people well taught in religion, and no disparagement to them to teach them themselves the good knowledge of the Lord, but their duty to encourage those whose office it is to teach them and to speak comfortably to them, 2 Chron. xxx. 22. Let not the people, the common people, be despised, no, not by the wisest and greatest, as either unworthy or incapable of good knowledge: even those that are well taught have need to be still taught, that they may grow in knowledge.
4. He took a great deal of pains and care to do good, designing to teach the people knowledge. He did not put them off with any thing that came next to hand, because they were inferior people, and he a very wise man, but considering the worth of the souls he preached to and the weight of the subject he preached on, he gave good heed to what he read and heard from others, that, having stocked himself well, he might bring out of his treasury things new and old. He gave good heed to what he spoke and wrote himself, and was choice and exact in it; all he did was elaborate. (1.) He chose the most profitable way of preaching, by proverbs or short sentences, which would be more easily apprehended and remembered than long and laboured periods. (2.) He did not content himself with a few parables, or wise sayings, and repeat them again and again, but he furnished himself with many proverbs, a great variety of grave discourses, that he might have something to say on every occasion. (3.) He did not only give them such observations as were obvious and trite, but he sought out such as were surprising and uncommon; he dug into the mines of knowledge, and did not merely pick up what lay on the surface. (4.) He did not deliver his heads and observations at random, as they came to mind, but methodized them, and set them in order that they might appear in more strength and lustre.
5. He put what he had to say in such a dress as he thought would be most pleasing: He sought to find out acceptable words, words of delight (v. 10); he took care that good matter might not be spoiled by a bad style, and by the ungratefulness and incongruity of the expression. Ministers should study, not for the big words, nor the fine words, but acceptable words, such as are likely to please men for their good, to edification, 1 Cor. x. 33. Those that would win souls must contrive how to win upon them with words fitly spoken.
6. That which he wrote for our instruction is of unquestionable certainty, and what we may rely upon: That which was written was upright and sincere, according to the real sentiments of the penman, even words of truth, the exact representation of the thing as it is. Those are sure not to miss their way who are guided by these words. What good will acceptable words do us if they be not upright and words of truth? Most are for smooth things, that flatter them, rather than right things, that direct them (Isa. xxx. 10), but to those that understand themselves, and their own interest, words of truth will always be acceptable words.
7. That which he and other holy men wrote will be of great use and advantage to us, especially being inculcated upon us by the exposition of it, v. 11. Here observe, (1.) A double benefit accruing to us from divine truths if duly applied and improved; they are profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction in righteousness. They are of use, [1.] To excite us to our duty. They are as goads to the ox that draws the plough, putting him forward when he is dull and quickening him, to amend his pace. The truths of God prick men to the heart (Acts ii. 37) and put them upon bethinking themselves, when they trifle and grow remiss, and exerting themselves with more vigour in their work. While our good affections are so apt as they are to grow flat and cool, we have need of these goads. [2.] To engage us to persevere in our duty. They are as nails to those that are wavering and inconstant, to fix them to that which is good. They are as goads to such as are dull and draw back, and nails to such as are desultory and draw aside, means to establish the heart and confirm good resolutions, that we may not sit loose to our duty, nor even be taken off from it, but that what good there is in us may be as a nail fastened in a sure place, Ezra ix. 8. (2.) A double way of communicating divine truths, in order to those benefits:– [1.] By the scriptures, as the standing rule, the words of the wise, that is, of the prophets, who are called wise men, Matt. xxiii. 34. These we have in black and white, and may have recourse to them at any time, and make use of them as goads and as nails. By them we may teach ourselves; let them but come with pungency and power to the soul, let the impressions of them be deep and durable, and the will make us wise to salvation. [2.] By the ministry. To make the words of the wise more profitable to us, it is appointed that they should be impressed and fastened by the masters of assemblies. Solemn assemblies for religious worship are an ancient divine institution, intended for the honour of God and the edification of his church, and are not only serviceable, but necessary, to those ends. There must be masters of these assemblies, who are Christ’s ministers, and as such are to preside in them, to be God’s mouth to the people and theirs to God. Their business is to fasten the words of the wise, and drive them as nails to the head, in order to which the word of God is likewise as a hammer, Jer. xxiii. 29.
8. That which is written, and thus recommended to us, is of divine origin. Though it comes to us through various hands (many wise men, and many masters of assemblies), yet it is given by one and the same shepherd, the great shepherd of Israel, that leads Joseph like a flock, Ps. lxxx. 1. God is that one Shepherd, whose good Spirit indited the scriptures, and assists the masters of the assemblies in opening and applying the scriptures. These words of the wise are the true sayings of God, on which we may rest our souls. From that one Shepherd all ministers must receive what they deliver, and speak according to the light of the written word.
9. The sacred inspired writings, if we will but make use of them, are sufficient to guide us in the way of true happiness, and we need not, in the pursuit of that, to fatigue ourselves with the search of other writings (v. 12): “And further, nothing now remains but to tell thee that that of making many books there is no end,” that is, (1.) Of writing many books. “If what I have written, serve not to convince thee of the vanity of the world, and the necessity of being religious, neither wouldst thou be convinced if I should write ever so much.” If the end be not attained in the use of those books of scripture which God has blessed us with, neither should we obtain the end, if we had twice as many more; nay, if we had so many that the whole world could not contain them (John xxi. 25), and much study of them would but confound us, and would rather be a weariness to the flesh than any advantage to the soul. We have as much as God saw fit to give us, saw fit for us, and saw us fit for. Much less can it be expected that those who will not by these be admonished should be wrought upon by other writings. Let men write ever so many books for the conduct of human life, write till they have tired themselves with much study, they cannot give better instructions than those we have from the word of God. Or, (2.) Of buying many books, making ourselves master of them, and masters of what is in them, by much study; still the desire of learning would be unsatisfied. It will give a man indeed the best entertainment and the best accomplishment this world can afford him; but if we be not by these admonished of the vanity of the world, and human learning, among other things, and its insufficiency to make us happy without true piety, alas! there is no end of it, nor real benefit by it; it will weary the body, but never give the soul any true satisfaction. The great Mr. Selden subscribed to this when he owned that in all the books he had read he never found that on which he could rest his soul, but in the holy scripture, especially Tit 2:11; Tit 2:12. By these therefore let us be admonished.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
SOLOMON’S CONCLUSION INTRODUCED
Verse 8 Introduces Solomon’s conclusion by repeating once again, his oft repeated declaration, that all (under the sun) Is vanity, a word used 37 times in Ecclesiastes. He proceeds then to state his objectives and conclusion.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES.
Ecc. 12:8. Vanity of vanities.] This repetition of chapter Ecc. 1:2 shows that these words are intended to be placed at the head of the conclusion of the book. They introduce the epilogue.
Ecc. 12:10. Acceptable words.] Pleasant, agreeable words. We are reminded of the gracious words of Our Lord. (Luk. 4:22.) And that which was written was upright.] In accordance with the standard. They corresponded with eternal realities, and were, therefore, true.
Ecc. 12:11. The words of the wise are as goads.] The author thus classes himself with the writers of proverbial wisdom. The Sapiential Books of the O.T. would come under this description. Such words are as goads; they have the power of penetrating deeply into the heart. And nails.] Used synonymously with goads. Fastened by the masters of assemblies.] The maxims of wisdom, as united into one assembly or collection. Which are given from one shepherd.] In the sense of a leader of a congregation, or chief of a school. The wisdom of many is pervaded by a spirit of unity. Hengstenberg considers that there is a reference to God as the author of the Sacred Books.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Ecc. 12:8-11
THE VINDICATION OF A TRUE RELIGIOUS TEACHER
The Church, though guided and informed by the Spirit of God, must have human teachers. Human words, written or spoken, are necessary to convey the suggestions of inspiration. Physical nature can be known by observation and research; but we can only know a person when he pleases to reveal himself by speech. God has spoken in past ages to minds fitted to receive and convey His truth. He who affirms that he possesses true spiritual wisdom, and speaks on behalf of God, puts forward a high claim. Upon what grounds can such a claim be vindicated? Solomon here answers this question for himself, and the claims of all true religious teachers admit of the like justification. These claims may be examined as they have reference to the teacher himself, or to his work. He may be vindicated, therefore:
I. By the Worth of His personal Qualifications. God has always chosen the purest and the noblest natures to convey His truth to mankind. The men who instruct us in the pages of the Written Word were fit instruments for so high an office; and all who presume to teach the Church the will of God must be sufficiently endowed in mind, and heart, and strength of purpose. Every true spiritual teacher should partake of the qualities which the author of this book claims for himself.
1. He has the gift of spiritual wisdom (Ecc. 12:9). He is in the possession of truths which lie not idly in his mind, but are quick and powerful, influencing the heart and life. To have wisdom is the one thing needful for the conveyance of it. God must first speak to the soul of a teacher before he can instruct the Church in words of living power. He can teach the people knowledge as long as he continues to utter, not only the old truths, but also the latest things which he has heard from God. This imparts the freshness of the morning to what may be, in reality, as old as time itself.
2. He has the power and impulse to teach wisdom. He is not content to be wise for himself; he must teach the people. This requires special talents, and a disposition towards the work.
(1) The power of conveying knowledge in a portable form. He gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. These are compact and terse expressions of truthfulness and wealth in little compass. It is sometimes an advantage to be able to exchange the scattered and cumbrous possessions of the mind for their golden equivalents of thought. We owe much to those who have expressed the wisdom of many in brief and pointed sayings.
(2.) The power of conveying knowledge in an agreeable form. Acceptable words, not of necessity to all, but to the true children of wisdom. There are those who are of the truth, and who therefore recognise the features of truth as by an unerring instinct. To such the words of wisdom are pleasant, and find welcome entrance and commendation.
(3.) The power of high moral purpose. The Royal Preacher had a high moral purpose to urge him to his task. He collected the maxims and chief things of wisdom, not for intellectual display or recreation, but in order that he might awaken in the souls of men the love of truth and the sense of duty. Such a purpose made him thoroughly in earnest. He announced no curious speculations, remote from the true interests of man; but, in words of solemn earnestness, set forth the simple facts of experience and of duty. The religious teacher has the strongest reason for earnestness, because he is concerned with eternal verities which will have untold significance when the world has passed away. All genuine teachers of the Church of God know and feel great spiritual truths, and tell them forth from the abundance of their heart. But further; the true religious teacher is vindicated.
II. By the Verification of His Work. He who is endowed with the necessary qualities of mind, and heart, and earnest purpose, must be a successful leader of the thought and effort of Gods people. Given such a teacher, and we can predict the results of his work. But we can reverse the process, and from the nature of the work, judge the worth and fitness of the teacher. Thus we are capable of verifying what is submitted to us as truth. We have a stronger foundation than mere authority for the essential facts of our spiritual nature. Even Christ Himself was not above appealing to that standard of truth which is preserved in every pure mind and heart. To all such, His sayings were true. We have, in this section, certain marks by which we can assure ourselves of the truth of what is delivered to us.
1. The teaching should be conformed to the standard of eternal truth. That which was written was upright; even words of truth. In the physical world, there are fixed directionssuch as the level and the vertical. In like manner, in the spiritual world, there is a normal and standard of right. Whatever is conformed to this shall live through the ages; and whatever is not so conformed, men will, in the course of time, allow most willingly to die. Conscience, enlightened by the Spirit of God, has a correct eye to discover what is right and true in morals and religion. And whatever offends, that eye cannot be allowed long to endure.
2. The teaching should have the power of penetrating the heart. (Ecc. 12:11.) Like goads and nails, spiritual truth has the power of penetrating the heart of the children of God, and there fixing itself. Divine Revelation, above all, has this wonderful property. Whatever in the literature of the world is deepest, and touches most our inmost part, is derived from that Blessed Book. All the rest, however beautiful or worthy in itself, does but gild and play upon the surface of our souls. If our hearts are sincere, and open to spiritual impressions, they can thus judge of the claims of any teacher to be the messenger of Gods truth.
3. The teaching should commend itself to the children of wisdom. It should find a welcome in all sincere and upright souls. Wisdom is sure to be justified of her children. She speaks those things which they know to be true to their own nature, instincts, and longings.
4. The teaching should be in harmony with all previous truth. Which are given from one shepherd. However diversified the utterances of truth by different minds, that truth is at one with itself. The light may be coloured by the medium through which it passes, or broken up into refractions, yet these can be traced to the same pure and single light of heaven. The Bible is an instance of such unity, because, though the work of many authors, it is pervaded by one purpose, and bears the impress of one presiding mind. In the successive stages of revelation, the truth is advanced further, but it is in perfect continuity with all that has preceded. Thus, by these several marks, the work of the true teachers of the Church may be verified, and proved to be really the work of God. Their claim to be heard may be supported upon the surest evidence. Even the Bible itself cannot be regarded as so securely resting upon authority as to set aside the necessity of enquiring into the nature and morality of its doctrines and precepts. Our spiritual nature answers to these, that they are right, pure, and true. Strong as the Scripture is in the support of external evidence, it is sublimely strong in the witness which it bears to itself. These words of the wise can be verified by their conformity to the standard of right, by their power to touch the heart and conscience, and by their adaptation to all the necessities of the soul. The authors are many, but they have contributed to form one book, which conveys a perfect unity of impression to every spiritual mind. It has the characteristic of every true book, and that is, that it has one central ideaone principal theme. That idea is one of surpassing greatness, for it concerns the most important and lasting interests of mankind.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Ecc. 12:8. These words are repeated in order to show that all human endeavour and greatness are vain, if the silent dust is all that remains of man.
The hand of death will lift from before the eyes of the dying the veil of delusive fascination that covered the emptiness of earthly joys; and this solemn truth, inscribed upon them all, will appear in its dread reality, and be felt in all its bitterness by the disappointed and foreboding heart [Wardlaw].
He who sees the vanity of life, is best prepared to learn the fear of God, and the ways of duty (Ecc. 12:13).
This is but a half-truth. Human existence cannot be considered as wholly vain when it is regarded in the light of the hereafter.
Ecc. 12:9. All who possess true wisdom have necessity laid upon them to teach it. The wisest cannot communicate his wisdom by some sudden influence. He must take upon himself the humble duty of teaching.
The knowledge of Divine things is the only stable foundation for piety. If the feelings are not fed from hence, they do but waste and consume the energy of the soul.
Instead of hiding in his own breast those treasures of wisdom and knowledge he had acquiredinstead of treating them as a mere intellectual luxury, or of selfishly hoarding them up for his own behoofhe was at pains to turn them to account, in the way of promoting the great interests of morality and religion. This was not a subject on which to speak at random. It demanded something better than hasty and superficial thoughts. He laid himself out, accordingly, to discover, by profound meditation, by practical and persevering study, the best and most appropriate things that could be said; and to condense and adjust them into those terse and pointed sentences which are usually designated by the name of proverbs [Buchanan].
The reason of things lies in little compass, if the mind could at any time be so happy as to light upon it. All philosophy is reduced to a few principles, and those principles comprised in a few propositions. And as the whole structure of speculation rests upon three or four axioms, or maxims, so that of practice also bears upon a very small number of rules. And surely there was never yet any rule or maxim that filled a volume, or took up a weeks time to be got by heart. The truth is, there could be no such thing as art or science, could not the mind of man gather the general natures of things out of the numberless heaps of particulars, and then bind them up into such short aphorisms or propositions, so that they may be made portable to the memory, and therefore become ready and at hand for the judgment to apply, and make use of, as there shall be occasion [South].
Ecc. 12:10. The truth may often be unpalatable, but it should not be so expressed as to give offence to those who hear it. The most harsh truths can always be so combined with others as to produce a grateful impression. In the doctrines of grace, and mercy, and hope for man, the true teacher of the Church has abundant material for imparting sweetness to his message.
Every faithful instructor of Gods people maintains a strict regard for truth, while he seeks, on the other hand, to make it lovely in the eyes of mankind.
The guidance of inspiration did not render unnecessary the activity of genius in the writers of the Sacred Books. They were able to clothe the truth in forms of beauty, and with all the agreeable diversity of their several gifts.
There were two objects at which he especially aimedthe one, to set down only that which was upright, even words of truth; the other, to find acceptable words in which to convey his thoughts. He knew how often the most weighty and precious lessons were rendered utterly distasteful, and even offensive, by the unsuitable language in which they were expressed. He understood human nature. He knew that many will be led who will not be driven; that it is often very possible to conciliate where it would be hopeless to attempt to coerce; that rudeness seldom fails to aggravate and embtter the enmity and opposition which gentleness would soothe and sweetennay, that so apparently a small matter as mere stylethe propriety, the elegance, the felicity of the form of speech in which a truth is deliveredwill, with many minds, gain for it a place and power which, in their case at least, it would never otherwise have acquired [Buchanan].
Writing gives a permanence to truth, and preserves it from the wrongs of time. It makes the progress of humanity possible by securing the results of all past victories over ignorance.
We owe much to the gifted men who have made great truths permanent for us in forms of beauty. They prepare and spread the repasts of the mind and soul.
Speaking is but like a burning coal, which giveth heat and some light near at hand; but writing is like a shining lamp, which giveth light afar off [Jermin].
Ecc. 12:11. All true words of lasting significance to man have power to enter the depths of the soul and to fasten themselves there.
As the Bible dwells upon the subject of all human anxieties, and speaks in the language of human experience and sympathy, its words have a pre-eminent power in piercing the heart.
The power of a book depends, not entirely upon its own worth, but also upon the condition of the reader. There are states of mind and heart in which the words of the Bible come home to us with overwhelming power.
St. Cyprian, therefore, saith: take not those things which are eloquent, and serve to delight the ears, but those that are strong and powerful to work upon the heart, to wound and gall the conscience, to rouse a carnal security. Such goads were the words of St. Peter, when they that heard them were pricked in their hearts, and cried out to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Of these goads, that is true, which from heaven was spoken to Saul, It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks [Jermin].
How often has it thus happened that some single sentence of Scriptureheard, perhaps, in some sermon, or read in some book, of which nothing else whatever is rememberedhas been so fixed, in a moment, in the sinners mind that he could not get rid of it? He tried to forget it; he wandered, it may be, all over the world, in the hope and with the desire of being able to free himself from the disquietude it created; but the nail could not be drawn out [Buchanan].
The words of the wise, who have spoken true things concerning the deepest interests of man, though they are many and diversified, are pervaded by a spirit of unity. They are but separate beams of one central light.
The shepherds who have taught the Church by their words contained in the Scripture, though they lived in different ages, and belonged to widely diverse classes of society, have produced a volume which, in the highest sense, is one Book. It is one, not by an outward, but by an organic, unity. One living power fills and informs every part.
But this unity of Scripture, where is it? From what point shall we behold and recognize it? Surely from that in which those verses (Eph. 1:9-10) will place us, when we regard it as the story of the knitting anew the broken relations between the Lord God and the race of man; of the bringing the First-begotten into the world, for the gathering together all the scattered and the sundered in Him; when we regard it as the true Paradise Regainedthe true De Civitate Deieven by a better title than those noble books which bear these namesthe record of that mystery of Gods will which was working from the first to the end that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ [Trench].
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
8. Vanity of vanities This solemn finale employs the key-note with which this inquiry began. It is as if the proposition then announced had now been demonstrated. The writer, committing it now to the judgment of reasonable men, feels sure of their concurrence for ever.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher, ‘all is vanity.’
This is a reference to the whole of man’s existence on earth. It signals the completion of what was commenced in Ecc 1:2, and the sum total of what the human mind can achieve. All that is done, or happens, on earth has been seen to be finally meaningless, temporary and transient. All hope of meaning and worth therefore depends on living before God and the final event just described, that the spirit returns to the God Who gave it. It depends on the fact that on death man is drawn back up to God and His mysterious everlastingness, (something that will one day gain clearer light in the coming and teaching of Jesus, and in His final conquest of death). But meanwhile all that is on earth is, and remains, ‘total vanity’.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Closing Remarks: Glorification The Preacher makes his closing remarks by restating his theme that all is vanity (Ecc 12:8). He accepts his divine duty to continue to teach the people on this topic (Ecc 12:9-12). In the final two verses (Ecc 12:13-14) he summarizes the solution to life’s vanities with the commandment to fear God because He will judge us in the next life. Within the context of the third responsive theme of Ecclesiastes, we fear Him and keep His commandments by resting in Him as He divinely orchestrates our lives and moves us into His divine seasons. These divine seasons are our destiny, so that we fear God and keep His commandments by fulfilling our divine destinies.
I once heard vanity described this way: a man is born, goes to school, gets a job, finds a wife, raises a family, retires, then he dies. His children do the same. A man works hard all of his life to reach each new phase of life, but for what purpose? Life is vain without a divine purpose. The answer to this dilemma of life’s vanities is found in the closing verses of this book, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” (Ecc 12:13)
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. Repetition of Opening Statement Ecc 12:8-12
2. Final Conclusion Ecc 12:13-14
Ecc 12:8-12 Repetition of Opening Statement In Ecc 12:8 the Preacher repeats his opening statement recorded in Ecc 1:2-4. This time he adds the comment that his words will teach and guide the people through this life of vanity (Ecc 12:9-12).
Ecc 12:8 Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.
Ecc 12:8
Ecc 12:9 And moreover, because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs.
Ecc 12:10 Ecc 12:9-10
[32] Miriam Lichtheim, The Instruction of Amenemope, in Ancient Egyptian literature: Volume II: The New Kingdom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973-[80]), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004).
The phrase, “the words of the wise,” is also used herein the context of King Solomon’s quest for wisdom. Note Ecc 12:11, “The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.”
Ecc 12:11 The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.
Ecc 12:12 Ecc 12:13-14
For the king, as well as the labourer, life does not consist in the abundance of one’s possessions or accomplishments. In the end, each man’s life will be measured on Judgment Day by amount of fear and obedience that he showed towards God. All of the pursuits that the Preacher described in the early chapters of this sermon are vanity compared to a man’s eternal destiny. The Preacher knows that every man will give an account of his life to God (Ecc 3:15; Ecc 3:17).
Ecc 3:15, “That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.”
Ecc 3:17, “I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.”
Ecc 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
Ecc 12:13
Ecc 12:13 “and keep His commandments” Comments – Note how Jesus explained that all of the commandments could be summed up into two commandments (Mat 22:36-40).
Mat 22:36-40, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets .”
Ecc 12:13 Comments – We may say that the Preacher’s conclusion to fear God and keep His commandments sounds too simplistic and vague for such a pursuit of the meaning of life. But the secret to rest is found in our daily walk with the Lord, not in our grand accomplishments. God designed our journey to be one of daily dependence upon Him for direction and guidance rather than Him giving us a clearly laid out plan to follow from the beginning of our lives. He designed our lives this way to that we would learn to have fellowship with Him on a regular basis. Thus, we must seek Him daily to find a fresh word from Him for each day in order to fulfill our earthly duties.
Ecc 12:14 For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
Ecc 12:14
1Co 3:11-15, “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Conclusion of the Book
v. 8. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, v. 9. And moreover, because the Preacher was wise, v. 10. The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words, v. 11. The words of the wise are as goads, v. 12. And further, by these, v. 13. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, v. 14. For God shall bring every work into Judgment,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Ecc 12:8. Vanity of vanities. The least reflection upon that ultimate term of all our occupations, enjoyments, and schemes of happiness in this world, death, naturally brings into one’s mind the maxim set forth in the beginning of this discourse, and from which, by proving its truth with respect to all those, the Hebrew philosopher had endeavoured to evince the necessity of a future state. Wherefore it was proper to mention it again, in order to prepare the minds of his hearers for the general conclusion; which, however, he divided from it by the fourth and last precept or advice that he thought necessary to give; and which, as it had no particular retrospect to any argument used before, it was proper to divide, somehow or other, from those that had. See on the following verses.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
EPILOGUE
Review of the whole, and Commendatory Recapitulation of the truths therein contained
Ecc 12:8-14.
1. With reference to the personal worth of the author
(Ecc 12:8-11).
8 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity. 9And moreover, because the Preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge: yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many Proverbs 10 The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words: and that which was written, was upright, even words of truth. 11The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which are given from one shepherd.
2. With reference to the serious and weighty character of his teachings
(Ecc 12:12-14).
12And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. 13Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. 14For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.
Ecc 12:9.. The primary sense of this root must be the ear, or hearing; since it is easier to understand how the sense of weighing (as it is in the Arabic ) came from that, than vice versa. The latter sense is either by a very natural figure, or from the resemblance of a balance with its two ears, as they may be called. Its intensive piel sense here may denote listening attentively, as a prelude to judging, or the act of the mind itself.
[Ecc 12:11. would be, according to the common usage, masters of collections, or of gatherings. , however, sometimes only very slightly modifies the meaning of the following word, and there is nothing in the way of its having the objective sense, like other similar auxiliary words: objects of collections, rather than makers of collections,the things gathered rather than the gatherers. So Hitzig views it, who has rendered it simply gesammelten, that is, collectanea or collections. In this way alone does it make a true parallel with the words of the wise in the previous number: their gathered sentences, as we have rendered it in the Metrical Version.T. L.]
[Ecc 12:12.. See remarks, p. 30.T. L.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
This concluding discourse opens purposely with that sentence which opened the book (Ecc 1:2), namely, with a lamentation over the vanity of all earthly things. This exclamation cannot be considered as a conclusion to what precedes, because the very words that immediately precede (Ecc 12:7) had opened the view to something that is not , but the vanquishing of all , and because, especially in the last section of the vanity of the world, or the negative side of the truths taught by the author, had fallen much behind the positive ideas of zeal in vocation, cheerful joy of life, and fear of God (as not vanities, but as virtue conquering vanity). Unlike the division followed by De Wette, Koster, Rosenmueller, Knobel, Ewald, Hitzig, Elster, etc., verse 8 is to be connected with what follows, in accordance with most of the older commentators (also with Dathe, Umbreit, Vaihinger, Hengstenberg, Hahn etc.) and is to be considered as an introduction formula[2] of the Epilogue, purposely conforming to the beginning of the whole. This view is also strengthened by the circumstance that the at the commencement of the ninth verse presents this, not as an introductory verse, but as the continuation of something already begun, whilst on the contrary the expression Ecc 12:8, according to the analogy of Ecc 1:2, is clearly used as an introductory formula. The object of this formula at the opening of the epilogue is again to present to the reader the negative summation of the observations and experience of the author, the fact of the vanity and perishability of all earthly things in order subsequently to establish the correctness of this result by a double testimony:1. By vindication of the moral weight of the personality of the author as a genuinely wise man and teacher of wisdom (Ecc 12:9-11); 2. by referring to the very serious and important character of the precepts laid down by him (Ecc 12:12-14). These two divisions are characterized by equal length and analogous construction[3] (i.e., that they both begin with and moreover) as skilfully planned strophes or executions of the theme contained in Ecc 12:8, and not as two mere postscripts of the author added as by chance (Hitzig); whilst in the latter the positive result of the religious and moral observations of the Preacher appears again in the most significant and precise form possible (Ecc 12:13), strengthened, too, by an addition (Ecc 12:14) which presents most clearly the correct intermediation of the positive with the negative result in Ecc 12:8, and thus affords the only true solution of the great enigma from which Ecc 1:2 had proceeded. This solution consists simply in pointing him who is discontented and anxious about the vanity and unhappiness of this life, to the great day of universal reckoning, and in the inculcation of the duty of deferential obedience to a holy and just God,a duty from which no one can escape with impunity. As this epilogue is in reality the first to offer the key to the correct understanding of the whole, (for the sum of the previously developed precepts of wisdom, is given neither so clearly nor impressively in Ecc 11:1-10; Ecc 11:7, as is the case here) we clearly perceive the untenability of that hypercritical view (v. d. Palm, Dderlein, Berthold, Knobel, Umbreit, and, to a certain extent, also, of Herzfeld) which denies the authenticity of these closing verses (from Ecc 12:9). For a special refutation of their arguments comp. the Int. 3, Obs.
2. First strophe. Ecc 12:8-11. The negative result of the book, attested in its truth and importance by reference to the personal worth of the author as a genuine teacher of wisdom. For verse 8 see partly the previous paragraph (No. 1), and partly the exegetical illustrations to chaps. 1 and 2. For the name (here without the article) see the Intr., & 1. Ecc 12:9. And moreover because the Preacher was wise. (used substantively): and the remainder (comp. 1Sa 15:15), is here, and in verse 12, clearly equivalent to: and there remains, namely, to say. The indirect construction follows here, introduced by (comp. the Lat. restat, ut, etc.), whilst in Ecc 12:12 we find the direct construction (comp. the Lat. Quod restat, or Ceterum). Gesenius, Winer, Knobel, Vaihinger, etc., translate and moreover, because, and therefore accept this clause as preliminary, letting the subsequent one commence with (Luther does the same: This same Preacher was not only wise, etc.; and so, in sense, the Vulgate: Cumque esset sapientissimus Ecclesiastes). But this is opposed partly by the analogy of the commencement, Ecc 5:12, and partly by the circumstance that the alone could scarcely introduce the secondary clause. Hengst. correctly remarks concerning : A wise man, not in the sense of the world, but of the kingdom of God, not from ones self, but from God (comp. Ecc 12:11), so that this passage is not in contradiction with Pro 27:2 : Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips. And nevertheless, Solomon could hardly have spoken thus of himself without incurring the censure of self-praise. And even another, who had written this with reference to him, would, in reality, have expressed something insipid and inappropriate, in case he really had the historic Solomon in his eye. For which reason the fictitious character of Koheleth, or his merely ideal identity with Solomon is quite apparent.He still taught the people knowledge.For at the beginning of a sentence, comp. Gen 19:12; Mic 6:10; Job 24:20.Yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. to consider, to weigh, the root of balances. This verb in conjunction with the following shows the means whereby he set in order ( comp. Ecc 1:15; Ecc 7:13), many proverbs. This product was the result of careful investigation and reflectiona relation of the three verbs to one another, which is clearly indicated by the absence of the copula before the third: ; comp. Gen 48:14; 1Ki 13:18; Ewald, 333 c.By the many proverbs ( as in Ecc 5:7; Ecc 9:8), the author evidently does not mean those mentioned in 1Ki 5:12, but rather those sayings of Solomon that are contained in the Book of Proverbs; for he imitates mainly these latter in his own contained in this book.
Ecc 12:10. The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words., pleasant, agreeable words ( , Luk 4:23), comp. Isa 54:12. Here are naturally meant words acceptable not to the great mass, but to serious minds, heavenly inclined, and seeking wisdom; words of honeyed sweetness in the sense of Psa 19:11, verba qu, jure meritoque desiderari et placere debent, tamquam divin virtutis et certitudinis (S. Schmidt). The expression can scarcely relate to mere acceptability and adornment of the form of speech (as asserted by Hitzig and Elster).And that which was written was upright, even words of truth. The passive participle expresses that which was written by the author in consequence of seeking after acceptable words; hence Herzfeld, and after him, Hengstenberg and Elster, are correct: and thus then was written what was correct; Ewald and Vaihinger, on the contrary, render erroneously: but honest words were written, which adversative rendering of the conjunction is decidedly injurious to the sense and opposed to the text. Hitzig reads the infinitive absolute: to find () and write; but this change is quite as unnecessary as the adverbial rendering of in the sense of correct, honest, which latter rendering is also found in Luther, Knobel, Vaihinger, tlster, etc. It is that expresses this adverbial sense every where else (Son 1:4; Son 7:10; Pro 23:31; Psa 58:1). is, on the contrary, here, as every where, a substantive, meaning straightforwardness, uprightness; and that in which this uprightness consists is expressed by the words in apposition, words of truth, e g., in true teaching, acceptable to God, and therefore bringing blessings; teachings of the genuine heavenly wisdom. Comp. Pro 8:6-10; Jam 3:17.
Ecc 12:11. The words of the wise are as goads.The author, by bringing the words of truth under the general category of words of the wise (e g., of those ethical precepts as they issue from the circles of the Chakamim, to which he himself belongs according to Ecc 12:9), lends to them so much the more weighty significance and authority; for all that can be said in praise of the words of the Chakamim in general must now especially avail also of his proverbs and discourses. Hence the phrase would be more fittingly rendered by: Such words of wise men (comp. Hitzig). Hengstenberg takes too narrow, or, if we will, too broad a view of the idea of wise men, when he, in connection with older authors, as Luther, Rambach, Starke, etc., sees therein only the inspired writers of the O. T., or the authors of the Canonical Books; according to which this verse would contain a literal and direct self-canonization. But this is opposed by the fact that elsewhere always means the authors of the characteristic Proverbial wisdom, or Chokmah, the teachings of the Solomonic and post-Solomonic era, which is to be clearly distinguished from the prophetic and lyrico-poetical [Psalmistic] literature (see 1Ki 4:30 f.; Pro 1:6; Pro 22:17; Jer 18:18; and comp. 3 of the General Intr. to the Solomonic literature, Vol. XII., p. 8f.), so that Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, etc., could not possibly have been reckoned in this category. This is quite apart from the fact that such a self-canonization expressed in the manner aforesaid, would have been neither especially appropriate nor sufficiently clear. , like goads, e g., endowed with stinging, correctly aiming, and deeply penetrating effect, verba, qu aculeorum instar alte descendunt in pectora hominum, sque manent infixa (Gesenius; comp. Ewald, Hitzig, Hengstenberg and Elster). It is usually regarded as ox-goads (Septuagint, ; Targ., Talm., Rabb., and most of the moderns). But : or (1Sa 13:21), neither means specially, according to its etymology, a goad to drive cattle, nor does the parallel as nails lead exactly to this special meaning, to which the plural form of the expression would not be favorable. Neither is it the case that all the words of the wise, nor especially all the proverbs of this book, are of a goading, that is, an exhortatory, nature, as Hitzig very correctly observes. Therefore we must stop at the simple meaning of goads, and interpret this to signify the penetrating brevity, the inciting and searching influence of these precepts of wisdom of Koheleth and other wise men.And as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies.As the fastened nails doubtless form a synonym to the goads, so the masters of assemblies, literally the colleagues of the assembly [ comp. chap.Ecc 10:11; Ecc 10:20; Pro 1:17; Isa 41:15] can only be another expression for those words of the wise. We are therein to understand collected maxims of wisdom, united into one assembly or collection, and not merely well connected proverbs, as Ewald and Elster would have it; for the verb does not refer to the excellence and perfection of the collection; neither does the figure of the nails, which, at most, leads to the idea of juncture, and not to that of a specially beautiful and harmonious order. Highly unfitting also is the interpretation of as masters of assemblies (Luther), e g., partakers in learned assemblies [Gesenius] or principals of learned schools, teachers of wisdom [Vaihinger, etc.], or even authors of the individual books of the sacred national library, or authors of the separate books of the Old Testament Canon [Hengstenberg]. This personal signification of the expression is forbidden once for all by the parallelism with the words of wisdom in the first clause.Which are given from one shepherd.That is, in so far as the words of the wise in the preceding book are united, they proceed from one author, who was not only a wise man, but a shepherd in the bargain, i.e., a wise teacher, the leader of a congregation, an elder of the synagogue. For this sense of shepherd as chief of a school, or a priestly teacher, comp. Jer 2:8; Jer 3:15; Jer 10:21; Jer 23:4. The oneness of the authorship is here thus pointedly expressed by way of contrast to the many wise men in the first clause. To refer the expression to God [Hieron., Geier, Michaelis, Starke, Hengstenberg, Herzfeld, Knobel, etc.], is quite as arbitrary as a reference to Moses [Targ.], to the historic Solomon [Jablonski, etc.], to Zerubbadbel [Grotius], or as the emendation for by virtue of which Hitzig translates: which are given united as a pasture [reading instead of]
3. Second strophe. Ecc 12:12-14. The positive result of the book as a self-speaking testimony for the truth, worth, and weight of its contents.And further, by these, my son, be admonished.The word is closely but improperly connected by the Masoretic accentuation with (it can as well be absolute as in Ecc 12:9 above): it refers to the words of the wise given by one shepherd, contained in Ecc 12:11, and thus, in short, to the maxims of this book [not of the entire Old Testament Canon, as Hengstenberg thinks], From them [comp. Gen 9:11; Isa 28:7], the reader, the son of the wise teacher, is to be admonished. For my son, which is equivalent to my scholar; compare Pro 1:8; Pro 10:15; Pro 2:1, etc., and for be admonished, accept wisdom, Ecc 4:13, preceding.Of making many books there is no end.That is, beware of the unfruitful, even dangerous, wisdom which others [partly in Israel, partly among the heathen, e g., Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, etc.Comp. Intr., 3, Obs.] endeavor to spread and inculcate in numberless writings.[4]It is not worldly literature, in general, in contrast to the spiritual literature of Divinely inspired writings, against which the author utters a warning (Hengstenberg), but the useless and deceitful literature of others which he contrasts with that genuine wisdom taught by him. The countless elaborations of false philosophers [Col 2:8], as they already then in the bloom of Hellenistic sophistry were beginning to fill the world, are presented to his readers by way of warning, as a foul and turbid flood of perverted and ruinous opinions, by which they ought not to permit themselves to be carried away. Herzfeld takes the infinitive as a genitive dependent on , and renders in a conditional sense, to making many books there would be no end. Hitzig opposes this rendering, but improperly takes as a mere adverbial modifier to instead of the elsewhere customary in such connection, and hence translates the making of very many books, requiring much exertion ofthe mind () is weariness of the body. Thereby Koheleth would give his readers to understand that he might have written for them whole books filled with maxims of wisdom (comp. Joh 21:25), but would rather not do this, as being useless and fatiguing. But the term infinitely many would then involve a very strong hyperbole; and the equality and rhythmical harmony of the construction would be too much destroyed by such an affirmation of two subjects for the predicate And much study; Namely, the study of many books, much reading (Aben Ezra, Ewald,Vaihinger, Elster, etc.) not the writing of books (Hitzig), nor the thirst after knowledge (Hengstenberg), nor preaching (Luther, Hahn, etc.),these are all renderings at variance with the simple and clear sense of .Is a weariness of the flesh.Vaihinger correctly says, the passion for reading, which weakens mind and body, whilst fruitful reflection strengthens both. Such a morbid desire corresponds entirely with the later Jewish eras.[5] See above, Ecc 1:18.
Ecc 12:13. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: In contrast, that is, to this useless making of many books and much reading. , the end (comp. Ecc 3:11; Ecc 7:2) does not literally signify the sum of all that has been previously said, but the limit which the author wishes just now to set to his discourse, the practical conclusion by which we are to abide. Therein we see that it is not the total and all-comprehending result of his observations and teachings, but only the positive or practical side of this result (in contrast to the negative one expressed in Ecc 12:8) that he will now express in the following maxim; see above No. 1. points, even without an article, to the precise discourse of this book, and therefore to the entirety of (comp. Ecc 1:1, and for in this collective sense, see 1Sa 3:17; Jos 21:43, etc.) is really in apposition with , consequently, when strictly taken is to be translated, the end of the discourse,of the whole, and not, the end of the whole discourse. And therewith it is indeed intimated that in the end of the discourse the whole is included, or that the final thought is the ground thought (or at least one principal thought); comp. Hengstenberg and Vaihinger. Observe also that by the mutual let us hear, the author subjects hjmself to the absolute commandment of fearing God and obeying Him.Fear God, and keep His commandments. Literally, God fearthe object of fear emphatically placed before, as in Ecc 5:7.For this is the whole duty of man. There is an ellipsis of the verb in the original, for which comp. Ecc 2:12; Jer 23:5; Jer 26:9. The correctness of our rendering, which is the same as Luthers (for that belongs to all men) is confirmed by verse 14, where we are informed of a divine judgment of all men regarding their works. The Vulgate, Ewald, Herz-ield, and Elster say, for that is the whole man, which is as much as saying, thereon rests his entire fate. But this sense would be very obscurely expressed; and , moreover, never means the whole man, but “every man, all men.[6] Ecc 12:14.For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing. (Zckler renders: Judgment upon every hidden thing). This direct connection of with the preceding is sustained by the construction of the verb in Niphal with , Jer 2:35, as well as by the frequent use of in the sense of on account, concerning The view of Hitzig that here stands for , the particle of relation, is too artificial, as is that of Vaihinger and Hahn, that = together with every secret thing. The natural meaning is, the judgment in the next world, as also in Ecc 9:9, not simply that which is executed in the ordinary development of this world. This view is supported also by the addition, every secret thing, compared with Rom 2:16; 1Co 4:5, as well as by the subsequent, whether it be good, or whether it be evil,compared with 2Co 5:10; Joh 5:29, etc. Still the present judgment, executed in the history of the world, may come into consideration, here as well as in Ecc 9:9, and Psa 90:8. (Comp. Joh 3:17 ff.; Eph 5:13, etc.).
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
(With Homiletical Hints)
The ground thought of this closing section, as already developed in No. 1 of the exegetical illustrations, is about as follows: The speech of the truly wise man infallibly proves itself to be such by its inner strength and truth; its effect, penetrating, like goads and nails, deeply into the heart, sharpening the dull conscience, mightily summoning the whole man to the fear of God and obedience to His sacred commandments, testifies in the most direct manner to its harmony with the word of God,yes, even to its divine origin and character. It is the voice of eternity in time, of the imperishable, ever-living truth, rescuing us from sin and death in the midst of the vanity of this world. Thus is it to be understood when the preacher of the genuine truth proclaims to his hearers these two great truths of revelation: All is vanity, and, Fear God and keep His commandments, and thus it guides them to a correct knowledge of sin as well as of the way of salvation,of the law as of the gospel.
In accordance with this, the theme for a succinct homiletical treatment of the section, would be about the following: Of the inward power and truth of the divine word, as is shown in the preaching of the law and gospel (of repentance and faith) as the immutably connected, and fundamental elements of divine revelation.Or, the knowledge of the vanity of all earthly things as the foundation for the knowledge and inheritance of heavenly glory.Or: Of the wholesomeness of the wounds inflicted by the goads of the divine word.
HOMILETICAL HINTS TO SEPARATE PASSAGES
Ecc 12:9-10. Cramer:It is not enough that a teacher be simply learned unto himself; it is his duty to serve others with the talent that God has given him, and not to bury it.Starke:He alone is skilful in leading others into the way of truth who himself has been a pupil of truth, who has been instructed in the school of Jesus. Geier (Ecc 12:10):Every one who speaks or writes should endeavor with all zeal to present nothing but what is just, true, lovely, and edifying, Php 4:8; 1Pe 4:11.
Ecc 12:11-12. Brenz:Unless you lay the foundation of faith in the word of God, you will be the sport of every wind; much reading, frequent hearing of discourses, will bring more of error, disquietude, and perturbation, than of genuine fruit.Luther:He exhorts us not to be led away by various and strange teachings. It is as if he had said: You have an excellent teacher; beware of new teachers; for the words of this teacher are goads and spears. Such also were Davids and the prophets. But the bunglers words are like foam on the water.Geier:In sermons and other edifying discourses, we must not speak words of human wisdom, or fables and idleprattle, but the words of the holy men of God, which are, themselves, the words of the living God; godly preaching is proof of the spirit and the power, 1Co 2:4.Hengstenberg:We have here a rule for the demeanor of hearers towards the sermon; they are not to be annoyed if its goad penetrates them.
Ecc 12:13-14. Melanchthon:He sets forth a final rule which ought to be the guide of all counsels and actions: Look to God and His teaching; depart not from it, and be assured that he who thus departs rushes, without doubt, into darkness, into the snares of the devil, and into the direst punishments. Refer all counsels and all actions to this end, namely, obedience to God. Starke:A sure sign of genuine fear of God, is to be zealous in keeping the commandments of God by the grace of the Holy Ghost.Sibel:Since God has given to us the spirit, let us keep pure and sound this noble deposit, that we may thus return it to the Giver and the Creator. So good and faithful men are wont to guard a deposit committed to their care (1Ti 6:20). On the health of the soul depends the health of the body, and of the whole man. The soul saved we lose nothing; when that is lost all perishes. Zeyss:The thought of the day of judgment, is a salutary medicine against false security (Sirach 7:40), and a sweet promise of the rewards of mercy in eternal life. Wolle:Because God is infinitely just, He will neither let hidden evil be unpunished, nor hidden good be unrewarded. To Him therefore be all the glory forevermore.
AMEN.
Footnotes:
[2][The correctness of this would depend entirely upon the view we take of the preceding description. If it is the old age of the sensualist, the aged sinner, as Watts calls him, and as we have maintained in the note preceding the exegetical remarks on the section,then this exclamation: Oh, Vanity! all vanity! Would be a very appropriate close. At the beginning of this scholium it would seem out of place under any circumstances, except, perhaps, as an imitation of the beginning of the book, for which there can be assigned no reason in any connection it has with what follows, whether regarded as all appended by a scholiast, or, which is the most probable view, that Ecc 12:9-10 are an inserted prose note by some other hand, intended to call special attention to the weighty concluding words that follow from the original author. These are clearly poetry, and as rhythmical as any thing in the book. Such inserted scholia should create no more difficulty than their evident appearance in Genesis, and elsewhere in the Pentateuch. The remark that follows, about the force of the conjunction has no weight whatever. It is so often used as a mere transition particle; and the idea of any logical, or even rhetorical, connection between the exclamation and the plain prosaic annotation that follows is absurd.T. L.]
[3][It should be said, rather, that the two divisions are made by the 9 and 10, on the one hand, and all that follows on the other. The fact that Ecc 12:12 begins with is of no importance in this respect. But that which has a decided bearing on the division is overlooked, namely, that the first (9 and 10) is the plainest prose, whilst the second (beginning with the 11th) most clearly returns to the poetical both in thought and diction,a fact which shows that the first belongs to a scholiast, the second to the main and original author of the book. See the Metrical Version.T. L.]
[4][See the remarks in Appendix to Introduction, p. 30, on as referring here to this very book of Koheleth itself,the plural either denoting chapters, or parts of one treatise, as the term is used by Greek and Latin writers, or being equivalent to , or mult liter, much writing. It may be rendered, therefore, collectively, or in the singular: in making a great book there is no end. It is an endless, a useless, labor. What is already written is enough; therefore let us hear, etc.T. L.]
[5][There is no maintaining this unless the date of Koheleth is brought down to a period nearly, if not quite, cotemporaneous with the Christian era. Even then, there was no such establishment of Jewish schools, or spread of Jewish books, as would render credible the existence among them of such a Lesewuth, or Lesesucht (passion for reading, morbid desire for reading) as is here spoken of by Zckler and Hitzig. Such an idea is not hinted at in the New Testament. All this shows the difficulty of finding any place for this book of Koheleth between the time of Solomon and that of Christ. The application of such a remark to the times of Malachi would be utterly absurd.T. L.]
[6][, in the construct. state, rather means, the whole of man. The other expression, every man, might have the construct. from, but , the absolute, with or without the article, would be the best adapted to it.T. L.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
Ecc 12:8 Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all [is] vanity.
Ver. 8. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher. ] Who chose for his text this argument of the vanity of human things, which having fully proved and improved, he here resumes and concludes. See previous verses.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Ecc 1:2, Ecc 1:14, Ecc 2:17, Ecc 4:4, Ecc 6:12, Ecc 8:8, Psa 62:9
Reciprocal: Psa 39:6 – surely Psa 78:33 – years Psa 119:96 – I have seen Psa 144:4 – Man Pro 23:5 – that which Ecc 7:14 – set Ecc 7:27 – saith Jer 2:13 – broken cisterns Mat 13:45 – seeking 1Co 7:29 – that both 1Ti 2:7 – a preacher
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Ecc 12:8. Vanity of vanities This sentence, wherewith he began this book, he here repeats in the end of it, as that which he had proved in all the foregoing discourse, and that which naturally followed from both the branches of the assertion laid down, Ecc 12:7.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
B. The Concluding Summary 12:8-14
In conclusion, Solomon repeated his original thesis (Ecc 12:8; cf. Ecc 1:2) and his counsel in view of life’s realities (Ecc 12:13-14). In between these statements, he set forth his source of authority for writing what we have in Ecclesiastes (Ecc 12:9-12).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
All human work (Ecc 1:12 to Ecc 6:9) and wisdom (Ecc 6:10 to Ecc 11:6) are ultimately ephemeral (i.e., lacking ability to produce anything of ultimate substance or lasting worth in this life).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE EPILOGUE
In Which The Problem Of The Book Is Conclusively Solved
Ecc 12:8-14
“STUDENTS,” says the Talmud, “are of four kinds; they are like a sponge, a funnel, a strainer, and a sieve: like a sponge that sucketh all up; like a funnel which receiveth at one end and dischargeth at the other; like a strainer which letteth the wine pass but retaineth the lees; and like a sieve which dischargeth the bran but retaineth the corn.” Coheleth is like the sieve. He is the good student who has sifted all the schemes and ways and aims of men, separating the wheat from the bran, teaching us to know the bran as bran, the wheat as wheat. It is a true “corn of heaven” which he offers us, and not any of the husks to obtain which reckless and prodigal man has often wasted his whole living-husks which, though they have the form and hue of wheat, have not its nutriment, and cannot therefore satisfy the keen hunger of the soul.
We have now followed the sifting process to its close; much bran lies about our feet, but a little corn is in our hands, and from this little there may grow “a harvest unto life.” Starting in quest of that Chief Good in which, when once it is attained, we can rest with an unbroken and measureless content, we have learned that it is not to be found in wisdom, in pleasure, in devotion to business or public affairs, in a modest competence or in boundless wealth. We have learned that only he achieves this supreme quest who is “charitable, dutiful, cheerful”; only he who “by a wise use and a wise enjoyment of the present life prepares himself for the life which is to come.” We have learned that the best incentive to this life of virtue, and its best safeguards, are a constant remembrance of our Creator and of His perpetual presence with us, and a constant hope of that future judgment in which all the wrongs of time are to be redressed. And here we might think our task was ended. We might suppose that the Preacher would dismiss us from the school in which he has so long held us by his sage maxims, his vivid illustrations, his gracious warnings and encouragements. But even yet he will not suffer us to depart. He has still “words to utter for God,” words which it will be well for us to ponder. As in the Prologue he had stated the problem he was about to take in hand, so now he subjoins an Epilogue in which he re-states the solution of it at which he has arrived. His last words are, as we should expect them to be, heavily weighted with thought. So closely packed are his thoughts and allusions, indeed, as to give a disconnected and illogical tone to his words. Every saying seems to stand alone, complete in itself; and hence our main difficulty in dealing with this Epilogue is to trace the links of sequence which bind saying to saying and thought to thought, and so to get “the best part” of his work. Every verse supplies a text for patient meditation, or a theme which needs to be illustrated by historic facts that lie beyond the general reach; and the danger is lest, while dwelling on these separate themes and texts, we should fail to collect their connected meaning, and to grasp the large conclusion to which they all conduct.
Coheleth commences (Ecc 12:8) by once more striking the keynote to which all his work is set: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity!” We are not, however, to take these words as announcing his deliberate verdict on the sum of human endeavours and affairs; for he has now discovered the true abiding good which underlies all the vanities of earth and time. His repetition of this familiar phrase is simply a touch of art by which the poet reminds us of what the main theme of his poem has been, of the pain and weariness and disappointment which have attended his long quest. As it falls once more, and for the last time, on our ear, we cannot but remember how often, and in what connections, we have heard it before. Memory and imagination are set to work. The whole course of the sacred drama passes swiftly before us, with its mournful pauses of defeated hope, as we listen to this echo of the despair with which the baffled Preacher has so often returned from seeking the true good in this or that province of human life in which it was not to be found.
Having thus reminded us of the several stages of his quest, and of the verdict which he had been compelled to pronounce at the close of each but the last, Coheleth proceeds (Ecc 12:9) to set forth his qualifications for undertaking this sore task: “Not only was the Preacher a wise man, he also taught the people wisdom, and composed, collected, and arranged many proverbs” or parables, the proverb being a condensed parable and the parable an expanded proverb. His claims are that he is a sage, and a public teacher, who has both made many proverbs of his own, collected the wise sayings of other sages, and has so arranged them as to convey a connected and definite teaching to his disciples; and his motive in setting forth these claims is, no doubt, that he may the more deeply impress upon us the conclusion to which he has come, and which it has cost him so much to reach.
Now during the captivity there was a singular outbreak of literary activity in the Hebrew race. Even yet this crisis in their history is little studied and understood; but we shall only follow the Preachers meaning through Ecc 12:9-12, as we read them in the light of this striking event. That a change of the most radical and extraordinary kind passed upon the Hebrews of this period, that they were by some means drawn to a study of their Sacred Writings much more thorough and intense than any which went before it, we know; but of the causes of this change we are not so well informed. A great, and perhaps the greatest, authority on this subject writes:
“One of the most mysterious and momentous periods in the history of humanity is that brief space of the exile. What were the influences brought to bear on the captives during that time, we know not. But this we know, that from a reckless, lawless, godless populace, they returned transformed into a band of puritans. The religion of Zerdusht (Zoroaster), though it has left its traces in Judaism, fails to account for that change. Yet the change is there, palpable, unmistakable-a change which we may regard as almost miraculous. Scarcely aware before of their glorious national literature, the people now began to press round these brands plucked from the fire-the scanty records of their faith and history with a fierce and passionate love, a love stronger even than that of wife and child. These same documents, as they were gradually formed into a canon, became the immediate centre of their lives, their actions, their thoughts, their very dreams. From that time forth, with scarcely any intermission, the keenest as well as the most poetical minds of the nation remained fixed upon them.”
The more we think of this change, the more the wonder grows. Good kings and inspired prophets had desired to see the nation devoted to the Word of the Lord, had spent their lives in vain endeavours to recall the thought and affection of their race to the Sacred Records in which the will of God was revealed. But what they failed to do was done when the inspiration of the Almighty was withdrawn and the voice of prophecy had grown mute. In their captivity, under the strange wrongs and miseries of their exile, the Jews remembered God their Maker, Giver of songs in the night. They betook themselves to the study of the Sacred Oracles. They began to acquaint themselves with all wisdom that they might define and illustrate whatever was obscure in the Scriptures of their fathers. They commenced that elaborate systematic commentary of which many noble fragments are still extant. They drew new truths from the old letter, or from the collocation of scattered passages, -as, for instance, the truths of the immortality of the soul and of the resurrection of the body. They laid the hidden foundations of the Synagogues and schools which afterwards covered the land. Ezra and Nehemiah, who, by grace of the Persian conquerors, led them back from Babylonia to Jerusalem, are still claimed as the founders of the Great Synagogue, i.e., as the leaders of that great race of jurists, sages, authors, whose utterances are still a law in Israel, and of whom the lawyers and the scribes of the New Testament were the modern successors. Before the captivity there was not a term for “school” in their language; there were at least a dozen in common use within two or three centuries after the accession of Cyrus. Education had become compulsory. Its immense value in the popular estimation is marked in innumerable sayings such as these:
“Jerusalem was destroyed because the education of the young was neglected”;
“Even for the rebuilding of the Temple the schools must not be interrupted”;
“Study is more meritorious than sacrifice; A scholar is greater than a prophet”;
“You should revere the teacher even more than your father; the latter only brought you into this world, the former shews you the way into the next.”
To meet the national craving indicated in these and similar proverbs, innumerable copies of the Sacred Books, of commentaries, traditions, and the gnomic utterances, of the wise, were written and circulated, of which, in the canon, in some of the Apocryphal Scriptures, in the works of Philo, and in the legal and legendary sections of the Talmud, many specimens have come down to us. In fine, whatever was the cause of this marvellous outburst, there can be no doubt that the whole Rabbinical period was characterised by devotion to learning, a mental and literary activity, much more general and vital than it is easy for us to conceive.
In such an age the words of a professed and acknowledged sage would carry great weight. If, besides being “a wise man,” he was a recognised “teacher,” a man whose wisdom was stamped by public and official approval, whatever fell from his lips would command public attention: for these teachers, or rabbis, were the real rulers of the time, and not the Pharisees or the priests, or even the politicians. They might be, they often were, “tentmakers, sandal makers, weavers, carpenters, tanners, bakers, cooks”; for it is among their highest claims to our respect that these learned rabbis reverenced labour, however menial or toilsome, that they held mere scholarship and piety of little worth unless conjoined with regular and healthy physical exertion. But, however toilsome their lives or humble their circumstances, these wise men were “masters of the law.” It was their special function to interpret the Law of Moses-which, remember, was the law of the land-to explain its bearing on this case or that, if not, as many modern critics maintain, to add to its precepts and codes; and, as members of the local courts, or the metropolitan Sanhedrin, to administer the law they expounded. An immense power, therefore, was in their hands. To obey the Law was to be at once loyal and religious, happy here and hereafter. Hence the rabbis, whose business it was to apply the law to all the details of life, and whose decisions were authoritative and final, could not fail to command universal deference and respect. They were lawyers, judges, schoolmasters, heads of colleges, public orators and lecturers, statesmen and preachers, all in one or all in turn, and therefore consecrated in themselves the esteem which we distribute on many offices and many men.
Such a rabbi was Coheleth. He was of “the Wise”; he was a “master of the law.” And, in addition to these claims, he was also a teacher and an author who, besides “composing,” had “collected and arranged many proverbs.” Than this latter he could hardly have any higher claim to the regard, and even the affection, of the Hebrew public. The passionate fondness of Oriental races for proverbs, fables, stories of any kind, is well known. And the Jews for whom Coheleth wrote took, as was natural at such a time, an extraordinary delight, extraordinary even for the East, in listening to and repeating the wise or witty sayings, the parables and poems, of their national authors. Some of these are still in our hands: as we read them, we cease to. wonder at the intense enjoyment with which they were welcomed by a generation not cloyed, as we are, with books. They are not only charming as works of art: they have also this charm, that they convey lofty ethical instruction. Take a few of these pictorial proverbs, not included in the Canonical Scriptures.
“The house that does not open to the poor will open to the physician.”
“Commit a sin twice, and you will begin to think it quite allowable.”
“The reward of good works is like dates-sweet, but ripening late.”
“Even when the gates of prayer are shut in heaven, the gate of tears is open.”
“When the righteous dies, it is the earth that loses; the lost jewel is still a jewel, but he who has lost it-well may he weep.”
“Who is wise? He who is willing to learn from all men. Who is strong? He who subdues his passions. Who is rich? He that is satisfied with his lot.”
These are surely happy expressions of profound moral truths. But the rabbis are capable of putting a keener edge on their words; they can utter witty epigrams as incisive as those of any of our modern satirists, and yet use their wit in the service of good sense and morality. It would not be easy to. match, it would be very hard to beat, such sayings as these:-
“The sun will go down without your help.”
“When the ox is down, many are the butchers.”
“The soldiers fight, and kings are the heroes.”
“The camel wanted horns and they took away his ears.”
“The cock and the owl both wait for morning: the light brings joy to me, says the cock, but what are you waiting for? When the pitcher falls on the stone, woe to the pitcher; when the stone falls on the pitcher, woe to the pitcher: whatever happens, woe to the pitcher.”
“Look not at the flask, but at that which is in it: for there are new flasks full of old wine, and old flasks which have not even new wine in them”;
ah, of how many of those “old flasks” have some of us had to drink, or seem to drink! When the rabbis draw out their moral at greater length, when they tell a story, their skill does not desert them. Here is one of the briefest, which can hardly fail to remind us of more than one of the parables uttered by the Great Teacher Himself.
“There was once a king who bade all his servants to a great repast, but did not name the hour. Some went home and put on their best garments, and came and stood at the door of the palace. Others said, There is time enough, the king will let us know beforehand. But the king summoned them of a sudden; and those that came in their best garments were well received, but the foolish ones, who came in their slovenliness, were turned away in disgrace. Repent ye today, lest ye be summoned tomorrow.”
Is it any wonder that the Jews, even in the sorrows of their captivity, liked to hear such proverbs and parables as these? that they had an immense and grateful admiration for the men who spent much thought and care on the composition and arrangement of these wise, beautiful sayings? Should not we ourselves be thankful to hear them when the days work was done, or even while it was doing? If, then, such a one as Coheleth-a sage, a rabbi, a composer and collector of proverbs and parables, -came to them and said, “My children, I have sought what you are all seeking; I have been in quest of that Chief Good which you still pursue; and I will tell you the story of the quest in the parables and proverbs which you are so fond of hearing”;-we can surely understand that they would be charmed to listen, that they would hang upon his words, that they would be predisposed to accept his conclusions. As they listened, and found that he was telling them their own story no less than his, that he was trying to lead them away from the vanities which they themselves felt to be vanities, toward an abiding good in which he had found rest; as they heard him enforce the duties of charity, industry, hilarity-duties which all their rabbis urged upon them, and invite them to that wise use and wise enjoyment of the present life which their own consciences approved: above all, as he unfolded before them the bright hope of a future judgment in which all wrongs should be redressed and all acts of duty receive a great recompense of reward, -would they not hail him as the wisest of their teachers, as the great rabbi who had achieved the supreme quest? Assuredly few books were, or are, more popular than the book Ecclesiastes. Its presence and influence may be traced on every subsequent age and department of Hebrew literature; it has entered into our English literature hardly less deeply. Many of its verses are familiar to us as household words, are household words. Brief as the book is, I am disposed to think it is better known among us than any other of the Old Testament books, except Genesis, the Psalter, and the prophesies of Isaiah. Job is an incomparably finer, as it is a much longer poem; but I doubt whether most of us could not quote at least two verses from the shorter for every one that we could repeat from the longer Scripture. We can very easily understand, therefore, that the wise Preacher, as he himself assures us (Ecc 12:10), bestowed on this work much care and thought; that he had made diligent search for “words of comfort” by which he might solace and strengthen the hearts of his oppressed brethren; and that having found words of comfort and of truth, he wrote them down with a frank sincerity and uprightness.
From this description of the motives which had impelled him to publish the results of his thought and experience, and of the spirit in which he had composed his work, Coheleth passes, in Ecc 12:11, to a description of the twofold function of the teacher which is really a marvellous little poem in itself, a pastoral cut on a gem. That function is, on the one hand, progressive, and, on the other hand, conservative. At times the teachers words are like “goads” with which the herdsmen prick on their cattle to new pastures, correcting them when they loiter or stray; at other times they are like the “spikes” which the shepherds drive into the ground when they pitch their tents on pastures where they intend to linger: “The words of the wise are like goads,” he says; and “the wise” was a technical term for the sages who interpreted and administered the law; while “those of the masters of the assemblies are like spikes driven home,” “Masters of Assemblies” being a technical name for the heads of the colleges and schools which, during the Rabbinical period, were to be found in every town, and almost in every hamlet, of Judea. The same man might, and commonly did, wear both titles; and, probably, Coheleth was himself both a wise man and a master. So much as this, indeed, seems implied in the very name by which he introduces himself in the Prologue. For Coheleth means, as we have seen, “one who calls an assembly together and addresses them,” i.e., precisely such a wise man as was reckoned the “master of an assembly” among the Jews.
What did these masters teach? Everything almost-at least everything then known. It is true that their main function was to interpret and enforce the law of Moses; but this function demanded all science for its adequate fulfilment. Take a simple illustration. The Law said, “Thou shalt not kill.” Here, if ever, is a plain and simple statute, with no ambiguities, no qualifications, capable neither of misconstruction nor evasion. Anybody may remember it, and know what it means. May they? I am not so sure of that. The Law says I am not to kill. What, not in self-defence! not to save honour from outrage! not in a patriotic war! not to save my homestead from the freebooter or my house from the midnight thief! not when my kinsman is slain before my eyes and in my defence! Many similar cases might be mooted, and were mooted, by the Jews. The master had to consider such cases as these, to study the recorded and traditional verdicts of previous judges, the glosses and comments of other masters; he had to lay down rules and to apply rules to particular and exceptional cases, just as our English Judges have to define the common law or to interpret a parliamentary statute. The growing wants of the Commonwealth, the increasing complexity of the relations of life as the people of Israel came into contact with foreign races, or were carried into captivity in strange lands, necessitated new laws, new rules of conduct. And as there was no recognised authority to issue a decree, no Parliament to pass an act, the wise masters, learned in the law of God, were compelled to lay down these rules, to extend and qualify the ancient statutes till they covered modern cases and wants. Thus in this very book, Coheleth gives the rules which should govern a wise and pious Jew in the new relations of traffic, {Ecc 4:4-16} and in the service of foreign despots. {Ecc 10:1-20} For such contingencies as these the Law made no provision; and hence the rabbis, who sat in Moses chair, made provision for them by legislating in the spirit of the Law.
Even in the application of known and definite laws there was need for care, and science, and thought. “The Mosaic code,” says Deutsch, “has injunctions about the Sabbatical journey; the distance had to be measured and calculated, and mathematics were called into play. Seeds, plants, and animals had to be studied in connection with many precepts regarding them, and natural history had to be appealed to. Then there were the purely hygienic paragraphs, which necessitated for their precision a knowledge of all the medical science of the time. The seasons and the feast days were regulated by the phases of the moon; and astronomy, if only in its elements, had to be studied.” As the Hebrews came successively into contact with Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, the political and religious systems of these foreign races could not fail to leave some impressions on their minds, and that these impressions might not be erroneous and misleading, it became the master to acquaint himself with the results of foreign thought. Nay, “not only was science, in its widest sense, required of him, but even an acquaintance with its fantastic shadows, such as astrology, magic, and the rest, in order that, both as lawgiver and judge, he might be able to enter into the popular feeling about these arts,” and wisely control it.
The proofs that this varied knowledge was acquired and patiently applied to the study of the Law by these “masters in Israel” are still with us in many learned sayings and essays of that period; and in all these the conservative element or temper is sufficiently prominent. Their leading aim was, obviously, to honour the law of Moses; to preserve its spirit even in the new rules or codes which the changed circumstances of the time imperatively required; to fix their stakes and pitch their tents in the old fields of thought. So obvious is this aim even in the familiar pages of the New Testament, that I need not illustrate it.
But on the other hand, the signs of progress are no less decisive, though we may be less familiar with them. Through all this mass of learned and deferential comment on the Mosaic Code, there perpetually crop up sayings which savour of the Gospel rather than of the Law-sayings that denote a great advance in thought. “Study is better than sacrifice, ” for example, must have been a very surprising proverb to the backward-looking Jew. It is only one of many Rabbinical sayings conceived in the same spirit: but would not the whole Levitical family listen to it with the wry, clouded face of grave suspicion? So, when Rabbi Hillel, anticipating the golden rule, said, “Do not unto another what thou wouldst not have another do unto thee; this is the whole law, the rest is mere commentary, ” the lawyers, with all who had trusted in ordinances and observances, could hardly fail to be shocked and alarmed. So, too, when Rabbi Antigonus said, “Be not as men who serve their master for the sake of reward, but be like men who serve not looking for reward”; or when Rabbi Gamaliel said, “Do Gods will as if it were thy will, that He may accomplish thy will as if it were His, ” there would be many, no doubt, who would feel that these venerable rabbis were bringing in very novel, and possibly very dangerous, doctrine. Nor could they fail to see what new fields of thought were being thrown open to them when Coheleth affirmed the future judgment and the future life of men. Such “words” as these were in very deed “goads,” correcting the errors of previous thought, and urging men on to new pastures of truth and godliness.
Sometimes, as I have said, the progressive sage and the conservative master would be united in the same person; for there are those, though there are not too many of them, who can “stand on the old ways” and yet “look for the new.” But, often, no doubt, the two would be divided and opposed, then as now. For in thought, as in politics, there are always two great parties; the one, looking back with affectionate reverence and regret on the past, and set to “keep invention in a noted weed”; the other, looking forward with eager hope and desire to the future, and attached to “newfound methods and to compounds strange”; the one, bent on conserving as much as possible of the large heritage which our fathers have bequeathed us; the other, bent on leaving a larger and less encumbered inheritance to those that shall be after them. The danger of the conservative thinker is that he may hold the debts on the estate as part of the estate, that he may set himself against all liquidations, all better methods of management, against improvement in every form. The danger of the progressive thinker is that, in his generous ambition to improve and enlarge the estate, he may break violently from the past, and east away many heirlooms and hoarded treasures that would add largely to our wealth. The one is too apt to pitch his tents in familiar fields long after they are barren; the other is too apt to drive men on from old pastures to new before the old are exhausted or the new ripe. And, surely, there never was a larger or a more tolerant heart than that of the Preacher who has taught us that both these classes of men and teachers, both the conservative thinker and the progressive thinker, are of God and have each a useful function to discharge; that both the shepherd who loves his tent and the herdsman who wields the goad, both the sage who urges us forward and the sage who holds us back, are servants of the one Great Pastor, and owe whether goad or tent spike to Him. Simply to entertain the conception widens and raises our minds; to have conceived it and thrown it into this perfect form proves the Sacred Preacher to have been all he claims and more-not only sage, teacher, master, author, but also a true poet and a true man of God.
It is to be observed, however, that our accomplished sage limits the field of mental activity on either hand (Ecc 12:12). His children, his disciples-“my son” was the rabbis customary term for his pupils, as “rabbi,” i.e., “my father,” was the title by which the pupil addressed his master-are to beware both of the “many books” of the making of which there was even then “no end,” and of that over-addiction to study which was a “weariness to the flesh.” The latter caution, the warning against “much study,” was a logical result of that sense of the sanitary value of physical labour by which, as we have seen, the masters in Israel were profoundly impressed. They held bodily exercise to be good for the soul as well as for the body, a safeguard against the dreamy, abstract moods and the vague fruitless reveries which relax rather than brace the intellectual fibre, and which tend to a moral languor all the more perilous because its approaches are masked under the semblance of mental occupation. They knew that those who attempt or affect to be “creatures too bright and good for human natures daily food” are apt to sink below the common level rather than to rise above it. They did not want their disciples to resemble many of the young men who lounged through the philosophical schools of Greece and Rome, and who, though always ready to discuss the “first true, first perfect, first fair,” did nothing to raise the tone of common life whether by their example or their words; young men, as Epictetus bitterly remarked of some of his disciples, whose philosophy lay in their cloaks and their beards rather than in any wise conduct of their daily lives or any endeavour to better the world. It was their aim to develop the whole man-body, soul, and spirit; to train up useful citizens as well as accomplished scholars, to spread the love and pursuit of wisdom through the whole nation rather than to produce a separate and learned class. And, in the prosecution of this aim, they enjoyed neither the exercises of the ancient palaestra, nor athletic sports like those in vogue at our English seats of learning, which are often a mere waste of good muscle, but useful and productive toils. With Ruskin, they believed, not in “the gospel of the cricket bat,” or of the gymnasium, but in the gospel of the plough and the spade, the saw and the axe, the hammer and the trowel; and saved their disciples from the weariness of overtaxed brains by requiring them to become skilled artisans, and to labour heartily in their vocations.
Nor is the caution against “many books,” at which some critics have taken grave offence, the illiberal sentiment it has often been pronounced. For, no doubt, Coheleth, like other wise Hebrews, was fully prepared to study whatever science would throw light on the Divine Law, or teach men how to live. Mathematics, astronomy, natural history, medicine, casuistry, the ethical and religious systems of the East and the West, -some knowledge of all these various branches of learning was necessary, as has been shown, to those who had to interpret and administer the statutes of the Mosaic code, and to supplement them with rules appropriate to the new conditions of the time. In these and kindred studies the rabbis were “masters”; and what they knew they taught. That which distinguished them from other men of equal learning was that they did not “love knowledge for its own sake” merely, but for its bearing on practice, on conduct. Like Socrates, they were not content with a purely intellectual culture, but sought a wisdom that would mingle with the blood of men and mend their ways, a wisdom that would hold their baser passions in check, infuse new energy into the higher moods and attitudes of the soul, and make duty their supreme aim and delight. To secure this great end, they knew no method so likely to prove effectual as an earnest, or even an exclusive, study of the Sacred Scriptures in which they thought they had “eternal life,” i.e., the true life of man, the life which is independent of the chances and changes of time. Whatever studies would illuminate and illustrate these Scriptures they pursued and encouraged; whatever might divert attention from them, they discouraged and condemned. Many of them, as we learn from the Talmud, refused to write down the discourses they delivered in school or Synagogue lest, by making books of their own, they should withdraw attention from the Inspired Writings. It was better, they thought, to read the Scriptures than any commentary on the Scriptures, and hence they confined themselves to oral instruction: even their profoundest and most characteristic sayings would have perished if “fond tradition” had not “babbled” of them for many an age to come.
If the sentiment which dictated this course was in part a mistaken sentiment, it sprang from a noble motive. For no ordinance could be more self-denying to a learned and literary class than one which forbade them to put on record the results of their researches, the conclusions of their wisdom, and thus to win name and fame and use in after generations. But was their course, after all, one which calls for censure? Has the world ever produced a literature so noble, so pure, so lofty and heroic in its animating spirit, as that of the Hebrew historians and poets? “The world is forwarded by having its attention fixed on the best things,” says Matthew Arnold in his Preface to his selection of Wordsworths poems, and proceeds to define the best things as those works of the great masters of song which have won the approval “of the whole group of civilised nations.” But even those whom the civilised world has acclaimed as its highest and best have confessed that in the Bible, viewed simply as literature, their noblest work is far excelled: and what sane man will deny that “Faust,” for example, would cut a sorry figure if compared with “Job,” which our own greatest living poet has pronounced “the finest poem whether of ancient or of modern times,” or Wordsworth himself if placed side by side with Isaiah? Who can doubt, then, that the world would have been “forwarded” if its attention had been fixed on this “best”? Who can doubt that it would be infinitely sweeter and better than it is if these ancient Scriptures had been studied before and above all other writings, if they had been brooded over and wrought into the minds of men till “the life” in them had been assimilated and reproduced? The man who has had a classical or scientific education, and profited by it, must be an ingrate indeed, unless he be the slave of some dominant crotchet, if he do not hold in grateful reverence the great masters at whose feet he has sat; but the man who has really found “life” in the Scriptures must be worse than an ingrate if he does not feel that a merely mental culture is a small good when compared with the treasures of an eternal life, if he does not admit that the main object of all education should be to conduct men through a course of intellectual training which shall culminate in a moral and spiritual discipline. To be wise is much; but how much more is it to be good! Better be a child in the kingdom of heaven than a philosopher or a poet hanging vaguely about its outskirts.
If any of us still suspect the Preachers words of illiberality, and say. “There was no need to oppose the one book to the many, and to depreciate these in order to magnify that,” we have only to consider the historical circumstances in which he wrote in order to acquit him of the charge. For generations the Holy Scriptures had been neglected by the Jews; copies had grown scarce, and were hidden away in obscure nooks in which they were hard to find; some of the inspired writings had been lost, and have not been recovered to this day. The people were ignorant of their own history, and law, and hope. Suddenly they were awakened from the slumber of indifference, to find themselves in a night of ignorance. During the miseries of the captivity a longing for the Divine Word was quickened within them. They were eager to acquaint themselves with the revelation which they had neglected and forgotten. And their teachers, the few men who knew and loved the Word, set themselves to deepen and to satisfy the craving. They multiplied copies of the Scriptures, circulated them, explained them in the schools, exhorted from them in the Synagogues. And, till the people were familiar with the Scriptures, the wiser rabbis would not write books of their own, and looked with a jealous eye on the “many books” bred by the literary activity of the time. It was the very feeling which preceded and accompanied the English Reformation. Then the newly-discovered Bible threw all other books into the shade. The people thirsted for the pure Word of God; and the leaders of the reformation were very well content that they should read nothing else till they had read that; that they should leave all other fountains to drink of “the river of life.” The translation and circulation of the Scripture were the one work, almost the exclusive work, to which they bent their energies. Like the Jewish rabbis, Tyndale and his fellow labourers did not care to write books themselves, nor wish the people to read the books they were compelled to write in self-defence. There is a remarkable passage in Fryths “Scripture Doctrine of the Sacrament,” in which replying to Sir Thomas More, the reformer says: “This hath been offered you, is offered, and shall be offered. Grant that the Word of God, I mean the text of Scripture, may go abroad in our English tongue and my brother Tyndale and I have done, and will promise you to write no more. If you will not grant this condition, then will we be doing while we have breath, and show in few words that the Scripture doth in many, and so at the least save some.” The Hebrew reformers of the school of Coheleth were animated by precisely the same lofty and generous spirit. They were content to be nothing, that the Word of God might be all in all. “The Bible, and the Bible only,” they conceived to be the want of their age and race; and hence they were content to forego the honours of authorship, and the study of many branches of learning which under other conditions they would have been glad to pursue, and besought their disciples to concentrate all their thoughts on the one book which was able to make them wise unto salvation. Learned themselves, and often profoundly learned, it was no contempt for learning which actuated them, but a devout godliness and the fervours of a most self-denying piety.
So far the Epilogue may seem a mere digression, not without interest and value indeed, but having no vital connection with the main theme of the poem. It tells us that the Preacher was a sage, a recognised official teacher, the master of an assembly, a doctor of laws, an author who had expended much labour on many proverbs, a conservative shepherd pitching his tent on familiar fields of thought, a progressive herdsman goading men on to new pastures-not Solomon therefore, by the way, for who would have described him in such terms as these? If we are glad to know so much of him, we cannot but ask, What has all this to do with the quest of the Chief Good? It has this to do with it. Coheleth has achieved the quest; he has solved his problem, and has given us his solution of it. He is about to repeat that solution. To give emphasis and force to the repetition, that he may carry his readers more fully with him, he dwells on his claims to their respect, their confidence, their affection. He is all that they most admire; he carries the very authority to which they most willingly defer. If they know this-and, scattered as they were through many cities and provinces, how should they know it unless he told them?-they cannot refuse him a hearing; they will be predisposed to accept his conclusion; they will be sure not to reject it without consideration. It is not out of any personal conceit, therefore, nor any pride of learning, nor even that he may grant himself the relief of lifting his mask from his face for a moment, that he recounts his titles to their regard. He is simply gathering force from the willing respect and deference of his readers, in order that he may plant his final conclusion more strongly and more deeply in their hearts.
And what is the conclusion which he is at such pains to enforce? “The conclusion of the matter is this; that God taketh cognisance of all things: fear Him, therefore, and keep his commandments, for this it behoveth every man to do; since God will bring every deed to the judgment appointed for every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be bad” (Ecc 12:13-14).
Now that this “conclusion” is simply a repetition, in part expanded and in part condensed, of that with which the Preacher closes the previous section, is obvious. There he incites men to a life of virtue with two leading motives: first, by the fact of the present constant judgment of God; and, secondly, by the prospect of a future, a more searching and decisive, judgment. Here he appeals to precisely the same motives, though now instead of implying a present judgment under the injunction “Remember thy Creator,” he broadly affirms that “God takes note of all things”; and, instead of simply reminding the young that God will bring “the ways of their heart” into judgment, he defines that future judgment at once more largely and more exactly as “appointed for every secret thing” and extending to “every deed,” both good and bad. In dealing with the motives of a virtuous life, therefore, he goes a little beyond his former lines of thought, gives them a wider scope, makes them more sharp and definite. On the other hand, in speaking of the forms which the virtuous or ideal life assumes, he is very curt and brief. All he has to say on that point now is, “Fear God and keep his commandments”; whereas, in His previous treatment of it, he had much to say, bidding us, for instance, “cast our bread upon the waters,” and “give a portion to seven, and even to eight”; bidding us “sow our seed morning and evening,” though “the clouds” should be “full of rain,” and whatever “the course of the wind”; bidding us “rejoice” in all our labours, and carry to all our self-denials the merry heart that physics pain. As we studied the meaning of the beautiful metaphors of chapter 11, sought to gather up their several meanings into an orderly connection, and to express them in a more literal logical form-to translate them, in short, from the Eastern to the Western mode-we found that the main virtues enjoined by the Preacher were charity, industry, cheerfulness; the charity which does good hoping for nothing again, the industry which bends itself to the present duty in scorn of omen or consequence; and the cheerfulness which springs from a consciousness of the Divine presence, from the conviction that, however men may misjudge us, God knows us altogether and will do us justice. This was our summary of the Preachers argument, of his solution of the supreme moral problem of human life. Here, in the Epilogue, he gives us his own summary in the words, “Fear God, and keep his commandments.”
If we compare these two summaries, there seems at first rather difference than resemblance between them: the one appears, if more indefinite, much more comprehensive, than the other. Yet there is one point of resemblance which soon strikes us. For we know by this time that on the Preachers lips “Fear God” does not mean “Be afraid of God”; that it indicates and demands just that reverent sense of the Divine Presence, that strong inward conviction of the constant judgment He passes on all our ways and motives and thoughts, which Coheleth has already affirmed to be a prime safeguard of virtue. It is the phrase “and keep his commandments” that sounds so much larger than anything we have heard from him before, so much more comprehensive. For the commandments of God are many and very broad. He reveals his will in the natural universe and the laws which govern it; laws which, as we are part of the universe, we need to know and to obey. He reveals his will in the social and political forces which govern the history and development of the various races of mankind, which therefore meet and affect us at every turn. He reveals his will in the ethical intuitions and codes which govern the formation of character, which enter into and give shape to all in us that is most spiritual, profound, and enduring. To keep all the commandments revealed in these immense fields of divine activity with an intelligent and invariable obedience is simply impossible to us; it is the perfection which flows round our imperfection, and towards which it is our one great task to be ever reaching forth. Is it as inciting us to this impossible perfection that the Preacher bids us “fear God and keep his commandments”?
Yes and No. It is not as having this large perfect ideal distinctly before his mind that he utters the injunction, although in the course of this book he has glanced at every element of it; nor even as having so much of it in his mind as is expressed in the law that came by Moses, although that too includes precepts for the physical and the political as well as for the moral and religious provinces of human life. What he meant by bidding us “keep the commandments” was, I apprehend, that we should take the counsels he has already given us, and follow after charity, industry, cheerfulness. Every other phrase in this final “conclusion” is, as we have seen, a repetition of the truths announced at the close of the previous section, and therefore we may fairly assume this phrase to contain a truth-the truth of duty-which he there illustrates. Throughout the whole book there is not a single technical allusion, no allusion to the temple, to the feasts, to the sacrifices, rites, ceremonies of the Law; and therefore we can hardly take this reference to the “commandments” as an allusion to the Mosaic table. By the rules of fair interpretation we are bound to take these commandments as previously defined by the Preacher himself, to understand him as once more enforcing the virtues which, for him, comprised the whole duty of man.
Do we thus limit and degrade the moral ideal, or represent him as degrading and limiting it? By no means: for to love our neighbour, to discharge the present duty whatever rain may fall and whatever storm may blow, to carry a bright hopeful spirit through all our toils and charities; to do this in the fear of God, as in his Presence, because He is judging and will judge us-this, surely, includes all that is essential even in the loftiest ideal of moral duty and perfection. For how are we to be cheerful and dutiful and kind except as we obey the commandments of God in whatever form they may have been revealed? The diseases which result from a violation of sanitary laws, as also the ignorance or the wilfulness or the impotence which lead us to violate social or ethical laws, of necessity and by natural consequence impair our cheerfulness, our strength for laborious duties, our neighbourly serviceableness and goodwill. To live the life which the Preacher enjoins, on the inspiration of the motives which he supplies, is therefore, in the largest and broadest sense, to keep the commandments of God.
What advantage, then, is there in saying, “Be kind, be dutiful, be cheerful,” over saying, “Obey the laws of God”? There is this great practical advantage that, while in the last resort the one rule of life is as comprehensive as the other, and just as difficult, it is more definite, more portable, and does not sound so difficult. It is the very advantage which our Lords memorable summary, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself,” has over the Law and the Prophets. Bid a man keep the whole Mosaic code as interpreted by the prophets of a thousand years, and you set him a task so heavy, so hopeless, that he may well decline it; only to understand the bearing and harmony of the Mosaic statutes, and to gather the sense in which the prophets-to say nothing of the rabbis-interpreted them, is the labour of a lifetime, a labour for which even the whole life of a trained scholar is insufficient. But bid him “love God and man,” and you give him a principle which his own conscience at once accepts and confirms, a golden rule or principle which, if he be of a good heart and a willing mind, he will be able to apply to the details and problems of life as they arise. In like manner if you say: “The true ideal of life is to be reached only by the man who comprehends and obeys all the laws of God revealed in the physical universe, in the history of humanity, in the moral intuitions and discoveries of the race,” you set men a task so stupendous as that no man ever has or will be able to accomplish it. Say, on the other hand, “Do the duty of every hour as it passes, without fretting about future issues; help your neighbour to do his duty or to bear his burden, even though he may never have helped you; be blithe and cheerful even when your work is hard and your neighbour is ungrateful or unkind,” and you speak straight to a mans heart, to his sense of what is right and good; you summon every noble and generous instinct of his nature to his aid. He can begin to practise this rule of life without preliminary and exhausting study of its meaning; and if he finds it work, as assuredly he will, he will be encouraged to make it his rule. He will soon discover, indeed, that it means more than he thought, that it is not so easy to apply to the complexities of human affairs, that it is very much harder to keep than he supposed: but its depth and difficulty will open on him gradually, as he is able to bear them. If his heart now and then faint, if hand and foot falter, still God is with him, with him to help and reward as well as to judge; and that conviction once in his mind is there forever, a constant spur to thought, to obedience, to patience.
In nothing, indeed, does the wisdom of the Hebrew sages show its superiority over that of the other sages of antiquity more decisively than in its adaptation to the practical needs of men busied in the common affairs of life, and with no learning and no leisure for the study of large intricate problems. It comes straight down into the beaten ways of men. If you read Confucius, for example, and still more if you read Plato, you cannot fail to be struck with their immense grasp of thought, or their profound learning, or even their moral enthusiasm; as you read, you will often meet with wise rules of life expressed in beautiful forms. And yet your main feeling will be that they give you, and men like you, if at least you be of the common build, as most of us are, little help; that unless you had their rare endowments, or could give yourself largely and long to the study of their works, you could hardly hope to learn what they have to teach, or order your life by their plan. And that this feeling is just is proved by the histories of China and Greece, different as they are. In China only students, only literati, are so much as supposed to understand the Confucian system of thought and ethics; the great bulk of the people have to be content with a few rules and forms and rites which are imposed on them by authority. In ancient Greece, the wisdom to which her great masters attained was only taught in the Schools to men addicted to philosophical studies; even the natural and moral truths on which the popular mythology was based were hidden in “mysteries” open only to the initiated few; while the great mass of the people were amused with fables which they misapprehended, and with rites which they soon degraded into licentious orgies. No man cared for their souls; their errors were not corrected, their license was not rebuked. Their wise men made no effort to lift them to a height from which they might see that the whole of morality lay in the love of God and man, in charity, diligent devotion to duty, cheerfulness. But it was far otherwise with the Hebrews and their sages. Men such as the Preacher confined themselves to no school or class, but carried their wisdom to the synagogue, to the marketplace, to the popular assemblies. They invented no “mysteries,” but brought down the mysteries of Heaven to the understanding of the simple. Instead of engaging in lofty abstract speculations in which only the learned could follow them, they compressed the loftiest wisdom into plain moral rules which the unlettered could apprehend, and urged them to obedience by motives and promises which went home to the popular heart. And they had their reward. The truths they taught became familiar to all sorts and conditions of Hebrew men; they became a factor, and the most influential factor, in the national life. Fishermen, carpenters, tentmakers, sandal makers, shepherds, husbandmen, grew studious of the Divine Will and learned the secrets of righteousness and peace. During the wonderful revival of literary and religious activity which followed the exile in Babylon-a revival mainly owing to these sages-every child was compelled to attend a common school in which the sacred Scriptures were taught by the ablest and most learned rabbis; in which, as we learn from the Talmud, the duty of leading a religious life in all outward conditions, even to the poorest, was impressed upon them, and the virtues of charity, industry, and cheerfulness were enforced as the very soul of religion. Here, for example, is a legend from the Talmud, and it is only one of many, which illustrates and confirms all that has just been said.
“A sage, while walking in a crowded marketplace suddenly encountered the prophet Elijah, and asked him who, out of that vast multitude, would be saved. Whereupon the Prophet first pointed out a weird-looking creature, a turnkey, because he was merciful to his prisoners, and next two common-looking tradesmen who were walking through the crowd, pleasantly chatting together. The sage instantly rushed after them, and asked them what were their saving works. But they, much puzzled, replied: We are but poor working men who live by our trade. All that can be said for us is that we are always cheerful and good natured. When we meet anybody who seems sad, we join him, and we talk to him and cheer him up, that he may forget his grief. And if we know of two people who have quarrelled, we talk to them, and persuade them till we have made them friends again. This is our whole life.”
It is impossible that such a legend should have sprung up on any but Hebrew soil. Had Confucius been asked to point out the man whom Heaven most approved, he would probably have replied, “The superior man is catholic, not sectarian; he is observant of the rules of propriety and decorum; and he does not do to others what he would not have done to himself”: and he would certainly have looked for him in some state official distinguished by his wise administration. Had any of the Greek sages been asked the same question, they would have found their perfect man in the philosopher who, raised above the common passions and aims of men, gave himself to the pursuit of an abstract and speculative wisdom. Only a Hebrew would have looked for him in that low estate in which the one truly Perfect Man dwelt among us. And yet how that Hebrew legend charms and touches and satisfies us! What a hope for humanity there is in the thought that the poor weird-looking jailer who was merciful to his prisoners, and the kindly, industrious, cheerful workingmen, living by their craft, and incapable of regarding their diligence and good nature as “saving works,” stood higher than priest or rabbi, ruler or philosopher! How welcome and ennobling is the conviction that there are last who yet are first-last with men, first with God; that turnkeys and artisans, publicans and sinners even, may draw nearer to heaven than sophist or flamen, sage or prince! Who so poor but that he has a little “bread” to cast on the thankless unreturning waters? who so faint of heart but that he may sow a little “seed” even when the winds rave and the sky is full of clouds? who so solitary and forlorn but that he may say a word of comfort to a weeping neighbour, or seek to make “two people who have quarrelled friends again”? And this is all that the Preacher, all that God through the Preacher, asks of us.
All-yet even this is much; even for this we shall need the pressure of constant and weighty motives: for it is not only occasional acts which are required of us, but settled tempers and habits of goodwill, industry, and cheerfulness; and to love all men, to rejoice always, to do our duty in all weathers and all moods, is very hard work to our feeble, selfish, and easily-dejected natures. Does the Preacher supply us with such motives as we need? He offers us two motives; one in the present judgment, another in the future judgment of God. “God is with you,” he says, “taking cognisance of all you do; and you will soon be with God, to give Him an account of every secret and every deed.” But that is an appeal to fear-is it not? It is, rather, an appeal to love and hope. He has no thought of frightening us into obedience-for the obedience of fear is not worth having, is not obedience in the true sense; but he is trying to win and allure us to obedience. For whatever terrors Gods judgment or the future world may have for us, it is very certain that these terrors were in large measure unknown to the Jews. The Talmud knows nothing of “hell,” nothing of an everlasting torture. Even the “Sheol” of the Old Testament is simply the “underworld” in which the Jews believed the spirits of both good men and bad to be gathered after death. And, to the Jews for whom Coheleth wrote, the judgment of God, whether here or hereafter, would have singular and powerful attractions. They were in captivity to merciless and capricious despots who took no pains to understand their character or to deal with them according to their works, who had no sense of justice, no kindness, no truth for slaves. For men thus oppressed and hopeless there would be an infinite comfort in the thought that God, the Great Ruler and Disposer, knew them altogether, saw all their struggles to maintain his worship and to acquaint themselves with his will, took note of every wrong they suffered, “was afflicted in all their afflictions,” and would one day call both them and their oppressors to the bar at which all wrongs are at once righted and avenged. Would it affright them to hear that “God taketh cognisance of all things,” and has “appointed a judgment for every secret and every deed”? Would not this be, rather, their strongest consolation, their brightest hope? Would they not do their duty with better heart if they knew that God saw how hard it was to do? Would they not show a more constant kindness to their neighbours, if they knew that God would openly reward every alms done in secret? Would they not carry a blither and more patient spirit to all their labours and afflictions if they knew that a day of recompenses was at hand? The Preacher thought they would; and hence he bids them “rejoice” bids them “banish care and sadness,” because God will bring them into judgment, and incites them to “keep the commandments” because Gods eye is upon them, and because, in the judgment, He will not forget the work of their obedience, the labour of their love.
This, to some of us, may be a novel view whether of the present or of the future judgment of God. For the most part, I fear, we speak of the Divine judgments as terrible and well-nigh unendurable. We would escape them even here, if we could; but, above all, we dread them when we shall stand before the bar at which the secrets of all hearts will be disclosed. Now we need not, and we must not, lose aught of the awe and reverence for Him who is our God and Father which, so far from impairing, deepens our love. But we need to remember that fear is base, that it is the enemy of love; that so long as we anticipate the Divine judgments only or mainly with dread, we are far from the love which gives value and charm to obedience; and that, if we are to be good and at peace, we must “shut out fear with all the strength of hope.” What is it that we fear? Suffering! But why should we fear that, if it will make us perfect? Death! But why should we fear that if will take us home to our Father? Gods anger! But God is not angry with us if we love Him and try to do his will; He loves us even when we sin against Him, and shows his love in making the way of sin so hard to us that we are constrained to leave it. Ought we, then, to dread, ought we not rather to desire, the judgments by which we are corrected, purified, saved?
“But the future judgment-that is so dreadful!” Is it? God knows us as we are already: is it so very much worse that we should know ourselves, and that our neighbours should know us? If among our “secrets” there be many things evil, are there not at least some that are good? Do we not find ourselves perpetually thwarted or hindered in our endeavours to give form and scope to our purest emotions, our tenderest sympathies, our loftiest resolves? Do we not perpetually complain that, when we would do good, even if evil is not present to overcome the good, it is present to mar it, to make our goodness poor, scanty, ungraceful? Well, these obstructed purposes and intentions and resolves, all the good in us that has been frustrated or deformed, or limited, by our social conditions, by our lack of power, culture, expression, by the clogging flesh or the flagging brain, -all these are among “the secret things” which God will bring to light; and we may be sure that He will not think less of these, his own work in us, than of the manifold sins by which we have marred his work. We are in some danger of regarding “the judgment” as a revelation of our trespasses only, instead of every deed, and every secret, whether good or bad. Once conceive of it aright, as the revelation of the whole man, as the unveiling of all that is in us, and mere honesty might lead us to desire rather than to dread it. One of the finest and most devout spirits of modern France has said: “It seems to me intolerable to appear to men other than we appear to God. My worst torture at this moment is the over-estimate which generous friends form of me. We are told that at the last judgment the secret of all consciences will be laid bare to the universe: would that mine were so this day, and that every passer-by could read me as I am!” To seem what we are, to be known for what we are, to be treated as we are, this is the judgment of God. And, though this judgment must bring even the best of us much shame and much sorrow, who that sincerely loves God and truth will not rejoice to have done at last with all masks and veils, to wear his natural colours, and to take his true place, even though it be the lowest?
“In the corrupted currents of this world
Offences gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but tis not so above:
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In its true nature, and we ourselves compelld
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults
To give in evidence.”
To have got out of “the corrupted currents” of which audacious and strong injustice so often avails itself to our hurt; to be quit of all the shuffling equivocations by which we often pervert the true character of our actions, and persuade ourselves that we are other and better than we are; to be compelled to look our faults straight and fairly in the face; to have all the latent goodness of our natures developed, and their fettered and obstructed virtue liberated from every bond; to see our every “secret” good as well as bad, and our every “deed” good as well as bad, exposed in their true colours: is there no hope, no comfort for us, in such a prospect as this? It is a prospect full of comfort, full of hope, if at least we have any real trust in the grace and goodness of God; and if, through his grace, we have set ourselves to do our duty, to love our neighbour, and to bear the changes and burdens of life with a patient cheerful heart.
Now that we have once more heard the Preachers final conclusion, we shall have no difficulty in fitting into its place, or valuing at its worth, the partial and provisional conclusion to which he rises at the close of the previous sections of the book. In the First Section he describes his quest of the Chief Good in Wisdom and in Mirth; he declares that, though both wisdom and mirth are good, neither of them is the supreme good of life, nor both combined; and, in despair of reaching any higher mark, he closes with the admission {Ecc 2:24-26} that even for the man who is both wise and good “there is nothing better than to eat and to drink, and to let his soul take pleasure in all his labour.” In the Second Section he pursues his quest in Devotion to Business and to Public Affairs, only to find his former conclusion confirmed: {Ecc 5:18-20} “Behold, that which I have said holds good; it is well for a man to eat and to drink, and to enjoy all the good of his labour through the brief day of his life; this is his portion; and he should take his portion and rejoice in his labour, remembering that the days of his life are not many, and that God meant him to work for the enjoyment of his heart.” In the Third Section, his quest in Wealth and in the Golden Mean conducts him by another road to the same bright resting-place which, however, for all so bright as it looks, he seems to enter every time with a more rueful and dejected gait: {Ecc 8:15} more and more sadly he “commends mirth, because there is nothing better for man than to eat and to drink and to rejoice, and because this will go with him to his work through the days of his life which God giveth him under the sun.” To my mind there is a strange pathos in the mournful tones in which the Preacher commends mirth, in the plaintive minors of a voice from which we should naturally expect the clear ringing majors of joy. As we listen to these recurring notes, we feel that he has been baffled in his quest; that, starting every day in a fresh direction and travelling till he is weary and spent, he finds himself night after night at the very spot he had left in the morning, and can only alleviate the unwelcome surprise of finding himself no farther and no higher by muttering, “As well here perhaps as elsewhere!” No votary of mirth and jollity surely ever wore such a woe-begone countenance, or sang their praises with more trembling and uncertain lips. What can be more hopeless than his “there is nothing better, so you must even be content with this,” or than the way in which he harps on the brevity of life! You feel that the man has been passionately seeking for something better, for a good which would be a good not only through the brief hours of time but forever; that it is with a heart saddened by the sense of wasted endeavour and cravings unsatisfied that he falls back on pleasures as brief as his day, as wearisome as his toils. Yet all the while he feels, and makes you feel, that there is a certain measure of truth in his conclusion; that mirth is a great good, though not the greatest; that if he could but find that “something better” of which he is in quest, he would learn the secret of a deeper mirth than that which springs from eating and drinking and sensuous delights, a mirth which would not set with the setting sun of his brief day.
This feeling is justified by the issue. Now that the Preacher has completed his circle of thought, we can see that it is well for a man to rejoice and take pleasure in his labours, that God did mean him to work for the enjoyment of his heart, that there is a mirth purer and more enduring than that which springs from knowledge, or from the gratification of the senses, or from success in affairs, or from the possession of much goods, -a mirth for this life which expands and deepens into an everlasting joy. Throughout his quest he has held fast to the conviction that “it is a comely fashion to be glad,” though he could allege no better reason for his conviction than the transitoriness of life and the impossibility of reaching any higher good. Before he could justify this conviction, he must achieve his quest. It is only when he has learned to regard our life-
“as a harp,
A gracious instrument on whose fair strings
We learn those airs we shall be set to play
When mortal hours are ended,”
that his plaintive minors pass into the frank, jocund tones appropriate to a sincere and well-grounded mirth. Now he can cease to “trouble heaven with his bootless cries” on the indiscrimination of death and the vanity of life. He can now say to his soul,
“What hast thou to do with sorrow
Or the injuries of tomorrow?”
for he has discovered that no morrow can any more injure him, no sorrow rob him of his true joy. God is with him, observing all the postures and moods of his soul, and adapting all his circumstances to the correction of what is evil in him or the cultivation of what is good. There is no dark impassable gulf between this world and the next; life does not cease at death, but grows more intense and full; death is but a second birth into a second and better life, a life of ampler and happier conditions, and yet a life which is the continuation and consummation of that we now live in the flesh. All that he has to do, therefore, is to “fear God and keep His commandments,” leaving the issues of his labour in the Hands which bend all things to a final goal of good. What though the clouds drop rain or the winds blow bitterly, what though his diligence and charity meet no present recognition or reward? All that is no business of his. He has only to do the duty of the passing hour, and to help his neighbors do their duty. So long as he can do this, why should he not be bright and gay? In this lies his Chief Good: why should he not enjoy that, even though other and lesser goods be taken from him for a time-be lent to the Lord that they may hereafter be repaid with usury? He is no longer “a pipe for fortunes finger to sound what stop she please”: he has a tune of his own, “a cheerful tune,” to play, and will play it, let fortune be in what mood she please. He is not “passions slave,” but the servant and friend of God; and because God is with him and for him, and because he will soon be with God, he is
“As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,”
and can take “fortunes buffets and rewards with equal thanks.” His cheerful content does not lie at the mercy of accident; the winds and waves of vicissitude cannot prevail against it: for he has two broad and solid foundations; one on earth, and the other in heaven. On the one hand, it springs from a faithful discharge of personal duty and the neighbourly charity which hopeth all things and endureth all things; on the other hand, it springs from the conviction that God takes note of all things, and will bring every secret and every deed into a judgment perfectly just and perfectly kind. The fair structure which rises on these sure foundations is not to be shaken by aught that does not sap the foundations on which it rests. Convince him that God is not with him, or that God does not so care for him as to judge and correct him; or convict him of gross and constant failures in duty and in charity; and then, indeed, you touch, you endanger, his peace. But no external loss, no breath of change, no cloud in the sky of his fortunes, no loss, no infirmity that does not impede him in the discharge of duty, can do more than cast a passing shadow on his heart. Whatever happens, into whatever new conditions or new worlds he may pass, his chief good, and therefore his supreme joy, is with him.
“This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And, having nothing, yet hath all.”
Now, too, without fear or favour, without any prejudice for or against his conclusion because we find it in Holy Writ, we may ask ourselves, Has the Preacher satisfactorily solved the problem which he took in hand? has he really achieved his quest and attained the Chief Good? One thing is quite clear; he has not lost himself in speculations foreign to our experience and remote from it; he has dealt with the common facts of life such as they were in his time, such as they remain in ours: for now, as then, men are restless and craving, and seek the satisfactions of rest in science or in pleasure, in successful public careers or in the fortunate conduct of affairs, by securing wealth or by laying up a modest provision for present and future wants. Now, as then,
“The common problem, yours, mine, everyones.
Is not to fancy what were fair in life
Providing it could be, -but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means-a very different thing.”
That the Preacher should have attacked this common problem, and should have handled it with the practical good sense which characterises his poem is a point, and a large point, in his favour.
Nor is the conclusion at which he arrives, in its substance, peculiar to him, or even to the Scriptures. He says: The perfect man, the ideal man, is he who addresses himself to the present duty untroubled by adverse clouds and currents, who so loves his neighbour that he can do good even to the evil and the unthankful, and who carries a brave cheerful temper to the unrewarded toils and sacrifices of his life. because God is with him, taking note of all he does, and because there is a future life for which this course of duty, charity, and magnanimity, is the best preparative. He affirms that the man who has risen to the discovery and practice of this ideal has attained the Chief Good, that he has found a duty from which no accident can divert him, a pure and tranquil joy which will sustain him under all change and loss. And, on his behalf, I am bold to assert that, allowing for inevitable differences of conception and utterance, his conclusion is the conclusion of all the great teachers of morality. Take any of the ancient systems of morality and religion-Hindu, Egyptian, Persian, Chinese, Greek, or Latin; select those elements of it in virtue of which it has lived and ruled over myriads of men; reduce those elements to their simplest forms, express them m the plainest words; and, as I believe, you will find that in every, case they are only different and modified versions of the final conclusion of the Preacher. “Do your duty patiently; Be kind and helpful one to another; Shew a cheerful content with your lot; Heaven is with you and will judge you”:-these brief maxims seem to be the ethical epitome of all the creeds and systems that have had their day, as also of those which have not ceased to be. It is very true that the motive to obedience which Coheleth draws from the future life of man has been of a varying force and influence, rising perhaps to its greatest clearness among the Egyptians and the Persians, sinking to its dimmest among the Greeks and Romans, although we cannot say it did not shine even upon these; for, though the secret of their “mysteries” has been kept with a rare fidelity, yet the general impression of antiquity concerning them was that, besides disclosing to the initiated the natural and moral truths on which the popular mythology was based, they “opened to man a comforting prospect of a future state.” I am not careful to show how the Word of Inspiration surpasses all other “scriptures” in the precision with which it enunciates the elementary truths of all morality, in its freedom from admixture with baser matter, in its application of those truths to all sorts and conditions of men, and the power of the motives by which it enforces them. That is no part of my present duty. The one point to which I ask attention is this: With what an enormous weight of authority, drawn from all creeds and systems, from the whole ethical experience of humanity, the conclusion of the Preacher is clothed; how we stand rebuked by the wisdom of all past ages if, after duly testing it, we have not adopted his solution of the master problem of life, and are not working it out. Out of every land, in all the different languages of the divided earth, from the lips of all the ancient sages whom we reverence for their excellence or for their wisdom no less than from the mouths of prophet and psalmist, preacher and apostle, there come to us voices which with one consent bid us “fear God and keep His commandments”;-a sacred chorus which paces down the long-drawn aisles of time, chanting the praise of the man who does his duty even though he lose by it, who loves his neighbour even though he win no love in return, who breasts the blows of circumstance with a tranquil heart, who by a wise use and a wise enjoyment of the life that now is qualifies himself for the better life that is to be.
This, then, is the Hebrew solution of “the common problem.” It is also the Christian solution. For when “the Fellow of the Lord of hosts,” instead of “clutching at His equality with God,” humbled Himself and took on Him the form of a servant, the very ideal of perfect manhood became incarnate in this “man from heaven.” Does the Hebrew Preacher, backed by the consentient voices of the great sages of antiquity, demand that the ideal man, moved thereto by his sense of a constant Divine Presence and the hope of Gods future judgment, should cast the bread of his charity on the thankless waters of neighbourly ingratitude, give himself with all diligence to the discharge of duty whatever clouds may darken his sky, whatever unkindly wind may nip his harvest, and maintain a calm and cheerful temper in all weathers, and through all the changing scenes and seasons of life? His demand is met, and surpassed, by the Man Christ Jesus. He loved all men with a love which the many waters of their hostility and unthankfulness could not quench. Always about His Fathers business, when He laid aside the glory He had with the Father before the world was, He put off the robes of a king to don the weeds of the husbandman, and went forth to sow in all weathers, beside all waters, undaunted by any wind of opposition or any threatening cloud. In all the shock of hostile circumstance, in the abiding agony and passion of a life “short in years indeed, but in sorrows above all measure long,” He carried Himself with a cheerful patience and serenity which never wavered, for the joy set before Him enduring, and even despising, the bitter cross. In fine, the very virtues inculcated by the Preacher were the very substance of “the highest, holiest manhood.” And, if we ask, What were the motives which inspired this life of consummate and unparalleled excellence? we find among them the very motives suggested by Coheleth. The strong Son of Man and of God was never alone, because the Father was with Him, as truly with Him while He was on earth as when He was in the heaven from which He “came down.” He never bated heart nor hope because He knew that He would soon be with God once more, to be judged of Him and recompensed according to the deeds done in the body of his humiliation. Men might misjudge Him, but the Judge of all the earth would do Him right. Men might award Him only a crown of thorns; but God would touch the thorns and, at His quickening touch, they would flower into a garland of immortal beauty and honour.
Nor did the Lord Jesus help us in our quest of the Chief Good only by becoming a pattern of all virtue and excellence. The work of His Redemption is a still more sovereign help. By the sacrifice of the cross, He took away the sins which had rendered the pursuit of excellence a wellnigh hopeless task. By the impartation of His Spirit, no less than by the inspiration of His Example, He seeks to win us to the love of our neighbour, to fidelity in the discharge of our daily duty, and to that cheerful and constant trust in the providence of God by which we are redeemed from the bondage of care and fear. He the Immanuel, by taking our flesh and dwelling among us, has proved that “God is with us,” that He will in very deed dwell with men upon the earth. He, the Victor over death, by His resurrection from the grave, has proved the truth of a future life and a future judgment with arguments of a force and quality unknown to our Hebrew fathers. So that now, as of old, now even more demonstrably than of old, the conclusion of the whole matter is that we “fear God and keep His commandments.” This is still the one solution of “the common problem” and “the whole duty of man.” He who accepts this solution and discharges this duty has achieved the Supreme quest; to him it has been given to find the Chief Good.