Ecclesiastes 1:7

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full The words express the wonder of the earliest observers of the phenomena of nature: as they observed, the poet described.

So we have in Aristophanes (Clouds, 1248),

αὕτη μὲν (ἡ θάλαττα) οὐδὲν γίγνεται

ἐπιῤῥεοντων τῶν ποταμῶν, πλείων.

"The sea, though all the rivers flow to it,

Increaseth not in volume."

Lucretius, representing the physical science of the school of Epicurus, thought it worth his while to give a scientific explanation of the fact:

"Principio, mare mirantur non reddere majus

Naturam, quo sit tantus decursus aquarum."

"And first men wonder Nature leaves the sea

Not greater than before, though to it flows

So great a rush of waters."

Lucret. vi. 608.

thither they return again We are apt to read into the words the theories of modern science as to the evaporation from the sea, the clouds formed by evaporation, the rain falling from the clouds and replenishing the streams. It may be questioned, however, whether that theory, which Lucretius states almost as if it were a discovery, were present to the mind of the Debater and whether he did not rather think of the waters of the ocean filtering through the crevices of the earth and so feeding its wells and fountains. The Epicurean poet himself accepts this as a partial solution of phenomena, and on the view taken in the Introductionas to the date of Ecclesiastesit may well have been known to the author as one of the physical theories of the school of Epicurus. We can scarcely fail, at any rate, to be struck with the close parallelism of expression.

"Postremo quoniam raro cum corpore tellus

Est, et conjuncta est, oras maris undique cingens,

Debet, ut in mare de terris venit umor aquai,

In terras itidem manare ex aequore salso;

Percolatur enim virus, retroque remanat

Materies humoris, et ad caput amnibus omnis

Confluit; inde super terras redit agmine dulci."

"Lastly since earth has open pores and rare,

And borders on the sea, and girds its shores,

Need must its waters, as from earth to sea

They flow, flow back again from sea to earth,

And so the brackish taint is filtered off

And to the source the water back distils,

And from fresh fountains streams o'er all the fields."

Lucret. vi. 631 637.

The same thought is found in Homer, Il.xxi. 96,

"Ocean's strength

From which all rivers flow,"

and is definitely stated in the Chaldee paraphrase of the verse now before us. Comp. also Lucret. v. 270 273. An alternative rendering gives "to the place whither the rivers go, thither they return again" or "thence they return again."