_I will prove thee with mirth_ The self-communing of the man talking to his soul, like the rich man in Luke 12:18-19, in search of happiness, leads him to yet another experiment. He will lay aside philosophy and try what pleasure will do, and live as others live. The choice of Faust in Goethe's grea... [ Continue Reading ]
_I said of laughter, It is mad_ The choice of a word cognate with the madness of chap. Ecclesiastes 1:17, gives a special emphasis to the judgment which the man thus passes on himself. There was as much insanity in this form of life as in the other. He was plunging into madness with his eyes open an... [ Continue Reading ]
_to give myself unto wine_ Literally, and more vividly, TO CHERISH MY FLESH WITH WINE. The Hebrew word for "give" is unusual and obscure. The primary meaning is "to draw out," that of the word for "acquainting" is "to guide" or "drive," as in Exodus 3:1; 2 Samuel 6:3. Possibly, as Lewis suggests in... [ Continue Reading ]
_I made me great works_ The verse may be either a retrospect of the details of the life of the pleasure-seeker as sketched in the previous verse, or, as seems more probable, the account of a new experiment in which the man passed from purely sensual pleasures to the life of what we know as -culture,... [ Continue Reading ]
_I made me gardens and orchards_ The latter word, originally Persian, and found only in the O. T. in this book, in Song Song of Solomon 4:13, and Nehemiah 2:8, is the "paradise" of Xenophon, of later Rabbinic writings and of the New Testament (Luke 23:43; 2 Corinthians 12:4). It indicates what we ca... [ Continue Reading ]
_I made me pools of water_ Those at Etam have been mentioned above. Besides these we have the fish-pools of Heshbon (Song Song of Solomon 7:4), the pool of the king (Nehemiah 2:14), possibly also, the pools of Siloam (John 9:7), and Beth-esda (John 5:2). In Palestine, as in India, these large tanks... [ Continue Reading ]
_I got me servants and maidens_ Better, I BOUGHT. The picture of Oriental state was incomplete without this element, and the slave trade, of which the Midianites were the chief representatives in the patriarchal history. (Genesis 37:28), had probably been carried on without intermission, and supplie... [ Continue Reading ]
_I gathered me also silver and gold_ Here also we find a counterpart in what is recorded of the wealth of Solomon, the ships of Hiram that brought gold from Ophir, to the amount of 420 talents (1 Kings 9:28), the gifts from the queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10:1), the total revenue of 666 talents (1 Kings... [ Continue Reading ]
_I was great, and increased_ There is something significant in the repetition of the formula of ch. Ecclesiastes 1:16. The king had surpassed all others in wisdom, he was now surpassing all others in magnificence. _also my wisdom remained with me_ The thought expressed seems to be, as in Ecclesiast... [ Continue Reading ]
_whatsoever mine eyes desired_ From such a life the idea of self-denial, even of self-control, was absolutely excluded. Money and power were but means to the end, and the end proposed was the gratification of the "desire of the eyes," not identified with the "lust of the flesh," but closely allied t... [ Continue Reading ]
_Then I looked_ Here also, however, the result was as before. There came the afterthought which scrutinised the enjoyments and found them wanting. The pursuit of pleasure was as unsatisfying as the pursuit of knowledge. Like others who have trodden the same path, he had to confess that "Medio de fo... [ Continue Reading ]
_I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly_ We enter on yet another phase of the life of the seeker after happiness. He falls back with a cynical despair, when mere pleasure left him a prey to satiety and ennui, upon his former study of human nature in its contrasted developments of w... [ Continue Reading ]
_I saw that wisdom excelleth folly_ Better, as keeping up, in the English as in the Hebrew, the characteristic word of the book, THERE IS PROFIT IN WISDOM MORE THAN IN FOLLY, and so in the second clause. Something then had been gained by the experience. In language like that of the Stoics he sings t... [ Continue Reading ]
_The wise man's eyes are in his head_ The figurative language is so much of the nature of an universal parable that we need hardly look to any special source for it, but we are at least reminded of those that "walk on still in darkness," who have eyes and yet "see not" in any true sense of seeing (I... [ Continue Reading ]
_why was I then more wise?_ Better, WHY HAVE I BEEN WISE NOW OVERMUCH? The very wisdom of the seeker might lead him to see that he has not only been wiser than others, but wiser than it was wise to be. The last word is almost identical with the "profit" which occurs so frequently. He found that he h... [ Continue Reading ]
_there is no remembrance of the wise_ More accurately, FOR THE WISE MAN AS FOR THE FOOL THERE IS NO REMEMBRANCE FOR EVER, the last two words being emphatic, almost as if intentionally calling in question the teaching of Psalms 112:6, that "the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance." The... [ Continue Reading ]
_Therefore I hated life_ Better, AND I HATED. Of such a temper, the extremest form of pessimism, suicide would seem the natural and logical outcome. In practice, however, the sages who have thus moralized, from Koheleth to Schopenhauer, have found life worth living for, even when they were proving t... [ Continue Reading ]
_because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me_ The history of the great ones of the earth presents not a few parallel utterances. Mazarin walks through the galleries of his palace and says to himself, "_Il faut quitter tout cela_." Frederick William IV. of Prussia turns to his frien... [ Continue Reading ]
_who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man_ We note in this rather the utterance of a generalized experience than, as some have thought, the special thought of the historical Solomon watching the growth of a character like Rehoboam. No man, whatever care he may take to entail his possessions, can s... [ Continue Reading ]
_I went about to cause my heart to despair_ The verb for despair is not a common one. Another form of it meets us in the emphatic cry, "There is no hope" of Jeremiah 2:25; Jeremiah 18:12. What he had felt had made the seeker renounce the very impulse that led to labour. In the phrase "I went about,... [ Continue Reading ]
_For there is a man_ It is characteristic of the DEBATER that he broods over the same thought, and contemplates it as in a variety of aspects. It is not merely, as in Ecclesiastes 2:19, that another possessed his heaped up riches who may use them quite otherwise than he would have them used, but tha... [ Continue Reading ]
_the vexation of his heart_ The word differs from that for which "_feeding on wind_" has been suggested, but is akin to it, and has been, as in Ecclesiastes 1:17, rendered by _meditation_. Here, perhaps, " CORRODING CARE " would best convey its meaning.... [ Continue Reading ]
_yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night_ The verse speaks out the experience of the men who labour for that which does not profit. There is no real pleasure, even at the time. The "cares of this world" come together with "the pleasures of this life" (Luke 8:14). We trace the same yearning after... [ Continue Reading ]
_There is nothing better for a man_ The Hebrew, as it stands, gives a meaning which is partly represented by the LXX., "There is no good for a man which he shall eat and drink," as though the simplest form of bodily pleasure were condemned. Almost all interpreters however are agreed in adopting a co... [ Continue Reading ]
_For who can eat_ The sequence of thought is obscure, and many commentators follow the LXX. and the Syriac version, as implying an original text which gives a better meaning, WHO CAN EAT AND WHO CAN HASTEN (_i.e._be eager in this pursuit of pleasure), or, as some take the words, HAVE ENJOYMENT, WITH... [ Continue Reading ]
_For God giveth_ The word for God, as the italics shew, is not in the Hebrew, but it is obviously implied, and its non-appearance justifies the change in the text of the previous verse, which preserves the sequence of thought unbroken. What we get here is the recognition of what we have learnt to ca... [ Continue Reading ]