Abstract
R.B.Y. Scott, translator and interpreter of Ecclesiastes for the Anchor Bible, describes Qohelet as “the strangest book in the Bible, or at any rate the book whose presence in the sacred canons of Judaism and of Christianity is most inexplicable”. Whereas the (similarly disputed) Song of Songs “with its frankly erotic tone ... equally out of place in company with the Law and the Prophets” can, and has been interpreted as an allegory of the love of God for Israel, “in the case of Ecclesiastes”, he argues,
there is no such possibility of allegorization to bring it into line with the tone and the teaching of the rest of the Bible. It diverges too radically. In fact, it denies some of the things on which the other writers lay the greatest stress — notably that God revealed himself and his will to man, through his chosen people Israel.1
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Notes
Ecclesiastes, The Anchor Bible,Vol. 18, introduction, translation, and notes by R.B.Y. Scott, New York: Doubleday 1965, pp. 191–193.
The Babylonian Talmud (hereafter: the Bavli), Kidushin,30b.
Qohelet Rabba,A, 4
Mishna, Yadaim 3:5.
Scott, Op. cit.,pp. 191–192
Ibid.
Op. cit.,p. 193.
See for example R. Gordis, Koheleth — The Man and his World, New York: Bloch, 1955.
Personal experience or reflection, most probably both, had robbed [Qohelet] of the traditional Jewish faith in the triumph of justice in the world, preached by the Prophets, or in the redress of the balance in the hereafter, as affirmed by the forerunners of Phaisaic Judaism, who were his contemporaries. (p. 112)
Fisch, H., Poetry with a Purpose: Biblical Poetics and Interpretation, Bloomington Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1988, p. 158.
Op. cit., pp. 158–60.
See below Sect. 3 (iii).
See for example M.V. Fox,`The Meaning of hebel for Qohelet’, Journal of Biblical Literature,vol. 105 (1986), pp. 409–27, who surveys the relevant literature concluding not unlike Fisch that:
For Qohelet the reliability of the causal nexus fails, leaving only fragmented sequences of events which, though divinely determined, must be judged random from the human perspective…. The belief in a reliable causal order fails, and with it human reason and self-confidence. But this failure is what God intends, for after it comes fear. And fear is the only emotion that Qohelet explicitly wants God to arouse. (p. 427)
Cf. Fisch, M. “The Perpetual Covenant of Jewish Learning” in Spolsky E. (ed.), Summoning: Ideas of the Covenant in Literary Theory, Albany: SUNY Press 1993, pp. 91–114.
Scott, op. cit.,p. 202.
For further details see Halivni, D. Weiss, Peshat and Derash: Plain and Applied Meaning in Rabbinic Exegesis,New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, especially Chapters 2 and 5.
See Mishna, Peah 1:1, and Bavli, Kidushin 127b where Torah-study is deemed superior to all deeds “the fruit of which man may enjoy in this world and still their capital is invested in the next”. Maimonides, however, rules that: “No commandment equals that of Torah study, rather Torah study is comparable to all other commandments put together, since study leads to deeds, and therefore has precedence over deeds everywhere.” (Mishne Torah, Talmud Torah,Ch. 3: 3) See also op. cit. Ch. 1:4.
Bavli, Sanhedrin,68a.
Bavli, Berakhoth,27b-28a.
For whom the acceptance of a bona fide testimony is invariant to human opinion regardless of the relative number of dissenters.
Ibid.
The day referred to in Baba Metzia is the day on which the susceptibility to ritual impurity of a certain type of oven was debated — a debate listed and resolved in Mishna, Eduyoth.
Contrary to the traditionalist who regards man’s knowledge of the Torah as gradually diminishing, Elazar considers Torah-study an essentially progressive endeavor.
If not indicated otherwise I follow Harold Fisch’s revised English translation, The Holy Scriptures, Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1989.
M.V. Fox, for example (note 12 above) reads hebel as paralleling Camus’ notion of absurdity.
A usage employed both in Biblical and talmudic texts. See for example: Isaiah (57: 13), Bavli, Shabbat 34a—b; 39b; 51a, Yebamoth 80b, Baba Metzia 107b, Baba Batra 75a, and Yerushalmi (The Talmud of the Land of Israel), Terumoth 45d, Pesahim 34a.
R.B.Y. Scott offers a conjoined rendering of hebel,translating (1: 2) as “A vapor of vapors! (says Qoheleth). Thinnest of vapors! All is vapor!”, but adding in ftn: “hebel denotes a breath empty of substance and also transient. The writers thesis is that everything in a man’s experience in this world… is empty of meaning or worth… Hence… his efforts to achieve something are ultimately futile”. (Anchor Bible, op. cit.,p. 209)
I prefer this translation by Scott to the standard: “man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing”.
This constitutes Qohelet’s novel solution to the classical problem of “the righteous suffer while the wicked thrive”. “… yet surely I know that it shall be well with those who fear God, who fear before him: but it shall not be well with the wicked” (8: 12–13). And yet it does not follow that we can therefore guarantee our righteousness by merely imitating the deeds of the well-to-do’s and avoiding those of the sufferer, since, he goes on to explain, “there is a hebel which is done upon the earth; that there are just men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked; [and] there are wicked men, to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous: I said that this also is hebel” (8: 14)! Note that if hebel is taken to mean “a temporary or tentative state of affairs upon the earth” the passage makes perfect sense. But if one accepts the standard translation, it reads as though Qohelet is accusing God of acting absurdly!
I have taken the liberty of combining the standard translation with that of Scott. The latter aptly adds in footnote: “The sage is expressing his contempt for thoughtless participation in cultic worship” (Anchor Bible,p. 227).
The Hebrew word for righteous, tzadik,I believe, is used by Qohelet literally to denote simple-minded justification (hatzdakah, tziduk). It is therefore a degrading term when taken to the extreme. His position being, that we are required to understand and to take action to the best of our ability, and to fall back on justificationary piety only beyond the tested limits of our (conjectured) knowledge. To remain inactive, even out of piety, is mere folly (4: 5).
So seriously, in fact, that most commentators on the book have taken Qohelet’s presentation of his adversary’s position to be his own. C.f. H.L. Ginsberg (Koheleth, M. Newman, Tel Aviv Jerusalem, 1961, p. 23), R.B.Y. Scott (The Anchor Bible, p. 245), I. Efros, Ancient Hebrew Philosophy: A Study in Metaphysics and Ethics, ( Hebrew) Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1965, p. 26.
All quotations from Ch. 9 follow Scott’s translation.
The Hebrew u’gedola he alai is considerably stronger: “and it (this particular piece of wisdom) struck me as great”.
Compare, for example, (8: 4–6) where Qohelet discusses the limits of civil disobedience. Since “the word of a king has authority… He who keeps the king’s (evil) commandment shall [know] no evil (Divine punishment)… For there is a time and method (literally `trial’) for every (Divine) purpose…”. The nuance is lost on the standard English translation that renders the Hebrew hephetz (literally: purpose, wish, request) as “matter”.
Interestingly, it is no longer a “sore task” or, as Scott has it, a “grievous affliction”, as in the earlier mirror-verse (1: 13).
This might be the key to interpreting the cryptic and enigmatic (5: 8). The standard translation renders it: “Moreover, land has an advantage for everyone: he who tills a field is a king.” Although it roughly matches the Hebrew wording and conforms with most traditional commentaries, such a statement would seem wholly out of context; situated as it is between the above mentioned caution against being deterred by inevitable error (5: 7), and a firm dismissal of the idea of setting the accumulation of riches as one’s aim in life (5: 9–10). Scott brackets off the two lines arguing that they “have been damaged in manuscript transmission and no attempt at their reconstruction has been wholly successful.” Whereas Ginsberg simply notes: “I have not had the privilege to explain it.”
Rather than praising farming merely as the most advantageous pursuit perhaps the verse can be read as praising farming as a paradigmatic example of rational action. Such a reading fits the Hebrew even better: “And all earthly `profit’ resembles a king tilling a field.” Qohelet’s audience was obviously familiar with the open planning, speculation and trial and error, as with the prospects of success or failure involved in prudent farming.
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Fisch, M. (1995). Eccleciastes (Qohelet) in Context — A Study of Wisdom as Constructive Skepticism. In: Jarvie, I.C., Laor, N. (eds) Critical Rationalism, the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 162. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0441-0_10
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