ECCLESIASTES

R.N. Whybray

Sheffield Academic Press





Pour Didier
Lance ton pain la surface des eaux, car la longue tu le retrouveras
Copyright 1989, 1997 Sheffield Academic Press
Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd
Mansion House
19 Kingfield Road
Sheffield S11 9AS
England
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1-85075-211-7
CONTENTS
Preface
Abbreviations
Select List of Commentaries
1. Introduction
2. The Author and his Times
3. Language, Style and Structure
4. Place in the History of Thought
5. Qoheleths Characteristic Ideas
Index of Authors
PREFACE
In preparing this small volume I have been conscious that it has not been possible within the
limitations of space imposed by the nature of the Old Testament Guides series to do justice
either to every feature of Ecclesiastes or to the wide variety of scholarly opinion on the many
problems which it raises. This is particularly true of the final chapter, where it has not been
possible to do more than give a brief sketch of some current trends of interpretation. This book
should be regarded as no more than an introduction, and, it is hoped, a stimulus to further
reading, for which there is no substitute.
Biblical quotations have been taken in the main from the Revised Standard Version. This
is always the case where a part of a verse has been identified by quoting its opening or closing
words.
Biblical references are given in accordance with the numbering system used in the English
versions. With regard to Ecclesiastes, it may be helpful to know that in chapter 5 of that book
the verse numbers in the Hebrew text are one less than those in the English text, and that 5:1 in
the latter appears as 4:17 in the Hebrew.
R.N. Whybray
Ely, August 1988
ABBREVIATIONS
ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testement, 2nd edn, Princeton University Press,
1955.
BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSS Journal of Semitic Studies
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
NF Neue Folge
OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly
TR Theologische Rundschau
VT Vetus Testamentum
VT Suppl Supplements to Vetus Testamentum
ZAW Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palstina-Vereins
Select List of Commentaries
G.A. Barton, The Book of Ecclesiastes (The International Critical Commentary), Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1908. This commentary, constantly reprinted, is particularly strong on philological matters. In other
respects it is seriously outdated and is not recommended to beginners.
J.L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes (The Old Testament Library), Philadelphia: Westminster Press; London: SCM
Press, 1987. This is a solid, up-to-date commentary with a new translation, which interprets the book as
the work of a pessimist and sceptic.
R. Davidson, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon (The Daily Study Bible), Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew
Press; Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1986. Written primarily to commend the books to the
Christian reader, these commentaries are nevertheless based on sound scholarly principles.
M.A. Eaton, Ecclesiastes (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries), Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1983. A
brief but scholarly commentary written from a somewhat conservative point of view.
W.J. Fuerst, The Books of Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Songs, Lamentations (The Cambridge
Bible Commentary on the New English Bible), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. The
commentary on Ecclesiastes is rather brief and sketchy.
C.D. Ginsburg, The Song of Songs and Coheleth (The Library of Biblical Studies), New York: Ktav
Publishing House, 1970. Two separate commentaries have here been reprinted in one volume. That on
Ecclesiastes was first published in 1861. Its Introduction is notable for a very complete (217-page)
history of the interpretation of the book, invaluable especially for the early period.
R. Gordis, KohelethThe Man and His World, 3rd edn, New York: Schocken Books, 1968. This is
probably the best commentary on Ecclesiastes in English. The commentary itself assumes a knowledge
of Hebrew, but the extensive Introduction, new translation and summaries of the contents of each
section are invaluable and within the capabilities of any attentive reader.
E. Jones, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (Torch Bible Commentaries), London: SCM Press, 1961. A brief
commentary suitable for beginners.
J.A. Loader, Ecclesiastes. A Practical Commentary, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1986. A sound,
up-to-date commentary which, perhaps too insistently, attempts to find a consistent pattern of thought
throughout the book.
G. Ogden, Qoheleth, Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987. An excellent commentary which pays special attention
to literary forms and key words. The book is given a positive interpretation.
E.H. Plumptre, Ecclesiastes, Or, The Preacher (The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges),
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1881. A solid commentary still worth consulting for its
exegetical comment. It is noteworthy for its espousal of the view that Ecclesiastes is strongly
influenced by Greek thought.
O.S. Rankin, The Book of Ecclesiastes: Introduction and Exegesis (The Interpreters Bible, vol. V), New
York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1956. This brief commentary contains useful presentations of
current scholarly opinions.
R.B.Y. Scott, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes (The Anchor Bible), Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965. The
commentary on Ecclesiastes is very sketchy. It consists of a new translation, a short introduction and
very brief notes.
R.N. Whybray, Ecclesiastes (New Century Bible), Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; London: Marshall, Morgan
and Scott, 1989.
Commentaries in foreign languages
K. Galling, Der Prediger (Handbuch zum Alten Testament), 2nd edn, Tbingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1969. A
major commentary by an acknowledged master of the subject. The body of the book is held to consist
of twenty-seven independent pericopes.
H.W. Hertzberg, Der Prediger (Kommentar zum Alten Testament), Gtersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1963. This
commentary contains full and useful discussions of the text. The translation is somewhat free, but often
illuminating.
R. Kroeber, Der Prediger, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963. This work consists of a substantial
Introduction, notes on the Hebrew text and a running commentary. No overall plan to the book is
recognized.
A. Lauha, Kohelet (Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament), Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978. A
solid commentary but one which offers few surprises. It will rank among the major commentaries.
N. Lohfink, Kohelet (Die Neue Echter Bibel), Wrzburg: Echter Verlag, 1980. Although brief, this
commentary is written in an engagingly lively style. It abounds in fascinating new interpretations of
many passages in the light of the political, economic and social background.
D. Lys, LEcclsiaste ou Que vaut la vie?, Paris: Letouzey & An, 1977. This volume, which ends at 4:3,
is the first volume of a commentary not so far completed. The Hebrew text is rendered rather

JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
eccentrically into French in an attempt to render the exact sense of the original. Minute attention is paid
to the meaning of words and to the syntax.
W. Zimmerli, Das Buch des Predigers Salomo (Das Alte Testament Deutsch), 3rd edn, Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980. Zimmerli ranks with Galling as a major interpreter of Ecclesiastes.
This commentary is specifically designed to be comprehensible to non-Hebraists.

1
INTRODUCTION
ECCLESIASTES IS AT ONCE a strange book and a modern one, at once enigmatic and
curiously familiar. Its strangeness is partly due to its unexpectedness: it keeps strange
company. Coming to it towards the end of a course of Old Testament study dominated by the
great corpora of the Pentateuch and the historical books on the one hand and the prophetical
books on the other, the student finds himself in a world suddenly grown quiet: the world of the
scholar in his study or of the lecturer in his lecture-room, where the great issues of life and
death can be discussed calmly and dispassionately and without fear of interruption. The world
of the Old Testament is on the whole a turbulent world, a world of dramatic events and of
equally dramatic denunciations; to enter the world of Qoheleth is to enter a strange, secret
room tucked away, as it were, in a corner of some vast, echoing building.
It is true, of course, that in our modern Bibles Ecclesiastes is provided with some not
altogether uncongenial companions, in a little section squeezed between the great narrative
and legal complex of Genesis to Esther and the imposing block of Isaiah to Malachi. In this
little section it is preceded by Job, Psalms and Proverbs and followed by the Song of Solomon.
Traditionally these five books have been designated the wisdom books of the Old Testament,
though modern scholars now usually restrict that title to Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. But
even within that group Ecclesiastes stands alone. There is nothing in it of the passion of Job
and nothing of either the desperate complaints or the noble outpourings of praise which we
find in the Psalms. There is equally nothing of the laconic dogmatism of Proverbs or of the
tenderness of the Song of Solomon.
That Ecclesiastes is enigmatic even the most casual reader will soon discover for himself.
Here we find a man detached from the world and yet intensely aware of it, setting down in
writing his thoughts about human life under the sun and giving his considered advice about
the way in which it can best be lived. Yet from the very first his readers have been unable to
agree about his basic attitude to life. St Jerome, on the one hand, spoke for many Jewish and
Christian interpreters in seeing his book as a call to embrace the ascetic life in order to escape
the vanities of this world. On the other hand, Jerome also tells us, the Hebrews say that
this book ought to be obliterated, because it asserts that all the creatures of God are vain, and
regards the whole as nothing, and prefers eating and drinking and transient pleasures before all
things.
This latter opinion was not typical of the early Jewish attitude towards the book; but it has
often been reiterated since. One of the most recent commentators, Crenshaw, asserts that the
book teaches that life is profitless; totally absurd. The world is meaningless. Virtue does
not bring reward. The deity stands distant, abandoning humanity to chance and death. Yet
Ogden, whose commentary was published in the same year (1987), states that The books
thesis is that life under God must be taken and enjoyed in all its mystery. Two thousand
years of interpretation, then, have utterly failed to solve the enigma. But in the enigma lies
much of the books fascination.
But there is also a sense in which Ecclesiastes can be called modern. That is, it is
concerned with a set of universal questions which are recognizably the same as those which
still puzzle modern men and women, and which are here treated in a way somewhat similar to
modern theological and philosophical discourse. They are questions which no thinking person
can ultimately escape: questions about such matters as the purpose, if any, of human existence
and whether the universe is governed by moral lawsquestions to which, more than two
thousand years later, and despite the efforts of many generations of philosophers and
theologians, no answers have yet been foundand indeed it is doubtful whether one can even
say that progress has been made.
And the way in which these matters are discussed in this book is very familiar to us. The
discussion is completely open and uninhibited: here is no blind acceptance of traditional
views, but a radical and ruthless testing of them in the light of reason and experience. In
striking contrast with his predecessors, the author presents us with a picture of human society
and of the ambitions, desires and motives of the individuals within it, not as they ought to be
but as they are. Gods in his heaven; but alls not right with the world.
Something of the same realism is to be found in the Book of Job; but Ecclesiastes is much
more modern, and so more familiar to us than Job: it is in Ecclesiastes, not Job, that we find
the subtleties of a genuine exploration of ideas in which one argument is weighed against
another, not with the intention of showing one to be absolutely true and another absolutely
false, but in order to assess how much truth there is in each; in order to present reality in its
complexity rather than to press home an unqualified conclusion. Ecclesiastes is a book which
invites the reader to eschew prejudice and passion and to think for himself. And this makes it a
unique phenomenon within the Old Testament canon.
Further Reading
Apart from the commentaries (see pp. 910), there are relatively few full-scale works entirely devoted
to Ecclesiastes. The following more general works, however, contain useful treatments of the book as a
whole:
J.L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction, Atlanta: John Knox Press; London: SCM Press, 1981,
ch. 5.
M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, London: SCM Press, 1974, vol. I, pp. 11530; vol. II, pp. 7788.
G. von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, London: SCM Press, 1972, ch. 12.
An important German work which deals with most aspects of the book in the light of its
general cultural and literary background is:
O. Loretz, Qohelet und der Alte Orient, Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1964.

2
THE AUTHOR
AND
HIS TIMES
IN ENGLISH BIBLES, apart from very recent ones, the full title of the book is given as
Ecclesiastes or The Preacher. Both parts of this title are ultimately translations of that found
in Hebrew Bibles, which consists simply of one word: Qoheleth (qhelet). This title is derived
from the first verse of the book (1:1), which is a heading or colophon informing the reader
who this Qoheleth was: he was the author of the book, or at least the speaker of the words
which are contained in it (we may compare the opening words of Jeremiah and Amos, and
also Prov. 30:1 and 31:1); and he was the son of David, king in Jerusalem. But no person of
that name is known from other sources, and the name itself is a strange one. It therefore came
to be supposed from very early times that Qoheleth is not the personal name of the author, but
is rather a title or epithet applied to him, whether by himself or by others. Accordingly the
Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint) attempted a Greek rendering of it:
Ecclesiastes. Later the Latin Vulgate retained this title. The English subtitle The Preacher,
like the German Der Prediger, is yet another attempt to translate the word, rendering the
unfamiliar Ecclesiastes into the modern vernacular.
That Qoheleth is not a personal name but some kind of title or epithet is generally
agreed. This view is supported by the fact that in 12:8 (and probably also in 7:27) the word is
preceded by the article: that is, the Qoheleth. But what does the word mean?
The word qhelet appears to be derived from the verb qhal, to gather or assemble; its
form is that of an active participle, and it is clearly used, as is often the case, as a noun: one
who assembles. But its use in connection with the author of the book is peculiar in that it is a
feminine participle. This does not, however, mean that Qoheleth was a woman: the word is
always construed with a masculine verb. The reason for the use of the feminine form must be
sought elsewhere. In fact, this peculiarity is not difficult to account for. There is general
agreement that the word qhelet belongs to a small class of words denoting particular
functions or professions. In Hebrew such abstract nouns are often feminine. But some of these
words came also to be used as the titles of such functionaries, or even eventually as personal
names (somewhat like Butcher, Taylor, etc. in English). An example of this is to be found in
the similarly formed proper name Hassoperet in Ezra 2:55: here a term meaning the scribal
profession has become the name of a family. Naturally when these terms came to be used of
male persons rather than of functions, they ceased to be regarded grammatically as feminine.
In the case of Qoheleth, the final development had not taken place. Qoheleth was not the
proper name of the author. If it had been, it would have been impossible for the author of 1:1
to state that he was the son of David. It was probably a reference to his profession, or it may
have been a nickname or pen-name. In any case, he was known as the assembler.
But whom, or what, did he assemble? Traditional interpretation, accepting as literal truth
the statements in 1:1 and 1:12 that Qoheleth was a son of David and king over Israel in
Jerusalem, found the answer to this question in the career of King Solomon. For although
Solomons name appears nowhere in the book, he was the only one of Davids children who
succeeded to the kingship; and, moreover, the authors account of Qoheleths unparalleled
wealth, luxury, power, magnificent buildings and wisdom in 2:110 clearly showed that
Solomon was the author of the book. Solomon was, it was also noted, an assembler or
collector of many things; he was also believed to be the assembler or compiler of many
proverbs; and it was also he who assembled the leading men of Israel to witness the great
service of dedication of the temple which he had built in Jerusalem (1 Kings 8).
It is now generally recognized that the tradition that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes cannot be
correct. Everything about the bookits language, its mode of thought, its subject-matter
shows conclusively that it cannot have been written in the tenth century BCthe age of
Solomonbut is in fact one of the very latest of the Old Testament books to be written. The
evidence for this dating will be discussed in greater detail as the various aspects of the book
are considered. Here it is necessary to indicate briefly only one piece of evidence, but one
which is by itself totally conclusive: the language in which the book is written. Even the
merest beginner in the study of Hebrew cannot fail to recognize that Qoheleths Hebrew is as
different from the classical Hebrew of the tenth to seventh centuries BC as is chalk from
cheese. The following quotations from modern scholars make the position clear:
If Ecclesiastes belongs to the time of Solomon the Hebrew language has no history (T.K. Cheyne).
We could as easily believe that Chaucer is the author of [Dr Johnsons] Rasselas as that Solomon
wrote Coheleth (Ginsburg).
In fact, in terms of the history of the Hebrew language, Ecclesiastes bears all the marks of
having been written in a transitional period between classical biblical Hebrew and the post-
biblical literature of the Mishnah (c. 200 AD, but containing earlier material). The implicit
claim made by the author in the first two chapters to be King Solomon is a literary fiction of a
kind not at all uncommon in the ancient world (we may compare, for example, the attribution
of the entire legislation of the Pentateuch to Moses).
Some interpreters have suggested that Qoheleth was so called because he was an
assembler, that is, an editor or collector, of wisdom literature. This might be supposed to fit
rather well with what is said about him in 12:9, that he
taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging proverbs with great care.
But unfortunately the verb qhal is elsewhere used only of assembling people, never of
assembling things. It is of course possible that it is used here in an entirely exceptional sense,
but the fact that it never occurs in this sense either in the Old Testament or in later Hebrew
makes this unlikely.
Qoheleth, then, was known as a man who assembled people for some purpose or other. But
for what purpose? It is conceivable that he did this as the holder of some high ecclesiastical or
political office; but there is nothing in the book which suggests this. It is much more likely that
his gathering or assembling of people had something to do with education, especially since
the only direct information which we have about him (12:9) states that he was a teacher:
Besides being wise, Qoheleth also taught the people knowledge.
(We may note here that this educational role of Qoheleth gives some colour to the modern
title The Preacher, though this title was originally the result of a linguistic misapprehension.
The translators of the Septuagint, thinking of the Old Testament word qhl, congregation
[connected with the verb qhal], rendered qhelet by ekklsiasts because in classical Greek
this word means a member of a public assembly [ekklsia]. But in the Christian Church, the
word ekklsia came to have the specialized meaning of church. Hence to Christians the
word Ecclesiastes seemed to denote someone who performed the function of teacher, or
preacher, in the Church. Qoheleth thus became the author of an ecclesiastical or churchly
body of teachings: hence the title The Preacher).
Whom, then, did Qoheleth teach, and what was his authority to do so? Unfortunately little
is known of whatever educational system may have existed in Jerusalem before the time of
Ben Sira, the author of Ecclesiasticus, in the early second century BC. Qoheleth probably lived
somewhat before this time. Admittedly the existence of Hebrew literature dating from earlier
times than his shows that there was a literate class in Israel; but we can only guess at the ways
in which Israelites learned to read and write, and at the circles which produced and enjoyed
literature. As in other hereditary professions, the professional expertise of the scribal class
probably passed from father to son. But of Qoheleth it is said that he taught the people, and
also that he was a wise man (km), though the latter term does not necessarily mean a
teacher at this periodQoheleth himself frequently uses it in a much more general sense, as
the opposite of a fool. However, some further indication of his activities may be gleaned from
the fact that on one occasion (11:9) he specifically addresses young men.
We may conclude from this verse and from the admiring words of the epiloguist in 12:9
10 that Qoheleth was a man who had acquired a reputation for elegantly expressed comments
on life which were regarded as constituting practical advice, and that it was by this purely
personal authority that he gathered (qhal) a youthful audience around him. Whether this
instruction was purely informal or conducted in the context of some kind of educational
institution we do not know. Nor can we know what was the general reaction to his teaching.
Clearly he had a band of enthusiastic disciples; but there were almost certainly other groups in
Jerusalem who objected strongly to his radical teaching (as was the case with the not wholly
dissimilar Socrates). Some commentators see in the words of the socalled second epiloguist in
12:12 some hint of this opposition:
My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a
weariness of the flesh.
If Qoheleths teaching activity took place, as is most probable, about the middle of the
third century BC, he lived in a time of increasing conflict among Jerusalem Jews between
conservatives and radicals. But this is an obscure period in Jewish history about which we
should like to know much more than we do. What evidence we have about the reception of his
teaching appears contradictorya sure sign that more was going on than we know about. On
the one hand, the fact that his words were not only written down but preserved might seem to
testify to the existence of a school of thought of which he was the founder or at least, in his
time, the leader. Yet on the other hand the literature of the immediately succeeding period
which has come down to us shows few signs of his influence.
I have suggested above that the third century BC is the most probable date for Qoheleths
activity and for the composition of the book. This opinion is widely held among scholars, and
has much to commend it. From the linguistic point of view any earlier period is improbable;
and, as will be suggested in another chapter of this book, Qoheleths peculiar mode of thought,
unique in the Old Testament, is difficult to account for except on the assumption of some
Greek cultural influence, which would not have been so strong during the Persian period, but
became dominant in Palestine as elsewhere after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and
particularly with the intensive occupation of the country under the Ptolemies, especially
Ptolemy II Philadelphus (282246 BC). The Ptolemaic period in Palestine, which covers
roughly the third century BC, was also a period of peace and of prosperity (for the upper
classes); and this may be reflected in the book, in which neither warfare nor political unrest
appears to be referred to as one of the causes or symptoms of the uncertainty of life which is
one of Qoheleths main themes.
It is equally unlikely that the book was written as late as the second century BC, Such a late
date appears to be ruled out by the fact that it was known to Ben Sira when he wrote his book,
almost certainly not later than 180 BC, It is also significant that there is nothing in Ecclesiastes
which might be taken to reflect the persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes and the
ensuing Maccabean Revolt in the 160s, or the polarization of the Jews into pro- and anti-
Hellenists which had begun somewhat earlier. These momentous events could hardly have
failed to mark Qoheleths thoughts about the precariousness of human life, had he written his
book at that time. Finally, a fragment of Ecclesiastes found at Qumran shows that by the
middle of the second century BC the book had already acquired the status of an important
work, at any rate for this religious group.
A third-century date undoubtedly fits the character of the book better than any other; and if
we take this as a working hypothesis we find that Qoheleths choice of topics and his general
attitude to life become easier to understand. His references to the absolute power of kings (e.g.
8:25; 10:20) may well reflect the firm, if not oppressive, administration of the Ptolemies. But
even more significant is Qoheleths constant preoccupation with wealth and its acquisition
(e.g. 4:78; 5:1017; 10:19). This reflects the fact that the third century BC was the age of the
entrepreneur, the age of the investor. It was a time when international trade underwent
enormous expansion, when new methods of agriculture and manufacture were developeda
kind of industrial and economic revolution. It was, in consequence, an age of nouveaux riches,
of speculators, of financial expertise, and equally of spectacular financial disasters. It was also
an age when old ways of life and old traditions were being overturned.
Qoheleths teaching was evidently addressed primarily to the leisured young men who
sought his advice on how they should live their lives, and also on the deeper problems of life:
in particular, Is it all worth while? This search is reflected in the questions which Qoheleth
asks over and over again about the purpose of life, e.g.
Who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a
shadow? (6:12)
What gain has the worker from his toil? (3:9)
It is a reasonable guess that these were questions which such young menor some of them
were asking themselves. The same questions are being asked today, in not altogether
dissimilar circumstances. It is against this backgroundthat of the rich young men of the
third century BCthat we must see the activity of Qoheleth as thinker and teacher.
In what has been said so far it has been assumed that it was in Jerusalem that Qoheleth
lived and taught. This opinion, which is, of course, not founded on the statements in 1:1 and
1:12 that he was king in Jerusalem, is that of the majority of recent scholars. Attempts have
been made (e.g. by Plumptre, Humbert and Weiser) to demonstrate that his home was
Alexandria, the great Hellenistic city of Egypt which was the home of many Jews at that time.
It has been argued that certain topicsreferences to the king as someone with whom
Qoheleths readers or pupils might come into personal contact (especially 8:24), a possible
allusion to maritime trade (11:12)and a supposed knowledge of Greek philosophy point in
that direction. But none of these arguments is conclusive. King may mean no more than a
provincial governor, or alternatively the sayings about kings may be merely following a
literary convention (cf., e.g., Prov. 16:14; 22:11; 25:67); international maritime tradeif
11:12 does in fact refer to thatflourished in Palestine as well as elsewhere in the third
century BC, through the seaports of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean; and Qoheleths
supposed familiarity with Greek philosophywhich is dubious: see pp. 5155 belowcould
quite well have been a characteristic of a Palestinian Jew, especially of one who lived in such
a cosmopolitan city as Jerusalem.
It has also been suggested, by M. Dahood and his followers, that the language of
Ecclesiastes points to a Phoenician origin; but this opinion has not been generally accepted. In
fact, the few scraps of incidental information which the book provides about its place of origin
point unmistakably to Jerusalem and its immediate environs. There are, for example,
references to local conditions, customs, flora and faunathe rain (11:3; 12:2), the changes of
the wind (1:6; 11:4), the use of wells and cisterns for storing water (12:6), the almond tree
(12:5) etc.which are incompatible with an Egyptian origin but characteristic of Palestine;
but a more precise indication is found in the references to the Temple and to sacrifice (5:1;
9:2). It is difficult to interpret these references in any other way than as assuming that the
reader had ready access to the Jerusalem Temple (see Bishop, Hertzberg).
About the man Qoheleth we know nothing at all apart from what has already been said. It
has frequently been supposed that he was an old man nearing the end of his life when he wrote
the book. This notion is based on a number of supposed indications: on the fact that he
addresses the young man in 11:9; on the frequency with which he refers to death, a theme
which reaches its culmination at the end of the book (12:17) with the striking description of
old age and failing powers; and on the supposed air of gloom and disillusion pervading the
book. But the notion has nothing to commend it. The address to the young man merely
indicates that Qoheleth was a man of mature years when he taught or wrotesomething which
could in any case be deduced from the maturity of his thought and his evident ability to draw
on a wide experience. There is no doubt that the mind which produced such thoughts was an
unusually acute one unimpaired by age. The thoughts about death are not a sign of morbidity:
rather, they form an essential element in a reasoned assessment of the value of human life, and
draw attention to the importance of enjoying what one can; and this is also the point of the
final chapter. Lastly, the view that the book is all gloom rests on a particular interpretation of
Qoheleths thought which is by no means the only possible one (see Chapter 5 below).
It has also been alleged, on very flimsy evidence, that Qoheleth was that very rare
phenomenon among the Jews of the Old Testament period, a bachelor, and even a misogynist.
This notion is based mainly on a single very obscure passage, 7:2329, which is certainly
capable of being interpreted as expressing contempt or hatred of women in general, but is also
capable of other interpretations. Against it has to be set the passage (9:710) in which
Qoheleth includes the companionship of a beloved woman or wife among the pleasures of life.
All these theories about the nature of the man Qoheleth are attempts to discover what we are
in fact not told.
Qoheleth and the authorship of the book
There is, however, another set of questions about Qoheleth which has been the subject of
vigorous discussion since very early times. They concern the relationship between the man
Qoheleth and the book as we now have it. Is the book a straightforward literary work written
by Qoheleth, like a modern theological or philosophical treatise? Or, since Qoheleth was a
teacher, is it possible that it is a transcript of lectures which he had previously delivered
orally? Or is it, perhaps, an adaptation of those lectures for more literary purposes? Did he
compile it from a series of written notes which he had previously made? Or was it compiled
by an editor, or even by a succession of editors? Did such editors, if such there were, simply
arrange and transcribe the material available to them, or did they add new material of their
own? If so, were such additions merely minor ones? or were they substantial additions
intended in some way to modify Qoheleths original teaching?
Such questions are not idle: they are of considerable importance for the interpretation of
the book. Moreover, there is nothing intrinsically surprising about them. They are the sort of
question which has been asked about the other books of the Old Testament, and with good
reason; for investigation along these lines has shown quite clearly that most of the books of the
Old Testament are the work not of one author but of many: they are compilations rather than
monographs, in which various sources have been combined by editors and redactors. If
Ecclesiastes were in fact the work of a single author, it would be a rarity in the Old Testament
canon.
There appear, at least at first sight, to be good reasons for supposing that Ecclesiastes is no
exception: that Qoheleth cannot be the author of the whole book. It was already perceived by
some early rabbinic writers that the book contains a number of apparently contradictory
statements. For example, whereas some passages (e.g. 8:14; 9:12) assert that the righteous
and the wicked share the same fate, others (e.g. 2:26; 3:17; 8:1213) express confidence in
Gods righteous and effective judgement. Sometimes, as in 8:1213 and 8:14, such
contradictory assertions are juxtaposed. On this basis it has been argued by many
commentators that Qoheleths pessimistic and unorthodox teaching has been glossed by one or
more orthodox redactors.
In fact it is indisputable that the book has been edited by someone other than Qoheleth.
Both in the opening section (1:12 or possibly 1:13) and in the final section, the so-called
epilogue (12:914), and also in a clearly interpolated phrase in 7:27, he is referred to in the
third person. 12:910 are obviously a comment on Qoheleths activity by one who admired
him, and the final verses (12:1114) are a collection of miscellaneous general remarks
evidently tacked on to the end of the book. All this is self-evidently editorial work. The same
is true of 12:8, which also refers to Qoheleth in the third person, and which is almost identical
with 1:2. We may reasonably suppose that these two verses, 1:2 and 12:8, were at some stage
inserted by an editor to summarize what he supposed to be the essential teaching of Qoheleth
and to act as a frame enclosing his actual words. The words of Qoheleth to which the
heading in 1:1 refers, then, are to be found in 1:3 (or 4) to 12:7.
The phrase The words of Qoheleth in 1:1 does not, of course, guarantee that the whole of
this material comes from Qoheleth himself (cf. Amos 1:1 and Jer. 1:1). Indeed, some
commentators of an earlier generation argued that a large part of the book consists of later
additions made by a number of different persons. C. Siegfried in his commentary of 1898,
following a hint given in 1894 by P. Haupt, who declared that There is no author to the book
of Ecclesiastes, at any rate not of the book in the form in which it has come down to us,
attributed more than half the book (some 117 verses) to a series of no less than nine different
hands, each having a distinct theological viewpoint. Podechard in 1912 somewhat more
modestly attributed large parts to two, or probably more, additional contributors. According to
these scholars, the period immediately following the publication of the original book must
indeed have been one of intense literary and editorial activity.
Such extravagant hypotheses have long since been abandoned. It should be remembered
that the period when these scholars were active was the heyday of the source-criticism of the
Pentateuch and the historical and prophetical books, one of the basic tenets of which
concerned the question of consistency of thought: it was believed that what appeared to be
contradictions of thought or viewpoint in a given piece of literature clearly proved that two or
more different authors must have been at work in its production: no other explanation, such as
muddled thinking or forgetfulness on the part of a single author, was conceivable, and no
allowance was made for the possibility that ancient writers might have had different standards
of consistency from those of nineteenth-century professors. The answer to all these questions
about consistency took the form of the splitting up of the texts in question into separate
sources or documents which were believed to have been subsequently combined or
conflated by editors or redactors.
That there are inconsistencies of thought in the book is an opinion not to be rejected out of
hand. But the theory of massive interpolations made in order to correct Qoheleths theology
is hardly a reasonable one. It is true that the suspect verses are those which express pious or
traditional beliefs which, at least at first sight, appear to contradict their more radical contexts:
that God judges the wicked, or that life is essentially good, at any rate for the righteous. These
are traditional, orthodox beliefs which Qoheleth elsewhere questions or denies. But it must
be asked what would have been the point of making such orthodox additions to a book of
whose whole teaching one disapproved. If it was thought to be important to condemn
Qoheleths teaching, it would surely have been better to suppress the book altogether, or, if
that proved impossible, to write another book refuting his arguments.
Is it possible to account for these strange oppositions of thought on the hypothesis that
Ecclesiastes is the work of one man only? Leaving aside the possibility that there may be a
few minor additions, or glosses, such as are to be found in many other books of the Old
Testament, many modern commentators now answer this question in the affirmative. In fact, a
whole range of possible explanations has been put forward. These are not mutually exclusive.
To take these inconsistencies as evidence that Qoheleth was simply a confused thinker
incapable of consistency would no doubt be a counsel of despair. Moreover, there is abundant
evidence in the book that he was nothing of the kind. However, it is possible, especially if the
book is a collection of separate pieces composed at different times, that some of them may be
due to fluctuations of mood. We know nothing of the actual circumstances in which Qoheleth
composed this or that passage. This hypothesis would, however, not account for those cases
where the inconsistencies are found within a single passage.
Another possibility is that the book is a polemical work in which the author is engaged in a
running dialogue with an imaginary opponent, whose words he quotes or summarizes in order
to refute them. As is now widely recognized, the difficulties of many passages in the Old
Testament are due to a failure by interpreters to recognize the presence in the text of
quotations. Ancient authors did not have at their disposal the modern device of quotation
marks, and they often did not indicate their use of quotations by other means available to them
such as introductory phrases. They took it for granted that the reader would have no difficulty
in recognizing that they were quoting, or in some cases, rephrasing, what other people had
said, or might be imagined as saying.
There can be no doubt that Qoheleth did employ this device. Some of his quotations (e.g.
1:15; 1:18) can be clearly recognized by their poetical form and their resemblance to sayings
in the book of Proverbs, which cause them to stand out in the context of a prose passage. Such
quotations are sometimes used to confirm a point (e.g. 1:18). In other cases they are used as a
basis for Qoheleths own critical comment (e.g. 2:14a, which is followed by the comment in
2:14b, which deprives it of much of its force). On this use of quotations see Gordis,
commentary, pp. 95108.
Another explanation which certainly has some validity is that these supposed
contradictions are due to what may be called the dialectical character of Qoheleths thought.
For him, reality is complex; and it is not possible to do justice to it either by emphasizing only
one side of it, or by choosing a middle way between the extremes. Reality has sometimes to
be expressed in what one recent scholar (Loader) has called polar opposites which
apparently contradict one another. This is also one way of sayingand Qoheleth himself says
this quite explicitlythat the whole truth is beyond our powers of comprehension. Qoheleth
was not in fact the first Old Testament writer to express his thought in this way: cf., e.g., Prov.
26:4, 5.
This discussion does not answer all the questions about the authorship and composition of
the book which were posed on pp. 2223 above. Some of these will be discussed in the next
chapter. But it should encourage the reader to take seriously the proposition that Ecclesiastes
is substantially the work of one man, the man known as Qoheleth, and to attempt to interpret
the complexities of its teaching on that basis.
Further Reading
There are sections on most of the topics discussed in this chapter in the Introductions to the major
commentaries.
Education in Israel is discussed in:
R.N. Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition in the Old Testament (BZAW, 135), Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974
Different views are, however, held by, e.g.
B. Lang, Schule und Unterricht im alten Israel, La Sagesse de lAncien Testament, ed. M. Gilbert (BETL 51),
Gembloux: Duculot, 1979, pp. 186201
On the Hellenistic system of education later introduced in Jerusalem see:
Hengel, vol. I, pp. 6582
The dating of Ecclesiastes in the third century BC and Palestinian society at that time are
discussed in:
E. Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible, New York: Schocken Books, 1967
Hengel, vol. I, pp. 157
V. Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, 2nd edn, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of
America; Jerusalem, The Magnes Press, 1961
Reasons for a Palestinian setting for Ecclesiastes are given in:
E.F.F. Bishop, A Pessimist in Palestine, PEQ 100, 1968, pp. 3341
H.W. Hertzberg, Palstinische Bezge im Buche Kohelet, ZDPV 73, 1957, pp. 11324
The view that Qoheleth was an inhabitant of Phoenicia is based mainly on linguistic grounds.
Among the contributions to the discussion are:
M.J. Dahood, The Phoenician Background of Qoheleth, Biblica 47, 1966, pp. 26482
R. Gordis, Was Koheleth a Phoenician?, JBL 74, 1955, pp. 10314
On the use of quotations in Ecclesiastes and the Old Testament generally see:
M.V. Fox, The Identification of Quotations in Biblical Literature, ZAW 92, 1980, pp. 41631
Gordis, pp. 95108
R.N. Whybray, The Identification and Use of Quotations in Ecclesiastes, VT Suppl 32, 1981, pp. 43551
Loaders theory of polar opposites is discussed briefly in the Introduction to his commentary,
and more fully in:
J.A. Loader, Polar Structures in the Book of Kohelet (BZAW 152), Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979

BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium
PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly
ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palstina-Vereins
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
ZAW Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
VT Suppl Supplements to Vetus Testamentum

3
LANGUAGE,
STYLE AND
STRUCTURE
QOHELETHS HEBREW DIFFERS considerably from the classical Hebrew of earlier periods,
and indeed presents considerable difficulties to the student who has learned the language from
the standard textbooks of biblical Hebrew. In many respects it is already close both in
grammar and vocabulary to the late or post-biblical Hebrew of the early rabbinic period.
One of the features which it shares with the language of that later time is its particularly
frequent use of Aramaisms: that is, of the vocabulary and grammatical forms of the Aramaic
language. Aramaic, a Semitic language in some ways similar to, but nevertheless quite distinct
from, Hebrew, had already been used in the period of Persian rule as a lingua franca or
common language among the diverse peoples of the empire, including the Jews. Among the
Jews of Palestine and the surrounding regions it had gradually come more and more into
common use, even to some extent superseding Hebrew as the common tongue. It may well
have been the language with which Qoheleth was most at home. But by his time it had also,
understandably, greatly influenced the Hebrew language itself.
So numerous are the Aramaisms in Ecclesiastes that some scholars (F.C. Burkitt, F.
Zimmermann, C.C. Torrey, H.L. Ginsberg) concluded that the book was originally written in
Aramaic, and that the text which is now extant in the Hebrew Bible is a translation into
Hebrew from that original Aramaic work. That opinion was, however, contested by other
scholars, notably Gordis, and appears now to have been abandoned. But the language of the
book is particularly heavily influenced by Aramaic. This may suggest that Qoheleth, having
chosen Hebrew as the appropriate medium for the composition of a work of this nature, was
nevertheless unconsciously influenced in the writing of it by the more familiar Aramaic idiom
(Gordis).
But neither this Aramaic influence nor the natural development of the Hebrew language
itself in the course of time is entirely sufficient to account for the not infrequent obscurity of
Qoheleths style. A different attempt to solve this problem was made by scholars who believed
that his speech was affected by the influence of the Greek language; but this theory has been
investigated in detail by Loretz and others, and there is now a general agreement among
modern commentators that there is little or no evidence of this. The same is true of the theory
of Albright and Dahood of an influence from Canaanite-Phoenician (see Whitley).
Many of the obscurities of Qoheleths style are probably due to the fact that the Hebrew
language in its current stage of development was inadequate for the expression of ideas as
complex or as abstract as those which he wished to convey. As far as is known from the extant
literature, Hebrew had never before been used as a vehicle for quasi-philosophical notions.
Comparison with the Book of Job well illustrates the point. There, although there are
similarities of theme with those discussed by Qoheleth, the effects are gained by means of
short, vivid sentences full of concrete images simply juxtaposed or joined with the simple
conjunction and (or but: the Hebrew prefix w
e
does duty for both). This simple syntax is
particularly suited to poetry, especially poetry of the Hebrew type; but even Hebrew prose of
the classical period employs very few conjunctions and avoids subordinate clauses as much as
possible.
Qoheleth, on the other hand, writing for the most part in prose, especially when engaged in
sustained argument, had, as has been said, a clear realization of the complexity of the world
and its problems. He frequently wished, for example, to say that certain propositions had an
element of truth, but a limited one: conflicting factors also needed to be taken into account.
For such subtleties the Hebrew language was hardly an adequate vehicle. Qoheleth did his best
to deal with this problem; but he cannot, as far as we can judge, be said to have been entirely
successful. He used what syntactical devices were available to him, but often in new senses;
and he appears also to have used quite novel ones, whose meaning is not always clear, at any
rate to the modern reader. Consequently there are a good many passages in the book capable
of more than one interpretation, and others where the stages in an argument are extremely
difficult to follow. A comparison between different English translations will make this point
clear.
Prose or poetry?
It may seem surprising that there can be any doubt whether a book is written in prose or
poetry. But Ecclesiastes is not the only Old Testament text concerning which it has been
necessary to ask this question. The reason lies in the fact that our understanding of the
characteristics of ancient Hebrew poetry is far from complete. From the formal point of view
the poetry of the Old Testament as it is typically found in, for example, the Psalms, Job, the
Song of Songs and some passages in the prophetical books mainly consists of combinations of
short lines of roughly equal length arranged in pairs (occasionally in threes) and corresponding
to one another in both sense and structure. On the basis of this model it is difficult to find
poetry in most of Ecclesiastes, although the attempt has been made. But it is possible that there
existed also, as in much modern verse, a freer poetical form with less regular yet more subtle
rhythms of its own. The line between this kind of poetry, if it existed, and prose is extremely
difficult to draw. (Some scholars prefer to speak in this connection of elevated prose.) There
are, of course, other criteria which can be used for the identification of classical Hebrew
poetry (see especially Watson, pp. 4462); but the problem is far from a simple one.
Modern commentators are divided on the question whether Ecclesiastes is fundamentally a
prose work or a poetical one. It is generally admitted that some passages (e.g. 1:411; 12:27)
have poetical qualities; some of these, however may be quotations by Qoheleth of the work of
others. Some isolated sayings like 1:15, 18 and several in 7:112 have the same poetical form
as sayings in the Book of Proverbs. But some commentators (e.g. Lauha, Hertzberg, Loader)
go further, maintaining that the book as a whole is free poetry; Barton, Gordis and Zimmerli,
on the other hand, see it as mainly prose, though with moments of poetical effusion.
Podechard went as far as to say that the book is not only prose, but bad prose. Several
commentators, no doubt wisely, express no opinion at all on the question.
These extreme differences of opinion confirm the fact that the criteria which we possess
for the identification of poetry in the Old Testament are seriously inadequate. But it will
hardly be denied that Qoheleths style is very variable. It swings from the surely utterly
prosaic and (as Podechard would say) clumsy 4:1316 or 6:16 to the lyricism of 4:1 or 12:2
7.
The literary forms
Ecclesiastes is at first sight an extremely daunting book. While it is clear that its prevailing
tone is one of rational argument, the individual arguments are often complex and hard to
follow. They can, however, often be broken down into smaller units; and the identification of
these smaller units and an examination of the way in which they have been combined to form
longer sections can often help to clarify particular problems of interpretation.
From the point of view of style and literary form, one of the most remarkable features of
the book is the variety of its material. Equally notable is the way in which it combines the
conventional with the unconventional and innovative.
In many cultures conventional wisdom is most commonly expressed in what might be
called the short saying, which, whether by direct statement or by the use of analogies,
metaphors, similes and the like, puts into a very few words ideas which are believed to be of
universal validity and applicability (e.g. A stitch in time saves nine). Ancient Israel was no
exception to this mode of expression. Short sayings of this kind appear sporadically in the
historical and prophetical books of the Old Testament (e.g. 1 Kgs 20:11; Ezek. 16:44). Side by
side with these brief prose sayings there also developed a rather more elaborate type: the
poetical couplet, of which several hundred examples, each apparently quite independent of its
neighbours, are to be found in the great collections of Prov. 10:122:16 and 2529.
These two types of saying evidently expressed the conventional views of ordinary
Israelites about many features of human life and society. It is not surprising, therefore, that
Qoheleth, whose purpose was to subject conventional ideas to a close scrutiny and to offer to
his readers the fruits of his own reflections on such subjects, should have incorporated a
number of examples into his own work, whether quoting them in support of his own views or
in order to refute or question their validity. In fact, both types of saying are represented in his
book. Nor would it be surprising if somethough scarcely allof these sayings were not
quotations but were coined by Qoheleth himself along conventional stylistic lines in order to
sum up either conventional ideas or ideas of his own in a conveniently succinct and
memorable form. This he seems to have done; but it is often impossible to detect the pastiche.
All the main types of saying familiar from elsewhere in the Old Testament are represented
in Ecclesiastes. Two are better than one (4:9) and A threefold cord is not quickly broken
(4:12) are examples of the short popular saying in prose. The main types of saying in poetical
couplet form are also represented, as may be seen from selected examples given in the
following table:
Synonymous couplets (in which the second line echoes the first): 1:15, 18 (omitting For); 7:7; 10:8, 9,
18; 11:4. Cf. Prov. 22:1; 26:27, 28; 29:22.
Antithetical couplets (in which two oppositeshuman types, situations, lines of conduct etc.are
contrasted, with implicit approval of one of them): 2:14 (to darkness); 7:4. Cf. Prov. 10:1, 19.
Non-parallel couplets (of which the second line continues and completes the thought of the first
sometimes known as synthetic parallelism); 4:5; 10:3, 15. Cf. Prov. 16:4, 5; 17:15; 19:3.
Comparisons and similes in couplet form: 2:13 (from wisdom); 7:6 (omitting For), 12 (to money).
Cf. Prov. 10:26; 11:22.
Couplets declaring A to be preferable to B (so-called better-sayings): 4:6, 13 (to king); 6:9 (to
desire); 7:2 (to feasting), 5; 9:17. Cf. Prov. 12:9; 15:16, 17; 16:19; 21:9; 27:5.
In addition to such brief statements (German Aussageworte) about aspects of life based on
observation, Qoheleth also incorporated, or himself devised, short admonitions (German
Mahnworte) in couplet form in which direct practical advice or warning is given in the
imperative (or sometimes jussive) form about conduct to be pursued or avoided. This type of
saying, which is not essentially different in intention from that of the Aussagewort but which
by its imperative form makes explicit and definite the kind of advice which in the
Aussagewort is only implicit and general, is another traditional form of speech. It is often
supposed to have been specifically employed by teachers in the instruction of their pupils, but
its origins are in fact obscure: other scholars (especially Gerstenberger) have supposed that it
originated in regulations governing tribal society. It occurs fairly frequently in Proverbs (e.g.
14:7; 19:18; 20:13, 16; 27:1). In some cases the second line of the couplet consists of a
motive clausethat is, it states a reason why the advice given in the first line should be
followed.
In Ecclesiastes a number of such admonitions occur, mainly in groups or combined with
other material: 5:1, 2, 4, 6, 7; 7:9, 10, 14, 16, 17, 21; 9:7, 8, 9, 10. There are, however, more
isolated examples: 8:2, 3; 10:4, 20; 11:1, 2, 6. It is characteristic of Qoheleth that the motive-
clauses tend to be expanded beyond the confines of the poetical couplet, the admonition itself
being treated as a point of departure for further reflections not necessarily expressed in
poetical form.
Another literary form employed by Qoheleth which was clearly borrowed from earlier
instructional practice is the moral tale, in which the speaker or writer describes a scene which
he claims to be based on personal observation or experience (I saw ), and draws from it a
moral which he presses upon the listener or reader. Prov. 7:627; 24:3034 and Ps. 37:3536
are good examples of this literary device. In Ecclesiastes, 4:1316 and 9:1316 are the clearest
examples, together with the Solomonic fiction of 1:122:26, which is by far the longest
section of the book, and also the most extended example of its kind in the Old Testament.
4:1316 and 9:1316 are relatively simple stories which point a single moral and do not
differ markedly from the examples in Psalms and Proverbs. 1:122:26, however, is of much
greater complexity and well illustrates Qoheleths methods of composition. Basically it is a
fictional account in the first person of Solomons great experiment in which he set himself to
seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven (1:13)a purpose which is
transparently that of Qoheleth himself. But this is used as a starting-point not for drawing a
single, simplistic moral, but for a complex series of reflections on the value of human wisdom
and of the pursuit of pleasure which discusses these matters from every angle and draws
distinctions between absolute and relative values. Indeed, so far-reaching is the discussion that
commentators have disagreed about the extent of the fiction. It has been possible, for example,
to maintain that by 2:11 the persona of Solomon has been merged with that of the reflective
Qoheleth himself, and that the fiction ends there, 2:1226 constituting a new section of the
book, albeit on a similar theme.
The Solomonic fiction, then, goes beyond the bounds of the traditional moral story and
has quite unique features. It has been suggested that it is based on the model of the self-
laudatory royal inscription which was a feature of Mesopotamian monumental literature, or on
somewhat similar self-praising accounts of the activities of highly placed persons found in
Egyptian tombs and in some literary works (in the Old Testament, the Nehemiah Memoirs in
Neh. 17; 12:3113:30 may be an example of something of the kind); but if so, the model is a
somewhat remote one. The Solomonic fiction is a device for making a critical exploration of
the value of human achievement by positing a situation in which the opportunities are at their
very greatest (that is, in the case of the legendary Solomon); and the treatment of the theme is
entirely Qoheleths own.
But it is in his novel use of the short saying that Qoheleths originality of composition is
most particularly marked. Some passages, admittedly, bear a superficial resemblance to the
Book of Proverbs: thus 7:112 and 10:111:4 are collections of short sayings which have no
common theme, but jump rapidly from one subject to another, making a succession of
different points with no further comment or with only brief motive-clauses. Even here,
however, the similarities with the collections in Proverbs are more apparent than real.
Thematic arrangement, though not continuous, is not entirely lacking (it is to be found in 7:1
4; 10:811, 1215); and some of the sentiments expressed (e.g. in 7:14; 10:19) bear the
marks of Qoheleths own paradoxical mind.
In the rest of the book such short sayings, whether quoted from earlier sources or
composed by Qoheleth himself, are treated quite differently. They are used as elements in
longer sections in a variety of ways. They may occur at the beginning or the end of an
argument, or in the middle. They may introduce a new subject, or they may sum up or confirm
a preceding argument. They may be quoted for the purpose of showing their falsity or in order
to qualify or modify them. Two sayings which wholly or partly contradict one another may be
juxtaposed in order to show that the truth lies between two extremes. In many cases the
contexts in which they are used gives them a meaning different from that which they
originally had, or which they would have if they stood in isolation. And sometimes a saying
may be quoted of which only half is relevant to the argument. A few examples will
demonstrate this variety of usage.
1:1318 is concerned with Solomons plan to investigate by wisdom all that is done
under heaven. In v. 14 he anticipates his conclusion. The saying quoted in v. 15, which may
originally have referred to the futility of undertaking impossible tasks, is now used to confirm
that conclusion: that it is impossible to make sense of, or to find good in, the world as it is.
Similarly, at the end of the passage, the saying in v. 18, which may originally have been a
warning by a teacher that education cannot be obtained without trouble and pain, now serves
as a fitting conclusion to the whole passage, in which the value of the whole enterprise is
questioned.
9:110 is a discussion of how human beings ought to live their lives in face of the
knowledge that they will all die and suffer a common fate. In the course of the discussion the
question is raised whether life is worth living at all; and at this point Qoheleth affirms that it is
(v. 4, to hope). The saying in v. 4b is used simply to confirm that conclusion.
The saying in 2:14, however (to darkness), while used to confirm the praise of wisdom
expressed in v. 13, is quoted only to be seriously qualified in the second half of the verse.
Qoheleth does not completely deny its truth, but points out that conventional wisdom
oversimplifies the matter. Wisdom indeed enables one to avoid many pitfalls in life, but is no
protection against the inevitability of death.
In 4:5, 6 two conventional sayings are set one against the other. Verse 5 is a warning
against the disastrous consequences of idleness, while the saying in v. 6 (to toil) points out
that it is equally foolish to work harder than is necessary and so to deprive oneself of
enjoyment: to be content with a modest income is more sensible than to strive constantly for
more. Both these sentiments are commonplaces of conventional wisdom such as is found in
Proverbs. The effect of their juxtaposition here is to demonstrate the inadequacy of aphorisms
as guides to behaviour in a complex world, and to counsel caution and moderation.
The first half of 5:3 is obscure, and the relationship of the whole verse to its context
equally so, until one realizes that Qoheleth has chosen it only for its second half, which neatly
sums up and confirms the admonition expressed in v. 2.
5:10 (to gain) is an example of a saying prefixed to a new section (vv. 1020). The
subject is the deceitfulness of money. The saying appropriately introduces the theme by
pointing to the root of the trouble: it is not wealth itself which is unsatisfactory, but an
inordinate love of it. From this starting-point Qoheleth then proceeds to enumerate various
ways in which wealth can deceive its possessors. 11:7 is another example of a saying
introducing a new section.
3:115 is probably another example of Qoheleths use of quoted material; but in this case
the quotation is not of a short saying but of a much more extended piece (vv. 18). Its original
purpose is indicated by v. 1, which, as the following verses show, is intended to assert the
principle that all human activity from birth to death depends for its success on its being
conducted at the right timethat is, at specific moments inherent in a predetermined order
of things. This principle is then exemplified (vv. 28) by the enumeration of a series of
fourteen pairs of contrasting activities, each of which has its appropriate time. The first pair,
birth and death, and the number fourteentwice the perfect number, sevenattest a striving
after completeness: the principle, it is implied, is applicable to, and embraces, all aspects of
life. The implication of these verses taken by themselves is one common to much of the earlier
wisdom literature, including the Book of Proverbsthat success in life will be achieved by
those who are able to discern when the right time has come for whatever they have in mind to
do (cf., e.g., Prov. 15:23; and see von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, pp. 13844). (There is also
discernible in the strict formal pattern of the passage and in the multiplication of the instances
a drive, attested elsewhere in ancient Near Eastern literature, to compile comprehensive lists
of phenomena [onomastica] in an attempt to understand and so eventually to master the
mysteries of the universe. In the Old Testament, the lists of natural phenomena in Job 3841
and in Psalm 104, and, on a small scale, the groupings of similar phenomena in Proverbs 30
attest a similar interest.)
Verses 915 constitute a kind of critical commentary by Qoheleth himself on this
traditional piece of wisdom, turning it upside down. In v. 9 he poses his characteristic
question: granted that there is a proper time for everything, so what? How can one profit from
this fact? Qoheleth then proceeds to signify his agreement with the proposition, but at the
same time draws a quite different conclusion from it than that which it most naturally implies:
God, he says, indeed established the times, but not in order to enable man to know and profit
by this. On the contrary, he has deliberately withheld the knowledge of them from man (v. 11).
This assertion then leads on to further discussion (vv. 1215).
Two other passages in the book may perhaps have been based to some extent on earlier
models, but there is no way of proving this, since such models, if they existed, are no longer
extant. These passages1:411 and 12:17have been placed, whether by Qoheleth himself
or by an editor, respectively at the beginning and the end of the collection of Qoheleths
words. Their somewhat poetical character contrasts sharply with Qoheleths normal style, but
their themes are entirely consonant with Qoheleths teaching as a whole, and there is no reason
to doubt that Qoheleth is their author.
Qoheleths style of argument
The literary form most characteristic of Qoheleth is the sustained argument or reflection in
which he discusses specific problems. These arguments are set out in a personal style which is
to be found nowhere else in the Old Testament. It is only in this book that the author throws
aside the cloak of anonymity and comes on the scene, as it were, to conduct a discussion and
to tell the reader what are his own thoughts about complex theological and philosophical
problems. This personal style is not confined to the Solomonic fiction of the first two
chapters, where it might be said that the author is hiding behind Solomon as in the book of
Proverbs: the whole book is written in the first person singular, and its I is clearly the author
himself, whose identity was well known, even though his actual name remains hidden by the
pen-name Qoheleth. There are, admittedly, some passages in which the word I does not
occur; but even a quick look at an English translation will reveal that it occurs more than sixty
times in these twelve chapters; and in fact in the Hebrew there are many more verbs than this
in the first person singular. That Qoheleths intention is to lay stress on himself as the author
of these opinions is made particularly clear by the way in which the emphatic personal
pronoun (
a
n) frequently accompanies the verb. This emergence of the individual thinker who
identifies himself and takes personal responsibility for his teaching is quite new in the history
of Hebrew thought and characteristic of the Hellenistic age. (A few generations later Ben Sira,
the author of Ecclesiasticus, was to identify himself even more clearly by signing his name,
as it were, to his book [Ecclus 50:27].)
Qoheleths reflections follow no fixed pattern. They are, it is true, frequently punctuated
by a variety of phrases in the first person which often mark stages in the argument: ntatt
libb, I applied my mind, rt, I saw or observed, mart, I said, dibbart et-libb, I
spoke in my mind, that is, I said to myself or I considered, ydat, I know or I came to
the conclusion that , pant, I turned (to consider), sabbt I turned about, abt I
turned (to see), mt, I found. But unfortunately most of these expressions seem to be
more or less interchangeable in Qoheleths usage: they all mark new stages in his arguments,
but he seems mainly to have chosen one or other at random rather than in order to indicate at
which stage he has arrived. There seems to be no pattern or principle here which might help
the reader to discover the precise direction or articulation of an argument.
Although the sequence of thought in Qoheleths reflections is often difficult to follow, they
have one frequently occurring characteristic which, once recognized, makes the task
somewhat easier. This is the stylistic device of the so-called Zwar-aber Aussage (there seems
to be no equivalent for this in English)that is, the argument (see Hertzberg, p. 30; Zimmerli,
p. 126) in which Qoheleth first states a propositionwhether in his own words or in a
quotationwith which he agrees as far as it goes and in general terms (zwar means
admittedly or It is true that ), but then (aber, but) proceeds to qualify it by another
consideration which largely deprives it of its force. 2:14 and 3:11 are very simple examples of
this. Other examples are more complex and so more difficult to recognize, e.g. 4:1316. In
some instances (e.g. 9:1318) a problemhere the value of wisdomis expounded by means
of a whole series of alternating pros and cons, which at first seem confusing, but which are
intended to bring home to the reader the complexity of the problem and the need to think it
through rather than to accept without question the over-simple solution put forward by some
neat, popular, conventional aphorism. The convoluted style of such passages matches the
difficulty of the problem and the subtlety of Qoheleths approach to reality. Each reflection,
however, needs to be studied separately and in its own right: a rigid stylistic pattern is not to
be expected from Qoheleth, who is always concerned to make his readers see that reality is not
as simple as they thought.
Many commentators believe that the Zwar-aber style of argument accounts for most, if not
all, the supposed inconsistencies of thought in the book referred to in Chapter 2 above (pp. 23
26): in other words, not all the statements in the book are to be taken as expressing Qoheleths
own views; some have been thrown up, as it were, in the course of the argument as a basis for
discussion. The fact that Qoheleth often simply sets down contradictory statements side by
side with no connecting particle to indicate the direction of his thought, and also fails to
indicate clearly when he is quoting the views of others can be a source of misapprehension
leading to theories of corrections made by later hands.
Ellermeier, however (pp. 12728) raises the question whether certain absolute
contradictions such as appear to be found in 3:1617 and 8:1214 can be explained on this
basis. On these passages he comments: Either one believes in Gods judgment or one does
not. In such cases, he maintains, the theory of correcting interpolations or glosses is the only
possible solution. Against this point, however, it may be argued that Ellermeier, despite his
extremely elaborate attempt to analyse and classify the various forms of argument used by
Qoheleth, has failed to grasp the dialectical character of his thought (see Loader, 1979 and his
commentary on these passages).
Structure
Ecclesiastes is evidently a very different kind of book from Proverbs. Qoheleth is not content
to set down a series of lapidary statements or admonitions without further comment: except in
a few passages he engages the reader in a genuine discussion of the various topics which he
raises.
But does the book as a whole have a plan? If so, this does not take the form of a single
continuous structured argument proceeding logically from an initial premise to a final
conclusion. On this point there is general agreement. Such a logical scheme was unknown to
the ancient Near Eastern and Israelite tradition (compare the apparently random arrangement
of the material in Proverbs and the Near Eastern works collected in ANET, pp. 41230); and in
this respect at least Qoheleth remains within that tradition rather than the Greek one. If a plan
is to be found in Ecclesiastes, then, it must be a much looser one: an arrangement of the
various blocks of material in the book according to some logic which facilitates the
comprehension of Qoheleths thought not just on individual topics but as a whole. This
question is, however, unfortunately complicated by the fact that it is sometimes difficult to
determine where one of these blocks of material ends and another begins.
There is certainly some element of deliberate arrangement in the book as it now stands in
so far as the first and last sections1:12 (or 1:13) and 12:814, commonly known as the
prologue and epiloguehave been composed by an editor (or editors) in order to form a
framework enclosing Qoheleths own words (for a somewhat different view see Fox).
Whether it was Qoheleth himself or an editor who gave the remainder of the book its present
form, however, there is not sufficient evidence to determine. (Some commentators have
attributed some of the supposed additions to the body of the book to the authors of the
Prologue and Epilogue.)
Further, within the body of the book (1:412:7), the first and last sections (1:411 and
12:17) have probably been placed in their present positions to form an appropriate
introduction and conclusion to Qoheleths thoughts (each of these passages has a distinctive
style, which adds plausibility to this view). In addition, there is some reason to suppose that
the Solomonic fiction of 1:122:26 serves a thematic purpose as introducing most of the topics
discussed in the material which follows. If these various hypotheses are accepted, the main
problem of plan or structure is confined to the material in 3:111:10.

ANET Ancient Near Easten Texts Relating to the Old Testement, 2nd edn, Princeton University Press,
1955.
The structure of an unified literary work may manifest itself in either or both of two
distinct but related ways: it may have a formal unity, and it may have a logical continuity. On
the question whether, on either or both of these grounds, Ecclesiastes can be said to have a
comprehensive structure, and if so, in what sense, both modern commentaries and those of
earlier generations have evinced an astonishing variety of opinions. Only a few representative
examples can be given here.
Some scholars have claimed to discover in the book a detailed, logical thematic structure
consisting of a few main divisions each with its own theme, but related to one another, and
each comprising a number of subdivisions also arranged in some sort of logical, thematic
order. Thus Ginsberg divides the book into four sections: 1:22:26 (A); 3:14:3 (B); 4:46:9
(A); 6:1012:8 (B). The theme of A is that All is zero (hebel); that of B is that All
happenings are foreordained, but never fully foreseeable. These two themes are linked
together in 3:913, where the initial question What does man gain by all the toil at which he
toils under the sun? (1:3) is repeated (3:9) and then answered (3:1013); man gains nothing
by it, because God has ordained things in that way. The two final sections, A and B, are
pendants to A and B respectively. They take up again the themes already discussed in those
earlier sections and draw out the consequences which follow from them.
But if we look closely at Ginsbergs scheme we find that much of the material does not fit
into it at all. In some cases he admits this: 5:19, for example, is described in a footnote as a
block of associative digressions which plays no part in his scheme. 9:1710:19 is also
similarly noted as a block of associative digressions with some internal dislocations. No
explanation is given of these anomalies. Nor is it explained why, if 3:913 is the crucial
passage which links parts A and B together, it stands not at the end of B but in the middle,
leaving further considerations to be made in 3:144:3. But even more damaging to Ginsbergs
thesis is the fact that a number of extremely important themes, such as the value of wisdom,
the proper attitude to be adopted towards work or toil, the inevitability of death and the advice
to accept Gods gifts and enjoy life to the full, appear not just in one or two of his divisions,
but throughout the book.
In fact, it is just these constant repetitions of the same theme which, while testifying to a
unity of authorship, also point to a lack of literary unity. They give plausibility to the view
that the book is made up of a number of originally quite separate pieces, each expressing the
views of the same personand often in very similar languagebut which, when gathered
subsequently into a collection of Qoheleths writings or reflections, show a marked degree of
overlap, as collections of this kind commonly do.
The subjective character of such attempts to discover a comprehensive plan in the book is
suggested by the fact that it is rare to find two scholars who agree about the nature of this plan.
One recent example is that of Lohfink, who, asserting that the book is systematically
arranged, divides it into seven sections under the headings 1. cosmology (1:411); 2.
anthropology (1:123:15); 3. social critique I (3:164:16); 4. religious critique (5:17); 5.
social critique II (5:86:10); 6. ideological critique (6:119:6); and 7. ethics (9:712:7). This
thematic arrangement, he claims, is based on the model of the Greek diatribe. As with
Ginsbergs theory, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the materialapart from sections
1 and 4has been forced into rigid, artificially contrived categories which are by no means
wholly appropriate to much of it; that the supposed logical connections between the main
sections are difficult to find; and that the frequent duplications of the same thoughts in
different parts of the book have been ignored. A whole range of alternative theories of this
kind could be cited.
Other scholars who see the book as a closely-knit literary unity seek to obviate
subjectivism by stressing its form rather than its thematic content. Thus Wright employs the
methods of the New Criticism school of literary criticsthat is, he follows the principle that
The critic looks for repetitions of vocabulary and of grammatical terms and thus seeks to
uncover what literary devices involving repetition the author may have used (p. 318; p. 250 in
Crenshaws reprint). On that basis he finds that in Ecclesiastes The key to [its] structure is to
be found in three successive patterns of verbal repetition in 1:1211:6 (p. 313 [245]). The
first of these is the phrase (vanity and) striving after wind, which occurs frequently in 1:12
6:9, but not subsequently. This phrase thus points to those chapters as constituting the first
main section of the book and also acts as a concluding refrain which marks out each of its
subdivisions. The other two main sections, determined on a similar basis, are 7:18:17 (with
an introduction in 6:1012) and 9:111:6. 1:411 and 11:712:7 are then seen as related
thematically to the rest, stressing its two major themes: the denial of profit in toil and the
invitation to enjoyment.
Wright is, then, not solely concerned with form. He maintains that the formal features
which he has pointed outfor example, the vanity-formulaare not merely intended to
make a pleasing formal pattern or to constitute some kind of mnemonic device, but to mark
articulations in Qoheleths thought. Here, however, his analysis falls victim to the same kind
of subjectivism as do those of Ginsberg, Lohfink and others: his formal patterns do not in fact
convincingly correspond to the themes which he proposes as thematically characteristic of the
various sections into which he has divided the book. For example, to maintain, as he does, that
the common theme of 2:186:9 is toil is to ignore large tracts of those chapters which are not
concerned with toil at all.
Another proponent of the formal approach to the book is Rousseau. For him also, the main
part of the book (1:411:10) consists of cycles of material each marked out by a recurring
refrain: that is, by a passage inviting the reader to enjoy life (2:2426; 3:1213; 3:22; 5:17
19; 8:15; 9:710; 11:710). Some of these are expressed in similar terms, and some of these
phrases also recur inside the various sections of the book. The existence of this series of
refrains had already been noted by earlier scholars, and the possibility entertained that it
might have something to do with the structure of the book; but it had seemed that no positive
conclusion of that kind could be drawn (see, e.g., Whybray, 1982). Within each cycle there
is, according to Rousseau, an arrangement of the material on the basis of traditional oral or
mnemonic techniques whereby individual lines, or stichoi, are connected with one another
by a complex pattern of repeated words and phrases and other similar devices, to form a larger
whole.
The principle of composition to which Rousseau has drawn attention may well have
played a part in the composition of the individual sections of the book. But as a theory of the
composition of the book as a whole his scheme is no more successful than those already
considered. Rousseau recognizes the fact that form and theme cannot in the end be separated:
a formal pattern running throughout the book is unlikely to have been worked out for itself
alone; if it exists, it must have been intended to serve a thematic purpose. Yet when Rousseau
attempts to define his seven cycles in terms of their themes, he is unable to do so
convincingly, as is shown by the vagueness of the titles which he gives them: three of the
seven cycles (4:15:19; 6:18:15; 9:1111:10) are each given the same vague title
disappointments and exhortations. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the theory of
seven cycleswhich are, incidentally of very uneven length, one of them consisting of only
thirteen verses (3:113), though it at first seems promising, does not work.
In complete contrast to the views outlined above, many scholars since Delitzsch (1875)
have denied that in Ecclesiastes there is any comprehensive plan or literary unity at all.
Formerly this state of affairs could to a large extent be accounted for in terms of theories of
composite authorship: any unity which the book might originally have possessed had been
destroyed by the work of successive interpolators and glossators. But the fact that it is now
generally attributed to a single author does not necessarily imply unity of composition: the
material which it contains may have been composed at different times by Qoheleth as a series
of independent pieces.
Gordis describes the book as a kind of cahier or note-book containing a collection of brief
essays. One may perhaps find an analogy in Pascals Penses, which consists of a large
number of separate notes made by Pascal in preparation for the compilation of a work which
he did not live to write, and which were published after his death in a single volume. Attempts
have been made by successive editors to arrange these in a logical order, but without success:
taken together, they give a valuable impression of the consistency and unity of thought of a
great mind; but they have no literary unity at all. The analogy is not a complete one: we have
no reason to suppose that Qoheleth intended to use the material in the book as the basis for the
composition of a single, logically ordered, major work, and it is improbable that he did so
intend; while, on the other hand, he may have regarded what he wrote not as mere notes or
jottings, but as brief, finished, essays or discourses. Nevertheless, the theory that the material
originated as separate, individual pieces does account for the fact that it so strongly resists all
attempts to find in it a comprehensive development of thought. It also accounts for the
frequent repetitions and duplications which are so characteristic of the book. This feature,
regarded in this way, points rather to the literary disunity of the book than to its unity.
The theory of separate, self-contained pieces making up the book as it now exists was
strongly advocated, among modern scholars, by Galling, who divided it into twenty-seven (in
an earlier edition of his commentary, thirty-seven!) Sentenzen or aphorisms. Gallings
uncertainty about the number of these is significant. Almost every commentator since Galling
has divided the book in a somewhat different way. The uncertainty, in a number of cases,
about the point at which one section ends and another begins suggests that the view that there
is no continuity at all in the book, and that the individual sections have been put together
entirely at random needs some modification. It suggests that, at any rate in some parts of the
book, there is some continuity which oversteps the boundaries of the individual sections (so,
e.g., Zimmerli). And this is clearly the case. 5:106:9, for example, have the common general
theme of riches, yet this theme is there handled in a number of different ways which strongly
suggest that several shorter pieces have been subsequently put together. The same
phenomenon occurs elsewhere in the book; however, Hertzbergs attempt to apply this
principle to the whole book, analysing it into twelve major sections each having a number of
subsections, seems to other commentators to go beyond the evidence.
Probably we have to distinguish between original and subsequent connections, whether
thematic or formal, between sections of the book. That is, connections, where they exist, may
be an indication that when the editor (whether Qoheleth or another) arranged the material he
did not do so entirely at random, but, like the editors of Pascals Penses, did his best to
create some kind of unity wherever possible. Only, as Loretz pointed out, ancient Near Eastern
notions of logical relationships are very far removed from modern western ones.
The majority of scholars now adopt a position somewhat along these lines: that is, that
Ecclesiastes is not structurally an unified work, although in its present form it shows signs of
an attempt to arrange its contents in some sort of order. Its unity is to be found rather in its
being the product of a single mind than in a logical development of thought such as is to be
found in a philosophical treatise. There is thus a sense in which the problem of plan or
structure is of only secondary importance. A knowledge of such matters as the precise limits
of each individual component section and the connections, if any, between consecutive parts
if certainty could be obtained on these matterswould certainly be useful for the detailed
exegesis of the book and for the appreciation of minor nuances of meaning; but it is,
fortunately, possible to grasp the essential elements of Qoheleths thought without such
knowledge.
The divisions of the book
All the commentators have in fact attempted to make an analysis of the divisions of the book
in order, if nothing else, to facilitate detailed exegesis. But no two commentators divide it in
exactly the same way. The following table, which can do no more than indicate some of the
principal themes, is intended merely to provide one rough and ready way of approaching the
book for the first time, and also to demonstrate how the themes recur over and over again but
in different combinations. It makes no claim to be more authoritative than other ways of
dividing the book which are to be found in the commentaries.
1:1 Title
1:23 Prologue
1:411
Like the natural phenomena, human life is essentially
unchanging.
*1:122:26
Solomon concludes from his experiment with wisdom and
pleasure that one should accept joyfully the gifts which God
gives.
3:115
Since we cannot know how and when we should act to our best
advantage, we should accept joyfully the gifts which God gives.
*3:1622
Life is often unjust, though God will not fail to judge our deeds.
Since death is probably the end, we should accept joyfully the
gifts which God gives.
4:13 For the oppressed, death or non-existence is preferable to life.
*4:48 Work is good if not carried to excess.
4:912
Co-operation is safer than going it alone, especially at times of
danger.
*4:1316
Political power is fraught with dangers and uncertainties both for
rulers and ruled.
5:17 In approaching God, caution is necessary.
5:89 Injustice and oppression are inevitable in the political system.
*5:1020
The possession of wealth is not always a blessing. We should
accept joyfully the gifts which God gives.
*6:16
Wealth cannot create happiness. Without happiness, death or non-
existence is preferable to life.
*(6:79 Miscellaneous sayings)
6:1012 We are helpless before God.
*(7:114 Miscellaneous sayings)
7:15 We do not always get what we deserve.
7:1618
We should avoid self-righteousness and pretensions to wisdom,
and fear God.
7:19 The superiority of wisdom.
7:2022 No-one is perfect.
7:238:1 True wisdom is unattainable.
8:29 We cannot know the future, but obedience is the best policy.
*8:1015
Life is often unjust, though God will not fail to judge our deeds. It
is best to fear God and to accept joyfully the gifts which God
gives.
8:1617 We cannot know what God does in the world.
9:110
Death levels all, so we should accept joyfully the gifts which God
gives.
9:1112
We do not always get what we deserve, and do not know the
future.
9:1318 Wisdom is better than folly, but is often disregarded.
(10:111:6 Miscellaneous sayings)
*11:712:7
Advice to youth: enjoy the gifts which God gives while you can,
before God brings life to an end.
12:814 Epilogue
*It should be noted that in each of the sections marked with an asterisk (in addition to the
Prologue and Epilogue) there is at least one occurrence of a phrase containing the word hebel
(vanity) such as All (this) is (also) hebel (and a striving after wind). In 1:122:26 there are
nine such occurrences. The weight to be given to this characteristic phrase varies, however,
according to the contexts in which it appears. Including it in the above table on each
occurrence would have given the impression that it dominates the entire book. This would
have been to prejudge the question of its importance for an assessment of Qoheleths thought.
See Chapter 5 below.
Further Reading
The theory that Ecclesiastes was originally written in Aramaic was put forward by
F.C. Burkitt, Is Ecclesiastes a Translation?, JTS 23 (1922), pp. 2228
F. Zimmermann, The Aramaic Provenance of Qohelet, JQR 36 (1945/6), pp. 1745
C.C. Torrey, The Question of the Original Language of Qoheleth, JQR 39 (1948/9), pp. 15160
H.L. Ginsberg, Studies in Koheleth, New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950

JTS Journal of Theological Studies
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
The theory was opposed convincingly by
R. Gordis, The Original Language of Qohelet, JQR 37 (1946/7), pp. 6784.
KohelethHebrew or Aramaic?, JBL 71 (1952), pp. 93109
and more briefly in his commentary, pp. 5962. The same view is taken by
C.F. Whitley, Koheleth. His Language and Thought, BZAW 148, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979, pp. 10610.
The question of Greek phraseology is discussed in Loretz, pp. 4548
R. Braun, Kohelet und die frhhellenistische Popularphilosophie, BZAW 130, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973, pp.
4456.
An earlier treatment of the question in English is to be found in Barton, pp. 3233.
Canaanite-Phoenician linguistic influence was proposed by
W.F. Albright, Canaanite-Phoenician Sources of Hebrew Wisdom, VT Suppl 3, Leiden: Brill, 1955, pp. 115
M.J. Dahood, Canaanite-Phoenician Influence in Qoheleth, Biblica 33 (1952), pp. 3052, 191221
The theory has been negatively assessed in Whitley, pp. 11118
A standard work on Hebrew poetry is
W.G.E. Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry. A Guide to its Techniques (JSOT Suppl Series 26), Sheffield: JSOT
Press, 1984
Brief sections on Qoheleths style are to be found in most of the commentaries. The only
detailed treatments are in German:
Loretz
F. Ellermeier, Qohelet I/1, Herzberg am Harz: Verlag Erwin Jungfer, 1967
The second of the above named books is not recommended to beginners.
Attempts to discover a comprehensive plan or structure in the book include
H.L. Ginsberg, The Structure and Contents of the Book of Koheleth, VT Suppl 3, 1955, pp. 13849
J.A. Loader, Polar Structures in the Book of Qohelet, BZAW 152, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979
F. Rousseau, Structure de Qohlet i411 et plan du livre, VT 31 (1981), pp. 20017
A.G. Wright, The Riddle of the SphinxThe Structure of the Book of Qoheleth, CBQ 30 (1968), pp. 31334,
reprinted in J.L. Crenshaw (ed.), Studies in Ancient Israelite Wisdom, New York: Ktav, 1976, pp. 245
66
Lohfink, pp. 56
Another view of the composition of the book is that of
M.V. Fox, Frame-narrative and Composition in the Book of Qohelet, HUCA 48 (1977), pp. 83106
The view that the book has no comprehensive structure was taken by
K. Galling, Kohelet-Studien, ZAW 50 (1932), pp. 27699

JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
VT Suppl Supplements to Vetus Testamentum
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
VT Vetus Testamentum
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
Stand und Aufgabe der Kohelet-Forschung, TR NF 6 (1934), pp. 35573
The opinion of
W. Zimmerli, Das Buch KoheletTraktat oder Sentenzensammlung?, VT 24 (1974), pp. 221230
that in some parts of the book there are loose connections between one section and the next
but no continuous plan has been followed by a number of commentators.

4
PLACE IN
THE HISTORY
OF THOUGHT
THE MARKEDLY PERSONAL STYLE of the book noted in the last chapter shows clearly that
Qoheleth presented himself to his readers as an independent thinker, observing and reflecting
on all that is done under heaven (1:13) and making his own comments on it. This self-
presentation, though similar in form to the I-style of the moral tale (see p. 34 above), was
with Qoheleth more than a mere stylistic device: the views which he expresses are his own,
neither simply repeating or developing conventional views nor, on the other hand, simply
opposing them as a matter of principle. As a thinker, he was his own manthough he was no
dogmatist. His aim was to encourage his readers to think for themselves.
Nevertheless, it is important to be aware of his intellectual background. He would not have
been able to attract and retain the attention of his readers if he had not chosen to discuss
current issues which they could recognize as relevant to themselves, and it is therefore
necessary for a proper understanding of his thought to know what these were. Further,
however much his teaching was based on his own observations and reflections, he cannot, as a
learned man and a Jew of liberal persuasion, have been unaware of the intellectual questions
currently debated in the Hellenistic world; and it would be surprising if these had played no
part at all in stimulating his critical faculties; it must, moreover, be admitted, to put the matter
no higher, that they may, at least to some extent, have sown the seed of his own thinking,
whether he was aware of this or not. At the same time it is obvious that his book could only
have been written by a Jew well grounded in his own religious tradition.
Some scholars in their search for the origins of Qoheleths thought have tended to deny
both Qoheleths essential Jewishness and his originality, arguing that he was not merely
indirectly affected by the pagan culture with which he was surrounded, but that he actually
derived most of his ideas from a knowledge of non-Jewish philosophical systems, or even
directly from non-Jewish literary works. In considering this possibility, a note of caution is in
order. Except in the case of exact quotation from a work of one author by another, it is
extremely difficult to prove the existence of such influences. In the absence of such direct
proof, chance is often the most probable explanation of coincidence of ideas, since human
minds, confronted by similar problems, often run along similar or parallel lines. The likelihood
of such purely chance parallels is particularly great if the pool of material available for

ZAW Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
TR Theologische Rundschau
NF Neue Folge
comparison is very large. It would, for example, be surprising if the vast range of Greek
literature did not contain some passages which called to mind some sayings of Qoheleths,
especially since Greek poets and philosophers were frequently engaged in the criticism of
traditional religious ideas and beliefs which were not totally dissimilar to those of Israel. Only
if there were very striking verbal parallels, or if points of agreement of ideas between two
writers were so numerous as to constitute a wholly identical pattern of thought would it be
reasonable to suspect a direct connection between them. It is necessary to avoid what has been
called parallelomania. On the other hand, it would be perfectly possible for a writer like
Qoheleth to have picked up and used what might be called floating ideas, that is, notions
which, originally derived from some particular source, had passed into everyday usage and
had come to form part of popular scientific jargon, as one might speak today of complexes
or viruses without any real knowledge of what these terms mean.
The Question of Greek influence
The fact that Qoheleth lived in a time of political domination by a Hellenistic state, the empire
of the Ptolemies, has inevitably suggested to many scholars that, of all possible sources of
external intellectual influence on his thought, that of Greece is the most probable. In fact the
extent of the impact of Hellenism on the Jews of Palestine in the middle of the third century
BC is difficult to assess. There is no doubt that a few generations later, in the first half of the
second century, it was very marked: so much so that it produced a religious crisis which
threatened to destroy Judaism itself, and forced Jews to take sides for or against it. It is
tempting to try to fill in the very considerable blanks in our knowledge of the situation in the
earlier, Ptolemaic period by assuming that the cultural Hellenization of educated Jews had
begun quite early, proceeding hand in hand with the political and commercial changes which
had resulted from the assumption of Greek rule.
The fact, which has already been noted, that recent discussion has shown that there is no
evidence that Qoheleth was acquainted with the Greek language would seem to put the
possibility of direct influence on him of the Greek philosophers in some doubt. However, a
succession of critics has claimed to find, often in isolated phrases in the book but also with
respect to some of Qoheleths more fundamental notions, dependence on a wide variety of
Greek philosophies including Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Epicureanism, and even on other
and earlier Greek writers. Plumptre, for example, wrote that Koheleth turned to the literature
and philosophy of Greece, reading such writers as Sophocles, Theognis and Euripides, adding
that It was to the philosophy of Greece, as represented by the leading sects of Stoics and
Epicureans, that he turned with most eagerness. Plumptre, it is true, believed that Qoheleth
lived in Alexandria and had access to the great library there.
The majority of recent scholars have dismissed such notions as improbable, on various
grounds apart from the linguistic difficulty. The very fact that the supposed parallels with
Greek literature are so varied, involving so many different periods, throws suspicion on the
whole hypothesis. Plumptres picture of Qoheleth as an avid reader in the public library of all
kinds of Greek literature who then wrote his book in an eclectic fashion, taking one thought
from one writer and another from a quite different one, while wholly agreeing with none, is
now seen to be fanciful. The result of such eclecticism would surely have been a third-rate
work full of half-baked ideas and lacking all consistency of thought. His book is far from
giving that impression: despite its difficulties, it possesses a certain unified attitude towards
the world which is undoubtedly his own. Whatever similarities there may be to particular
Greek philosophical ideas, none of the philosophical systems in question considered as a
whole can be said to lie at the basis of his teaching, and indeed every one of them possesses
important features which are quite at variance with his views. For a discussion of this question
see Barton, pp. 3243; Gordis, pp. 5157; Loretz, pp. 4854.
The opinion that Qoheleth was substantially dependent on Greek ideas still has its
supporters. Thus Whitley continues to maintain that he was not only influenced by
Epicureanism and Stoicism, but was also acquainted with a wide range of earlier Greek
literature. But Whitley dates Ecclesiastes a century later than is generally believed to be the
case, in the mid-second century BC, in a period when Greek culture had certainly become more
widely disseminated among educated Jerusalem Jews than it had been a century earlier. There
are, however, strong reasons for rejecting this late dating; and the fact that Qoheleth wrote in
Hebrew, and in a Hebrew which shows no sign that he was acquainted with the Greek
language, continues to be an obstacle to the theory of a close acquaintance with Greek
literature.
Braun is another scholar who has recently argued for a strong influence of Greek thought
on Qoheleth; but he puts forward his argument on a rather different basis. Rather than arguing
for a direct acquaintance of Qoheleth with earlier Greek literature and philosophy, he points
out that the Greek-speaking world of the third century BC was characterized by a certain kind
of pessimistic popular philosophy ultimately derived from earlier sources but having a
character of its own. Ecclesiastes, he maintains, bears a close similarity to some of the literary
products of this type of thought. However, it is not necessarily implied by this that Qoheleth
was directly dependent on any particular one of such works. Rather, though writing from
within the Jewish tradition, he was nevertheless acquainted with the popular ideas current in
the Hellenistic world of his day of which such works are representative; he found them
congenial to his own reflections on the world and human nature, and allowed them to
influence his own thought and teaching.
To sum up the present state of the question: it would be foolish to deny that in some
respects Ecclesiastes has the flavour of Greek rather than Jewish literature. It would indeed be
surprising if he had been totally immune from the intellectual currents of his day. His
approach to his taskin particular, his determination not to accept traditional beliefs and ideas
unexamined, his personal style and his encouragement to individuals to think for themselves
and not to be afraid of reaching unorthodox conclusionsis characteristic of the Hellenistic
world and no doubt ultimately owes something to the example of the great Greek
philosophers. But with regard to the actual substance of his teaching it is necessary to enquire
whether the thoughts of this Jewish scholar, who addressed his compatriots in Hebrew, the
language of his ancestors and of the whole Jewish religious tradition, cannot in fact rather be
adequately accounted for in Jewish terms as a critique of that native tradition.
Babylonian and Egyptian influence?
Before we pass on to a consideration of this question, however, two other theories of foreign
influence on Qoheleth should be briefly noted. The publication of the Old Babylonian version
of the Epic of Gilgamesh in 1902 quickly led to a widespread theory that Eccl. 9:79, in which
Qoheleth recommends the enjoyment of the good things of life, was directly based on a
passage from this ancient work (Tablet X iii 614; translation in ANET, p. 90). Barton even

ANET Ancient Near Easten Texts Relating to the Old Testement, 2nd edn, Princeton University Press,
1955.
claimed that in parts the Hebrew seems to be a translation of the Babylonian (p. 39). It is
now widely recognized that this is at the very least an overstatement: the two passages are by
no means exactly parallel. The fact that, as is now recognized, very similar passages are found
in a number of different literatures, including Greek and Egyptian, has inclined recent scholars
to the view that all these passages are probably simply independent expressions of a
widespread human mood.
Recently Loretz has examined the question of Babylonian, or more correctly
Mesopotamian, influence on Qoheleth on a much broader basis, claiming that there are
significant parallels between Qoheleths thoughts and a number of major themes of certain
types of Mesopotamian literature, especially with regard to such problems as theodicy, the
rejection of the view that human conduct reaps its reward in this world, and the ephemeral
character of human life. None of the proponents of the theory, however, has been able to find a
convincing solution of the problem of the time-gap between the literatures in question or of
the way in which Babylonian ideas could have reached Qoheleth while bypassing earlier
Hebrew writers. In fact Loretz, whose main purpose seems to have been to show that
Qoheleths thought belongs to the Semitic (that is, not to the Greek or Egyptian) world rather
than to prove the direct influence on him of specific examples of Mesopotamian literature,
admits that biblical parallels are in fact not entirely confined to Ecclesiastes but are found also
elsewhere in other Old Testament books. In demonstrating that Qoheleths thought is basically
Semitic, Loretz has, if nothing else, given strong support to those who maintain that there is no
need to suppose that his intellectual background was fundamentally Greek or Egyptian.
Much of what has been said above about theories of Greek and Mesopotamian influences
on Qoheleth is also true of theories of Egyptian influence. Two generations ago P. Humbert
found parallels with Qoheleths phraseology and ideas in almost every period of Egyptian
literature, concluding that he must have visited Egypt, learned the Egyptian language, and
made himself familiar with its entire literary heritage. Such supposed parallel features
included, among many others, such matters as the fiction of royal authorship, the personal
style, a pessimistic attitude towards human life, caution about speaking too much in the temple
(Eccl. 5:12) and numerous items of phraseology. More recent scholars have been very much
more cautious about the significance and extent of these parallels, though Gemser and others
have pointed out a limited number of interesting similarities between Ecclesiastes and certain
very late Egyptian works.
Loretz and Whitley in particular have examined this question and reached negative
conclusions. Not only are most of the supposed parallels imprecise and matched equally by
parallels from other parts of the ancient Near East and from Greece; but it is also recognized
that it is extremely improbable that Qoheleth, even if he visited or even resided in Egypt,
could have mastered not only the Egyptian spoken in his day but also the very different earlier
forms of the language sufficiently well to have read extensively in its literaturemuch more
improbable, in fact, than that he should have been familiar with the Greek cultural heritage,
which was, by his time, dominant in Hellenistic Egypt as it was in other parts of the
Hellenistic world. It is true that literary works continued to be written in Egyptian and in the
Egyptian manner as late as the third century BC and even much later; but a recent study by M.
Lichtheim of the Egyptian wisdom literature of the Graeco-Roman period has argued
convincingly that these late Egyptian writers may have been themselves indebted to their non-
Egyptian counterparts rather than the other way round. She concluded from her examination of
these works that they had absorbed many elements of non-Egyptian origin, for their authors
had been acquainted with, and influenced by, currents of international wisdom literatures,
Near Eastern and Greek, which flowed through the internationalized cultures of the Hellenistic
world (p. X). It may be felt that this comment on the general merging of once independent
cultural properties into something of a common pool, which was so characteristic of
Hellenism, tends to relativize, if not to undermine, the whole concept of specific influences
on Qoheleth.
Qoheleth and the Wisdom Tradition
Despite the lack of evidence that Qoheleth was familiar with specific non-Jewish literary
works, the idea has persisted that he is to be understood as heir to a widespread international
wisdom tradition, which had flourished in Egypt and Mesopotamia from very ancient times,
and of which the wisdom books of the Old Testamentthat is, Proverbs and Job as well as
his own bookwere products. This idea is taken for granted, even though in a somewhat
modified form, in many modern treatments of these bookse.g. H.H. Schmid, Wesen und
Geschichte der Weisheit; Scott, The Way of Wisdom, ch. 2; Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom,
chs. 1 and 2; Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1983, ch. 1. Some authorities on the extra-biblical literature commonly labelled
wisdom literature, have, however, expressed scepticism about the concept of a wisdom
tradition of this kind (W.G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1960, pp. 12; H. Brunner, Die Weisheitsliteratur, Handbuch der
Orientalistik I/2, gyptologie, Leiden: Brill, 1952, pp. 90110). That Qoheleth was concerned
with some of the same problems of human life as were the authors of some of the Babylonian
and Egyptian works in question need not be disputed. But, as has been suggested above, it
may be more reasonable to suppose that we have to do here with parallelism of thought and
expression than with dependence.
Foreign connections apart, however, the question remains whether it can be convincingly
argued that Qoheleth was a wisdom writer in the sense that he belonged to an exclusive guild
of wise men which had preserved its corporate identity throughout the centuries since the
time of the early Judean monarchy. There seems to be no concerete evidence for this. Indeed,
with regard to the theory of an esoteric wisdom tradition in Israel, it has been argued recently
that too much reliance has been placed in the past on the significance of the frequent
occurrence of the words km, wise and okmh, wisdom in the three books of
Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes and of the use by all of them of the proverb form (only really
frequent in Proverbs). It is not at all certain that the authors of these books would have seen
themselves as belonging to a single class distinct from all other Israelites, except in the sense
that they were all educated men (Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition, especially ch. 3). No
direct links have been convincingly shown to exist between the three books, which are very
different from one another in important respects, and there are time-gaps between them which
remain unfilled by the existence of other works of a similar type.
If the above considerations are valid, the placing of Qoheleth within the narrow confines
of a wisdom tradition may prove to be a false move which conduces to a misunderstanding
of Qoheleths position in the history of thought. It may be more fruitful to regard him as an
independent thinker who set himself to make a critical examination, not just of a distinct
wisdom tradition, but of his own native religious tradition as a wholethat is, of the main
religious tradition enshrined in the Jewish scriptures. There is ample evidence of this.
Qoheleth and the Old Testament Tradition
Ecclesiastes is not, of course, a compendium of Jewish theology. Qoheleth was not concerned
either to express his approval of, or to dispute, every belief traditionally held by the Jewish
people. Neither does he refer in his book to more than a very restricted range of Old Testament
literature. We may assume that much of what he passes over in silencenotably the whole
Israelite historical tradition and the concept of Israel as a people uniquely chosen by Godhe
took for granted. In this he was by no means unique among the writers of the Old Testament:
these aspects of traditional belief are also passed over in silence not only in Proverbs and Job,
but also in many of the Psalms. Like these, he was concerned with the individual: with the
limitations and frustrations, but also with the possibilities open to individual men and
womenthat is, with the universal situation common to all members of the human race set to
live in the world by an omnipotent and omniscient God who keeps them in ignorance of what
he has in store for them, except for the knowledge of their mortality. This was the problem
with which he was concerned; he was not bound to comment on the whole range of religious
belief common to himself and his readers.
Nevertheless the range of theological topics alluded to in the book, in which Qoheleth
shows himself to be entirely at one with traditional Jewish belief, is impressive. Like all his
fellow-Jews, he assumed without question that there is one God who created the world (3:11)
and has sovereign power over it (3:14; 6:10; 7:13; 9:1; 11:5), a God who is wholly
transcendent (5:2), exalted above and different in nature from his creatures (6:10). The world
which he created was a good world (3:11). Man was created from the dust (3:20) and animated
by his creator with breath (3:19). He is, however, a weak creature (6:10). It is through his own
fault that his nature has become corrupted (7:29; 8:9). So the world is now beset with evil (4:3;
9:3), hardship, frustration and injustice (2:11; 3:16; 4:1). Man must die, and, like the animals,
revert to the dust (3:1920; 12:7). He survives only in the shadowy and joyless state of Sheol
(9:56): there is, as far as can be known, no real life after death (3:21). Yet human life, while
it lasts, is a gift of God (3:13; 5:19), and should be lived to the full (9:10) and, as far as
possible, with enjoyment (2:24; 9:710; 11:710), for that is Gods intention (3:13; 5:19). That
it is mans duty to worship this God is also taken for granted (5:1).
On all these matters Qoheleths teaching is clearly dependent on, and in accordance with,
the Old Testament tradition. In some respects, admittedly, there are parallels with other
traditions of the Semitic world. But taken as a whole this is good, plain Jewish doctrine and
not derived from elsewhere. The Old Testament parallels are obvious.
When we pass to those aspects of Qoheleths teaching which appear to differ from or
contradict traditional Jewish belief, it is important to ask whether these can be satisfactorily
accounted for as part of an inner-Jewish discussion which took the Old Testament tradition as
its starting-point, or whether his radicalism is something entirely novel, totally unrelated to
that tradition. Is Qoheleth, in other words, as von Rad maintained, an outsider completely free
of tradition, whose book is no more than a sceptical note on the tradition of the wise men?
This latter judgment has recently been questioned. It has been argued that we need to view
the Jewish religious tradition reflected in the Old Testament as being considerably more
diverse than it was previously thought to be, and as having embraced a radical element from a
quite early time. In this perspective the radicalism of Qoheleth would appear not as something
quite new and outlandish, but as a development of earlier doubts about the purposes of God
and dissatisfaction about the human condition which had already been voiced from time to
time in opposition to the main, mainly optimistic, stream of Jewish religious tradition. Two
recent books which develop this view are R. Davidson, The Courage to Doubt: Exploring an
Old Testament Theme, and J.L. Crenshaw, A Whirlpool of Torment: Israelite Traditions of
God as an Oppressive Presence. These titles are significant. Both of these works include
chapters on Ecclesiastes, but as only one among several Old Testament books in which such
critical attitudes are expressed, so putting Qoheleth fairly and squarely within the orbit of Old
Testament thought.
The question whether Qoheleth can rightly be described as a sceptic will be discussed in
the next chapter, where an attempt will be made to give a more detailed account of his
thought. Here it is sufficient to note that, if he was a sceptic, this was a scepticism not about
the existence or the power of God, but about Gods justice, and about the worth of human life.
Davidson in the book referred to above has pointed to passages in Genesis, certain psalms,
Jeremiah and elsewhere in the Old Testamentquite apart from Jobwhere scepticism about
Gods righteousness is expressed; Crenshaw has similarly indicated Old Testament passages
in which God is seen as an oppressive presencefor example, the story of the sacrifice of
Isaac, which, he suggests, depicts a God apparently indifferent to the torment which he has
deliberately inflicted on his faithful servant Abraham. If Qoheleth did indeed dare, at least
implicitly, to question God and to make him the direct cause of human misery, he was,
according to these scholars, in good Israelite company.
It has frequently been suggested that Qoheleth was particularly influenced by his reading
of Gen. 111. There are, for example, possible reminiscences of Gen. 1 in Eccl. 3:11, and of
Gen. 2:7 in Eccl. 3:1920. Moreover, the pattern of human sin, corruption and punishment
which we find in Gen. 311 may lie behind such passages as Eccl. 7:29. But perhaps even
more striking is the similarity between the depiction of the fallen state of man in Gen. 311
and Qoheleths picture of humanity as he knew it. In Gen. 3:23 man is cast out of the Garden
of Eden to live a life of hardship in separation from God; and in the story of the Tower of
Babel (Gen. 11:19) God throws confusion into the human race, creating a situation in which
harmony and mutual understanding become impossible. The two picturesthat of Gen. 111
and of Qohelethhave much in common; and it is perhaps significant that these chapters of
Genesis are concerned, like Qoheleth, not, like most of the Old Testament, with Israel, but
with humanity as a whole. Qoheleths predilectionif such is the casefor Gen. 111 would
illustrate this eclectic attitude towards the Hebrew scriptures.
These and other examples which could be given of Qoheleths preoccupation with certain
aspects of the Jewish religious tradition, together with his silence about others, give some
indication of his general purpose. They suggest that Qoheleth is to be seen as a thinker whose
aim was to re-interpret the Jewish faith for his own time, bringing it into line with the truth
about the world as he saw it, rather than as an iconoclast who simply wished to throw doubt
upon its validity and to leave it in ruins or to put something else in its place, and who, even at
his most radicaland, as we shall see, there is no doubt that he was extremely radical
wished to preserve what he perceived to be true in it while attacking and exposing what was
false.
Further Reading
The question of foreign influence on Qoheleth is discussed in most of the commentaries. See
especially Plumptre, Barton and Gordis, and also Loretz, Whitley and Braun. A recent
contribution to the discussion of Babylonian parallels is
J. de Savignac, La sagesse du Qhlth et lEpope de Gilgamesh, VT 28 (1978), pp. 31823.
The classic exposition of the theory of Egyptian influence is
P. Humbert, Recherches sur les sources gyptiennes de la littrature sapientiale dIsral, Neuchtel, 1929
A recent assessment of late Egyptian wisdom literature and its relationship to other wisdom
literatures is
M. Lichtheim, Late Egyptian Wisdom Literature in the International Context. A Study of Demotic Instructions,
OBO 52, Freiburg, Switzerland and Gttingen: the University of Freiburg and Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1983
The idea of wisdom as an international phenomenon is expounded in many general works on
Israels wisdom literature, including
R.B.Y. Scott, The Way of Wisdom, New York and London: Macmillan, 1971
J.L. Crenshaw, Old Testament Wisdom: An Introduction, London and Atlanta: SCM Press and John Knox
Press, 1981
The view that Qoheleth was particularly influenced by his reading of Gen. 111 is most fully
expounded in
C.C. Forman, Koheleths Use of Genesis, JSS 5 (1960), pp. 25663
On Qoheleths relationship to the Old Testament tradition see Gordis, pp. 4351
R.N. Whybray, Conservatisme et radicalisme dans Qohelet, Sagesse et Religion. Colloque de Strasbourg
(octobre 1976), Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979, pp. 6581

5
QOHELETHS
CHARACTERISTIC
IDEAS
THE LITERARY CHARACTER of Ecclesiastesa series of reflections on particular subjects, not
always in agreement with one another or even internally logically consistentmakes it
extremely difficult to discover what, if any, was the central proposition which Qoheleth
wished to put to his readers. To write a definitive and generally accepted account of his
thought is, indeed, an impossible task. Many scholars have attempted to do so, but the very
number and variety of these attempts speak for themselves. To look for complete consistency
in Qoheleths writings is to look for something which is not to be found, for he himself
confessed his own failure to arrive at the truth, and in fact asserted that it is impossible for the
human mind to do so:
Man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he
will not find it out; even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out (8:17),
for it is Gods will that he should not do so (3:11; 7:14).
Nevertheless the book is the record of the reflections upon life of one man. Even though he
failed to find clearcut solutions to the problems which troubled him, his very choice of
questions to discuss and his manner of discussing them may be expected to shed light on at
least some of his basic attitudes.
A common way of approaching this question is to take certain words and phrases which
are constantly repeated throughout the book as expressing Qoheleths basic attitude to life. Of
these the most frequent is the word hebel. If we disregard its six occurrences in the Prologue
and Epilogue, this word occurs no less than twenty-eight times in this book, but only thirty-

OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
JSS Journal of Semitic Studies
four times in the whole of the rest of the Old Testament. It is found in every chapter except ch.
10though not in every section of the book (see the Table on pp. 4647and most
frequently in such phrases as All is/this is (also) hebel, sometimes followed by and a
striving after wind. It is clearly a key word. Unfortunately it is not entirely clear what
Qoheleth meant by it: vanity, nothingness, worthlessness, futility, absurdity,
mystery, impermanence are only a few of the ways in which it has been translated. It is
also disputed whether when Qohelethas distinct from the authors of the Prologue and
Epilogueused the phrase all is hebel (1:14; 2:11, 17; 3:19) he was making a statement
about everything which exists, or whether he was referring to some particular aspect of life
which was, in his opinion, wholly hebel. But there can be no doubt that he characterized a
great many particular situations in life in this way, and that hebel, whatever its precise
meaning for him, denoted something which was fundamentally unsatisfactory and was the
cause of a sense of deep frustration.
Against this negative estimate of the human situation, however, must be set another
frequent theme: that of the enjoyment of life. In a series of passages running throughout the
book (2:24; 3:1213, 22; 5:18; 8:15; 9:79; 11:912:7) the reader is encouraged to enjoy life
to the full. These seven passages clearly form a series; and, in the book as it is now arranged, it
is a series which is marked by a steady increase in emphasis (see Whybray, 1982). Although
they are not verbally identical, these passages to a large extent employ a common phraseology.
There is nothing better for a man, eat and drink, find enjoyment and This is from the
hand of God, phrases which occur in 2:24, all recur in virtually the same form in the next five
passages. Another common feature is the insistence that all enjoyment comes as a gift from
God. Further, the word b, good, better, and often enjoyment, is a key word in all except
the last of these passages. This final passage, which now stands in a key position at the end of
the book, is a very emphatic piece of advice to the young to make the most of life before the
inevitable advent of old age and death, when God will take back his gift of life. It is
noteworthy that Qoheleths words conclude with a reminder to the reader of this gift of God
(12:7).
One of the main problems of the book is whether these apparently contradictory attitudes
towards life represented by hebel and joy can be reconciled, and, if so, how: was Qoheleth, to
put the matter simply, an optimist, a pessimist, or something between the two? Which of these
two themes had precedence over the other in his thought? Those who stress the negative
attitude represented by the sayings about hebel interpret the recommendations to enjoy life as
the expression of a hedonism born from despair: that is, because life is cruel, frustrating and
without hope for either the present or the future, and because death comes to everyone and
often without warning, one should snatch at every opportunity for pleasure which presents
itself. Such an attitude is not without parallels in the history of mankind. But it has been
pointed out in objection to this interpretation of Qoheleths philosophy of life firstly that
passages like 2:111 and 7:26 show that Qoheleth in fact deprecated the pursuit of pleasure
for its own sake and rated it as mere folly, and secondly that in emphasizing so strongly that
all true enjoyment comes from God as his gift, he was implicitly affirming that life does have
some positive qualities after all: that God has not simply abandoned his creatures to despair.
The argument has been pursued with numerous variations. For example, on the one hand it
has been maintained that Qoheleths use of the term hebel was not intended to cover the
whole of life, but only some aspects of it; or, alternatively, that the term as used by him does
not necessarily have a negative connotation but means no more than mystery or
impermanence. On the other, texts like 1:13; 2:17, 23; 4:23; 6:35 have been adduced as
proof that life was hateful to him and death or non-existence preferablethough these are
difficult to reconcile with 9:4 and 11:7, which attest to his love of life! The difficult phrase
rendered by RSV and other versions by striving after wind has been interpreted in various
ways for the light that it might shed on the meaning of hebel, with which it is associated and
perhaps equated in several passages. These arguments and counter-arguments can hardly by
themselves lead to any definite conclusion about the matter, unless it is to bring out the
complexityand perhaps the inconsistencyof Qoheleths thought. What is required if any
clear picture is to emerge is an investigation of the contexts in which Qoheleth used the
phrases and made the generalized comments referred to in the previous paragraphs: in other
words, an examination of his treatment of concrete themes.
Even the examination of these themes, however, is hardly a simple matter. Each theme
wisdom, death, wealth, work, justice and the restwas seen by Qoheleth as involving
complex issues which could not be properly dealt with by a simple comment. Moreover, each
of them was in some way relevant to, and impinged upon, the others, so that Qoheleth was
rarely able to discuss one of them without reference to those others. It was this complexity of
issues which led him to adopt the Zwar-aber style referred to on p. 39 above.
In considering these topics it is important to bear in mind that Qoheleth was often
commenting on and criticizing generally accepted notions. A number of scholarsGese,
Hengel, Lauha and Kaiser among othershave written of a crisis of wisdom, or of religion,
discernible in Qoheleths teaching: in other words, they see his teaching as marking a crucial
turning-point in the history of the Jewish faith. It is certainly true that Qoheleth discerned that
certain features of what had been up to his time a commonly accepted system of religious
belief and morals had to some extent at least lost their validity and needed reappraisal in the
light of the changed conditions of the Hellenistic world. His teaching thus presupposes the
existence and tenacity of those beliefs, which accordingly constitute the starting-point for the
expression of his own convictions.
Wisdom
The word wisdom (okmh) has a number of somewhat different connotations in the Old
Testament. But behind them all is the idea of the possession of knowledge: a practical
knowledge which confers the ability to achieve success. It was by wisdom that God created
the world (Prov. 3:19), and it was through the possession of wisdom in the form of a
knowledge of Gods laws that Israel was to become the envy of the other nations (Deut. 4:5
8). On the human level, the book of Proverbs emphasizes again and again that wisdom is the
key to success.
That human wisdom was a gift from God was taken for granted; but the relationship
between divine and human wisdom was a question about which there was no agreed opinion.
On the one hand it was recognized, for example in Prov. 21:30, that No wisdom, no
understanding, no counsel, can prevail against Yahweh: that is, that human wisdom cannot
stand on its own; that it is quite useless unless it is backed by God. In Proverbs 8, the divine
Wisdom is actually pictured as offering herself to men. Elsewhere the subordination of human
wisdom to God is expressed by equating it with obedience to Gods will (Job 28:28); but on
the other hand this verse appears to contradict entirely the teaching of the previous poem
(28:127), which denies that wisdom is given to man at all: all those skills which are
elsewhere called wisdom are undeserving of the name; and the only true wisdom is the
exclusive possession of God, who keeps it hidden away (vv. 2327).
For Qoheleth, human wisdom was a gift of God (2:26); and, although he never specifically
used the terms wise and wisdom in speaking of God, there can be no doubt that he believed
that God possessed in an absolute degree that attribute which is elsewhere so called. But
between Gods absolute knowledge and mans puny efforts to possess such knowledge there
was a complete gulf; and this was unbridgeable. God had deliberately kept man in ignorance
of the things which he needed to know if he was to live securely and plan his life successfully
(3:11; 8:1617). Qoheleth does not deny that human wisdom has some practical value (2:13
14; 7:11; 9:1618; 10:2, 12), and he frequently follows the older tradition in contrasting the
wise man with the fool. But at every point there is, to use his own image, a fly in the
ointment (10:1) which frustrates the wise mans purpose or renders it ineffective.
Qoheleth believed that mans attempts to order his life by exercising his God-given
wisdom were frustrated by the limitations which God had imposed upon that wisdom: in
particular, that he had kept him ignorant of the appropriate times for action. As in the world of
nature, where even the birds know the proper time for migration (Jer. 8:7), and the crops duly
ripen at the proper season (Job 5:26), so, it was generally believed, human success depends on
a knowledge of this proper time. Such knowledge was believed to be, at least to some extent,
accessible to man. The farmer knows when to plough and when to sow his seed (Isa. 28:24
26); and history itself is full of examples of successful men who knew when to bide their time
and when to act, as is illustrated by the story of the rise of David to power (1 Sam. 192 Sam.
5), and in the portrayal of other men who destroyed themselves by taking action at the wrong
time (Adonijah, 1 Kgs 1; 2:1325; Josiah, 2 Kgs 23:2930). The book of Proverbs stresses the
value of knowing when to speak (15:23) and when to keep silent (13:3; 17:27), when to act
and when to refrain from action (13:16; 14:8, 17). Although it is recognized in a few of these
proverbs that we cannot be certain of the future (27:1) and that our destiny is ultimately hidden
in the purpose of God (20:24), there is in the book of Proverbs as a whole an overwhelming
assumption that the wise man is able by exercizing his wisdom to avoid the pitfalls of life and
confidently to exploit situations to his own advantage.
Qoheleth fully accepted the idea of the right time. The book begins (1:411) with an
illustration from nature, in which the natural phenomena are seen as ceaselessly performing
their proper functions (cf. Gen. 8:22). 3:18, which begins with the statement that for
everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven, and proceeds to
illustrate this statement with a catalogue of contrasting pairs of possible activities each of
which (apart from the first) indicates a need to make choices, is probably a quotation from
some older source; but there is every reason to suppose that Qoheleth agreed with it. However,
his own initial comment on it (What gain has the worker from his toil?, v. 9), together with
his subsequent reflections on it (vv. 10ff.), expresses a fundamental disagreement with the
traditional view that the wise man is able to discern these times and profit by this knowledge:
it is impossible, he says, for men to make use of the way in which the world has been
organized, because God has deliberately withheld the knowledge of it, and nothing can alter
what God has decided.
Two comments may be made about this. First, as has been seen, the recognition that we
cannot know what the future will bring and cannot therefore make effective plans was not
entirely new. What Qoheleth has done is to bring this thought into prominence for the first
time and to emphasize it so strongly that the whole assessment of the value of human wisdom
is thereby radically changed. Secondly, it should be noted that in practice Qoheleth shrank
from a completely deterministic view of life. If all human action is futile because God holds all
the cards, it would follow logically that there is no point in giving practical advice. Yet
Qoheleth does recommend certain courses of action as if it were possible to change the course
of events: the book contains many admonitions, both positive and negative. Thus he gives
advice, much in the manner of Proverbs, on the most prudent way to behave before rulers
(8:26), even stating (or is this ironical?) that in such circumstances the mind of a wise man
will know the time and way (8:5). He even applies the same principle to dealings with God
himself (5:16; 7:1617), apparently in the belief that Gods intentions can be influenced by
human behaviour. These apparent contradictions suggest that he was wrestling with the
familiar tension between free will and determinism, a tension which also appears in some
other Old Testament texts.
Death
Qoheleths assessment of human wisdom as ultimately valueless, despite its limited successes
in particular cases, is closely connected with his preoccupation with human mortality. It is not
that he has a morbid fear of death, or that he reproaches God for limiting the span of human
life. When he says that all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again (3:20) and that there
will come a time when the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God
who gave it (12:7), he is merely repeating the traditional view of the matter; and the same is
true of his statement that there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to
which you are going (9:10). His reflections on the brevity of human life do not take the form
of a bitter lament like that of the author of Psalm 90, who (vv. 510) saw human mortality as a
consequence of Gods anger. This is noteworthy in view of his evident familiarity with
Genesis 3, which he might reasonably have interpreted in that way. His phrase return to God
who gave it is more in line with the purely factual or neutral statement in Ps. 104:29 that
When thou takest away their breath they die and return to their dust.
In his statements about death, Qoheleths concern is rather to point out that it makes
nonsense of all human pretensions. This argument can be clearly seen in 2:1316, where the
discussion of the value of wisdom, punctuated with argument and counter-argument, reaches
the conclusion that of the wise man as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing
that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise man dies just like the
fool! Here we can also see the intense individualism of Qoheleth: the idea that the
achievements of individuals might benefit future generations after their death never occurs to
himan ironical fact when one considers that it is Solomon who is supposedly speaking here,
and also that Qoheleth himself has not after all been forgotten after 2000 years. It seems that
for Qoheleth wisdom was, like everything else, an entirely personal possession, valuable, if at
all, only to its possessor; and it died with him.
Qoheleth had similar views about the effect of mortality on material possessions, which
were for him closely associated with wisdom, for it was by wisdom and knowledge and skill
that they had been acquired (2:21). The rich man whose predicament is described in 2:1823
is, typically, a self-made man who owes nothing to his predecessors, and who laments not that
he will have to die some day, but that he cannot take his money with him. There is no thought
here of the benefit which wealth may confer on his heirs: ten to one they will not, in any case,
inherit his wisdom, and will foolishly contrive to lose all that he has left them. Here is a point
at which Qoheleth departs radically from traditional Israelite ideas: for him, society seems to
consist (4:912 is the only exception) of solitary individualsa reflection, perhaps, of the age
in which he lived. It is not death which appalls him, but the waste of individual talent and
enterprise which death brings about.
It was this thought of death as a waste that impelled Qoheleth to value life above all else,
despite its very evident frustrations, miseries and uncertainties. That this is so is clearly stated
in 9:16. Here, having listed some of the latteruncertainty about ones future, the unfairness
of a world in which rewards are unjustly distributed, and the evil which exists in the hearts of
menhe states his reason for thinking that it is nevertheless far better to be alive than dead:
even the despised dog while it lives and breathes has the advantage over the dead lion, because
where theres life, theres hope (v. 4). Even to know that one will die is better than to know
nothing at all, like the dead. The dead have nothing: no satisfaction, no place in the memory of
others, no passions, and, finally and emphatically, no more for ever any share in all that is
done under the sun (vv. 56). Death is here represented not as something terrible in itself, but
as the negation of all that is worth while. There is in this passage an immensely strong natural
instinct for life in all its variety, an instinct which also appears clearly in the ejaculation Light
is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun, with its succeeding comment: For if
a man live many years, let him rejoice in them all; and let him remember that the days of
darkness will be many (11:78).
It is in this context that we should consider two passages which appear to express a
directly contrary view: 4:13 and 6:16. In these two passages Qoheleth states that non-
existencewhether of the dead, the unborn or the stillbornis preferable to life. But these
statements refer to particular cases: in 4:13 that of persons who are subjected to the lifelong
misery of oppression by cruel and powerful oppressors; and in 6:16, on the other hand, that
of persons who possess every material benefit, but who for one reason or another (the situation
is not entirely clear) are unable to derive any enjoyment from their wealth. The two cases, very
different though they appear to be, have one thing in common: a total inability to find pleasure
in life. In one sense these passages contradict what Qoheleth has said elsewhere about life as
preferable to death despite all its miseries: he now admits that there are exceptions to this. On
the other hand, it may be argued that these examples reinforce his positive view of life. These
are terrible exceptions: the cases of people who, exceptionally, have no hope (compare 9:4),
for whom therefore non-existence would indeed be preferable to life because none of the
qualities of life is available to them. However inconsistent Qoheleth may be judged to be on
this matter, it should be borne in mind that his remarks here, unlike those expressed in the
passages previously considered, are not general remarks, but are made in relation to concrete
and particular cases.
Wealth
In the ideal world portrayed in the stories of the patriarchs in the book of Genesis, wealth was
a reward bestowed by God on persons who had deserved his favour. Reality, however, was
very different. In the denunciations of society uttered by the prophets, the rich are singled out
again and again as persons who have obtained their wealth by illegal and dishonest means, and
who use the power that wealth gives to pervert justice and to oppress the poor (e.g. Isa. 5:8;
10:12; Amos 2:67; 4:1; 8:46). In the book of Proverbs the two pictures stand side by side
(contrast, e.g., 10:22 with 10:2), and this is also true of the book of Psalms.
Qoheleths comments about wealth are not so much opposed to either of these pictures as
unrelated to them. The social scene had changed, though not for the better (4:1). The power
conferred by money was even more apparent (10:19). But Qoheleths concern was not so
much with the moral issues involved as with the real value of money as a source of happiness
and contentment to those who possess it. Solomons experiment (2:111) is intended to show
that even the most wealthy man on earth derives no lasting satisfaction from his wealth. In
5:1017 Qoheleth lists some of the ways in which wealth becomes a burden rather than a
source of enjoyment: the rich are never content with what they have, but are consumed by a
restless desire for more (v. 10); their position involves them in so many additional expenses
and calls upon their money that their wealth becomes an illusion: what gain has their owner
but to see them with his eyes? (v. 11); their worries keep them awake at night, in contrast
with the simple labourer who sleeps well and free from care (v. 12); and indeed there is always
the possibility that they may lose their wealth and be reduced to penury (vv. 1315). Finally,
death will put an end to their wealth and separate them from it for ever (vv. 1517).
The point of this extended passage is clearly to be seen in the verses which immediately
follow it (1820). Wealth is not in itself evil. It is, indeed, a gift of God. Only he can give the
power to enjoy it. True contentment is to be found in the acceptance of these facts. These
verses pick up the themes of the previous ones in order to show how the wealthy man can
avoid the disadvantages of his wealth. The man who simply accepts this gift from God will be
able to eat and drinkthat is, enjoy his wealth: he will enjoy his work rather than be
tormented by worry; he will accept his lot rather than be dissatisfied with it and plan
constantly to get more; he will be filled with a God-given joy in his heart which will save him
from worrying about the inevitable approach of death.
Work
This term (it occurs in three forms, the noun ml, the verb mal and the adjective ml,
one who works) is regularly translated in RSV and other versions by toil, which has a
somewhat negative connotation as something intrinsically unpleasant. The choice of this
translation is probably due to the fact that elsewhere in the Old Testament ml mainly has
such negative meanings as trouble, sorrow, misfortune, evil. It is, however, clear from the
contexts in which it is used that in Ecclesiastes, as in late Hebrew in general, it usually simply
means work, although occasionally, as in 2:18, it appears to mean the result of work, that is,
the material wealth gained through work. The word occurs very frequently in the book, and
thus has the status of a key word.
At first sight it would seem that in different passages Qoheleth expresses two quite
different views about the value of work. On the one hand he asks What gain has the worker
from his toil?a question which is equivalent to a categorical denial that work has anything
to be said in its favour, a view supported by other passages, where it is associated with pain
and vexation (2:2223) or with deprivation of pleasure (4:8). On the other hand, several
passages (2:24; 3:13; 5:1819; 8:15; 9:9) speak of work as something to be enjoyed, using
phrases like There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and find
enjoyment in his toil (2:24). In fact, however, Qoheleths attitude towards work is similar to
his attitude towards wealth. The passages in which work is regarded as a misfortune are almost
all concerned with overwork: with the frantic attempt to gain more and more wealth at the
expense of peace, enjoyment and even health which characterised the society in which he
lived (2:2223; 4:68; 5:1617), while those which speak of work as enjoyable count it among
Gods gifts. Once again Qoheleth is advocating the quiet acceptance of whatever God gives to
man. It is significant that he cites the saying Better is a handful of quietness than two handfuls
of toil, which he glosses with the comment and a striving after wind (4:6), and that he
contrasts the undisturbed sleep of the labourer (hbd) with the sleeplessness of the rich
(5:12).
The divine justice
It is especially with regard to Qoheleths teaching about the relationship between human
conduct and its reward that many scholars, including those mentioned on p. 66 above, have
spoken of a crisis of wisdom or a crisis of religion. In other words, it has been maintained
that in denying that there is any connection between the two, Qoheleth for the first time broke
completely with the traditional view that we get what we deserve in this life. This denial, it is
argued, severs the relationship between God and man which was an essential element of
Jewish religious belief.
Two questions arise here: whether Qoheleth did unequivocally assert that God never
intervenes in human affairs on the side of righteousness, and how far, if so, this teaching was
revolutionary.
To take the second question first; despite a general confidence, expressed in many parts of
the Old Testament, that the righteous will triumph and prosper because God defends the right,
and that the wicked will come to a bad end, the questioning of this belief is by no means
lacking. It appears particularly frequently in the psalms of lamentation, and it is a principal
theme of the book of Job. Another example is found in the story of Abrahams dialogue with
God over the fate of the righteous minority in Sodom, when Abraham boldly challenged God:
Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?. Shall not the Judge of all the earth
do right? (Gen. 18:2325). In that case God was persuaded to change his mind. Elsewhere the
problem is solved in other ways: either by a pious expression of confidence that the present
situation will ultimately be reversed, or, more profoundly, by the conviction that fellowship
with God far outweighs the mere suffering of injustice (Ps. 73:2126), or with the recognition
that Gods justice is too mysterious for man to be able to challenge it (Job). But there can be
no doubt that the question remained a very real one which demanded some sort of answer,
particularly in times of national misfortune or oppression. Qoheleths raising of it, therefore,
was neither new nor unexpected.
With regard to Qoheleths own position, the statement that time and chance happen to
them all (9:11) was once thought to be the expression of a doctrine of an impersonal fate
controlling the fates of human beings, comparable to the Greek notion of moira. But in fact
there is no reason to suppose that the word rendered by chance here (pega), a rare word
which occurs in only one other passage in the Old Testament (1 Kgs 5:4 [Heb. 18]), has this
connotation. It means no more than what happens. The time with which it is associated
here is clearly the time which God himself has appointed for every matter, but which, as
the following verse (12) states, man does not know, because God has hidden this knowledge
from him (see 3:11). There is, then, no reason to suppose either that chance here is an
impersonal force independent of God, or that Qoheleth intended to identify God with such an
impersonal force.
The real question is whether this hidden control of the times by God is based on what
man perceives as justice, or whether it operates entirely at random, irrespective of mans
deserts. To this question the book, taken as a whole, does not give an unequivocal answer: in
fact, so contradictory do Qoheleths statements on the subject seem to be that, as we have seen
(pp. 23, 3940 above), some scholars have cut the Gordian knot and denied some of them to
Qoheleth altogether.
Qoheleth was very aware of the existence of human injustice and oppression in the world,
and refers to this in several passages (3:16; 4:1; 7:15; 8:914). (He also refers, as we have
seen, to the annihilating power of death as a vanity and striving after wind, which, by
making no distinctions between the relative merits of individuals can make life itself hateful
at least in the case of Solomon [2:1217]; but this is a separate matter.) This recognition that
the world is not as it should be, which Qoheleth regarded as a situation for which God is not
responsible, but which is the result of human corruption (7:29), is of course a truism. The
crucial question is whether there is any sign that God is concerned about this and takes action
to put it right. But such cases of extreme injustice are in any case only part of the problem.
The fundamental question is whether in general there is any correlation between merit and
reward.
Qoheleth appears to give a number of different answers to this question. In 9:2 he asserts
that God makes no distinction between the righteous and the wicked, the good man and the
sinner; but the verses which follow suggest that here he is talking about the levelling effect of
death rather than about what happens in life. 9:1112, however, make an equally unequivocal
statement, apparently about success, or the lack of it, in life, in which unexpected misfortune
may fall on any person. God is even, by implication, compared with a fowler or a fisherman,
who snares creatures in his evil net. 7:15 and 8:14 both assert that the righteous may suffer
the fate deserved by the wicked, and vice versa; but in both cases there is a qualification: the
use of the phrase There is suggests that this is not always the case. Nevertheless, the
implication is that divine justice cannot be relied on; there is here, it may be suggested, a
random element in the allocation of rewards.
On the other hand there are several passages in the book in which Qoheleth states that God
will distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, and reward them as they deserve. Of
these, 3:1617 and 8:1013 are the clearest examples. 3:17 states that God will judge the
righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and every work. This
verse occurs, rather incongruously, as it may seem to us, before a statement that in death all
suffer the same fate. 8:11 is concerned with the fact that often it seems that the wicked escape
punishment, because the punishment is delayed. But vv. 1213 express a confident belief that
in the end it will be well with those who fear God ; but it will not be well with the wicked,
who will not be permitted to prolong his days. This passage also, however, presents serious
difficulties: firstly, in v. 12a it is stated that the habitual sinner does prolong his life, whereas
v. 13 states that he will not; and secondly, the positive statement about Gods punishment of
the wicked in v. 13 is immediately followed by a lament (There is a vanity ) that the
righteous and the wicked at least sometimes receive the opposite treatment to that which they
deserve!
In the passages which assert that God will judge both wicked and righteous, and that it
will be well with the righteous and not well with the wicked, nothing is said about the time
or the manner in which God will exercise his judgement. In view of what Qoheleth says
elsewhere about the state of man after death (e.g. 9:10) it is unlikely that he believed that this
righting of wrong will occur otherwise than in this life. Rather, he is here echoing the
traditional view expressed many times in the Psalms (e.g. Ps. 37) and by the friends of Job
(e.g. Job 20) that although the wicked appear to flourish with impunity, punishment is only
delayed: ultimately, at some unspecified time, the tables will be turned, and both the wicked
and the righteous will receive the rewards due to them.
Various attempts have been made to account for these seemingly quite contradictory
statements. It has been supposed that the orthodox statements have been added by a later
editor; or that they are expressions of traditional views quoted by Qoheleth himself which he
then refutes; or even that, rightly understood, they are not contradictory at all (compare, e.g.,
the commentaries of Gordis, Loader, Ogden and Crenshaw on 3:1617 and 8:1013). It may
be best to conclude that Qoheleth found it impossible to reconcile his own observations of life
with the traditional belief that the God who rules mens lives is righteous; and that he made no
attempt to reconcile the two but set them down side by side. Indeed, he can hardly have been
expected to have solved the problem intellectually, for the question How can I believe in a
good God when there is so much misery and injustice in the world? is one which no rational
argument has yet been able to answer. It is a perennial question which remains with us today.
There is, indeed, another kind of answer: the answer of faith, in which mans inability to
discern Gods purposes is recognized, but at the same time a deeper sense of joy in Gods
presence makes pain, suffering and injustice an irrelevance. This appears to have been the
answer of the author of the poem of Job, and possibly of Psalm 73. How Qoheleth understood
the relationship between man and God must now be considered further.
God and man
The question of divine justice apart, Qoheleth says little about this relationship which was not
based on common Jewish belief, but he is nevertheless untypical in that he stresses certain
aspects of it to the exclusion of others. The Jewish faith holds two sides of that relationship in
tension. In the Old Testament God is represented as, on the one hand, wholly other than man,
holy and mysterious; and his purposes are fundamentally beyond human comprehension. Yet
he is also depicted as one who in some degree at least draws near to man and even discloses
his plans to those whom he chooses. Even in those parts of the book of Proverbs in which God
appears mainly in the remote role of one who sees mens deeds and judges them, and in which
nothing is said about the possibility of mans knowing him, there are traces of something
which might be called an intimate relationship: God, for example, loves the person who
pursues righteousness (Prov. 15:9). Such language is not to be found in Ecclesiastes. For
Qoheleth, God (unlike Proverbs, he does not use the word Yahweh with its associations with
the intimate relationship between God and Israel) is represented above all as an all-powerful
and remote monarch who may easily take offence: God is in heaven, and you upon earth
(5:2); Why should God be angry at your voice, and destroy the work of your hands? (5:6).
Elsewhere he says: It is known what man is, and that he is not able to dispute with one
stronger than he (6:10). Gods actions and decisions are immutable, admitting of no
argument.
On the other hand, Qoheleth takes it for granted that his readers will worship God in the
temple (5:16). This passage has been variously assessed. The predominating note is one of
caution in approaching the God who is in heaven while you are on earth, who has no
pleasure in fools, and who may be angry at your voice. This cautious attitude may be an
expression of the religious awe in the presence of the mysterious and holy God which is
characteristic of the Israelite approach to worship: the awareness that God is a devouring fire,
a jealous God (Deut. 4:24). But the traditional attitude towards worship also includes an
element of joy in the presence of God: the two elements are, as it were, held in tension. It is
perhaps characteristic of Qoheleth that he mentions only the element of holy fear.
However this may be, everything that Qoheleth actually says about the proper attitude to
worship can be paralleled elsewhere in the Old Testament. He uses the technical term draw
near (qrab) of the act of worship; he takes it for granted that God hears prayer; and the
phrase draw near to listen (v. 1) presumably implies that the individual worshipper expects
to receive some instruction from God, whether directly as an answer to prayer or through the
medium of the temple priests. Some degree of communication between God and man is thus
presupposed.
The statement that to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools (v. 1)
is certainly not a condemnation of sacrifice as such or a dismissal of it as worthless (the point
made in 9:2 is quite different). We may compare Samuels words in 1 Sam. 15:22 that to
obey is better than sacrifice, the saying in Proverbs that the sacrifice of the wicked is an
abomination to Yahweh, but the prayer of the righteous is his delight (Prov. 15:8; cf. 21:3,
27), and also a similar saying in the Egyptian Instruction for King Merikare, a text which at
the same time strongly stresses the importance of cultic duties (ANET, p. 417). The fools
who do not know that they are doing evil in offering their sacrifices may be persons who
stupidly imagine, contrary to the clear teaching of the Old Testament (e.g. Num. 15:2731;
Isa. 1:1017) that the offering of sacrifice will automatically cover their sins and put them
right with God. Qoheleth is equally orthodox about the practice of making voluntary vows to
God to be performed when requests are granted (vv. 45): in fact, these verses are clearly
dependent on Deut. 23:2123, and even contain verbal echoes of that passage.
There is, then, a certain ambiguity about Qoheleths attitude towards worship. The very
fact that Qoheleth devoted an entire section of his book to this subject shows that he did not
consider it to be an irrelevance; and from the fact that he contented himself with pointing out
that it is foolish to undertake it carelessly it does not necessarily follow that he regarded God
as hostile to those who approach him: we do not know what unexpressed assumptions about it
he may have shared with his readers, about which he thought it unnecessary to speak. On the
other hand, the fact that he speaks only of the negative aspect of worship may be significant.
(For a critical assessment of this passage see Perdue, pp. 17888.)
Another aspect of Qoheleths understanding of the relationship between God and man
which has been very differently assessed is that of the fear of God. Although the words
translated by the word fear (the verb yr, the noun yirh the adjective yr, fearing) are
used frequently in the Old Testament in their literal sense when their object is other than God,
in the latter case they have generally lost much of that literal sense and acquired a number of
much milder meanings: awe, reverence, honour, obedience, piety towards God. But many
scholars have maintained that Qoheleths concept of the fear of God was different from these:
that he regarded God as literally terrifying, and advised his readers to treat him as such. If this
interpretation is correct, it would confirm the view based on other aspects of Qoheleths
teaching, that his view of the relationship between God and man was one which excluded any
positive and satisfying form of communication.
The number of passages in which Qoheleth speaks of the fear of God is small: 3:14; 5:7;
7:18; 8:1213 8:1213 is a clear statement: those who fear God are contrasted with the
sinner who does evil habitually. In the other passages the meaning is less clear. In 5:7 the
phrase but do you fear God has no intelligible immediate context: it stands at the conclusion
of a section, and the words which precede it (the earlier part of the verse) hardly make sense in
the Hebrew, and are actually omitted by the NEB as meaningless. But if the advice to fear God
is the conclusion to the whole section (from 5:1), then it would seem that Qoheleth equates the
fear of God with the avoidance of the foolish behaviour warned against there, and perhaps,

ANET Ancient Near Easten Texts Relating to the Old Testement, 2nd edn, Princeton University Press,
1955.
more specifically, with the avoidance of conduct likely to cause Gods anger (v. 6). Similarly
in 7:18, where also the context (vv. 1518) presents difficulties of interpretation, the phrase
he who fears God shall come forth from them all appears to refer to the person who avoids
the self-destructive conduct described in vv. 1617.
From this survey of passages we may perhaps conclude that the fear of God is
recommended by Qoheleth as the avoidance of behaviour which would arouse Gods anger;
but it is less clear that his understanding of the notion, though it is here presented mainly
negatively, is necessarily basically different from its meaning elsewhere in the Old Testament.
It is difficultexcept, perhaps, on the basis of a negative assessment of Qoheleths view of
God derived from elsewhere in the bookto demonstrate that he believed that mans attitude
towards him should be simply based on terror.
One of the most frequent verbs used by Qoheleth to describe Gods relationship to men is
the verb to give (twelve times). God gives to man the gift of life, though in the end he takes
it back (12:7). To those who please him he gives wisdom, knowledge and joy (2:26), and also
wealth, possessions and the power to enjoy them (5:19; 6:2). Not all his gifts, however, are
pleasant ones. He has given (RSV put) the mysterious lm (RSV eternity) into mans heart.
Whatever this word means, it is given to all men and women (hdm) so that they will
remain in ignorance of his purposes (3:11). He has also given men an unhappy business to
be busy with (1:13; cf. 3:10but see below). Finally, to the sinner he gives the work of
gathering and heaping (2:26), evidently in contrast with wisdom and knowledge and joy;
and there are also people to whom he gives wealth and possessions, but does not at the same
time give them the power to enjoy them (6:2).
These gifts of God can be divided into four main categories. First, there is the gift of life
itself, referred to four times (5:18; 8:15; 9:9; 12:7). Secondly there is the limitation imposed
upon men: ignorance of Gods purposes (3:11), which does not, however, prevent us from our
desire to be busy (3:10). Thirdly, there are the good gifts which God gives to those who please
him; and fourthly, there are the unpleasant gifts that he gives to those who do not. (1:13, which
refers to the unhappy business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with is
probably not a general comment on the whole of mans existence in the world, but refers to
Solomons self-appointed task, mentioned earlier in the verse, to search out by wisdom all
that is done under heaven.)
Qoheleth never directly speaks of Gods gifts as deserving mans gratitude. He simply
states as a fact that God is the source of everything which pertains to man, including life itself.
This frequent talk about God as giver is intended to emphasize that the relationship between
God and man is one of total sovereignty and total dependence. Not only are we nothing apart
from him; we are dependent on him at every moment, because he has seen to it that we are and
remain ignorant of his purposes for us, and ignorant, for the most part, of what will please
him. It would seem, then, that we cannot elevate the notion of Gods gift as such into a cause
for rejoicing.
Nevertheless, as has already been observed (p. 64), joy, or enjoyment, is a recurring theme
in the book. The seven passages which urge the reader to make the most of life are, it may be
thought, too numerous and too insistent to be dismissed as simply expressions of despair or
resignation. It has been argued that each of them constitutes a kind of counterpoise to some
major aspect of the vanity or futility of life: the vanity of human toil and effort (2:2026);
of our ignorance of the future (3:1015); of the finality of death (3:1622); of the pursuit of
wealth (5:1020); of the unfairness of life (8:1415); of death as obliterating all thought and
activity (9:710); of the inexorable advent of old age and death (11:712:7) (Whybray, 1982).
It may be significant that in several of these passages there is specific reference to Gods
gift, either of joy or of life itself. Indeed, no less than eight of the twelve references to God as
giver in the book occur in these passages. For some interpreters Qoheleths encouragement to
his readers to enjoy life to the fullest extent possible is the key to the whole book: such
enjoyment is the very purpose for which God created man. So Gordis writes:
For Koheleth, joy is Gods categorical imperative for man, not in any anemic or spiritualised sense, but
rather as a full-blooded and tangible experience, expressing itself in the play of the body and the
activity of the mind, the contemplation of nature and the pleasures of love. Since he insists that the
pursuit of happiness with which man has been endowed by the Creator is an inescapable sacred duty, it
follows that it must be an inalienable right (Commentary, p. 129).
This, it may be thought, is an extreme view for which the evidence is not to be found in the
text. The statements that there is nothing better for man than that he should eat and drink and
find enjoyment in his toil are not in fact presented as a divine imperative, but only as
Qoheleths personal opinion; and against this opinion must be set other opinions of his which
are of a much more negative kind. His reflections on wisdom, death, wealth, work and justice
all show that the possibility of enjoying life is something which, by Gods own doing, has
been totally denied, often without apparent cause, to some and arbitrarily conferred on others,
while all are subjected to frustrations which severely hinder the unrestricted experience of
joyful existence which Gordis represents as commanded by God. Yet at the same time it is
true that joy, as distinct from mere hedonistic self-indulgence, is a theme to which Qoheleth
returned again and again. Owing to the lack of continuity between the various distinct
penses of which the book is composed, it will probably always be impossible to determine
with certainty where the balance of his thought lies.
Qoheleth as theologian
Qoheleths teaching has been assessed in many different ways. In this book the attempt has
been made to do justice to these conflicting views. It is, perhaps, permissible to end with a
personal view. One way of approaching his thought is to see him as a theologian, or perhaps
even as an apologist who was trying to find a way of reconciling the Jewish faith which he had
inherited with the world as he knew it: a modern world which was undergoing rapid change.
The traditional beliefs of Judaism had to be brought up to date at certain points; and
Qoheleth radically questioned their traditional formulation when he judged it necessary to do
so. But in putting forth his ideas he was not intending to prepare a new generation of
apostates; rather he was seeking to equip his pupils to be Jewish believers in a world where
there were many religions and philosophies claiming to possess the truth: to provide them with
the means to argue the case for Judaism. And, at the same time, he was seeking truth for
himself. His book contains no fully thought-out philosophical or theological system; it
contains many apparent contradictions and unsolved problems. But it is perhaps the most
fascinating book in the Old Testament.
Further Reading
Apart from the commentaries, all of which discuss Qoheleths leading ideas, general
assessments are to be found in
G.R. Castellino, Qoheleth and His Wisdom, CBQ 30 (1968), pp. 1528

CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
H. Gese, The Crisis of Wisdom in Koheleth, Theodicy in the Old Testament, ed. J.L. Crenshaw, Philadelphia:
Fortress Press and London: SPCK, 1983, pp. 14153
Hengel, vol. I, pp. 11528
R.K. Johnston, Confessions of a Workaholic: A Reappraisal of Qohelet, CBQ 38 (1976), pp. 1428
O. Kaiser, Die Sinnkrise bei Kohelet, Der Mensch unter dem Schicksal (BZAW 161), Berlin: De Gruyter,
1985, pp. 91109
A. Lauha, Die Krise des religisen Glaubens bei Kohelet, (VT Suppl. 3 (1955), pp. 18391
J.A. Loader, Polar Structures, pp. 11733
R.E. Murphy, The Penses of Coheleth, CBQ 17 (1955), pp. 18494
R.H. Pfeiffer, The Peculiar Skepticism of Ecclesiastes, JBL 53 (1934), pp. 100109
Von Rad, pp. 22637
Treatments of particular words and topics include:
M.V. Fox, The Meaning of Hebel for Qohelet, JBL 105 (1986), pp. 40927
L. Gorssen, La cohrence de la conception de Dieu dans lEcclsiaste, ETL 46 (1970), pp. 282324
H.G. Mitchell, Work in Ecclesiastes, JBL 32 (1913), pp. 12338
L.G. Perdue, Wisdom and Cult, SBL Dissertation Series 30, Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977
E. Pfeiffer, Die Gottesfurcht im Buche Kohelet, Gottes Wort und Gottes Land, ed. H. Graf Reventlow,
Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965, pp. 13358
C.W. Reines, Koheleth on Wisdom and Wealth, JJS 5 (1954), pp. 8084
W.E. Staples, The Vanity of Eclesiastes, JNES 2 (1943), pp. 95104 (and two other word studies in JNES 4
[1945], pp. 8796 and JNES 24 [1965], pp. 11012)
R.N. Whybray, Qoheleth, Preacher of Joy, JSOT 23 (1982), pp. 8798


BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
VT Supplements to Vetus Testamentum
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament