1. Who is as the wise man?] The question comes in abruptly as from a teacher who calls the attention of his scholars to things that are φωνήεντα συνέτοισιν (“significant to those who understand”) and remind us of the “He that hath ears to hear let him hear” in our Lord’s teaching (Matthew 11:15; Matthew 13:9; Mark 4:9). Something there was in what he is about to add, to be read between the lines. It required a á man to “know the interpretation” (the noun is Chaldaean and is found, with a slight variation, as the prominent word in Daniel 4:5; Daniel 4:7) of the “thing” or better, “of the word.” We find the probable explanation of this suggestive question in the fact that the writer veils a protest against despotism in the garb of the maxims of servility.

a man’s wisdom maketh his face to shine] Literally, illuminates his face. The word paints with a wonderful vividness the almost trans-figuring effect of the “sweetness and light” of a serene wisdom, or of the joy that brightens a man’s countenance when he utters his Eureka over the solution of a long-pondered problem.

the boldness of his face shall be changed] Literally, the strength of face, i.e. its sternness. The words have been very variously translated, (1) as in the LXX. “his shameless face shall be hated,” (2) as by Ewald “the brightness of his countenance shall be doubled.” There is no ground, however, for rejecting the Authorised Version. The “boldness of the face” is, as in the “fierce countenance” of Deuteronomy 28:50; Daniel 8:23, the “impudent face” of Proverbs 7:13, the coarse ferocity of ignorance, and this is transformed by culture. The maxim is like that of the familiar lines of Ovid,

“Adde quod ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes,

Emollit mores nec sinit esse feros.”

“To learn in truth the nobler arts of life,

Makes manners gentle, rescues them from strife.”

Epp. ex Ponto ii. 9. 47.

2. I counsel thee to keep the king’s commandment] The words in Italics “counsel thee,” have nothing answering to them in the Hebrew, and the grammar of the sentence does not allow us to translate with the Vulgate, “I keep the king’s commandment.” The pronoun on the other hand is emphatic and it introduces a series of precepts. We have therefore to supply a verb, I, for my part, say, which is practically equivalent to the English Version. The reference to the king is not without its bearing on the political surroundings of the writer and therefore on the date of the book. It is a natural inference from it that the writer, whether living in Palestine or elsewhere, was actually under a kingly government and not under that of a Satrap or Governor under the Persian King, and that the book must therefore have been written after the Persian rule had become a thing of the past. On this view Ptolemy Philopator has been suggested by one writer (Hitzig); Herod the Great by another (Grätz). See Introduction, ch. ii. The interpretation which explains the word as referring to the Divine King must be rejected as allegorising and unreal. The whole tone of the passage, it may be added, is against the Solomonic authorship of the book. The writer speaks as an observer studying the life of courts from without, not as a king asserting his own prerogative. Even on the assumption that Proverbs 25:2-6 came from the lips of Solomon, they are pitched in a very different key from that which we find here.

and that in regard of the oath of God] It is not without significance as bearing on the question of the date and authorship of the book, that Josephus relates (Ant. xii. 1) that Ptolemy Soter, the Son of Lagus, carried into Egypt a large number of captives from Judæa and Samaria, and settled them at Alexandria, and knowing their scrupulous reverence for oaths, bound them by a solemn covenant to obey him and his successors. Such an oath the Debater bids men observe, as St Paul bade Christians obey the Emperor, “not only for wrath but also for conscience’ sake” (Romans 13:5). Submission was the part of a wise man seeking for tranquillity, however bad the government might be. Of such covenants between a people and their king we have an example in 1 Chronicles 29:24.

3. Be not hasty to go out of his sight] The phrase is explained by Genesis 4:16; Hosea 11:2 as implying flight or desertion. Such a flight the Teacher looks on as an act of impatient unwisdom. It is better to bear the yoke, than to seek an unattainable independence. So those who have grown grey in politics warn younger and more impetuous men against the folly of a premature resignation of their office.

stand not in an evil thing] The Hebrew noun (as so often elsewhere) may mean either “word” or “thing:” the verb may mean “standing” either in the attitude (1) of persistence, or (2) protest, or (3) of hesitation, or (4) of obedient compliance. Hence we get as possible renderings, (1) “Persist not in an evil thing;” i.e. in conspiracies against the king’s life or power. (2) Protest not against an evil (i.e. angry) word. (3) Stand not, hesitate not, at an evil thing, i.e. comply with the king’s commands however unrighteous. (4) Obey not in an evil thing, i.e. obey, but let the higher law of conscience limit thy obedience. Of these (1) seems most in harmony with the context, and with O. T. usage as in Psalm 1:1. Perhaps, however, after the manner of an enigmatic oracle, not without a touch of irony, requiring the discernment of a wise interpreter, there is an intentional ambiguity, allowing the reader if he likes, to adopt (3) or (4) and so acting as a test of character.

he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him] The words paint a sovereignty such as Greek poets loved to hold up for men’s abhorence,

ἀλλʼ ἡ τυραννὶς πολλά τʼ ἄλλʼ ἐυδαιμονεῖ,

κἄξεστιν αὐτῇ δρᾶν λέγειν δʼ ἂ βούλεται.

“The tyrant’s might in much besides excels,

And it may do and say whate’er it wills.”

Soph. Antig. 507.

Here also we have an echo of the prudential counsel of Epicurus, who deliberately preferred a despotic to a democratic government (Sen. Ep. xxix. 10), and laid it down as a rule, that the wise man should at every opportune season court the favour of the monarch (καὶ μόναρχον ἐν καιρῷ θεραπεύσει), Diog. Laert. x. 1, § 121.

4. Where the word of a king is, there is power] Better, Forasmuch as the word of a king is power, or rather authority. The latter word in the Hebrew text is used in Chaldee as meaning a ruler, or potentate. In the last clause, “Who may say unto him, What doest thou?” we have an echo of Job 34:13, where the question is asked in reference to the sovereignty of God. The covert protest of the writer shews itself in thus transferring, as with a grave irony, what belonged to the Divine King to the earthly ruler who claimed a like authority. The despot stands, or thinks he stands, as much above the questionings and complaints of his subjects, as the Supreme Ruler of the Universe does above those of men in general.

5. Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing] The words are once again ambiguous. If the “commandment” is that of the king, they enjoin unhesitating servile obedience as in the interpretation (3) of Ecclesiastes 8:3. If, according to the all but invariable use of the word in the O. T., we take it as the “commandment” of God, the meaning is in harmony with the interpretation (4) of the previous precept, and parallel with the French motto, “Fais ton devoir, avienne que pourra” (“Do thy duty, come what may”). Here again, it seems natural to assume an intentional ambiguity. A like doubt hangs over the words “shall feel (literally know) no evil thing” which may mean either “shall be anxious about no moral evil,” or more probably “shall suffer no physical evil as the penalty of moral.” Can we not imagine the writer here also with a grave irony, uttering his Delphic oracles, and leaving men to choose their interpretation, according as their character was servile or noble, moved by “the fear of the Lord,” or only by the fear of men?

a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment] The “heart” as, for the most part, elsewhere in the Old Testament, includes the intellectual as well as the moral element in man’s nature. In the word “time” we have, as in ch. Ecclesiastes 3:1, the καιρός or “season” on which Greek sages laid so great a stress. What is meant is that the wise man, understanding the true meaning of the previous maxim, will not be impatient under oppression, but will bide his time, and wait in patience for the working of the Divine Law of retribution. This meaning is, however, as before, partially veiled, and the sentence might seem to imply that he should let his action depend on opportunities and be a time-server in the bad sense.

6. Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore] The English conjunctions misrepresent the sequence of thought, and we should read “For to every purpose there is time and judgment, for the misery (or, better, the wickedness) of man …” The wise man waits for the time of judgment, for he knows that such a time must come, and that the evil of the man (i.e. of the tyrant) is great upon him, weighs on him as a burden under which he must at last sink. This seems the most natural and legitimate interpretation, but the sentence is obscure, and has been very differently interpreted. (1) The evil of man (of the oppressor) is heavy upon him (the oppressed). (2) Though there is a time and a judgment, yet the misery of man is great, because (as in the next verse) he knows not when it is to come.

7. For he knoweth not that which shall be] The subject of the sentence is apparently the wicked and tyrannous ruler. He goes on with infatuated blindness to the doom that lies before him. The same thought appears in the mediæval proverb, “Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat,” or, in our modern condemnation of the rulers or the parties, who “learn nothing, and forget nothing.” The temper condemned is that (1) of the cynical egoism, which says, “Apres moi, le deluge,” (2) of those who act, because judgment is delayed, as if it would never come.

8. There is no man that hath power over the spirit] The word for “spirit,” may mean either “the wind” or the “spirit,” the “breath of life” in man, and each sense has been adopted by many commentators. Taking the former, which seems preferable, the latter involving a repetition of the same thought in the two clauses of the verse, we have a parallel in Proverbs 30:4, perhaps also in John 3:8. Man is powerless to control the course of the wind, so also is he powerless (the words, though general in form, point especially to the tyrannous oppressor,) to control the drift of things, that is bearing him on to his inevitable doom. The worst despotism is, as Talleyrand said of Russia, “tempered by assassination.”

neither hath he power in the day of death] Better, over the day of death. The analogy of the previous clause, as to man’s impotence to control or direct the wind, suggests that which is its counterpart. When “the day of death” comes, whether by the hand of the assassin, or by disease and decay, man (in this case again the generalized thought applies especially to the oppressor) has no power, by any exercise of will, to avert the end. The word for “power” in the second clause is, as in Daniel 3:3, the concrete of the abstract form in the first, There is no ruler in the day of death.

there is no discharge in that war] The word for “discharge” occurs elsewhere only in Psalm 78:49, where it is rendered “sending,” and as the marginal reading (“no casting of weapons”) shews has been variously interpreted. That reading suggests the meaning that “in that war (against death), there is no weapon that will avail.” The victorious leader of armies must at last succumb to a conqueror mightier than himself. The text of the English version is probably, however, correct as a whole, and the interpolated “that,” though not wanted, is perhaps excusable. The reference is to the law (Deuteronomy 20:5-8) which allowed a furlough, or release from military duty, in certain cases, and which the writer contrasts with the inexorable sternness which summons men to their battle with the king of terrors, and that a battle with a foregone and inevitable conclusion. Here the strict rigour of Persian rule under Darius and Xerxes, which permitted no exemption from service in time of war, was the true parallel (Herod. iv. 84, vii. 38).

neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it] Better, neither shall wickedness deliver its lord. The last word is the same as Baal, in the sense of a “lord” or “possessor,” and is joined with words expressing qualities to denote that they are possessed in the highest degree. Thus “a lord of tongue” is a “babbler” (ch. Ecclesiastes 10:11), “lord of hair” is “a hairy man” (2 Kings 1:8), and so on. Here, therefore, it means those who are specially conspicuous for their wickedness. The thought is as before, that a time comes at last, when all the schemes and plans of the oppressor fail to avert his punishment, as surely as all efforts to prolong life fail at last to avert death.

9. All this have I seen] The formula which had been used before (chs. Ecclesiastes 5:18, Ecclesiastes 7:23) to enforce the results of the Debater’s experience of life in general, is now employed to emphasize the wide range of the political induction on which the conclusions of the previous verses rested.

there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt] The Hebrew is, as in so many other instances, ambiguous. The English reflexive pronoun, in which our Version follows the Vulgate, misrepresents the purport of the sentence. What is described is, as before, the misrule of the tyrant-king who rules over others (the indefinite “another” standing for the plural) to their hurt. The wide induction had not been uniform in its results. The law of Nemesis was traversed by the law of apparent impunity. We have the “two voices” once again, and the writer passes, like Abelard in his Sic et Non, from affirmation to denial. The English version seems to have originated in the wish to make this verse also repeat the affirmation of the preceding. The immediate context that follows shews however that this is not now the writer’s thought, and that he is troubled by the apparent exceptions to it.

10. And so I saw the wicked buried] The English version is scarcely intelligible, and as far as it is so, goes altogether astray. We must therefore begin with a new translation, And so I have seen the wicked buried and they went their way (i. e. died a natural death and were carried to the grave); but from the holy place they departed (i. e. were treated with shame and contumely, in some way counted unholy and put under a ban), and were forgotten in the city, even such as acted rightly.

The verse will require, however, some explanation in details. In the burial of the wicked we have a parallel to the pregnant significance of the word in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, where “the rich man died and was buried” (Luke 16:22). This, from the Jewish standpoint, was the fit close of a prosperous and honoured life (comp. 2 Chronicles 16:14; 2 Chronicles 26:23; 2 Chronicles 28:27; Jeremiah 22:18-19). It implied a public and stately ceremonial. The words “they are gone” are not, as some have thought, equivalent to “they have entered into rest” (Isaiah 57:2), but, as in ch. Ecclesiastes 1:4, are given as the way in which men speak respectfully of the dead as “gone” or “gathered to their fathers.” So the Latins said Abiit ad plures. So we speak, half-pityingly, of the dead, “Ah, he’s gone!”

The “holy place” may possibly mean the consecrated ground (I do not use the word in its modern technical sense) of sepulture, but there is no evidence that the term was ever so used among the Jews, and it is more natural to take it, as explained by the use of the same term in Matthew 24:15, as referring to the Temple. The writer has in his mind those whose names had been cast out as evil, who had been, as it were, excommunicated, “put out of the synagogue” (as in John 9:22; John 12:42), compelled to leave the Temple they had loved and worshipped in, departing with slow and sorrowing tread (comp. Psalm 38:6; Job 30:28). And soon their place knows them no more. A generation rises up that knows them not, and they are forgotten in the very city where they had once been honoured. The reflection was, perhaps, the result of a personal experience. The Debater himself may have been so treated. The hypocrites whom he condemned (ch. Ecclesiastes 5:1-7) may have passed their sentence upon him as heretical, as some did afterwards upon his writings (see Introduction, ch. iii). If he was suspected of being in any way a follower of Epicurus, that would seem to them a sufficient ground for their anathemas. Epicureanism was, as it were, to the later Rabbis the deadliest of all heresies, and when they wanted to brand the believers in Christ with the last stigma of opprobrium, they called them not Christians, or even Nazarenes, but Epicureans. Something of this feeling may be traced, as has been shewn in the Introduction, ch. v., even in the Wisdom of Solomon. The main thought, so far as it refers only to the perishableness of human fame, has been common to the observers of the mutability of human things in all ages, and the Debater had himself dwelt on it (chaps. Ecclesiastes 1:11, Ecclesiastes 6:4). It finds, perhaps, its most striking echo in a book which has much in common with one aspect of Ecclesiastes, the De Imitatione Christi of à Kempis (B. i. 3). In substituting “such as acted rightly” for “where they had so done,” I follow the use of the word which the A. V. translates as “so” (ken); in 2 Kings 7:9 (“we do not well”); Numbers 27:7 (“speak right”); Exodus 10:29 (“thou hast spoken well”); Joshua 2:4; Proverbs 15:7; Isaiah 16:6; Jeremiah 8:6; Jeremiah 23:10, and other passages.

I have given what seems to me (following wholly, or in part, on the lines of Ginsburg, Delitzsch, Knobel, and Bullock), the true meaning of this somewhat difficult verse, and it does not seem expedient, in a work of this nature, to enter at length into a discussion of the ten or twelve conflicting and complicated interpretations which seem to me, on various grounds, untenable. The chief points at issue are (1) whether the “departing from the place of the holy” belongs to “the wicked” of the first clause, or to those who are referred to in the second; (2) whether it describes that which was looked on as honourable or dishonourable, a stately funeral procession from temple or synagogue, or a penal and disgraceful expulsion; and (3) whether the latter are those who “act so,” i.e. as the wicked, or, as above, those who act rightly; and out of the varying combinations of the answers to these questions and of the various meanings attached to the phrases themselves, we get an almost indefinite number of theories as to the writer’s meaning.

this is also vanity] The recurrence of the refrain of the book at this point is interesting. It is precisely the survey of the moral anomalies of the world that originates and sustains the feeling so expressed.

11. Because sentence against an evil work] The word for “sentence” is only found here and in Esther 1:20, where it is translated “decree” and is probably of Persian origin. Its primary meaning seems to be “a thing sent” and so the king’s missive or edict. The point of the reflection is that the anomaly noted in the previous verse was not only evil in itself, but the cause of further evil by leading men to think they could go on transgressing with impunity.

is fully set in them to do evil] Literally, their heart is full in them.

12. Though a sinner do evil an hundred times] The definite number is used, of course, as in Proverbs 17:10; or the “hundred years” of Isaiah 65:20; or the “seventy times seven” of Matthew 18:22, for the indefinite. There is no adequate reason for inserting “years” instead of “times.” By some grammarians it is maintained that the conjunctions should be read “Because a sinner …” and “although I know,” but the Authorised Version is supported by high authority.

yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God] The adverb “surely” has nothing answering to it in the Hebrew, and seems an attempt to represent the emphasis of the Hebrew pronoun. Better, perhaps, I for my part. We may compare the manner in which Æschylus utters a like truth on the moral government of the world:

δίχα δʼ ἄλλων μονόφρων εἰμί. τὸ γὰρ δυσσεβὲς ἔργον

μετὰ μὲν πλείονα τίκτει, σφετέρᾳ δʼ εἰκότα γέννᾳ.

“But I, apart from all,

Hold this my creed alone:

For impious act it is that offspring breeds,

Like to their parent stock.”

Agam. 757, 8.

There is an obviously intentional contrast between what the thinker has seen (Ecclesiastes 8:9), and what he now says he knows as by an intuitive conviction. His faith is gaining strength, and he believes, though, it may be, with no sharply defined notion as to time and manner, that the righteousness of God, which seems to be thwarted by the anomalies of the world, will in the long run assert itself. There is at least an inward peace with those who fear God, which no tyrant or oppressor can interfere with. The seeming tautology of the last clause is best explained by supposing that the term “God-fearers” had become (as in Malachi 3:16) the distinctive name of a religious class, such as the Chasidim (the “Assideans” of 1Ma 2:42; 1Ma 7:13; 2Ma 14:6), or “devout ones” were in the time of the Maccabees. The Debater, with the keen scent for the weaknesses of a hypocritical formalism, which we have seen in ch. Ecclesiastes 5:1-7, says with emphatic iteration, as it were, “when I say ‘God-fearing’ I mean those that do fear God in reality as well as name.” So in French men talk of la vérité vraie, or we might speak of “a liberal indeed liberal,” “religious people who are religious,” and so on.

13. neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow] The words seem at first in direct contradiction to the admission of the previous verse. But it is of the nature of the method of the book to teach by paradoxes, and to let the actual contradictions of the world reflect themselves in his teaching. What is meant is that the wicked does not gain by a prolonged life; that, as Isaiah had taught of old, “the sinner though he die a hundred years old, is as one accursed” (Isaiah 65:20). His life is still a shadow and “he disquieteth himself in vain” (Psalm 39:6). So the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon (Ecclesiastes 4:8) writes, probably not without a reference to this very passage, that “honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by the number of the years.” In the “days which are as a shadow,” so far as they refer to the shortness of human life in general, we find, as before in ch. Ecclesiastes 6:12, echoes of Greek thought.

It is noticeable that in Wis 2:5, in accordance with what one may call the polemic tendency of the writer, the thought and the phrase are put into the mouth of the “ungodly, who reasoned not aright.” The universal fact, however, has become a universal thought and finds echoes everywhere (Psalm 102:11; Psalm 144:4).

14. There is a vanity] There is something almost painful in the iteration of the ever-recurring thought that after all there are disorders in the world. A modern writer, we feel, would have pruned, condensed, and avoided such a repetition of himself. We are dealing, however, with “Thoughts” like Pascal’s Pensées, rather than with a treatise, jotted down, it may be, day by day, as has been said before, on his tablets or his papyrus, and there is, as has been said before, something significant in the fact that, wherever the thinker turns, the same anomalies stare him in the face.

15. Then I commended mirth] As before in chs. Ecclesiastes 2:14, Ecclesiastes 3:12; Ecclesiastes 3:22, Ecclesiastes 5:18, the Epicurean element of thought mingles with the higher fear of God, to which the seeker had just risen. There, at least, in regulated enjoyment, free from vices, and not without the fear of God which keeps men from them, there was something tangible, and it was better to make the best of that than to pine, with unsatisfied desires, after the impossible ideal of a perfectly righteous government in which there are no anomalies. For “of his labour” read in his labour.

16. When I applied mine heart to know wisdom] The opening formula has met us before in ch. Ecclesiastes 1:13. The parenthetical clause expresses, with a familiar imagery, the sleepless meditation that had sought in vain the solution of the problem which the order and disorder of the world presented. So Cicero (ad Fam. vii. 30) says “Fuit mirificâ vigilantiâ qui toto suo consulatu somnum non vidit.”

17. then I beheld all the work of God] The confession is like that which we have had before in chap. Ecclesiastes 7:23-24 : perhaps, also, we may add, like that of a very different writer dealing with a very different question, “How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out” (Romans 11:33). The English reader may be reminded of Bishop Butler’s Sermon (xv.) on the “Ignorance of Man,” of which these verses supply the text. What is noticeable here is that the ignorance (we may use a modern term and say the Agnosticism) is not atheistic. That which the seeker contemplates he recognises as the work of God. Before that work, the wise man bows in reverence with the confession that it lies beyond him. The Finite cannot grasp the Infinite. We may compare Hooker’s noble words “Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name; yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His greatness above our capacity and reach. He is above, and we upon earth; therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few” (Eccl. Pol. i. 2, § 3).