Chapter 15. Wisdom Reflections on Life (Part 4. Existence: The Meaning of Yahwism) (Song of the Vineyard: The Old Testament) (Napier, B.D.)

Introduction and Outline

The book of Job belongs among the most significant works in world literature. Not only its aesthetic value, which is apparent in the power of its expression, in the depth of its sensitivity, and in its monumental structure; but also its content - the bold and colossal struggle with the ancient, and at the same time always new, human problem of the meaning of suffering - all this puts the work, in its universal significance, in a class with Dante's Divine Comedy and Goethe's Faust.⁸

Throughout the centuries, Job has received extravagant praise from literary artists and critics. Thomas Carlyle, for example, is reported to have said, "There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit."⁹The name of Job has become a commonplace in our language in the phrase "the patience of Job." This work is, of course, beyond dispute a literary masterpiece. But the hero appears as a man of distinguished patience only in the relatively brief prologue of the work; and the sensitive reader of Job may well wonder whether the primary concern of the writing is the problem of suffering or that one vast, central problem of life under God, the life of faith.

Job is an anonymous writing. We are able to form an image of the creator of the literary Job only from the book. Job is not biography in any conventional sense of that word. It may well be that there once lived an actual historical Job; but from the once-upon-a-time beginning of the work and the overwhelming evidence throughout of a purpose quite transcending the merely biographical-historical, it is clear that only a known historical name has been employed. It was a name which traditionally conveyed an example of ultimate human righteousness, as is evident from Ezekiel 14:14 (cf. 14:20) where the name of Job is coupled with the names of Noah and Daniel.

Outline of the book of Job

1-2 Prologue.

3-31 Dialogue: a debate in three cycles between Job and his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Ch. 28, in praise of wisdom, has no intrinsic relationship to the dialogues but may nevertheless appear here in accordance with appropriate editorial design.¹⁰

32-37 The speeches of Elihu, a younger bystander.

38:1-42:6 The Yahweh speeches.

42:7-17 Epilogue.

The composition of the present book of Job cannot be dated. The prologue and epilogue may derive from a pre-exilic Job story, perhaps an ancient and certainly widely known tale. The Elihu speeches¹¹and segments of the Yahweh speeches (notably on the ostrich, 39: 13-18, and Leviathan, 41:1-34) may be added after the creative unification of the rest of the literary Job; but the work as a whole unmistakably reflects Israel's own corporate catastrophic experience of the bitter sixth century. The "biography" of Job is like the "biography" of the Servant of Second Isaiah: both are created and conditioned out of Israel's anguished existence through destruction and exile. The purpose of Job is essentially that of Second Isaiah - to restore a lost faith and lost meaning in existence.

The Literary Problem

The prose prologue and epilogue and the body of poetry in between betray many differences other than merely form. There are striking differences in vocabulary. In the poetry of Job, the deity is rather consistently designated by terms other than Yahweh (127 times it is 'el, or 'eloah, or shadai). But not one of these terms appears in the prose prologue or epilogue where, in contrast, the specific Israelite name, Yahweh, is used. In the poetry, the name Yahweh occurs once only in speech (12:9, but this is commonly regarded as a later editorial addition). In the speeches of Yahweh, 38:1-42:6, the name is never used in actual monologue or dialogue, but only in simple identification of the speaker, as "Job answered Yahweh" (40:3) or "Yahweh answered Job" (40:6).

The point of view and tone differ markedly in prose and poetry. The folk quality of prologue and epilogue is pronounced. Here one is confronted by that kind of brilliant, disarming naivete which, while appearing naive, is nevertheless informed by the accumulated understanding of the centuries.¹²One observes the highly stylized form with its effective use of repetition, a device characteristic of Israel's oldest folkloristic traditions. One delights in the deftly humorous use of hyperbole - surely this is the intention, for example, of 1: 13-19.11.¹³But these qualities do not appear in the dialogues. The poetry of Job is certainly also stylized, but it is stylization of a totally different character - the style of wisdom, familiar all over the ancient Middle East and quite at home in Israel from the time of Solomon.

The Yahweh of prologue and epilogue is much more intimately and charmingly envisaged than the relatively sophisticated deity of the speeches. And the character of Job himself appears to be of different stuff. The prologue justifies the popular image of Job as a man of unparalleled (indeed incredible and unhuman) patience; but in all the poetry that follows there is nothing to confirm this quality in Job, not even in the Job who accepts at last the rebuke of Yahweh (40:4-5 and 42:2-6).

In view of these and other decisive differences between the prose and poetry of Job¹⁴ we must assume that the poet, the creator of this unique work, employed an already existent prose narrative as the occasion and setting for his own brilliant literary creation. At the same tune we recall emphatically that literary-theological creativity in Israel was never exclusively a product of single authorship. From the time of the Yahwist, through the Deuteronomists and the complex of the Isaiahs and into the postexilic days of the priests, creativity was conspicuously a more corporate achievement wrought by the judicious, inspired use of existent material as well as by the artistic creation of the new.

The physical text of Job presents its own peculiar problems. The Hebrew of Job is notoriously difficult. Every page of the RSV translation betrays in footnotes the varied problems of the translator. Occasionally the structure of the underlying Hebrew is unintelligible or ambiguous and the translator must resort to the reading in the Greek or the Syriac text or even to conjecture.

In one notable case the text has suffered major disarrangement. As we move into chapter 25 we have had two speeches by each of the three friends, with Job's reply to each; and in addition Eliphaz has delivered his third speech (ch. 22) and Job has given his response (23-24). We now naturally expect the completion of the cycle of three, with a third speech each from Bildad and Zophar and corresponding responsive speeches from Job. As the text now stands Bildad speaks briefly (it is the briefest of all the speeches) in 25:1-6. All that follows, chapters 26-27, is represented as the words of Job, together with the wisdom poem of chapter 28, and the extended final Job speech of 29-31. Not only is Zophar not heard from in the third cycle; not only is Bildad cut short; but parts of the speeches of Job in chapters 24-27 would come much more appropriately from the lips of the friends than from Job (see 24:13-25 and 27:7- 23).¹⁵These peculiar problems of the text are answered b the following reconstruction:

Job's answer to the third speech of Eliphaz 23:1-24: 12

Bildad's third speech 25:1-6; 24:13-25

Job's answer to Bildad 26: 1-27:6

Zophar's third speech 27:7-23

This reconstruction¹⁶gives the fullest possible endorsement to the text as it stands, and achieves the logically anticipated sequence of speeches with minimal rearrangement. Job's answer to Zophar's third speech has not been lost: in chapter 28 the author employs (it is unimportant whether he wrote it or not) this exquisite poem on wisdom as his own answer, not only to the friends, but to Job as well. In advance of Job's self-indicting rebuttal (29-31), it provides the clue, reiterated in the Yahweh speeches (38-42), to the problem of Job.

The Interpretation

The real problem of Job is not his suffering, but his status in existence. It is not affliction and anguish that he cannot accept, but his own fundamental impotence to control the terms of his total environment. In this sense, Job is an existentialist writing, and "Hioh ist da!" He is all men; he is every man!

The old problem of theodicy - the problem of vindicating the justice of God in the face of its seeming denial - is raised again. We have met the same problem earlier in Habakkuk and Jeremiah. The increasingly vigorous and sometimes almost violent running dialogue between Job and the three friends seems to center in the tension between the proposition of a just and righteous God and the fact of innocent suffering. But what is always more deeply at issue is the question of existential sovereignty: who is in control in time and history and in the life of man, who sets the terms of existence, who is lord of life - God or man? In the last analysis Job protests, not his suffering, but an order of existence in which he is unable by his own devices to maintain his life in security and to achieve its fulfillment.¹⁷It is his role against which he rebels. And this is the same age-old theological problem which the Yahwist so brilliantly presented to Israel in the primeval stories of Genesis 2-11. It is the essential problem which prophetic Yahwism always addressed. It has been and is and will remain the primary issue in the life of faith.

Here again it is Job/Israel - as it was Jacob/Israel, King! Israel, Servant/Israel. Biblical theology is a product of history. It is the historical experience of a people that predominantly shapes the faith of the Old Testament.

Job/Israel was indeed unique, the only one who knows Yahweh.

There is none like him, on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil. (1:8)

Job/Israel looked back from post-tragedy to pre-tragedy and saw a relatively idyllic existence (1:3-5,10). Job/Israel suffered an incredible sequence of disasters resulting in the loss of everything (1:13-19). And Job/Israel bore the suffering and survived it (2: 10). But the conditions of survival were unrelentingly oppressive, and Job/Israel was inevitably proffered the "friendly" counsel of neighbors (2:11-13). This is the sense of the prologue as it is used by the author of Job.

The dialogue opens (ch. 3) with Job's consummately articulate elaboration of the death-wish, reminiscent in the Old Testament only of Jeremiah (20: 14-18). In Moses (Num. 11:15), in Elijah (1 Kings 19:4), in Jonah (4:3), as also in Jeremiah and Job, the wish or request for death is seen in the Yahweh faith as an act of defiance of deity, an unwarranted gesture of independence, a bitter - perhaps the bitterest - protest of disrespect of Yahweh. Job/Israel has come to this. This is the measure of bitterness.

The "friends" deliver the timeless note of religious piety and orthodoxy, known in and out of ancient Israel, known long before, and, alas, still long after. It is as thin as this: as a man appears, so is he. His status and condition are the sure measure of his intrinsic worth and worthiness. Job/Israel is sunk to the most miserable level of existence and is of necessity correspondingly evil.

This piece of stupidity is picked up, dusted off, examined from all sides, and powerfully shattered in Job's several brilliant responses on this theme. But while Job devastates the friends as well as their arguments (see, e.g., 6:15 ff.; 12:1 ff.; 13:45; 16:1 ff.; 19:1 ff.; 26:1 ff.), his hardest words and increasingly his attacks are directed at God himself, in the strongest and certainly the most sustained language of its kind in the Old Testament (see, e.g., 7:11-21, with a vitriolic parody of Ps. 8 in vv. 17-19; 9:7-12,30-35; 10:1-9,18-22; 13:3,14-15,20-28; 14:1-2,7-12,14-15,18-22).

The second cycle of speeches begins with Eliphaz' second discourse in chapter 15, and the third cycle at chapter 22. The passage most difficult to interpret and perhaps most disputed in Job falls in the course of the second cycle, in Job's response to the second Bildad speech:

Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then without my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another
[or, not as a stranger?]. (19:23-27)

So the RSV renders the passage, but the notes indicate the ambiguity or uncertainty of the Hebrew text. The question under debate is whether the character of Job is here intentionally represented as affirming faith that he will achieve his justification with God in life beyond death; or whether the redeemer is in the original sense of the word (in Hebrew, go'el), the kinsman who, in this case, succeeds in ultimately exonerating Job. In the second of these alternatives, the crucial verses yield to this interpretation:

But I know that my defender lives! He will survive my unjust death, and over the dust of my grave [cf. the use of the word 'aphar in 7:21; 7:16; 20:11; 21:26; also 10:9; 34:15; Ps. 104:29] he will stand at the last instant. Through his intermediation, by his activity, he will summon God and me together, and bring me before the face of God!¹⁸

If, on the other hand, Job affirms that God will himself redeem him in death, it is a position only very fleetingly held, since Job has consistently defied God up to this point and continues to do so in following speeches. But this by no means rules out this interpretation. It is not at all beyond the author's superb gifts of imagination and subtlety to effect precisely this kind of summit in the center of the dialogues.

But now Job/Israel is brought to the ultimate protest of worthiness and righteousness which is self-indicting in its very vehemence. The prophetic code of morality has already been extensively stressed in chapter 22 where Eliphaz, in his third speech, accuses Job of its wholesale violation. Job, in his long speech of final rebuttal in chapters 29-31, makes Israel's prophetic code his theme and in effect claims its flawless performance. In having him speak so, it may well be that the author means to present us with the prototype of the Pharisee who justifies himself by his overt performance of a set of relatively agreeable prescriptions and in that performance takes an inordinate and insufferable pride. The days before tragedy are recalled:

Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me

................................

When the ear heard, it called me blessed and when the eye saw, it approved; because I delivered the poor who cried, and the fatherless who had none to help him.

The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.

I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban.

I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame.

I was a father to the poor, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know,

I broke the fangs of the unrighteous, and made him drop his prey from his teeth.

Then I thought, 'I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand,

My roots spread out to the waters, with the dew all night on my branches,

My glory fresh with me, and my bow ever new in my hand.'

Men listened to me, and waited, and kept silence for my counsel.

After I spoke they did not speak again, and my word dropped upon them.¹⁹

They waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouths as for the spring rain.

I smiled on them when they had no confidence; and the light of my countenance they did not cast down.

I chose their way, and sat as chief, and I dwelt like a king among his troops, like one who comforts mourners. (29:2,11-25)

In view of earlier prophetic castigations of pride, this kind of protest of prophetic virtue becomes its own denial; and in the next line the code which the speaker thought to uphold is brutally shattered in one of the most arrogant statements in the Old Testament:

But now they make sport of me, men who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock! (30:1)

The vacuous piety of the orthodox friends is rebuked; but so is the colossal pride of Job/Israel. Perhaps the most significant lines in the often soaring, rhapsodic Yahweh speeches are these categorical words - strongly in the Isaianic tradition - calling Job/Israel away from pride to the life of faith again. It is Yahweh's turn to speak with defiance and sarcasm:

Gird up your loins like a man;

I will question you, and you declare to me.

Will you even put me in the wrong?

Will you condemn me that you may be justified?

....................................

Deck yourself with majesty and dignity; clothe yourself with glory and splendor.

Pour forth the overflowings of your anger - and look on every one that is proud, and abase him.

Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low; and tread down the wicked where they stand.

Hide them all in the dust together; bind their faces in the world below.

Then will I also acknowledge to you, that your own right hand can give you victory. (40:7-8,10-14)

The deftest touch of the whole composition of Job is the use of the epilogue from the old Job story. It is affirmed in the charming, naive language of the folktale that Job's and Israel's true fulfillment (indeed, every man's fulfillment) is in abandonment of pride, in acceptance of the status of servant, and in cheerful acquiescence in the given condition and existent role.

And that note of universalism, present in the Old Testament faith from earliest times, is subtly sounded yet again in words taken over unchanged from the old tale. The same sense of covenant destiny always affirmed in the call of Abraham (Gen. 12:3) is reiterated:

Yahweh said to Eliphaz the Temanite: "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. . . . So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what Yahweh had told them; and Yahweh accepted Job's prayer.

And Yahweh restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. . . (42:7-10)

The Wisdom Type

From relatively early pre-exilic times, Israel's religious leadership was of three major types, set forth explicitly in the words of Jeremiah 18:18:

. . . the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet.

Wisdom literature represents, then, the utterance not of priest nor of prophet, but of wise man. In the Hebrew canon Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and a number of Psalms (conspicuously those listed in note 20) belong to this type. Job is sometimes assigned to this category, but it is certainly not typical and in our judgment it is on the whole inappropriately classified with the wisdom writings even though it employs the wisdom style. Among the apocryphal writings (rejected by the Hebrew canon, but present from the beginning in the Greek) I Esdras, Tobit, and Baruch may be classified as wisdom writings, and Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon are consistent and classical models of the wisdom type. In addition, a number of such writings have been preserved outside both the Hebrew and Greek canons.²¹

What are the characteristics of the wisdom writing? It tends to he nonnationalistic, although in its later development in the dispersion of Jews over the Greek world the apologetic note grows stronger and the specifically Jewish is more and more stressed. It tends to its own kind of orthodoxy, but an orthodoxy freer and more flexible than most. The wisdom writing characteristically gives advice in some form, and it proffers this advice generously and with confidence. The words of wisdom are prevailingly words of counsel uttered on rational grounds; but the appeal to common or uncommon good sense is never (not even in Ecclesiastes) a denial of or in opposition to the mode of inspiration and revelation. The sage is, for the most part, in accord with both priest and prophet. The prophetic ethic is prominent, although the sense of the immediacy of its theological justification is largely lost. The demands of the priest are honored.

The wisdom school flourished in Yahwism and Judaism for more than a thousand years. There are marked affinities with precisely the same type of expression among Babylonians and Egyptians and there can be no doubt that Yahwism-Judaism is often the borrower. The contents of Proverbs 22:17-23:10 appear substantially (and certainly originally) in an Egyptian writing called the Teaching of Amen-em-ope, variously dated in the early centuries of the first millennium B.C. But this is not to say that the product of wisdom in the biblical tradition is merely an Egyptian or Babylonian copy. Canonical wisdom is for the most part distinctly and creditably its own. Like everything that the Old Testament borrowed, it is substantially altered, if not in form then in essence, by the distinctive faith of Yahwism-Judaism.

Wisdom was early domiciled in Israel. There is no reason to doubt that Solomon was a generous and even enthusiastic patron of the school. In the broad development of the biblical wisdom tradition, the pattern of wisdom, thus early made indigenous, continued by and large to shape and control its continuing expression.

And finally, what is wisdom?

Wisdom was the first product of God's creative activity, for it is the condition and instrument for the creation of all things. Before there were deeps and their fountains, before the mountains were sunk into their places, before the earth and its fields existed, wisdom was present to assist in fixing the heavens and in tracing the great circle of the farthest horizon, . . . Wisdom was to Yahweh an intimate friend, as well as agent and overseer in all this work, finding delight in the creation of all things. . .

The precise origin of the figure of wisdom in Hebrew usage is obscure and disputable. . . . Its unifying function in regard to Nature is obvious. The world becomes a revelation of the divine wisdom, and Nature is a unity in the sense that it exhibits the wisdom of its divine Creator and Upholder. Whilst the mystery of Nature . . . tended to separate God from man, this revelation of the divine Wisdom constitutes a bond of union between them, capable of further development in the Logos background of the Incarnation, to which Wisdom was an important tributary.²²

Several descriptions of wisdom merit special mention. Job 28 lyrically probes the question, where is wisdom to be found and what, in fact, is it:

God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.

..............................

When he gave to the wind its weight, and meted out the waters by measure; when he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of thunder; then he saw it and declared it; he established it and searched it out.

And he said to man,

'Behold, the fear of Yahweh, that is Wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.' (Job 28:23,25-28)

In Proverbs 8 wisdom is hypostatized, that is, wisdom assumes the reality of a distinct being:

I, 'Wisdom, dwell in prudence. (v. 12)

I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me. (v. 17)

I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice. (v. 20)

And now, my sons, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways. (v. 32)

For he who finds me finds life. (v. 35)

In the Apocrypha, two remarkable chapters, the Wisdom of Solomon 7 and Ecclesiasticus 24, also make this same kind of hypostasis. The composers of these three essays hardly intend a literal hypostasis. Wisdom is personified but not personalized.²³ Wisdom is not seen as incarnate in a distinct being. This occurs in the New Testament in the identification of Jesus and wisdom, a fact which speaks again of the incalculable influence of the Old Testament on the New. The priests' cultus, the prophets' Word, and the sages' wisdom are all three essentially a part of the immediate background of the New Testament faith in the person of Jesus.²⁴

The hypostasis of wisdom in these passages and others represents the wisdom school at its best and most refined theological attainment. When we turn now to Proverbs it is apparent that wisdom's more common theme is one of practical, often pithy, and sometimes quasi-philosophical, or better folk-philosophical counsel.

Although traditionally ascribed to Solomon, the writing itself does not make that claim for the full contents. Indeed, there can be no question that the book, like the Psalter, attained its present form in an extended process involving several collections of proverbs.

Sections

By general consent, the oldest collection is contained in 10:1-22:16, parts of which may possibly come down from Solomon himself and the time of Solomon. Other pre-exilic collections include, probably, 22:17-24:34 (the first part closely paralleling the Egyptian Amen-em-ope) and chapters 25-29, a section ascribed (see 25:1) to the time of Hezekiah (about 700). Chapters 1-9 represent, on the other hand, a relatively late collection, probably from the Greek period. It appears that this section was added to the older collections by an editor of the whole book. He also appended chapters 30-31 which include proverbs attributed to Agur (30) and King Lemuel (31:2-9); and a final acrostic poem on the ideal woman, wife, and mother. We certainly do not intend to disparage womanhood, marriage, and the home when we say that this proverbial creature is about as realistically depicted in her remarkable relationships and enterprises as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Selected Proverbs

A few representative chapters from Proverbs have been suggested in note 20, page 343. Here is a representative selection of individual proverbs.

Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (3:5-6)

Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life. (4:23)

For the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. (5:3-4)

Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.

Without having any chief, officer or ruler, she prepares her food in summer, and gathers her sustenance in harvest.

How long will you lie there, O sluggard?

When will you arise from your sleep?

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest,

And poverty will come upon you like a vagabond, and want like an armed man. (6:6-11)

Like a gold ring in a swine's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion. (11:22)

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. (12:15)

Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad. (12:25)

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. (13:12)

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. (14:34)

A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention. (15:18)

Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. (16:8)

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. (16:18)

Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent. (17:28)

The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body. (18:8)

Love not sleep, lest you come to poverty; open your eves, and you will have plenty of bread.

"It is bad, it is bad," says the buyer; but when he goes away, then he boasts. (20:13-14)

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (22:6)

Who has woe? Who has sorrow?

Who has strife? Who has complaining?

Who has wounds without cause?

Who has redness of eyes?

Those who tarry long over the wine, those who go to try mixed wine.

Do not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, and goes down smoothly. [This is an existential lament.]

At the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like an adder.

Your eyes will see strange things, and your mind utter perverse things.

You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast.

"They struck me," you will say, "but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it.

When shall I awake?

I will seek another drink." (23:29-35)

I passed by the field of the sluggard, by the vineyard of a man without sense; and lo, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down.

Then I saw and considered it;

I looked and received instruction.

"A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest,"

And poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man. (24:30-34)

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver (25:11)

Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of a gift he does not give. (25:14)

Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor's house, lest he become weary of you and hate you. (25:17)

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for you will heap coals of fire on his head, and Yahweh will reward you. (25:21-22)²⁵

He who meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.

Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows and death is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, "I am only joking!"

For lack of wood the fire goes out; and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases. (26:17-21)

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. (27:6)

Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand; the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the high seas, and the way of a man with a maiden. (30:18-19)

Wisdom may not be sold short; and a sense of wonder is not the least of the gifts of theological insight.

Impersonating Solomon

This is represented to be "the words of the Preacher (Hebrew, Qoheleth), the son of David, king in Jerusalem" (1:1; cf. 1:1 2). The intention to impersonate Solomon is unmistakable. But the Preacher is not Solomon and what appears as his work in Ecclesiastes is hardly, in its entirety, the words of one man. The proverbs which are interspersed throughout may be extraneous; and some of the more pious statements of conventional orthodoxy must certainly be regarded as editorial, especially chapter 12. The finished work of Ecclesiastes can with virtual certainty be dated in the third century B.C. The broad mind of the Greek world is a part of its background, a fact which requires its dating after the era of Alexander (he died in 323 B.C.). At the lower extreme of date, nothing of the tight, defiant mood of the Maccabean recovery of Jewish independence (from 167 B.C.) appears; and from the additional fact that fragments from two different manuscripts of Ecclesiastes have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of them older than the other and hardly later than the early second century, a date later than about 200 B.C. is improbable.²⁶

Read on special Feasts

Ecclesiastes has a special place in the canon of Judaism with four other writings. It is one of the five megilloth, "scrolls," read on the occasion of special religious festivals during the cultic year:

Ecclesiastes Feast of Tabernacles
Ruth Pentecost
Lamentations 9th of Ab (the fall of Jerusalem)
Esther Purim
Song of Solomon Passover

"Youth wasted on the Young"

Of the Preacher himself, by which we mean the dominant author, one can assert only that he is well along in years; that he would heartily concur in that word originally attributed to C. B. Shaw that youth is a wonderful thing but wasted on the young; and that he possessed both the means and position to have the best of this world's goods. His skepticism has been overemphasized. He does challenge sharply some of the major orthodox tenets of his day. But at the same time he repeatedly affirms the greatness and power of God; the fact, in faith, that human life stems from God and is the gift of God; and that all that has been, is, or ever shall be is ordained of God. As in the dialogues of Job, the name Yahweh is avoided: the argument is intended to have a setting broader than Yahwism-Judaism. The insight of this wise man, the Preacher, centers on the human predicament, the plight of man. The conventional, orthodox answers are not ultimate answers. These are God's alone. Man can only ask the ultimate questions - and the Preacher does this brilliantly and with zest.

"Vanity of Vanities"

The substance of the Preacher's thought is, of course, best conveyed in his own original words. The selection of verses and paragraphs that follows is designed to suggest some of his major themes and to illustrate the power and appeal of his mind and language. The key word is "vanity," occurring more frequently in this one writing than in all other Old Testament writings combined. All aspects of existence are in the last analysis vanity - from man's perspective. Undergirding the Preacher's words is the faith that vanity, the absence of meaning, the "striving after wind" (1:14,17, and repeatedly), and all frustration and vexation (2: 23) are resolved in the life and purpose (one might almost but not quite say "the love ) of God. The sense of the proverb, whether original or inserted, is authentic (4:6), "Better is a handful of quietness [this is the Isaianic quietness of faith, Isa. 30:15] than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind."

What can endure?

I have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; also that it is God's gift to man that every one should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever. . . (3:10-14)

In a mood which does not necessarily deny this, the Preacher states with candor his basic empirical observation:

I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all! (9:11)

Bursting the balloons of the pious

One suspects that the Preacher enjoyed his role as burster of the balloons of the pious.

I commend enjoyment, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat, and drink, and enjoy himself, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of life which God gives him under the sun. When I applied my mind to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth . . . then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. . .(8:15-17)

But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God whether it is love or hate man does not know. Everything before them is vanity, since one fate comes to all. . .(9:1-2)

It has variously and sometimes ludicrously been asserted that the Preacher is a disciple. a "school" spokesman. One commentator sees him under the influence of the Stoics. Another makes him an Epicurean. Some would take Aristotle to be his master. Still others have alleged that he shows Buddhist leanings. The Preacher must be contemplating with delight all this idle speculation in the immortal life which he accepted, I am sure, with genuine, but controlled astonishment. In the tradition that produced the likes of a Moses, an Elijah, an Amos, and a Nehemiah, this preacher is his own man - a child of Yahwism-Judaism, gifted with uncommon insight and uncommon candor, whose work was wisely admitted into a canon properly and magnificently representing the full range of life and thought of the Old Testament people.

We rejoice that this one also made the canon. In no technical sense is it in the category of wisdom but it falls appropriately under the heading "faith and the world's wisdom," since, like wisdom, it is peculiarly in rapport with the world at large.

Debate over the interpretation of this little writing has exceeded that of any other Old Testament writing, and while this is perhaps an understandable fact, it is also lamentable and a rather pitiful commentary on the history and problems of biblical interpretation.

Variety of Interpretations

Suppose we see what some of these interpretive opinions are and have been.

1. The modern, uninitiated reader, running through the poems for the first time, is likely to react with some surprise and the exclamation, "Now how did that get in the Bible?" The Song of Solomon made the canon on the merits of the oldest orthodox view: these poems (which are in reality songs of erotic love) are allegorical of the love of God for the congregation of Judaism. Christian orthodoxy accepted them on the corresponding analogy of the love of Christ for the Church.

2. In the light of documents from Ugarit-Ras Shamra in Syria, dating from a time before Moses, the Song is interpreted as liturgical material in common use in the Jerusalem temple until Josiah's reform in 621 B.C. This position takes for granted the virtually complete triumph of Canaanite fertility cultism in the very temple itself.

3. A comparable view sees the Song as an ancient Tammuz liturgy from the Adonis cult, originating in and borrowed from an early Canaanite fertility cult.

4. In another interpretation, the Song is read as poems originally employed regularly in connection with wedding festivities.

5. The now prevailing view, and perhaps the simplest and best, regards the Song of Solomon as a collection of frank, uncomplicated poems of erotic love. As such they may be, as some insist, substantially folk poetry. If so, they display at points a rather high degree of sophistication. Or, it may be that this is poetic drama, although proponents of the view have been unable to agree on the intended plot of the alleged drama.

Love Poems from different times

We would certainly read the Song of Solomon as simply a collection of love poems, from different poets and from different times. But there is something of truth in all the interpretations, even the first. If the theological perspective has any depth at all, then erotic love will always have its sacramental overtone: this love is born of God's love, is a reflection of that love, and may be in a real sense participation in that love. The play of erotic love falls always into a plot; it is always something of a drama. The various cultic interpretations of the poems remind us that such poetry as this is never created new, but rather always draws from the articulate lover of last spring and the spring before and the spring before that, and so on back not merely over the years, but over the centuries and even the millennia. The theories of folk, liturgical, or ceremonial dependence all underscore not only the full measure in which all the world loves and creates the lover, but also the singular beauty and insight and sensitivity of the ancient Israelite tradition in treating the love of a man for a maid.

So, nowhere in the Old Testament does the question of date seem less important. The only cities are in any case internal. in its present form it is of course postexilic, but whether late fourth century, or early or middle third - who knows, and who loses sleep. Perhaps only the man who must have his biblical love from the lips of Solomon.

A celebration of marriage

It has on occasion been carelessly said that the Song has no religious-theological value. I must take emphatic personal exception. If it informs and nourishes and enriches the category of joyful, rapturous, sexual love; and if it has power to restore something of tenderness and freshness to the marriage relationship, then surely in the sense to which we have consistently held in these pages, the Song of Solomon has even theological justification. As one who continues to delight in the poems, I cheer the ingenuity and inspiration of the allegorical interpretation which preserved the Song of Solomon. The Song properly belongs in a canon of sacred literature from a people who were able to look at all the gifts of a rich creation with gratitude to the Giver and joy in the gift.