All this of itself settles what we are to think of the Elihu-speeches. They are the work of a reader of the original poem, who felt dissatisfied that the speeches of Job, dubious in part, and almost bor- dering on blasphemy, should not have received a more stringent refutation. This lack the author of the Elihu-speeches seeks to supply, and does so by explaining the suffering of Job as purificatory, designed for the purging out of the sins of pride and self-righteousness which clung to him. In themselves many of this author's ideas are beauti- ful and good. But as a professed solution of the problem they are irreconcilably opposed to the presuppositions of the original poem.
3. Ecclesiastes (the Preacher).—(a) It is not with- out hesitation that we enumerate Ecclesiastes as one of the creations of the Hokhmah literature ; for it is only in avery relative sense that it can be treated in the same series as Proverbs and Job. The original portions of the book,* at all events,
* The very striking contradictions in the statements of the Preacher (cf. for example 711f. 19 81 917f 101°, with expressions used elsewhere regarding the worth of wisdom 113. 18 688. 723; or again 57-16 71# with the opinions he expresses as to the in- justice that dominates the course of the world 316 41f ; as also 310. 14 on the worth of piety with v.11) have long been noticed
stand on the extreme periphery of OT faith; and of a hope for the future, be it for the nation or the individual, they exhibit not a trace. The Preacher shows himself to be dominated by a dark, almost pessimistic, tone of feeling. The history of his nation obviously appears to him like an extinct voleano. He does not touch upon it even in a single word; the cheerless conditions of the pres- ent alone occupy his mind, together with the pros- pect of the cheerless end, identical for all. The thesis of which he makes a headline — ‘vanity of vanities, all is vanity ’—recurs again and again even in the course of his argument. Everywhere he sees things in restless revolution, ending in nothing profitable (14); there is no new thing under the sun (1%-). Vain is the pursuit of riches and pleasure, even when it rests upon industrious labour (2%), But vain also is the pursuit of wisdom (11°: 68f- 723), for he that increaseth know- ledge increaseth sorrow (148). Wise men and fools have ultimately the same destiny (2'4* 97). Nay, vain is even the pursuit of piety (47 [51] 715 81 14) ; it does not change the fact that man and beast at last go to the one place (3™*:), to the joyless Shé ol and everlasting oblivion. The attempt by means of mistaken exegesis to foist upon the Preacher a hope of immortality has completely failed. Pas- sages like 3° 94f- 10>, ‘there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest,’ admit of no doubt as to his real opinion. Even in 37! the sense of the doubting question * is not to ask whether the spirit of man as immortal returns to God, but whether a differ- ence between the breath of man and of beast exists so far that the latter, it may be, goes downward to the earth, but the former upward—not in any - sense as self-conscious spirit, but (exactly as in 12”) as once more re-entering the universal Divine life- spirit, from which it had once come forth. The expectation of a future judgment can at most be found in the closing verse (12"*-), ‘fear God, and keep His commandments: for this pertains to all men. For God shall bring every work into the judgment which tries every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.’ But it is certain that this epilogue (from v.° onwards) does not belong to the work of the original author. For the folly and injustice which manifest themselves everywhere in the course of the world (31 4'*>), that author knows no consolation other than the possibility of securing, by means of a rational en- joyment of life, the relatively best side of what is in every respect a mournful earthly existence. This is the counsel he is never weary of giving (274 Bl2t. 22 517 B15 gif. 118), not in the sense of vulgar Epicureanism, but still from the standpoint of a man who has made up his mind about the value of all other earthly goods and aims.
What preserved him from vulgar godless Epi- cureanism is the fact that even he had retained one important relic of the believing treasures of
and explained, sometimes in mechanical fashion (by supposing a dialogue between the doubting scholar and the didactic master, or even by the hypothesis that parts of the MS have got out of order), sometimes from the character of a mind tossed hither and thither by doubt. The present writer, how- ever, is now convinced that C. Siegfried was on the right track when (in his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Gottingen, 1898) he argued in favour of a number of successive hands, which from very divergent standpoints sought to supplement, to correct, or even in many places expressly to refute, the judgments of their predecessors. Siegfried’s analysis may in part be needlessly artificial, since he postulates first a pessimist (Q{oheleth] 1) infected with Greek philosophy, then an epicurean glossator belonging to Sadducean circles (Q?), next a ‘wise’? man who defends wisdom (Q3), and, finally, one of the ‘ pious’ (ha@std, Q4), who defends the justice of the Divine government of the world, together with two further glossators—yet in the main his theory is a sound one. ; :