distinct confession and repentance. There are forms of satiety and self-reproach, of which this half sad, half scornful retrospect of a man's own life — this ut- terance of bitter words by which he is condemned out of his own mouth — is the most natural expression. Any individual judgment on this point cannot, from the nature of the case, be otherwise than subjective, and ought therefore to bias our estimate of other evi- dence as little as possible. 5. The state of oppression, sufferings, and misery depicted in this book (iv, 1-4 \ V, 7 ; viii, 1^, 10, 11 ; n, 5-7, 20, etc.) cannot be rec- onciled with the age of vSolomon, and unquestionably shows that the Jews were then groaning under the grinding tyrannj' of Persia. There are sudden and violent changes, the servant of to-day becoming the ruler of to-morrow (x, 5-7). All this, it is said, agrees with the glimpses into the condition of the Jews under the Persian empire in Ezra and Nehemiah, and with what we know as to the general condition of the prov- inces under its satraps. But we cannot suppose that these evils, which have been prevalent in all times, were alluded to as specialh' characteristic of the writ- er's daj'. 6. The fact that Koheleth is represented as indulging in sensual enjojnnents, and acquiring riches and fame in order to ascei-tain vhai is good for the chil- dren of men (ii, 3-9 ; iii, 12, 22, etc.), making philo- sophical experiments to discover the summum bonum, is held to be at variance with the conduct of the his- torical Solomon, and to be an idea of a much later period. In like manner, the admonition not to seek divine things in the profane books of the philosophers (xii, 12) are thought to show that this book was writ- ten when the speculation of Greece and Alexandria had found their way into Palestine. In short, the doctrine of a future bar of judgment, whereb}- Kohe- leth solves the grand problem of this book, when com- pared with the vague and dim intimations respecting a future state in the pre-exilian portions of the O. T., is regarded as proving that it is a post-exilian production. But the untrustworthy character of these arguments is evinced by the parallel case of the book of Job (q. v.). It is also urged that the indications of the relig- ious condition of the people, their formalism and much speaking (v, 1, 2), their readiness to evade the per- formance of their vows by casuistic excuses (v, 5), represent in like manner the growth of evils, the germs of which appeared soon after the captivity, and which we find in a fulh'-developed form in the prophecy of Malachi. In addition to this general resemblance, there is the agreement between the use of TjX3'2il for the " angel" or priest of God (v, 6, Ewald, in loc), and the recurrence in Malachi of the terms "^5^ nin^, the " angel" or messenger of the Lord, as a syn- onyme for the priest (Mai. ii, 7), the true priest being the great agent in accomplishing God's purposes. Significant, though not conclusive in either direction, is the absence of all reference to any contemporaneous prophetic activity or to anj^ Messianic ho]irs. This might indicate a time before such hopes had become prevalent, or after they were for a time extinguished. It might, on the other hand, be the natural result of the experience through which the son of David had ! passed, or fitly take its place in the dramatic persona- tion of such a character. The use througlKUit the l)Ook of Elohim instead of Jehovah as the divine name, thougli characteristic of the book as dealing with the problems of the universe rather than with the relations between the Lord God of Israel and his people, and therefore striking as an idiosyncrasy', leaves the ques- tion as to date nearly where it was. The indications of rising questions as to the end of man's life and the constitution of his nature, of doubts like those which afterwards developed into Sadduceeism (iii, 19-21), of a copious literature connected with those questions, con- firm, it is urged (Ewald), the hypothesis of the later date. It may be added, too, that the absence of any
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reference to such a work as this in the enumeration of Solomon's writings in 1 Kings iv, 32, tends, at least, to the same conclusion. But such considerations drawn a silentio are highly inconclusive. 7. The strongest argument, however, against the Solomonic authorship of this book is its vitiated language and style. It is written throughout with peculiarities of phraseology which developed themselves about the time of the BaViylonian captivity. So convincing is this fact, that not o\\\y have Grotius, J. D. Michaelis, Eichhorn, Do- derlein, Spohn, Jahn, J. E. C. Schmidt, Nachtigal, Kaiser, Kosenmiiller, Ewald, Knobel, Geseniiis, De AVette, Noyes, Hitzig, Heiligstedt, Davidson, Meier, etc., relinquished the Solomonic authorship, but even ■ such unquestionably orthodox writers as Umbreit, Hengstenberg, Gerlach, Vaihinger, Stuart, Keil, El- ster, etc., declare most emphatically that the book was written after the Babylonian captivity ; and there is hardly a chief rabbi or a literary Jew to l)e found who would have the courage to maintain that Solomon wrote Koheleth. Dr. Herzfeld, chief rabbi of Bruns- wick ; Dr. Philippson, chief rabbi of Magdeburg ; Dr. Geiger, rabbi of Breslau ; Dr. Zunz, Professor Luzzat- to, Dr. Krochmal, Steinschneider, Jost, Griitz, Fiirst, and a host of others, affirm that this book is one of the latest productions in the O.-T. canon. We are more- over reminded that these are men to whom the Hebrew is almost vernacular, and that some of them write bet- ter Hebrew, and in a purer style, than that of Kohe- leth. With most readers, however, a single intima- tion of the text itself will weigh more than the opin- ion of these or all other learned men. On the other hand, the Rabbinical scholars, who certainly were not inferior in a knowledge of Hebrew, appear to have found no difliculty in attributing this book to Solo- mon. ]\Iost of those above enumerated are of very ques^tionablc sentiments on a point like this, and it must be borne in mind that a very large, if hot equal, amount of learning has been arrayed on the opposite side. The last of the above objections, however, de- serves a more minute consideration.