Many opponents of the Solomonic authorship of Ec- clesiastes have certainly gone much too far in their assertions respecting the impurity of its language. The Grsecisms which Zirkle thought that he had found have now generally been given up. The Kabbinisms likewise could not stand the proof. The words, signi- fications, and forms which seem to appertain to a later period of Hebrew litei'ature, and the Chaldaisms, an abundance of which Knobel gathered, require, as Herzfeld has shown (in his Commentary, published at Braunschweig, 1838, p. 13 sq.), to be much sifted. Ac- cording to Herzfeld, there are in Ecclesiastes not more than between eleven and fifteen " young Hebrew" ex- pressions and constructions, and between eight and ten Chaldaisms. Nevertheless, it is certain that the book does not belong to the productions of the first, hut rather to the second period of the Hebrew lan- guage. This alone would not fully disprove the au- thorship of Solomon, for it would not necessarilj' throw tlie production into the latest period of Hebrew litera- ture. We could suppose that Solomon, in a philo- sophical work, found the pure Hebrew language to be insufficient, and had, therefore, recourse to the Chal- daizing popular dialect, by which, at a later period, the book-language was entirely displaced. This supposi- tion could not be rejected a priori, since almost every one of tlie Hel)rew authors before the exile did the same, altliough in a less degree. It has been thought, however, that the striking difference between tlie lan- guage of Ecclesiastes and the language of the Prov- erbs renders that explanation quite inadmissible. This difference would ])rove little if the two books l)elonged to two entirely dilferent classes of literature — tiiat is, if Ecclesiastes bore the same relation to the Proverbs as the Song of Solomon does ; but since Ecclesiastes and the Proverbs belong essentially to the same class,
the argument taken from the difference of style can only be avoided by attributing it to the effect of great- er age in tlic writer. The occurrence of Chaldee words and forms in any Hebrew document is by no means a certain and invariable indication of lateness of compo- sition. We must be careful to distinguish archaisms, and words and forms peculiar to the poetic style, from Chaldaisms of the later period. Moreover, the He- brew writings which have been transmitted to us be- ing so few in numljer, it is of course much more diffi- cult decisively to determine the period to which any of these writings belongs by the peculiar form of lan- guage which it presents, than it would have been had there been preserved to us a larger number of docu- ments of ditierent ages to assist us in forming our de- cision. Still, from the materials within our reach, scanty' though they are, we would naturally draw a conclusion as to the age of the liook of Ecclesiastes, not altogether certain, indeed, but dccidedlj' unfavor- able to an early date ; for it needs but a cursory sur- vey of the hook to convince us that in language and style it not only differs widely from the other writings of the age of Solomon, but bears a very marked resem- blance to the latest books of the Old Testament. (1.) One class of words employed by the writer of Ecclesi- astes we find rarely employed in the earlier books of Scripture, y>-ei7?/e«//?/ in the later, i. e. in those written during or after the Baln-lonish captivity. Thus sha- lat', k-bd, he ruled (Eccles. ii, 19; v, 18; vi, 2; viii, 9), is found elsewhere only in Nehemiah and Esther. The derived noun "|ii:b w\ shilton' , rule (ch. viii, 4, 8), is found only in the Chaldee of Daniel; but w3"^s'>r?5 shallit', ruler, appears once in the earlier Scriptures (Gen. xlii, G). Under this head may also be men- tioned r^lipp, malkuth', Jcingdom (ch. iv, 14), rare in the earlier Scriptures, but found above forty times in Esther and Daniel ; and ri3^'l''2, medinah', province (ch. ii, 8; v, 7), which appears also in Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and likewise in 1 Kings xx, 14-19, where "princes of the provinces" are mentioned among the officers of king Ahab, but in none of the earlier Scriptures. (2.) A second class includes those words which are nere?" found in any He- brew writing of earlier date than the Babj'lonian cap» tivity, but are found in the later books : as " -T, zc- man', set time (ch. iii, l) = iy'l?3, which we meet with in Hebrew only in Neh. ii, 6 and Esth. ix, 27, 01, but in the biblical Chaldee and in the Targums frequcnt- \y ; CSrS, intlujani , sentence (chap, viii, 11), which ap- pears in Hebrew onlj' in Esth. i, 20, hut in Chuldca frequently. (If this word be, as is commonly sup- posed, of Persian origin, its appearance only in the later Jewish writings is at once accounted for. See Rodiger's Additions to Gesenius's Tkemurus.) "'^'?, madda' (ch. x, 20), a derivation of "'H"', to know, found only in 2 Chron. and Daniel, and also in Chaldee ; and the particles *1^1S!, illu, if {ch. vi, 6), and "53, hehen, then, so (ch. viii, 10), found in no earlier Hebrew book than Esther. From this enumeration it appears that the book of Ecclesiastes resembles the book of Esther in some of the most distinctive peculiarities of its lan- guage. (3.) A third class embraces those words which are not found even in the Hebrew writing", of the latest period, but only in the Chaldee of Daniel and Ezra, or in the Targums, as "'1^^'', yithron , profit, which is used nine times in Ecclesiastes, never in any other scriptural writing, but frequently in the Targums, un- der the slightly modified form yi/ZArara ; so also "^33, kebar' , already, lony ayo, which recurs eight times in this book ; '{^'r\,takan' (c\i.\,\b; vii,13; xii, 9), found also in Chaldee (Dan. iv, 33, etc.) ; r^""i, reuth' , de- sire, recurring five times, and also in the Chaldee por-