such P o.nd i would his readers be impressed by e. superiority to these princelets, mostly hea,thene, all of them beyond the pale of Israel, and, with one exception, in no respect celebrated P It is surely much more probable that the author for the moment forgets, or throws aside, hie assumed character, and alludes to the long succession of Jewish monarchs who had reigned in J eruealem up to hie own time. A further intimation that a. fictitious use is made of the name of the great king is given in the epilogue, supposing it, as we do, to be an original portion of the work. Here ( eh. xii. 9-14) the real author speaks of himself and the composition of his book; be is no longer "the Koheleth," the Solomon, who hitherto has been the speaker (as in ver. 8), but a koheleth; a wise man, who, founding his style on his great predecessor, sought to please and edify the people of his generation by means of proverbial sayings. Thie is the way in which he describes hie undertaking, and in which it is impossible that the historical Solomon should ha.ve,written: "Moreover, because Koheleth was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he pondered, and sought out, and put in order many proverbs," and,· as the next verse implies, he adopted a form and style which might make the truth "acceptable" to his hearers. 3. Besides the notice mentioned above, there are many statements in the book wholly irreconcifable with the circumstances of Solomon's reign and epoch. In eh. iii; 16 ; v. 8, etc., we read of oppression of the poor and high~handed perversion of judgment, and are bidden not to wonder thereat. That such a condition of things obtained in the time of Solomon is not con- ceivable; if it did exist, one would have expected that this powerful monarch would immediately have set about a reformation, and not contented himself with urging patience and acquiescence. But the writer appears to have no power to redress these crying wrongs, which, if he is king, must have been owing to his neglect or misgovernment. He tells what he hns seen, sympathizes with the sufferers, offers advice how to make the best of such trouble, but gives no hint that he considers himself answerable for this miserable state of things, or could in any way alleviate or remove it. If, as alleged, this book is the result of Solomon's repentance, the outcome of the revulsion of feeling caused by the warnings of the Prophet Ahijah and the grace of God working in his softened heart, here, surely, was an oppor- tunity of expressing his changed sentiments, acknowledging the wrong- doing which occasioned the disorders in the administration of government, and.avowing a determination of redress. But there is nothing of the kind. He writes as an uninterested observer, one who had no hand in producing, and possesses no influence in checking, oppression. So, too, Solomon could not have written of his own class and country in such terms as we read in eh. x. 16, "Woe to thee, 0 land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning ! " • It is doing violence to lo,ngunge, if not to common sense, to argue that Solomon is alluding to his son Rehoboam, who must lia.ve been more than forty years old at this time; and it does not speak well for the king's repentance if, knowing that his son would turn out so viil INTRODUCTION 'J.'O
badly, he made no effort for his reformation, DOI\ following the precedent observed in his own case, attempted. to nominate a. more worthy successor, Here and in other remarks about kings (e.g. eh. x. 20) the writer speaks, not 88 though he himself were a. monarch, but merely as a philosopher or student of human nature. If he introduces the great king as uttering the sentiments, they are his own experiences which he records (eh. x. 4-7): the spirit of the ruler rising against a subject, a fool set in high dignity and the rich debased to low places, servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth ;-such circumstances one can ill imagine the historical Solomon to have known and recorded, though they might readily enough have been witnessed by one who made him the vehicle of his life-history. Again, can one suppose that Solomon would call the heir to his throne "the man that should be after" him ( eh. ii.18), and hate his labour because its fruits would fall into such unworthy hands? Or that, being well aware who his successor would be, he should speak as if it we~e quite uncertain- one of those future contingencies which no one could determine (eh. ii.19) P To minimize the force of the objection here made, some critics assert that Solomon utters this sentiment after Jeroboam's attempted rebellion, and with the fear of this restless and unscrupulous leader's success lying heavy on his mind; but there is no historical ground for this notion. As far as we know, no dread of a revolution troubled his last days. Jeroboam had been driven into exile; and it is quite a gratuitous assumption that the fear of his return and forcible seizure of the throne dictated the words in the text, There are other incongruities in connection with the relation of monarch and subject. The passage eh. viii. 2-5, 9 contains advice, not from a. ruler to his dependents, but from a subject to his fellow-subjects : "I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment," etc. It is a prudent exhortation, showing how to behave under a tyrannical government, when "one man ruleth over another to the other'a hurt," and could never have emanated from great David's greater son. Again, is it compatible with the modesty of a refined disposition that Solomon should boast unrestrainedly of his intellectual acquirements ( eh. i. 16), his possessions, his greatness (oh. ii. 7-9)? Such exultation might proceed naturally enough from a :fictitious person, but would be most unseemly in the mouth of the real character. Is he satirizing himself when he denounces the royal spendthrift, glutton, and debauchee, and describes "Ji.e misery which he brings on the land (eh. x. 16-19)? Is it not much more likely that Koheleth is drawing from his own experience of licentious rulers, which concerns not Solomon at all? Then, again, the course of philosophical investigation into the summum bonum depicted in the book is wholly incompatible with the historical Solomon. There is no evidence wh.!l.tever that he entered into any such inquiry and pursued it with the view herein intimated. The writer gives a fair account of many of the king's great undertakings-his palaces, gardens, reservoirs, his feasts, sensu- ECCLESIASTES ; OR, THF! PREACHlrn. ix