Note 304 — Chapter II · ‘TRUTH AND FICTION’ IN AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Among the many other interpretations of this difficult passage, two may be mentioned here. (1) ‘He has also set worldliness in their heart, without which man cannot understand the work that God does, from beginning to end.’ So Kalisch (Path and Goal, frequently). This is an improvement upon the translation of Gesenius and others, who render, not ‘without which’ &c., but ‘so that man may not’ &c. The objection to the latter rendering is that it gives ‘worldliness’ a New Testament sense (comp. 1 John ii. 15). Kalisch, however, in full accord with the spirit of Judaism, makes Koheleth frankly accept ‘worldliness’ as a good, understanding by ‘worldliness’ a sense of worldly duties and enjoyments. Had this however been Koheleth’s meaning, would he not have coined another of his favourite abstract terms (comp. the Peshitto’s ’olmoyuthō = αἰὼν in Eph. ii. 2)? (2) ‘Also he has put eternity into their heart, but so that man cannot’ &c. So Ginsburg and Delitzsch (desiderium æternitatis, taking ‘eternity’ in a metaphysical sense = ‘that which is beyond time’); so also Nowack (taking it in the popular sense of years following upon years without apparent limit). Ginsburg’s view is against the context, in which the continuance of the human spirit is doubted; but Nowack’s explanation is not unacceptable. Man has been enabled to form the idea of Time (for the popular view of ‘eternity’ comes practically to this), and has divided this long space into longer and shorter periods; what happens in one period or season, he can compare with what happens in another, thus finding all well-adapted and ‘beautiful.’ But he cannot grasp the whole of Time in one view. But I still prefer the explanation given in the text, as being simpler, in spite of the fact that ’ōlām nowhere else occurs in the sense of ‘world’ (or the present order of things), so common in later Hebrew.