Note 335 — Chapter VI · KOHELETH’S ‘PORTRAIT OF OLD AGE;’ THE EPILOGUE, ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN.

So Klostermann. ‘Shepherd’ must, I think, mean teacher (comp. Jer. ii. 8, iii. 15 &c.); the expression is suggested by the ‘goads.’ ‘One shepherd’ (the text-reading) might mean Solomon; and we might go on to suppose the Solomonic origin of Proverbs as well as Ecclesiastes to be asserted in this verse. But the author of the Epilogue apparently considers Koheleth to be merely fictitiously Solomon, but really a wise man like any other. If so, he cannot have grouped it with Proverbs as a strictly Solomonic work.