and on that account puts off the sowing of the seed till it is too late. The time of harvest requires warmth without rain (Pro 26:1); but the scrupulous and timid man, who can never be sure enough, looks at the clouds (cf. Isa 47:13), scents rainy weather, and finds now and never any security for the right weather for the gathering in of the fruits of the field. He who would accomplish and gain anything, must have confidence and courage to venture something; the conditions of success cannot be wholly reckoned upon, the future is in the hand of God, the All-Conditioning.
Verse 5
Ecc 11:5 “As thou hast no knowledge what is the way of the wind, like as the bones in the womb of her who is with child; so thou knowest not the work of God who accomplisheth all.” Luther, after Jerome, renders rightly: “As thou knowest not the way of the wind, and how the bones in the mother's womb do grow; so,” etc. The clause, instar ossium in ventre praegnantis, is the so-called comparatio decurtata for instar ignorantiae tuae ossium, etc., like thy ignorance regarding the bones, i.e., the growth of the bones. כּעץ,[1] because more closely defined by 'בּב הם, has not the art. used elsewhere after כ of comparison; an example for the regular syntax (vid., Riehm, under Psa 17:12) is found at Deu 32:2. That man has no power over the wind, we read at Ecc 8:8; the way of the wind he knows not (Joh 3:8), because he has not the wind under his control: man knows fundamentally only that which he rules. Regarding the origin and development of the embryo as a secret which remained a mystery to the Israel. Chokma, vid., Psychol. p. 209ff. For עצם, cf. Psa 139:15 and Job 10:11. Regarding meleah, pregnant (like the Lat. plena). With fine discrimination, the fut. תדע לא in the apodosis interchanges with the particip. יודע אינך in the protasis, as when we say: If thou knowest not that, as a consequence thou shalt also not know this. As a man must confess his ignorance in respect to the way of the wind, and the formation of the child in the mother's womb; so in general the work of God the All-Working lies beyond his knowledge: he can neither penetrate it in the entireness of its connection, nor in the details of its accomplishment. The idea 'oseh kol, Isa 44:24, is intentionally unfolded in a fut. relat. clause, because here the fut. in the natural world, as well as in human history, comes principally into view. For that very reason the words את־הכּל are also used, not: (as in passages where there is a reference to the world of creation in its present condition) eth-kol-elleh, Isa 66:2. Also the growth of the
- ↑ The Targ. reads בעץ, and construes: What the way of the spirit in the bones, i.e., how the embryo becomes animated.
