per oculos lippientes, per nares guttatim fluentes, per os subinde excreans cet., quae sane defluxiones, tussis ac catharri in juvenibus non ita sunt frequentia, quippe ubi calor multo adhuc fortior, consumens dissipansque humores. It is enough to understand עבים of cases of sickness and attacks of weakness which disturb the power of thought, obscure the consciousness, darken the mind, and which ahhar haggěshěm, after they have once overtaken him and then have ceased, quickly again return without permitting him long to experience health. A cloudy day is = a day of misfortune, Joe 2:2; Zep 1:15; an overflowing rain is a scourge of God, Eze 13:13; Eze 38:22; and one visited by misfortune after misfortune complains, Psa 42:7 : “Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.”
Verse 3
To the thought: Ere the mind and the senses begin to be darkened, and the winter of life with its clouds and storms approaches, the further details here following stand in a subordinate relation: “That day when the watchers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves, and the grinders rest, because they have become few, and the women looking out of the windows are darkened.” Regarding בּיּום with art.: eo (illo)tempore, vid., under Sol 8:8. What follows is regarded by Winzer, with Mich., Spohr, and partly Nachtigal, as a further description of the night to which old age, Ecc 12:2, is compared: Watchers then guard the house; labourers are wearied with the labours and cares of the day; the maids who have to grind at the mill have gone to rest; and almost all have already fallen asleep; the women who look out from the windows are unrecognisable, because it has become dark. But what kind of cowardly watchers are those who “tremble,” and what kind of (per antiphrasin) strong men who “bow themselves” at evening like children when they have belly-ache! Ginsburg regards Ecc 12:2-5 as a continuation of the description of the consequences of the storm under which human life comes to an end: the last consequence is this, that they who experience it lose the taste for almonds and the appetite for locusts. But what is the meaning of this quaint figure? it would certainly be a meaningless and aimless digression. Taylor hears in this verse the mourning for the dead from Ecc 12:2, where death is described: the watchers of the house tremble; the strong men bow themselves, viz., from sorrow, because of the blank death has made in the house, etc.; but even supposing that this picture had a connection in Ecc 12:2, how strange would it be! - the lookers out at the windows must
