called a pessimist loosely. Bad as things are, he does not believe that the world is getting worse and worse and hasting to its ruin. He believes in revolutions, some for evil, some for good, some for 'rending' or 'breaking down,' others for 'sewing' or 'building up.' He believes, in other words, that God brings about recurrent changes in human circumstances. But (like another wise man, Prov. xxv. 21) he does not trust revolutions of human origin ('evil matters' he calls them, viii. 3); he is no carbonaro (x. 20). And so for the present he is a 'malist,' and having no imaginative faculty he cannot sympathise with the 'Utopian' prospects for the future contained in the prophetic visions.
Yet, in spite of appearances, Koheleth builds upon a true Israelitish foundation. It is already something that he cannot bear to plunge into open infidelity, that he is still (as we have seen) a theist, though his theism gives him but little light and no comforting warmth. Now and then he alludes to the religious system of his people (see v. 1-5, 17, viii. 10). A stronger proof of his Israelitish sympathies is his choice of Solomon as the representative of humanity; I say, of humanity, because the author evidently declines to place himself upon the pedestal of Israelitish privilege. (Perhaps, too, as Herzfeld thinks,[1] he would console his people by showing them that they have companions in misfortune everywhere 'under the sun;' and we have already seen Job snatch a brief alleviation of pain from the thought of suffering humanity.) Koheleth is not only a Jew, but a man of culture. He cannot perhaps entirely defend himself from the subtle influence of the Greek view of life, and is even willing to associate from time to time with the ministers of alien sovereigns. True, he has noted with bitter irony the absurd and capricious changes in the government of Palestine (x. 5-7), but he has no spark of the spirit of the Maccabees, unless indeed in viii. 2-5, x. 4, 20, beneath the garb of servile prudence we may (with Dr. Plumptre) detect the irony of indignation. To the simple-minded reader at any rate he appears to counsel passive obedience, and a cautious crouching
- ↑ Geschichte des Volkes Jisrael, iii. 30.
