and the almond-tree is in bloom [white hair[1]],
and the locust drags itself along,
and the caper-berry fails [to excite the appetite],
For the man is on the way to his eternal home,
and the mourners go about in the street.
Ere the silver string [the tongue] be tied,
and the golden bowl [the head] break,
and the pitcher [the heart] be shivered at the fountain,
and the windlass [the breathing apparatus] break into the pit.
With a little determination the traces of development in the Biblical literature can be more or less effaced. The pious but unphilological editors of Koheleth were not deficient in this quality. After altering the introduction of the poem on old age they proceeded to furnish it with a finale. Not only the opening words of ver. i., but the comfortless expression 'his eternal house'[2] in ver. 5 gave them serious offence. One remedy would have been to transpose (with the Syriac translator) two of the letters of the Hebrew, and thus change 'home of his eternity' into 'home of his travail' (i.e. the place where 'the weary are at rest'). They preferred, however, to add two lines—
and the dust return to the earth as it was,
and the spirit return unto God who gave it.
This no doubt is a direct contradiction of iii. 21. But the ancients probably got over this, as most moderns still do, by supposing that the earlier passage did but express a sceptical suggestion which skimmed the surface of Koheleth's mind.
The excision of these words would of course not be justified in a translation intended for popular use; but for the purposes of historical study seems almost inevitable. It hangs together with the view adopted as to the origin of xi. 9b], and implies the assumption that the Targum rightly paraphrases,
- ↑ Does the eastern sun blanch the 'crimson broidery' of the almond-blossom?
From the language of travellers like Thomson and Bodenstedt it would seem so. - ↑ The Hebrew 'ōlām here expresses perpetuity (comp. Jer. li. 39, Ps. cxliii. 51, Ezek. xxvi. 20), not (as some moderns, after Aben Ezra) long continuance It is true, that in the Targum of Isa. xlii. 11 an exit from the 'eternal house' is spoken of; but no one doubts that the belief in the Resurrection was general in the fourth century A.D.
