society (exceptional cases of prosperity notwithstanding), mark the book as the work of a dark post-Exile period. The absence of any national feeling equally distinguishes it from the monuments of the earlier humanistic movement (even from Job). The germs of philosophic thought, which cannot be explained away, supply, if this be possible, a still more convincing argument. We shall return to these later on: at present, let us confine ourselves to the linguistic evidence, which has been set forth with such accuracy and completeness by Delitzsch[1] and after him by Dr. Wright of Dublin.
The Hebrew language has no history if Ecclesiastes belongs to the classical period; indeed, the Hebrew name of the book may seem of itself to stamp it as of post-Exile origin (see note on Koheleth in Appendix). The student would do well, however, to examine all the peculiar words or forms in Delitzsch's glossary, and to classify them for himself, under two principal heads, (1) those which occur elsewhere but in distinctively late-Hebrew books, (2) those only found in Koheleth, with four subdivisions, viz., (a) words which can be explained from Biblical Hebrew usage, (b) those which belong to the vocabulary of the Mishna, (c) those of Aramaic origin and affinities, (d) those borrowed from non-Semitic languages. The student should also notice the striking grammatical peculiarities of Koheleth, especially the fact that the ordinary historic tense (the imperfect with Waw consecutive) is hardly ever used. The scholar's instinct but three times reveals itself in the adoption of this old literary idiom (i. 17, iv. 1, 7), but elsewhere the usage of the Mishna is already law. Almost equally important is the fact that the Hebrew mood-distinctions are so little used in Koheleth (on which point see Delitzsch's introduction); indeed, we may say upon the whole that that which gives a characteristic flavour to the old Hebrew style is 'ready to vanish away.' The Mishnic peculiarities of the book are especially interesting, as confirming our view of its origin. The author is very different in his opinions from the doctors of the Mishna, but he resembles them in his questioning and reflective spirit, and helped to
- ↑ Comp. the glossary at the end of Grätz's commentary.
