Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Ecclesiastes 2:12
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
"And I turned myself to examine wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what is the man who could come after the king, him whom they have made so long ago!" Mendelssohn's translation, Ecc 2:12: "I abandoned my design of seeking to connect wisdom with folly and madness," is impossible, because for such a rendering we should have had at least מלּראות instead of לראות. Hitzig, otherwise followed by Stuart: "I turned myself to examine me wisdom, and, lo, it was madness as well as folly." This rendering is impossible also, for in such a case הנּהו ought to have stood as the result, after חכמה. The pasage, Zac 14:6, cited by Hitz., does not prove the possibility of such a brachyology, for there we read not veqaroth veqeppayon, but eqaroth iqeppaūn (the splendid ones, i.e., the stars, will draw themselves together, i.e., will become dark bodies). The two vavs are not correlative, which is without example in the usage of this book, but copulative: he wishes to contemplate (Zckler and others) wisdom on the one side, and madness and folly on the other, in their relation to each other, viz., in their relative worth. Hitzig's ingenuity goes yet further astray in Ecc 2:12: "For what will the man do who comes after the king? (He shall do) what was long ago his (own) doing, i.e., inheriting from the king the throne, he will not also inherit his wisdom." Instead of āsūhū, he reads ǎsōhū, after Exo 18:18; but the more modern author, whose work we have here before us, would, instead of this anomalous form, use the regular form עשׂותו; but, besides, the expression ēth asher-kevar 'asotho, "(he will do) what long ago was his doing," is not Heb.; the words ought to have been keasotho kevar khen i'sah, or at least 'asāhū. If we compare Ecc 2:12 with 18b, the man who comes after the king appears certainly to be his successor. (Note: The lxx and Symm. by hammělêk think of melak, counsel, βουλή, instead of melek, king; and as Jerome, so also Bardach understands by the king the rex factor, i.e., God the Creator.) But by this supposition it is impossible to give just effect to the relation (assigning a reason or motive) of Ecc 2:12 to 12a expressed by כּי. When I considered, Knobel regards Koheleth as saying, that a fool would be heir to me a wise man, it appeared strange to me, and I was led to compare wisdom and folly to see whether or not the wise man has a superiority to the fool, or whether his labour and his fate are vanity, like those of the fool. This is in point of style absurd, but it is much more absurd logically. And who then gave the interpreter the right to stamp as a fool the man who comes after the king? In the answer: "That which has long ago been done," must lie its justification; for this that was done long ago naturally consists, as Zckler remarks, in foolish and perverse undertakings, certainly in the destruction of that which was done by the wise predecessor, in the lavish squandering of the treasures and goods collected by him. More briefly, but in the same sense, Burger: Nihil quod a solita hominum agendi ratione recedit. But in Ecc 2:19, Koheleth places it as a question whether his successor will be a wise man or a fool, while here he would presuppose that "naturally," or as a matter of course, he will be a fool. In the matter of style, we have nothing to object to the translation on which Zckler, with Rabm., Rosenm., Knobel, Hengst., and others, proceeds; the supplying of the verb יעשׂה to meh hāādām = what can the man do?…
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