Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Ecclesiastes 3:15
A historical reference excerpt for this verse.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.
"That which is now hath been long ago; and that which will be hath already been: God seeketh after that which was crowded out." The words: "hath been long ago" (הוּא כּבר), are used of that which the present represents as something that hath been, as the fruit of a development; the words: "hath already been" (היה כּבר), are used of the future (ל אשׁר, τὸ μέλλον, vid., Gesen. 132. 1), as denying to it the right of being regarded as something new. The government of God is not to be changed, and does not change; His creative as well as His moral ordering of the world produces with the same laws the same phenomena (the ו corresponds to this line of thought here, as at Ecc 3:14) \- God seeks את־ן (cf. Ecc 7:7; Ewald, 277d). Hengstenberg renders: God seeks the persecuted (lxx, Symm., Targ., Syr.), i.e., visits them with consolation and comfort. Nirdaph here denotes that which is followed, hunted, pressed, by which we may think of that which is already driven into the past; that God seeks, seeks it purposely, and brings it back again into the present; for His government remains always, and brings thus always up again that which hath been. Thus Jerome: Deut instaurat quod abiit; the Venet.: ὃ τηεὸς ζητήσει τὸ ἀπεληλαμένον; and thus Geier, among the post-Reform. interpreters: praestat ut quae propulsa sunt ac praeterierunt iterum innoventur ac redeant; and this is now the prevailing exposition, after Knobel, Ewald, and Hitzig. The thought is the same as if we were to translate: God seeks after the analogue. In the Arab., one word in relation to another is called muradif, if it is cogn. to it; and mutaradifat is the technical expression for a synonym. In Heb. the expression used is שׁמות נרדּפים, they who are followed the one by another, - one of which, as it were, treads on the heels of another. But this designation is mediated through the Arab. In evidence of the contrary, ancient examples are wanting. Ecclesiastes 3:16
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