Nor in Devotion to Public Affairs and its Rewards: Ch. ix., v. 13-Ch.

7 Go, then, eat thy bread with gladness,
And drink thy wine with a merry heart,
Since God hath accepted thy works:
8 Let thy garments be always white;
Let no perfume be lacking to thy head:
9 And enjoy thyself with any woman whom thou lovest
All the days of thy life
Which He giveth thee under the sun,
All thy fleeting days:
For this is thy portion in life,
And in the labour which thou labourest under the sun.

Ver. 9.: "Enjoy thyself with any woman." The word here rendered "woman" does not mean "wife." And as the Hebrew Preacher is here speaking under the mask of the lover of pleasure, this immoral maxim is at least consistent with the part he plays. More than one good critic, however, read "a wife" for "any woman."

10 Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do,
Do it whilst thou art able;
For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in Hades,
Whither thou goest.
11 Then I turned and saw under the sun,
That the race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong;
Nor yet bread to the wise,
Nor riches to the intelligent,
Nor favour to the learned;
12 But time and chance happen to all,
And that man doth not even know his time:
Like fish taken in a fatal net,
And like birds caught in a snare,
So are the sons of men entrapped in the time of their calamity,
When it falleth suddenly upon them.

x. v. 20.

13 This wisdom also have I seen under the sun,
And it seemed great to me--
14 There was a little city,
And few men in it,
And a great king came against it and besieged it,
And threw up a military causeway against it:
15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man,
And he saved that city by his wisdom;
Yet no one remembered this same poor man.
16 Therefore say I,
Though wisdom is better than strength,
Yet the wisdom of the poor is despised,
And his words are not listened to:
17 Though the quiet words of the wise have much advantage
Over the vociferations of a fool of fools,
And wisdom is better than weapons of war,
Yet one fool destroyeth much good:

x.

1 As a dead fly maketh sweet ointment to stink, So a little folly overpowereth (much) wisdom and honour. 2 Nevertheless the mind of the wise man turns toward his right hand, But the mind of the fool to his left; 3 For so soon as the fool setteth his foot in the street He betrayeth his lack of understanding; Yet he saith of every one (he meeteth), "He is a fool!"

Ver. 3.: Setteth his foot in the street. Literally, "walketh in the road." The sentence seems to be a proverb used to denote the extreme stupidity of the fool who, the very moment he leaves his house, is bewildered, cannot even find his way from one familiar spot to another, and sees his own folly in every face he meets.

4 If the anger of thy ruler be kindled against thee,
Resent it not:
Patience will avert a graver wrong.

Ver. 4.: Resent it not. Literally, "Quit not thy place."--See note on chapter viii., ver. 3.

5 There is an evil which I have seen under the sun,
An outrage which only a ruler can commit:
6 A great fool is lifted to high place,
While the noble sit degraded:
7 I have seen servants upon horses,
And masters walking like servants on the ground.

Ver. 7.: To ride upon a horse is still a mark of distinction in many Eastern States. In Turkish cities, till of late, no Christian was permitted to ride any nobler beast than an ass or a mule: so neither were the Jews, in the Middle Ages, in any Christian city.

8 Yet he that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; And whoso breaketh down a wall a serpent shall bite him; 9 He who pulleth down stones shall be hurt therewith; And whoso cleaveth logs shall be cut. 10 If the axe be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, He must put on more strength; But wisdom should teach him to sharpen it.

Ver. 10.: Ginsburg renders this difficult and much-disputed passage thus: "If the axe be blunt, and he do not sharpen it beforehand, he shall only increase the army; the advantage of repairing hath wisdom," and explains it as meaning: "If any insulted subject lift a blunt axe against the trunk of despotism, he will only make the tyrant increase his army, and thereby augment his own sufferings; but it is the prerogative of wisdom to repair the mischief which such precipitate folly occasions." I have offered what seems a simpler explanation in the comment on this passage, and have tried to give a simpler, yet not less accurate, rendering in the text. But there are almost as many readings of this difficult verse as there are critics; and it is impossible to do more than make a hesitating choice among them.

11 If the serpent bite because it is not charmed,
There is no advantage to the charmer.

Ver. 11.: The charmer. Literally, "the master of the tongue." The allusion of the phrase is of course to the subtle cantillations by which the charmer drew, or was thought to draw, serpents from their "lurk," and to render them harmless.

12 The words of the wise man's mouth win him grace;
But the lips of a fool swallow him up,
13 For the words of his mouth are folly at the beginning,
And end in malignant madness.
14 The fool is full of words,
Though no man knoweth what shall be,
Either here or hereafter:
And who can tell him?
15 The work of a fool wearieth him,
For he cannot even find his way to the city.

Ver. 15.: He cannot even find his way to the city; a proverbial saying. It denotes the fool who has not wit enough even to keep a high road, to walk in the beaten path which leads to a capital city. The thought was evidently familiar to Jewish literature; for Isaiah (xxxv. 8) speaks of the way of holiness as a highway in which "wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err."

16 Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, And thy princes feast in the morning! 17 Happy art thou, O land, when thy king is noble, And thy princes eat at due hours, For strength and not for revelry! 18 Through slothful hands the roof falleth in, And through lazy hands the house lets in the rain.

Vers. 18, 19.: And money pays for all; i.e. the money of the people. The slothful prodigal rulers, under whose mal-administration the whole fabric of the State was fast falling into decay, extorted the means for their profligate revelry from their toil-worn and oppressed subjects. It is significant of the caution induced by the extreme tyranny of the time, that the whole description of its political condition is conveyed in proverbs more enigmatical than usual, and capable of being interpreted in more senses than one.

19 They turn bread, and wine, which cheereth life, into revelry;
And money has to pay for all.
20 Nevertheless revile not the king even in thy thoughts,
Nor a prince even in thy bed-chamber,
Lest the bird of the air carry the report,
And the winged tribes tell the story.