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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 10:15 - 10:15
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“The labour of the foolish wearieth him who knoweth not how to go to the city.” If we do not seek to explain: labour such as fools have wearies him (the fool), then we have here such a synallage numeri as at Isa 2:8; Hos 4:8, for from the plur. a transition is made to the distributive or individualizing sing. A greater anomaly is the treatment of the noun עָמָל as fem. (greater even than the same of the noun pithgam, Ecc 8:11, which admitted of attractional explanation, and, besides, in a foreign word was not strange). Kimchi, Michlol 10a, supposes that עמל is thought of in the sense of עמל יְגִיעַת; impossible, for one does not use such an expression. Hitzig, and with him Hengst., sees the occasion for the synallage in the discordance of the masc. יְיַגְּעֶנּוּ; but without hesitation we use the expressions יְיַחֵל, Mic 5:6, יְיַסְּ, Jos 6:26, and the like. 'Amal also cannot be here fem. unitatis (Böttch. §657. 4), for it denotes the wearisome striving of fools as a whole and individually. We have thus to suppose that the author has taken the liberty of using 'amal once as fem. (vid., on the contrary, Ecc 2:18, Ecc 2:20), as the poet, Pro 4:13, in the introduction of the Book of Proverbs uses musar once as fem., and as the similarly formed צָבָא is used in two genders. The fool kindles himself up and perplexes himself, as if he could enlighten the world and make it happy, - he who does not even know how to go to the city. Ewald remarks: “Apparently proverbial, viz., to bribe the great lords in the city.” For us who, notwithstanding Ecc 10:16, do not trouble ourselves any more with the tyrants of Ecc 10:4, such thoughts, which do violence to the connection, are unnecessary. Hitzig also, and with him Elst. and Zöckl., thinks of the city as the residence of the rulers from whom oppression proceeds, but from whom also help against oppression is to be sought. All this is to be rejected. Not to know how to go to the city, is = not to be able to find the open public street, and, like the Syrians, 2Ki 6:18., to be smitten with blindness. The way to the city is via notissima et tritissima. Rightly Grotius, like Aben Ezra: Multi quaestionibus arduis se faitgant, cum ne obvia quidem norint, quale est iter ad urbem. אֶל־עִיר is vulgar for אל־הָעיר. In the Greek language also the word πόλις has a definite signification, and Athens is called ἄστυ, mostly without the art. But Stamboul, the name of which may seem as an illustration of the proverbial phrase, “not to know how to go to the city,” is = εἰς τὴν πόλιν. Grätz finds here an allusion to the Essenes, who avoided the city - habeat sibi!