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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 4:2 - 4:2
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“And I praised the dead who were long ago dead, more than the living who are yet in life; and as happier than both, him who has not yet come into existence, who hath not seen the evil work which is done under the sun.” וְשַׁבֵּחַ is hardly thought of as part., like יוּקָשִׁים = מְיֻקָּשִׁים, Ecc 9:12; the m of the part. Pih. is not usually thrown away, only מַהֵר, Zep 1:14, is perhaps = מְמַהֵר, but for the same reason as בֵּית־אֵל, 2Ki 2:3, is = בְּבֵית - אל. Thus וְשַׁבֵּחַ, like וְנָתוֹן, Ecc 8:9, is inf. absol., which is used to continue, in an adverbially subord. manner, the preceding finite with the same subject,
(Note: Also 1Ch 5:20, the subject remains virtually the same: et ita quidem ut exaudirentur.)
Gen 41:43; Lev 25:14; Jdg 7:19, etc.; cf. especially Exo 8:11 : “Pharaoh saw ... and hardened (וְהַכְבֵּד) his heart;” just in the same manner as וְשַׁבֵּחַ here connects itself with ושׁ אני וָאֶ. Only the annexed designation of the subject is peculiar; the syntactic possibility of this connection is established by Psa 15:5, Job 40:2, and, in the second rank, by Gen 17:10; Eze 5:14. Yet אני might well enough have been omitted had וש אני וא not stood too remote. Regarding עֲדֶנָה
(Note: Thus punctuated with Segol under Daleth, and ,נ raphatum, in F. H. J. P. Thus also Kimchi in W.B. under עד.)
and עֲדֶן. The circumstantial form of the expression: prae vivis qui vivi sunt adhuc, is intentional: they who are as yet living must be witnesses of the manifold and comfortless human miseries.
It is a question whether Ecc 4:3 begins a new clause (lxx, Syr., and Venet.) or not. That אֵת, like the Arab. aiya, sometimes serves to give prominence to the subject, cannot be denied (vid., Böttcher, §516, and Mühlau's remarks thereto). The Mishnic expressions הַיּוֹם אוֹתוֹ, that day, הָאָרֶץ אוֹתָהּ, that land, and the like (Geiger, §14. 2), presuppose a certain preparation in the older language; and we might, with Weiss (Stud. ueber d. Spr. der Mishna, p. 112), interpret אֲשֶׁר אֵת in the sense of אותי אשר, is qui. But the accus. rendering is more natural. Certainly the expression טוֹב שַׁבֵּחַ, “to praise,” “to pronounce happy,” is not used; but to טוב it is natural to suppose וְקָרָאתִי added. Jerome accordingly translates: et feliciorem utroque judicavi qui necdum natus est. הָרָע has the double Kametz, as is generally the case, except at Psa 54:7 and Mic 7:3.
(Note: Vid., Heidenheim, Meor Enajim, under Deu 17:7.)
Better than he who is born is the unborn, who does not become conscious of the wicked actions that are done under the sun. A similar thought, with many variations in its expression, is found in Greek writers; see regarding these shrill discordances, which run through all the joy of the beauty and splendour of Hellenic life, my Apologetick, p. 116. Buddhism accordingly gives to nirvâna the place of the highest good. That we find Koheleth on the same path (cf. Ecc 6:3; Ecc 7:1), has its reason in this, that so long as the central point of man's existence lies in the present life, and this is not viewed as the fore-court of eternity, there is no enduring consolation to lift us above the miseries of this present world.