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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 7:1 - 7:1
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“Better is a name than precious ointment; and better is the day of death than the day when one is born.” Like רָאָה and יָרֵא, so שֵׁם and שֶׁמֶן stand to each other in the relation of a paronomasia (vid., Song under Son 1:3). Luther translates: “Ein gut Gerücht ist besser denn gute Salbe” “a good odour (= reputation) is better than good ointment. If we substitute the expression denn Wolgeruch than sweet scent, that would be the best possible rendering of the paronomasia. In the arrangement טוב ... טוב שׁם, tov would be adj. to shem (a good reputation goes beyond sweet scent); but tov standing first in the sentence is pred., and shem thus in itself alone, as in the cogn. prov., Pro 22:1, signifies a good, well-sounding, honourable, if not venerable name; cf. anshē hashshem, Gen 6:4; veli-shem, nameless, Job 30:8. The author gives the dark reverse to this bright side of the distich: the day of death better than the day in which one (a man), or he (the man), is born; cf. for this reference of the pronoun, Ecc 4:12; Ecc 5:17. It is the same lamentation as at Ecc 4:2., which sounds less strange from the mouth of a Greek than from that of an Israelite; a Thracian tribe, the Trausi, actually celebrated their birthdays as days of sadness, and the day of death as a day of rejoicing (vid., Bähr's Germ. translat. of Herodotus, Ecc 4:4). - Among the people of the Old Covenant this was not possible; also a saying such as Ecc 7:1 is not in the spirit of the O.T. revelation of religion; yet it is significant that it was possible
(Note: “The reflections of the Preacher,” says Hitzig (Süd. deut. ev. protest. Woch. Blatt, 1864, No. 2) “present the picture of a time in which men, participating in the recollection of a mighty religious past, and become sceptical by reason of the sadness of the present time, grasping here and there in uncertainty, were in danger of abandoning that stedfastness of faith which was the first mark of the religion of the prophets.”)
within it, without apostasy from it; within the N.T. revelation of religion, except in such references as Mat 26:24, it is absolutely impossible without apostasy from it, or without rejection of its fundamental meaning.