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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 8:7 - 8:7
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Ecc 8:7 and Ecc 8:8 thus continue the For and For: “For he knoweth not that which shall be; for who can tell him who it will be? There is no man who has power over the wind, to restrain the wind; and no one has authority over the day of death; and there is no discharge in the war; and wickedness does not save its possessor.” The actor has the sin upon himself, and bears it; if it reaches the terminus of full measure, it suddenly overwhelms him in punishment, and the too great burden oppresses its bearer (Hitzig, under Isa 24:20). This עת ומשׁ comes unforeseen, for he (the man who heaps up sins) knoweth not id quod fiet; it arrives unforeseen, for quomodo fiet, who can show it to him? Thus, e.g., the tyrant knows not that he will die by assassination, and no one can say to him how that will happen, so that he might make arrangements for his protection. Rightly the lxx κατηὼς ἔσται; on the contrary, the Targ., Hitzig, and Ginsburg: when it will be;
(Note: The Venet. ἐν ᾧ, as if the text had בּאֲשֶׁר.)
but כַּֽאֲשֶׁר signifies quum, Ecc 5:1; Ecc 5:3; Ecc 8:16, but not quando, which must be expressed by מָתי (Mishnic אֵימָתַי, אֵימָת).
Now follows the concluding thought of the four כי, whereby Ecc 8:5 is established. There are four impossibilities enumerated; the fourth is the point of the enumeration constructed in the form of a numerical proverb. (1) No man has power over the wind, to check the wind. Ewald, Hengst., Zöckl., and others understand רוּחַ, with the Targ., Jerome, and Luther, of the Spirit (חיים( tir רוח); but man can limit this physically when he puts a violent termination to life, and must restrain it morally by ruling it, Pro 16:32; Pro 25:28. On the contrary, the wind hrwch is, after Ecc 11:5, incalculable, and to rule over it is the exclusive prerogative of Divine Omnipotence, Pro 30:4. The transition to the second impossibility is mediated by this, that in רוח, according to the usus loq., the ideas of the breath of animal life, and of wind as the breath as it were of the life of the whole of nature, are interwoven. (2) No one has power over the day of death: death, viz., natural death, comes to a man without his being able to see it before, to determine it, or to change it. With שַׁלִּיט there here interchanges שִׁלְטוֹן, which is rendered by the lxx and Venet. as abstr., also by the Syr. But as at Dan 3:2, so also above at Ecc 8:4, it is concr., and will be so also in the passage before us, as generally in the Talm. and Midrash, in contradistinction to the abstr., which is שָׁלְטָן, after the forms אָבְדָן, דָּרְבָן, etc., e.g., Bereshith rabba, c. 85 extr.: “Every king and ruler שלטון who had not a שולטן, a command (government, sway) in the land, said that that did not satisfy him, the king of Babylon had to place an under-Caesar in Jericho,” etc.
(Note: Regarding the distinction between שִׁלְטוֹן and שָׁלְטָן, vid., Baer's Abodath Jisrael, p. 385.)
Thus: no man possesses rule or is a ruler ... .
A transition is made from the inevitable law of death to the inexorable severity of the law of war; (3) there is no discharge, no dispensation, whether for a time merely (missio), or a full discharge (dimissio), in war, which in its fearful rigour (vid., on the contrary, Deu 20:5-8) was the Persian law. Even so, every possibility of escape is cut off by the law of the divine requital; (4) wickedness will not save (מִלְּט, causative, as always) its lord (cf. the proverb: “Unfaithfulness strikes its own master”) or possessor; i.e., the wicked person, when the עת ום comes, is hopelessly lost. Grätz would adopt the reading עֹשֶׁר instead of רשע; but the fate of the רֶשַׁע בַּעַל, or of the רָשָׁע, is certainly that to which the concatenation of thought from Ecc 8:6 leads, as also the disjunctive accent at the end of the three first clauses of Ecc 8:8 denotes. But that in the words בַּעַל רֶשַׁע (not בּעֲלֵי) a despotic king is thought of (בְּעָלָיו, as at Ecc 5:10, Ecc 5:12; Ecc 7:12; Pro 3:27; cf. under Pro 1:19), is placed beyond a doubt by the epilogistic verse: