Qohelet and Money

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Qohelet and Money

JAMES L. KUGEL

Harvard UniversityCambridge, MA 02138

ITHAS LONG BEEN RECOGNIZEDthat the biblical book of Ecclesiastes has

a particular interest in material problemswealth and poverty, good andbad investments, indeed, the whole world of money and possessions.1Amongrecent scholars, Mitchell Dahood was particularly sensitive to this issue,listing in one article some twenty-nine different "commercial terms" found inthe book.2Among the most prominent are prr, a word usually translated as"advantage," but which often seems to have a more technical sense of"profit" or "net gain." This word appears no less than eighteen times in ourbook, followed byTO*,"wealth," which is found twelve times, andVD,else

where "labor" or "toil" but, according to some,3

here with the meaning of"possession" or "earnings" (it also occurs twelve times).While it might seem that Dahood and others have exhausted the subject,

there remain more than a few verses in Ecclesiastes in which the author'sprecise thoughts about money and material problems, and indeed his use ofterms relating to these matters, might still bear some investigation. My purpose in the following is to discuss several such verses having to do with

1This aspect of Ecclesiastes was highlighted in C. W. Reines, "Koheleth on Wisdom andWealth,"JJS 5 (1954) 80-84.

2 M D h d "C i Ph i i I fl i Q h l h " ib 33 (1952) 220 21


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material concerns, and then to turn more generally to the question of Qoheleth's manner of presenting these matters and what, if anything, can belearned from it.

I

MY FIRST EXAMPLE comes from Eccl 5:5:

irn row >D*3sVIDKHbm jvtn ironV po pnVK rrcwo VamiVipV* o*nVxn * nV

Letnot your mouth lead you intosin,and do not say before themessengerthatitwas amistake;why should God be angryatyourvoice,and destroythework

ofyour hands?(RSV)This verse presents a few difficultiesnotably the origin and meaning of1*6D,which seems to refer to some sort of official emissary sent to collect onapledge;4or the precise nature of the assertion ion rmrc, usually rendered"itis a mistake." But the general sense is clear. This section begins with aninjunction to be careful in speech before God, "for God is in heaven and youare onearth,therefore let your words be few." Thetextthen turns specificallytovows before God: these are to paid promptly (v 3; in some translations, 4) and must certainly never be left unpaid:"Better that you do not vow,than that you vow and not pay"(v4;in sometranslations,5).Our own versecontinuesthis train of thought: "Do not allow your mouth to lead you5intosin,and do not say to the messenger that it was a mistake"that is, havingasserted that vows are to be paid promptly and under no circumstancessimply forgotten about, Qohelet further asserts that they are not to be dis-avowed at some later point on the grounds that the pledge was made in error.

Myquibblewith the understanding represented by,interalia,theRSVtranslationabove is slight indeed, having only to do with the latter part of

theverse: "why should God be angry at your voice and destroy theworkofyour hands?" Theword"destroy" here seems a bit on the violent side, anddoesnot ideally suit the overall context.Iwouldpropose changing nothingbut the Masoretic pointing and reading in place of the Dform Vgn the Gform ^jn oftheroot meaning"totakepossessionof a pledge,"i.e.,to distrainthe pledged item in the event of nonpayment.

As is well known, loans in biblical Israel were secured either by offeringsome item of value in pledge or by a human guarantor or pledge (a**)that

4

SeetherecentproposalofA.Rof,"The Angel' in Qohelet 5:5,"Eretz Israel14 (1978)105-9


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secured the loan. Biblicallawspecifically forbids takinginpledge such vitalitemsas amilloruppermillstone (Deut 24:6);pledged garmentshad to bereturned before sunset(Exod22:25).Indeed, from these and similar passages

itisclear that the institutionof pledgetaking was well established through-out the biblical period. What ismore, there wasanawareness that, becauseof this institutionofpledging,arash promise could have dire consequences.Thus Prov6:12:

TSDIT*?nypn 1?rony DX*

y>9 noxamibi ^s nam rwpia

My son,if you have become asurety for your neighbor, have given your pledge

for astranger,ifyou are snared inthe words ofyour mouth, caughtin the words

of your mouth . . .6

Here theinstitution of pledging has led specifically to thepledger being"snared" or "caught" by his own words. But this is precisely the warning withwhich Qohelet began our verse, "Let not your mouth lead you into sin," thatis, donot letarashvowget you into trouble with God. For reasonsofsenseaswell asassociation,therefore,itseems that the consonantal Vam ought bestto beconstrued asbelonging to thesemantic fieldof pledging rather thanutter destruction. Qohelet's meaning is: Donot besnaredby thewordsofyour mouth bydelaying payment of a vow ordenying itafter the fact,lest7

God grow impatient with your voice and distrain your possessionsas apledge. This meaning does indeed suit the contextoftheunpaidvowbetter,and makesthedivineactionnotonly less gratuitously violent butevenar-guably fair.8 Itremains only toexplain thatyv rraw, usually renderedas"handiwork"orthe like,isbest translated hereas"possessions"inkeeping

with Qohelet's tendencytouserrowtomean"collect,gather, get."9For here

6 Quite conceivably therepetition of TSno in both parts ofthe verseis anerror;cf.Peshittawhich hasbmmll' dsptwk (=naia) inplaceofthe first occurrence.

7 Thisis themeaning ofnoV here,as inEccl7:16,17; Phoen.n\Aram.KoVn; Cant1:7noto.

8 It also accords better with Deut23:22(which some have supposed a modelforEccl 5:3):"When you make vow to theLORDyour God, you shall not delay paying, for theLORDyour Godwillsurely demand itfrom you,and itshallbecounted against you asasin." Thisdivineactofdemanding ( W I T trm'a)may not mean merely insisting that thevow bepaid(andhowwouldsuch insistence beexpressed?),but rather that Godwill actually take payment one way oranother,and, what ismore,willaccountthe initial failure to pay as asin.

9 E.g., Eccl2:8, wherew s ,"I got" isinapposition to noaa, "I gathered"indeed, nVnnIPSO(2:4) means"Iincreasedmypossessions,"and the whole pleasuredome that results from


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in 5:5 it isspecificallyaperson'sworldlygoods,*TOD,thatareendangeredby a vow unpaid.

II

MY NEXT EXAMPLEcomes only two verses later,Eccl 5:7:

farmVynonnVx3 pixi DPVm npwv DKorrVy' nov roa Vy ma*D

TheRSV rendersasfollows:"If you see in aprovincethepoor oppressed andjustice and right violently takenaway, do not be amazed at the matter; forthe high official iswatched by ahigher,and there are yet higher ones over

them."Thedifficulty inthisparticularverseisthatittranslatestooeasily.Weare all accustomed in various European languages to the metaphorically"high"official,haut fonctionnaire,etc. and it is all tootemptingtoreadthismeaningintoour text. But thefactisthatrm has nosuchmeaninginBiblicalHebrew.Itmeansphysically tall or high up, and if it has any metaphoricaldimension it is not "exalted" somuchas"arrogant"or"haughty.""Talk nomoresoveryproudly"(nnaanainimn VK),Hannah sings(1Sam2:3), "norlet arrogance (pny) proceed from your mouth." Similarly one finds such

constructsas OTy rm, aV rm,na and mi (Ps 101:5; Prov 16:5; Eccl 7:8), allin the sense of haughtiness or impatience. Thus it seems hardly likely that ourverse means "one high official watches over another," but only one arrogantperson watches over another. This certainly is a possible reading, but unsatisfactory: does awareness of a network of arrogant people remove oursense of bewilderment at the perversion of justice and oppression of thepoor?

There is another, albeit minor, difficulty with our received text. It saysorrVy orrori loi? naa Vyra*>a. There is an asymmetry between the two prep

ositions, the first Vyo and the second simply -Vy. The tendency of commentators is to suppose an original o dropped off the secondVyby haplography,and so they amend the text to read DrrVy Danari. But this too is a problem,for the combinationVyo TIDPexists nowhere else in the Bible. The expressionVymatt in the sense of "to watch over" occurs once in 1 Samuel and twice inProverbs, but Vy mow occurs nowhere else but here. If one wished to retainthe sense of"to watch over," then it would be necessary, despite the argumentof haplography, to emend in the other direction and suppose that our text

should read larc naibvrm.


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I am inclined toemend in this fashion, but not for this reason. For naam* Vy hasanothermeaninginHebrew.Phrases of thetype"X Vy X" areusedin the Bibleto express specifically the ideaof alargequantity,dozens upon

dozens: nw Vynw (Isa29:1),Vy(Isa 30:1), "arc Vy iav (Jer 4:20), owaw Vy (2 Chr 21:15). Particularly interesting, in the light of resemblancestraced between the syntax and diction of Ecclesiastes and those of variousPhoenician inscriptions,10 is the sentence of the Karatepe inscription 26:68,nanbvrunaipo *?y DOVy oo pyVysi"And I amassed horse uponhorse, shield upon shield, campuponcamp. . . . " n

In the light of all this, Iwould see nai Vy(a) rm as an expression ofmultitude, "one naaupon another is at watch, and more upon them." Buthere, inviewof theunsatisfactorynatureof rm as"highofficial"or"arrogant

one," one might seek torepoint the same consonants in adifferent fashion.The verbal root ra* has another meaning, one not generally found in theHebrewBiblebut quitecommon in both Mishnaic Hebrewand Aramaic: itmeans"take payment"or "collect" as of adebtor taxes,12 thus, "If she tookout her bill of divorcement she takes payment nau of the amount of hercontract" (m. Ketub. 9:9); "A dayworker may take payment nau all night"(m.B. Mes.9:11). If the rm in our text is to be associatedwiththis rootratherthanthatmeaningto "be high,"thenthemeaningis clear: oppressionof thepoor and theperversionofjusticeare not to bewonderedat, for everyoneis"on the take," one "paymenttaker" roa upon another is watching for hisopportunity.The connection betweensuch paymentsand injustice,orwhatourversecallsDIPVn,is not only obvious; it is virtually a biblical clich:

Youshall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality and you shall not takea bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of therighteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow. (Deut 16:18-20)

Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after gain; they tookbribes and perverted justice. (1 Sam 8:3)

A wicked man accepts his bribe from the bosom to pervert the way of justice.(Prov 17:23)

Thus the "perversion of justice" (pisi DWVn) spoken of in our verse mightwell mean more specifically the perversion of justicethrough bribery,namely,

10 See the articles by M. Dahood in Bib33 (1952) 30-52, 191-221, and Bib39 (1958)302-18. I believe Dahood's theory of the "Phoenician provenance" of Ecclesiastes is wrong;

nevertheless,the data he adduces to showresemblancesbetween the diction, syntax, and grammarof Phoenician inscriptions and that of Ecclesiastes are certainly correct, and thus quiterelevant to the present point


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by offering payment to one roa or another (who are, according to our verse,in no short supply). This might also explain why "oppression of the poor"npxnis conjoined here with the perversion of justice, for the poor, unable

to offer bribes, are thus easy prey to the bribers and their complicitouspayment-takers.

In this connection it is further to be noted that our verse contains animportant qualification: "If you see oppression of the poor and the perversion of justice and right nnoa. . . . " This word, which means "province" (ormore literally "jurisdiction") in other postexilic books, is used twice in Ecclesiastes, here and in 2:8, and in neither case is the meaning of "province"entirely satisfactory.13 In our verse, one might wonder: are the poor op

pressed and justice perverted within the "province" but not outside it? Instead, it certainly seems plausible that the word nno has a somewhatdifferent coloring here, not province or jurisdiction as such, but jurisdictionrather in the sense of "place of judgment," that is, the etymological meaningofnriD,judgment-place. Alternately, it may be that our Urtext had the closecognateJVT,"legaldispute"(it parallels an in Jer 15:10; Hab 1:3; Prov 15:18;etc.), or perhaps the plural form ' (Qere: OTTO in Prov 18:19; 23:29;26:21). ElsewhereQohelet laments,"In placeofjudgment Dip,thereis

evil, and in the placeof

justicenxnDip, there is evil" (3:16). If "place of

judgment" or "legal dispute" is to be understood for nn in our verse, thenhis observation here is rather of the same order: "If you see oppression of thepoor and the perversion of justice and right in the judgment-place [or: in alegal dispute], do not wonder at the matter. . . . "

There remain only the last two words of our verse to be accounted for.The consonants*can beconstruedequallywellas rp| ornj in the first halfof Qohelet's saying, but the plural DTOJI can only represent our root"haughty" or "high." It is certainly not impossible that our author here, as

so often elsewhere, is playing on the similarity of two roots or sounds. Butto me it seems far more likely that the present MT merely contains a piousemendation. It is all too easy to imagine how a scribe or copyist, eithermistakenly or on purpose, identified Qohelet's sentiments here with thoseenunciated in the just-cited verse 3:16, "And I saw under the sun that in theplace of judgment, there is evil, and in the place of justice, there is evil." Forconfronted with this disturbing observation, Qohelettherecontinues: "I saidtomyself,but the righteous and the wicked God will judge, for there comes

a time for each thing, and for all that is done there" (3:17). In other words,


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the spectacle of injustice should not be disturbing, since the fact of divinejudgment ultimately will set things aright.

Itmay have seemed to our copyist that, in our verse as well, apparent

injustice is being explained by the capacity ofdivine judgmentto even thescalesafter death. "If you see oppression of the poor and the perversion of

justice and right in the placeof judgment,do not be astonished at the matter:for roa upon roa is watching...." Understandingtheseas rpa rather than roa,he took the meaning to be that those on high are observing all and willexecutefinaljudgment later on. As later Jewishexegesis codified this view:"roa VDroathese are the angels; God Himself."14 Having under-stood roa as rpa, he would unhesitatingly "correct"DO*to D*roa so that it

might agree in meaning with the first two.In sum, our verse should be translated: "If you see the oppression of thepoor and the perversion ofjustice and right in the placeof judgment,do notbe astonished at the matter; for one paymenttaker upon another is atwatch,15and other paymenttakers upon them." Though it has taken muchexplaining to arrive at this translation, only two slight modifications havebeen introduced into the consonantaltext,theexcisionofthe Dfrom Vyo (andthe asymmetry of ^Dand orr^y had in anycaseforced earlier commentatorsto alter thetextin one direction or another); and the removal of the from

D roawhich, it is argued, was a scribal insertion in the first place, based upona mistaken or deliberate construal of our verse as a pious assertion of thetriumph of divinejustice.

Ill

MY NEXT EXAMPLEbegins somewhat later in the same chapter, in Qo-helet'sdescription of the sad fate of the son whose potential inheritance has

all been lost in bad management and who, consequently, is forced to strugglehis whole life simply to stay alive (5:1215). The description of his woescontinuesin 16:

vbm roin OSDI VDX>jiproVD VDoa

The phraseVDT"juma, usually translated"he eatsindarkness,"has beenvariously explained:as a poor man, he is unable to afford oil to light hishouseatnight;or as adestitutelaborer,he is forced to hire himselfout untilaftersunset and as aconsequencecannotreturnforsupperuntil after dark.

14 Eccl Rab ad loc


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Neitherofthese is entirely convincing, however; among other things, if onlythe evening meal is intended, VDX> pro seems far too broadone wouldexpectima tax* nWo ("at night he eats in darkness") or the like. Morever,

the "eating in darkness" does not fit well with the rest of the sentence. Itwouldbe possible to repointtax*totax*,yielding "all his days he is consumedin [or: "by"] darkness" but thiswould not materially improve the sense.

The Old Greek, SyroHexaplar, and Coptic versions all read taxi fortax\ Following these, the RSV translates, " . . . and spent all his days indarkness and grief, in much vexation and sickness and resentment." But ofcourse there is no "spent" in our verse: construingtax*as taxi makes our verseinto a nominal sentence,and a rather long one at that: "All his days [are] indarkness and grief and much vexation and sickness and anger."While thiscertainly is possible, some sort of finiteverb wouldseem desirable here, allthe more so because "all his days are in darkness" etc. remains an equallypuzzling expression in Hebrew and English.16

A simple solution is at hand,17 one that requires changing nothing butthe Masoretic dot over the letterw,The root ifem occurs some twentyeighttimes in the Hebrew Bible: its basic meaning is "restrain, hold back, spare."(The nominal form , "restraint," occurs in Isa 14:6.) Moreover, it is acommon word in postbiblical Hebrew, where it sometimes has the specificcoloration of "to be sparing with regard to money" (see, e.g.,Sifra, 'Emor23:13;b. Menah.86b). Thus, the fate of our poor fellow is clear: "Yea, all hisdays he eats in spare fashion," in want, never able to allow himself a lavishmeal thatwould truly fill his belly.

Here is might be added that there is another description of poverty inthe next chapter that may well use the sameword.Describing the fate of one

who has been dispossessed by another, Qohelet laments (6:4):

noy law "UProi j roi xa taroo

For he enters with nothing, and in darkness he departs [i.e. dies],

and with darkness his name will be covered.

16 What is more, translating ax as"grief*is fudging a bit: the word means "mourning,"asof the dead (so Eccl7:2), and it is hardly clear what mourning the dead has to do with thisimpoverished unfortunate's condition.

17 For a time I thought it was my own, but I have discovered that it was first proposedsometime ago by A. B. Ehrlich. As strange as it is to findthat a problematic textlike this oneissimply the result of some slight misreading, it is still stranger to witness the phenomenon ofthe correct explanation being put forward by one critic and subsequently rejected byothers.So

Gordis specifically rejects Ehrlich's reading(Koheleth, 254), nor is it taken up by C. F.Whitley'srecentexcellent study,Koheleth: His Language and Thought (BZAW 148;Berlin: de Gruyter,


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The very repetition of "darkness" might indicate that something is wrong.And in fact itis:thefirst"darkness"isnot*\tinbut-pn,that is, our "restraint"or want. Such, Qohelet says, is the fate of the dispossessed one: he entersVana, without substance, with emptiness, and he dies ifrro, in penury, andafter death "his name is covered in darkness," that is, he disappears as if hehad never been, the itf ro of the last phrase picking up nicely the sound of thepreceding ifrro.18

It is to be noted that some commentators and translators mistakenlyhave referred this description to the "stillborn" (taa) mentioned in the previous verse.19This is to miss the point entirely! Qohelet here iscomparingthefate of one dispossessed with that of the taa: forjust like the taa, so the

dispossessed one's existence amounts to nothing. It is precisely to elaboratethe comparison with the taa that the dispossessed's existence is described inthese stark, stillborn-like terms.20

IV

OUR NEXT VERSE COMES in a section that begins with a sentiment thatsurely has occurred to many a starving graduate student, nVni Vnnan nat)

"Wisdom is good with inherited property" (Eccl 7:11). Despite the obvioussagacity of these words, scholars have cogently suggested that the text beemended to nVm nan roa or possibly nVro ta,21 "wisdom is better thaninherited property"i.e., better than any material fortuneand this pioussentiment does seem to accord well with what precedes it, a series of assayings, all of which are indisputably X-is-better-than-Y comparisons. Butthe verse of interest here is the following one, which reads:

rrtaa rrnn naanrt nsn pin*i pan taa noann Vsa o

Forthe protection ofwisdom islike the protection ofmoney;and the advantageof knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.(RSV)

18 An illustrious person's reputation (av) is what usually survives after his death; see Eccl7:1. But alas, this poor fellow's fate is such that even his name is covered over after death.

19 See thus RSV20 Likewise the next verse, 6:5, continues the comparison: "Even though he has never seen

the sun nor known anything, that one [i.e., the stillborn] was better off than this one."21 Thus the Peshitta translates and cf. NEB:"Wisdom is better thanpossessions, and

an advantage to all who see the sun." Note also the discussion in K. Galling,"Der Prediger,"Die Fnf Megilloth (HAT 18; 2d ed.; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1969) 106-7, and Gordis,


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The first partofthis sayingis along-standingcrux.Thereis, to myknowledge,nosayingofparallel structurein thewhole HebrewBible, that is, nosaying that reads,"In the X ofY,in the X ofZ."Indeed,it isstrikinghow

sayingsofa somewhat similar structure nevertheless diverge from thatofthisverse,atleastas it iscurrently understood. ElsewhereinEcclesiastes (5:10)we read rrVaiximnainmana,thefinite verb of the second part thus contrasting withthestructure allegedfor theabove verse. Indeed, ifQohelet'sintentioninour verseis tolink wisdomandwealth (and especially givenhistasteforpuns),hemight well havesaid:3Vra nann Vxa,"By wisdom'sprotectionis wealth keptsafe"again,afiniteverb would be whatonewouldnormallyexpectin such a formulation. Ps91:1,piVrrnrc Vxa pV inoaairr,is

likewise eloquent in its divergence: following this analogy our verse mightreadpVnnoan Vxa noann Vsa ar> ("he who dwells in wisdom's protection is[likewise]protectedbywealth").Ifnotthese,then one would certainlyexpectnoannVxa^anything, that is, but "pan Vsa noann Vxa.22

As is well known, F. Zimmermann championed the theory thatEccle-siastes is actually a Hebrew translation of an Aramaic original,23 and thisparticular verse served as a showcase example. For he saw behind the He-brew text a putative Aramaic orignial nVoa (="be idle, fail, etc."),which a

Hebrew translatormight then have mistaken for AramaicaplusxVo(="shad-ow")yielding theHebrewVsa.24This is certainly anevocativesuggestion.Thedifficulty with it is that it is tied to a theorythe Aramaic original of Ec-clesiastesthat seems hardly plausible.25 What is more, in this particularinstanceit is difficult to see how a Hebrew translator could fail to recognizeand understand in an Aramaictextthe root Vwa whichexistsboth in Biblical

22 Perhaps the strugglewiththe verse's meaning is reflected in the versions. The OG reads:

" , supposing a Hebrew textVsranoann aVxa,"In its shadow [that ofnVroof the previous verse] wisdom is as the shadow of silver." This doesnot make admirable sense, but a Hebrew text that had an overt comparison (... Vara.. . . Vxa)wouldat least sound better than the unparalleled "In the X of Y, in the X of Z."Notealso thatthe Syriac has xnoamnVVtnVoo RDoaiHV?O, "For the protection of wisdom is like the pro-tectionof money,"i.e.pan Vxa noann x'a.Cf. Jerome: Sicut enim protegit sapientia, sic protegitpecunia ("Forjustas wisdom protects, so money protects"). This form for theproverbseemsentirely defensible. If one can assume some confusion betweenaand a, it is easy to imagine howan original joan Vxa noann Vx 'a could become panVaranoann Vxa.

23 F. Zimmermann, "The Aramaic Provenance ofQohelet,"JQRn. s. 36(194546) 1745.24

Zimmermann^ Aramaic hypothesis subsequently was taken up by H. L. Ginsberg,who, however, ended up adopting the explanation of TurSinai (see below) for this particularverse in his Hebrew commentary nVnp (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Neuman 1977)


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Hebrew (Eccl 12:3!) and in Mishnaic Hebrew in abundanceindeed, fail torecognize it and be forced into the contortions of "In the shadow of X . . ."etc.

An alternative proposal might be simply to emend the Hebrew conjec-turally to *]oa Va naan n*?a.26Here we can readily imagine how the of anoriginalnVoabecame attached to thefollowing nanasVa was misread Vxa,and subsequently awas attached to *)oa for the sake of symmetry.Anotherconjectural emendationwas putforward by H.TurSinai27who saw in Vxa anoriginal Va, yielding "he possesses wisdom" or "he who has acquired

wisdom."Thisalso is aneminentlyplausible readingand fitswellwithinthecontext.

At theriskofoverwhelmingthereader,I cannot refrainfromobservingthat at least two morealternativesremainto be put forward.Thefirstwouldbe to emend our Vxa to Vxx, a root meaning "save" or "set aside." This is arelativelyrareword,but Qohelet knowsitheuses it in 2:10. Itwouldwork

wellin thepresentcontext and especially if, as seemspossible,theverbmighthavesome vaguelycommercialovertones. "Wisdom isbetterthaninherited

wealth," says our author, "for he who has saved up wisdom has saved upmoney." Proverbs of the same construction as this lastpart are not hard to

find,e.g., Prov 18:22:ai xxaTONXXO,"he who has found a wife has foundgoodness." The trouble with this is that confusion between and a seemsunlikely. The other proposalwould be to leavethe consonantal text exactlyas is, but topointVxa in each case as averb,Vxa (again on themodelofXXDai N2 rwv).Unfortunately, this verbal root appears to be extremely rarebut there are other rarities in the strange diction of Qohelet, so that perhapsthis possibility is not to be excluded. The root Vsa has been asserted to meanto "strip off' or "cut off' on analogy with its Ethiopie cognate,28and mightthus be connected with Hebrew Vxa ("onion") as well as with potentiallyrelated roots of similar meaning, "isa ("cut off, break off"), and possibly ysa("cut off," but here the middle radical is proto-Semitic d). On analogy withthis last root, whose "cut off" yields the noun arca, "profit,gain,"perhaps ourVsa might have had a similar, even technical, sense, i.e., "He who has ^xa [cutoff, nay, gained] wisdom has Vxa money."29

26This possibility was cited (though ultimately rejected) by Gordis, Koheleth,274.27 "DunkeleBibelstellen,"VomAlten TestamentKarl Marti zum siebzigsten Geburtstage

gewidmet (ed. K. Budde; BZAW41;Giessen: Tpelmann, 1925) 280.28BDB, 130.29


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But rather than to insist on one or the other of these alternatives, mypurpose in exploring the history of this problem has been in part to demon-stratehow easily the rest of the verse in question gets overlooked. To repeat,

the verse as a whole reads:rrVsaynsn mnn noann nanpirmjoan Vsa noann Vxa

Despite the awkwardness of the construct noann nm pw, it seems to passlargely unquestioned. RSV has: "For the protection of wisdom is like theprotection of money; and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom pre-serves the life of him who has it." Similarly Gordis: "For there is the doubleprotection of wisdom and money, and the advantage of knowing that wisdompreserves the lives of those who possess it." NewJPSV: "And the advantageof intelligence is that wisdom preserves the life of him who possesses it." C.F Whitley, sensitive to the problem, asserts that "it is doubtful that thephrase noann nanpirn is original to the Hebrew text" and proposes trans-posing it to 11, "where it should replace wu" 3 0

Butnone of this is necessary. Thes sense is perfectly clear, if only it isunderstood that noann nsnpirn is not one long construct, but that amajorpause comes between pro* and the next word. For however one seeks toexplain Vsa in this verse, whether as n^oa ("is lacking"or, perhaps better,

Vtsa, "he who has nullified") or Vya ("possesses") orVXK("has stored up") orVxa ("has cut off" or "gained"), or even the old Vxa ("in the shadow of0 theverse should bedivided:

pro*isoan Vxa noann VsarrVya rrnn noann nn

For the sense, it is best to review the whole context in order to see how this

fits in. nVm os noan nano"Better is wisdom than inherited wealth"*KIV i mtforcn"and it pays back tohumankind.31 For he who has acquired wisdom

othersthat lack thepreposition,such asSilliIshtar,SilliBel,etc.,and this same argument hasbeenmarshalled to explain such names as mVxa in Ezra2:52 (=rrVxaNeh.7:54),as well as aaVxain an Arad ostraconof the eighth century (and cf. the name of the amora nixano *n;seeM.HelderandM.Uhnah, o*napn mownimoD[Haifa:UniversityofHaifa, 1978]38).But this argument will not work for the namesVxan,Vxa,and[?]*Vxafound inSafaiticandThaumudic(i.e., dialectical Old Arabic) inscriptions(seeG. L. Harding,An Indexand Con-cordanceofPreIslamicArabian NamesandInscriptions[Toronto:University of Toronto,1971]13, 108,936),for here thecognate of our Hebrew Vx should be Vu. If to etc. there must then

representa verbal to, it is hard toinsistthatthe sameis not thecasewith our Arad to, biblicalmto, or, I believe, biblical ^Rto.

30 Whitl K h l h 65


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[or: "the possessor of wisdom," "he who has stored up wisdom," "he who hasgained wisdom," "he who has nullified wisdom,"etc.]has acquired [or:"pos-sesses," "has stored up," etc.] pirn *)0D,money and profit [perhaps in the

senseofprincipal andinterest];the knowledge of wisdom noann nsn keeps itspossessors alive." Clearly JTWparallels irr in the previous verse: "Better iswisdom than inherited wealth and itpays back tohumankind, for he whoacquires wisdom acquires money andpayback. . . . " The idea that pin* inEcclesiastes means specifically financial gain, "the surplus of the balancesheet,"has been recognized for at least the lasthundredyears.32That3andpin

1stand in the relationship of "capital asset"and "income from assets"is

not only suggested by Qohelet's use of pin* elsewhere,33 but by the very

continuation of this verse, rrtwarrnnnoann nsn where mnn is used in the clearsenseof "keep alive, support, nourish" frequent in the Dform of this verb.(Note also that noann nn is the appropriate feminine subject of this verb,whereas pnn> is masculine; moreover noan nrr appears in Eccl 1:17, whereaspin* in such a combination never does.) Thus in our phrase noannnsn, wisdomis the capitalasset,and it is the action to ran that yields the wherewithal tosustain life: noann ron provides one with aliving income.

VTkE MENTIONOFTHIS SPECIALIZED MEANING ofpin* brings me to my last

example, which, however, involves so slight a change in understanding as tobe scarcely worthy of mention, save perhaps in the presentcontext.It comesin a verse which is another longstanding Qohelet crux, Eccl 4:2:

nny Dn non WK onn jo mo naarc o non axnnim

And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than thelivingwho are still alive.(RSV)

The form ofnavihas been the subject of intense scrutiny. Mostrecent com-mentators take it as an infinitive absolute with finite meaning, comparing itsuse here to similar occurrences ofthe infinitive absolute in such verses as Lev6:7and Num15:35,or(with,as here,afollowing personal pronoun) Esth9:1,a practice apparently paralleled in Phoenician.34In focusing on the syntac-tical issue, however, it appears that commentators have let slip a minor

32

See sources in Gordis,Koheleth, 205.33 Ibid.Note thatQohelet'squestion in 1:3, rawn nnn Verw iVo te Olirnm ,meansspecificallywhat netgain,and his answer,"None,**issupported by the subsequently tidy picture


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problem in translation. The above-cited RSV translation strikes me as essentially correct, but somewhat free. For biblicalnan;means to "praise," notto "think fortunate;" more literally, then, our verse would mean: "So I praise

the dead, who are already dead, more than the living who are still alive." Itis,of course, easy to see why theRSV andother translators have shied awayfrom such a rendering. After all, why praise the dead "more than" the livingi.e., why give a lot of praise to one group and only a little to another,when clearly the meaning seems to call for something like praise and itsabsence: "I praise the deadand not the living"? Indeed, why introduce theidea of "praise" in the first place when the context seems to suggest that whatis really being offered is a ranking, that is, the dead are better off,not morepraiseworthy, than the living?("And,"the text immediately continues, "better

thanbothDTOWDawis the one who has not yet been born, for he has notseen the evil doings that are done under the sun.")

All this is to suggest that the word navi should perhaps be dissociatedentirely from the idea of "praise." This same root has another meaning inMishnaic Hebrew, a commercial meaning, "to increase in value." Thus: "If[a dyer] dyed [wool and it came out] poorly, if the increase in value (naw) is[nevertheless] greater than the expense, then he [the owner of the wool] mustpay the expense, but if the expense was greater than the increase in value, he

must pay the increase in value" (m. B. Qam. 9:4). As a verb in MishnaicHebrew, narc can mean "to grow in value" in the G-form, and to "improve"or "raise up in value" in the D-form. Thus it would seem entirely possiblethat our verse is using nav in just such a sense here. "And so I raise up in value[that is, "I esteem higher"] the dead, in that they are already dead, over theliving, in that they have yet to live; but better than both is the one who hasnot yet been born "As noted, this is basically the same translation as thatoffered by the RSV and other recent translators, the only difference beingthat the verb nav has been located in a somewhat different (and, if Mishnaic

Hebrew is any guide, a specifically commercial) semantic field.35

VI

HAVING LOOKED AT THESE PARTICULAR INSTANCES of Qohelet's concernwith matters material and financial, we might now take a step backward andsee what, in general, can be concluded from the things he has had to say inthis domain. First, a word about his vocabulary. While others have been

35Note that raw in the G-form in MH has only an intransitive meaning. If, however, in


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zealous in cataloguing "commercial terms" and the like in Ecclesiastes, itmay be worthwhile to note the words that do not appear. Most striking byitsabsence is thewordpn, "wealth."Onemight conclude that Qohelet simply

doesnot know it: not only does he use"iirwwith monotonous regularity, butwhen he wishes to pile up synonyms or related terms, it isD'oaanITO (5:18),or Tiaai D'oaai nrw(6:2).Similarly, he does not know ^Vrc in its(late)sense of"wealth" (see, e.g., Ps 119:162; Prov 1:13;31:11). This is striking becauseboth these words, and particularly the former,36 are often associated with the"wisdom milieu"indeed, pn occurs in the Book of Proverbs some eighteentimes (out of a total of26uses in the Bible overall). Of course there is littledoubt that Qohelet was associated withsomewisdom milieuthe pursuit ofwisdom is,in no obscure way, the subject ofhisbookbut ifthesetwo lexical

items are any guide, his "wisdom milieu" was linguistically somewhatdif-ferent from that of the Book of Proverbs and other, especially late, wisdomtexts.(By this I mean not only Psalm 119,which uses both Vro and pn, butalsoBen Sira, with multiple occurrences of both in the extant Hebrew frag-ments.)

The other striking circumstance to emerge from an examination ofQo-helet'stalk about money is that he inhabits a world, or more precisely aclass,of financial highrollers. In thatworld fortunes are amassed (2:8) or lost in

a bad business deal (5:13); accumulated wealth is managed for good or ill(5:12),even sent overseas(11:1).There is no talk of petty loans to farmersin need of tidingoverthe sort of loans on which ordinary Israelites areenjoined not to demand discount or interest (Deut 23:2021).Indeed, thereis no talk of borrowing or loaning (bnv, mV,rwi)at all, nor of itscosts(*pn,mann, n^ano): money, or rather fortunes, seem to be invested.Qohelet hassome sympathy for the oppressed (4:1), but he envies, rather grandly, thesimple worker's sound sleep,contrasting it to the rich man's worries that keep

him up all night(5:11).Certainly this betrays the rich man's perspective. Theonephenomenon that truly seems tobringtears to his eyes is not poverty somuch as the fall from riches, the fate of one whose father has lost the familyfortune (5:1217) or one who amasses wealth only to see it taken away byanother (6:15). These are a "grievous evil" in two alternate formulations(nVin nn and sn>5:12,15; 6:2). All this suggests a milieu of relativelysophisticated financial dealings, and of a class of entrenched wealth.

Can this help to situate Qohelet geographically and chronologically? Astothe former, Eccl 1:12 seems to locate our author in Jerusalem: if so,it isaJerusalem of established institutions and potentially corrupt officials (5:7),


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as well as (for the reasons just noted) one of fairly sophisticated financialdealings. But in what period might this be the case? My own inclination isto date the book rather earlier than most scholars.37The absence of almost

any scriptural reference38

stands in stark contrast to Ben Sira, which reflectsendlessly on scriptural verses; given what we know about the interest inscriptural exegesis in the third and even fourth century B.C.E.,39 this is astriking datum. There are two Persian loanwords in the book, oris and ouw,but not a trace of Greek, nor, despite theories once fashionable, any evidenceof specifically "Greek thought." All this would lead me to date the composition of Ecclesiastes no later than the mid-fourth century, and quite possiblyearlier.

Striking also in the book is its utter lack of what one might call Judeannationalism or consciousness. Apart from the matter-of-fact mention of Qohelet's kingship "over Israel in Jerusalem," there is no mention of that "Israel." Not only are there, as noted, no actual scriptural allusions, but noneeither to the history or current situation of the people of Israel. True, the"world of wisdom" is a world of timeless verities, and one finds a similar lackin Proverbs (though not, as noted in Ben Sira); but this book does not quitedwell in such a timeless vacuumit is full of thefirst-personnarrator and hisexperiences. The omission of national and historical reference must thereforestill be considered striking.

If the book is to be located in the Persian period, these arguments, alongwith those connected with the material circumstances discussed above,would then militate against dating it either at the end of that period or at thevery beginning. The end seems somewhat unlikely because, judging by theevidence of the material culture for this period (see below), it was a periodof rising national consciousness, even patriotism, perhaps culminating inJudean participation in the Phoenician revolt in the middle of the fourth

century.40Similarly, the period just after the return from exile, with its intenseconsciousness of the ancestral homeland and all that Israel once had

37A third- or late fourth-century date still seems the most common; Whitley, Koheleth,would even favor a mid-second-century date.

38 The only possible candidate, in my opinion, is the above-mentioned Eccl 5:3-4, with itsoverlap with Deut 23:22 (above, n. 8); however, even this strikes me as a highly questionableinstance.

39 I have recently discussed this topic at some length in J. Kugel and R. Greer, EarlyBiblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986) 40-72; see also M. Fishbane,BiblicalInterpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986).

40


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been41as well as the economic hard times that then prevailed, seems equallyimprobable. This leaves a somewhat hefty span of more than a century, fromthe fifth to the early-to-middle fourth, as the most likely bloc in which to

situate our book. About this period our knowledge has improved somewhatof late,42 though much remains to be clarified; in general, however, it is aperiod that corresponds to some oftheparticulars seen,43one in which Judeacould have had little hope on the horizon for national renewal, but only a lifein common with neighbors under a shared colonial rule, a period generallylacking in stirring causes but one of relative prosperity and, within thatcolonial framework, a network of far-flung commercial relations (as, again,the material culture bears witness).44 In such sleepy and generally orderlycircumstances a book like ours might well have been composed, perhaps evenby one who, if not actually a "king" (Eccl 1:12; 2:12), had Hebraicized as iVothe office of "governor" (nns) that he occupied, ruling over "Israel [= theJews] in Jerusalem" (1:12).

The evidence from seal impressions and coins of this period supportssuch a view. For we have, from the earlier part of the Persian period inPalestine, seals with animal and other motifs common throughout the Persian Empire, whereas starting toward the end of the fifth century we encounter seals bearing the name ofw or its abbreviation. Coins bearing thesame name appear somewhat later and proliferate in the last decades of thePersian period. This might also support a relatively early date for Qohelet,when, again, commercial relations amongst the Persian colonies would havebeen well established, economic conditions relatively stable, and yet Judeanself-awareness and national feeling might have been at an all-time low. Itwould of course be tempting, because of his strange language, to place Qohelet outside the geographic orbit of the Jerusalem speech which is apparently much of what we mean by "Biblical Hebrew," but this being eliminated

by the book's very words, one would have to allow for a sufficient time in thepostexilic period for that Hebrew to have become the unclassical thing thatit is in Ecclesiastes, or for a word like Dino to slip unselfconsciously into thebook's idiom in reference to a divine king rather than merely a Persian one.

41 Kugel and Greer,Early Biblical Interpretation, 34-39.42 For a recent survey see W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein, The Cambridge History of

Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1984).43

For the wealth of some of Judea's (Jewish) governors and their corruption, see Neh 5:15and the discussion thereof in N. Avigad,Bullae and Seals from a Post-Exilic Judean Archive(Qedem Monographs 4; Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1976) 34-36.


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For this combination of reasons, I would be inclined to locate the booksomewhere in the fifth century, a mysterious period in biblical history, butone which, by our scant evidence, might provide the proper mix of economic

stability and linguistic chaos to have generated this particular work.


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^ s

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Qohelet and Money