Ecclesiastes 1:12

I the Preacher was king over Israel Better, " I … have been king." It would, perhaps, be too much to say that this mode of introducing himself, is so artificial as to exclude, as some have thought, the authorship of the historical Solomon. Louis XIV."s way of speaking of himself "Quand ĵ etois roi" may well have had its parallel, as Mr Bullock suggests in the Speaker's Commentary, in the old age of another king weary of the trappings and the garb of Majesty. As little, however, can they be held to prove that authorship. A writer aiming at a dramatic impersonation of his idea of Solomon would naturally adopt some such form as this and might, perhaps, adopt it in order to indicate that it was an impersonation. The manner in which the son of David appears in Wis 7:1-15 presents at once a parallel and a contrast.