Ecclesiastes 1:17

And I gave my heart The apparent iteration of the phrase of Ecclesiastes 1:13 expresses the concentration of purpose. The writer adds that his search took a yet wider range. He sought to know wisdom through its opposite, to enlarge his experience of the diseases of human thought. He had fathomed the depths of the "madness and folly;" the former word expressing in Hebrew as in English the wilder forms of unwisdom. There is, perhaps, a touch of self-mockery in the fact that the latter word in the Hebrew is all but identical in sound with a word which means "prudence." One, the writer seems to say, has the same issue as the other. Some critics, indeed (e.g.Ginsburg), think that the present text originated in an error of transcription and that we ought to read "to know wisdom and knowledge." It has been thought and, as stated in the Introduction(chap. ii.), with some reason, that in the use of the stronger word we have an echo of the current language of the Stoics who looked on all the weaknesses of mankind as so many forms of insanity. So Horace (Sat.ii. 3. 43),

"Quem mala stultitia et quemcunque inscitia veri

Cæcum agit, insanum Chrysippi porticus et grex

Autumat. Hæc populos, hæc magnos formula reges,

Excepto sapiente, tenet."

"Him, whom weak folly leads in blindness on,

Unknowing of the Truth, the Porch and tribe

Who call Chrysippus Master, treat as mad.

Peoples and mighty kings, all but the wise

This formula embraces."

So also Diog. Laert. vii. 124,

λέγουσι πάντας τοὺς ἄφρονας μαίνεσθαι.

"All that are foolish they pronounce insane."

vexation of spirit Better, feeding on wind, as before. See note on Ecclesiastes 1:14. The word is, however, not identical in form, but expresses a more concrete idea. By some it is rendered "meditation." The fact that the writer uses a word not found elsewhere in the Old Testament, suggests the thought that he wanted a new word for the expression of a new thought.