Ecclesiastes 2:4

I made me great works The verse may be either a retrospect of the details of the life of the pleasure-seeker as sketched in the previous verse, or, as seems more probable, the account of a new experiment in which the man passed from purely sensual pleasures to the life of what we know as -culture," the pursuit of beauty and magnificence in Art. Here the writer throws himself into the surroundings of the historical Solomon. We may venture to refer to Tennyson's Palace of Artas tracing the working out of a like experiment to its inevitable issue. See Appendix II.

I builded me houses We think of David's house of cedar (2 Chronicles 2:3) and the storehouses, oliveyards and vineyards (1 Chronicles 27:25-31) which Solomon had inherited, of his own palace, and the house of the forest of Lebanon and the house for Pharaoh's daughter, which he built (1 Kings 7:1-9), of Tadmor and Hamath and Beth-horon and Baalath, the cities in far off lands which owned him as their founder (2 Chronicles 8:3-6). It is significant, on any theory of authorship, that we find no reference to Solomon's work in building "the house of the Lord." That was naturally outside the range of the experiments in search of happiness and too sacred to be mentioned in connexion with them here, either by the king himself or by the writer who personates him. On the assumption of personation the writer may have drawn his pictures of kingly state from the palaces and parks of the Ptolemies, including the botanical and zoological gardens connected with the Museum at Alexandria, or from those of the Persian kings at Susa or Persepolis.

I planted me vineyards Of these one, that of Baal-hamon, has been immortalised by its mention in the Song of Solomon (Ecclesiastes 8:11). It was planted with the choicest vine, and the value of its produce estimated at a thousand pieces of silver. Engedi seems also to have been famous for its vineyards (Song Song of Solomon 1:14).