(Johann P. Lange).doc - ccbiblestudy

?Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures - Eccelesiastes?(Johann P.
Lange) Commentator
Johann Peter Lange (April 10, 1802, Sonneborn (now a part of Wuppertal) -
July 9, 1884, age 82), was a German Calvinist theologian of peasant origin.
He was born at Sonneborn near Elberfeld, and studied theology at Bonn (from
1822) under K. I. Nitzsch and G. C. F. Lüheld several pastorates, and
eventually (1854) settled at Bonn as professor of theology in succession to
Isaac August Dorner, becoming also in 1860 counsellor to the consistory.
Lange has been called the poetical theologian par excellence: "It has been
said of him that his thoughts succeed each other in such rapid and agitated
waves that all calm reflection and all rational distinction become, in a
manner, drowned" (F. Lichtenberger).
As a dogmatic writer he belonged to the school of Schleiermacher. His
Christliche Dogmatik (5 vols, 1849-1852; new edition, 1870) "contains many
fruitful and suggestive thoughts, which, however, are hidden under such a
mass of bold figures and strange fancies and suffer so much from want of
clearness of presentation, that they did not produce any lasting effect"
(Otto Pfleiderer). Introduction ECCLESIASTES
or
KOHELETH
______________
by
DR. OTTO ZÖCKLER,
Prof. Of Theology, Greifswald.
______
AMERICAN EDITION
______
EDITED, WITH ANNOTATIONS, DISSERTATIONS ON LEADING IDEAS,
together with
A NEW METRICAL VERSION and AN INTRODUCTION THERETO,
by
PROF. TAYLER LEWIS, LL. D.
Of Schenectady, N. Y.
_______________________
TRANSLATED BY
WILLIAM WELLS, A.M.
professor of the german language and literature, union college, n. y.
ECCLESIASTES
Song of Solomon, THE PREACHER
_______________
INTRODUCTION
§ 1. Name And Character Of The Book
According to the title: "The words of Koheleth, Son of David, King of
Jerusalem," this book contains the discourses or reflections of a king whom
the author presents as Song of Solomon, but whom he designates with the
peculiarly symbolical appellative ??????? This expression, which is not
used outside of this book, is used again in it several times, and twice
with the article ( Ecclesiastes 7:27; Ecclesiastes 12:8; comp. Ecclesiastes
1:2; Ecclesiastes 1:12; Ecclesiastes 12:9-10). It is clearly allied with
????? assembly, congregation of the people, and, as there is no such verb
in Kal, is to be connected with Hiphil, ????? ( Numbers 8:9; Numbers 10:7;
Numbers 20:8; Job 11:10), and is accordingly to be considered as the
feminine participial form with the signification of one holding an
assembly, preaching. This signification which the oldest translators and
expositors express (Sept.: ????????????; Hieronymus: concionator; hence
Luther: "Preacher") appears to stand in direct relation to the Chokmah of
the Old Covenant, the personified Wisdom of Solomon, preaching in the
streets and on the market places, gathering around it all who were eager to
learn ( Proverbs 1:20 sqq.; Ecclesiastes 8:1 sqq.; Ecclesiastes 9:1 sqq.).
From an original designation of this Wisdom of Solomon, the name Koheleth
seems to have become the surname of Song of Solomon, the teacher of wisdom
???' ??????, or, as it were, wisdom incarnate,-a surname that with special
propriety could be conferred on the great King, when he was represented as
teaching and preaching, as in the apocryphal book of wisdom ( Ecclesiastes
7:1 sq.; Ecclesiastes 9:7-8, etc.), or as in ours. If one does not wish
thus to explain the feminine form, Koheleth, as a designation of a male
individual (with Ewald, Köster, Hengstenberg, Hitzig, and others), there is
nothing left but to accept an abstractum pro concreto, or, what is the same
thing, to derive the feminine ending from the character of the name as an
official name; for which analogies may be quoted in the Syriac and Arabic,
as in the later Hebrew (e.g., ????????=??????,?????? administrator, ??????
fellow-citizen, etc.; comp. J. D. MICHAELIS, Supplement to Heb. Lex.,
p2168; Gesenius, Lehrgebäude, p468, and KNOBEL Commentary, 10.)-In any
case, Song of Solomon, who was pre-eminently and emphatically the wise man
among the kings of Israel, must be understood under the peculiar name of
Koheleth; as is shown not only by the title, but also by the studied
description of the learning of Koheleth, comprehending every thing under
heaven ( Ecclesiastes 1:13; Ecclesiastes 8:9), and by his zealous searching
after wisdom and truth ( Ecclesiastes 1:13; Ecclesiastes 12:9), his
transcendent fame as a sage ( Ecclesiastes 1:16; Ecclesiastes 2:15), and
finally his activity as a teacher of wisdom and author of proverbs (
Ecclesiastes 12:9). For these are all characteristics which the book of
Kings attribute honorably to Song of Solomon, and of all the posterity of
David, to him only ( 1 Kings 2:9; 1 Kings 3:12; 1 Kings 5:9-13; 1 Kings
10:1; see the Introduction to the Literature of Solomon in general (in the
beginning of this volume).
The whole literary character of the book proves also that it belongs to the
circle of the Solomonic writings on Wisdom of Solomon, if not in the
narrower then in the broader sense, and raises it to a certainty, that
under the Koheleth, therein appearing as speaker, none other can be meant
than Solomon. For the book belongs clearly to the class of didactic
teachings, and is distinguished from the Proverbs as the characteristic and
principal representative of this poetic style in the Old Testament, mainly
by the fact that it does not range numerous individual proverbs loosely and
without consecutive plan, but rather develops one narrow and close circle
of thoughts and truths in poetical and rhetorical form. The idea of the
vanity of all human things clearly forms the centre of this circle of
thought, the common theme of the four discourses, into which the whole
falls according to the division mainly corresponding to the intention and
plan of the author. To the dialectically progressive development and
illumination in various directions which these discourses cast upon the
theme in question, there corresponds an appropriate change from special
moral maxims to longer or shorter descriptions of conditions, citations of
doctrines or examples, observations regarding personal experience, and
reflections on prominent and subordinate truths. There is also, in a formal
view, a strophic division of the discourse, marked by formulas and terms
repeated either literally or in sense, and a fitting diversity of style
corresponding to the various objects, expressed in rhythmical prose, or
lofty rhetorical and poetical diction. As the shortest expression for the
designation of these peculiarities, the term "Philosophical and Didactic
Poem" might be used; but in this, however, the idea of the philosophical
must embrace the characteristic peculiarities of the spiritual life and
aspirations of the Hebrews, or rather of the Shemitic people in general
(comp. Introd. to Proverbs, § 2, p5 sqq.).
Observation1.-The tracing of the name ???? to ???, ????? in the sense of
congregare, conscionari, has the best authority, and is supported by the
oldest as well as by the most numerous and critical among the modern
expositors of this book. Hieronymus says, Comment, in Ecclesiastes 1:1 :
"Coëleth, i.e., Ecclesiastes. ' ???????????? autem Gr?co sermone
appellator, qui coetum, i. e, ecclesiam congregat, quem nos nuncupare
possumus concionatorem, eo quod loquatur ad populum, et sermo ejus non
specialiter ad unum, sed ad universos generaliter dirigatur." Later
expositors and lexicographers have fixed the fundamental meaning of the
root ??? properly as that of "calling," and hence compare ???? Arabic
quâla, and Greek ?????., with Latin, calare, clamare. ??????? "the caller,
the preacher," is clearly nearest allied to the synonymous ????????? Isaiah
40:3. On account of this fundamental signification of "calling," we condemn
these expositions of the name which proceed from the supposed root idea of
gathering or collecting. To these belong1) the opinion of Grotius, Herder,
Jahn, etc.: that the word means collector sententiarum, a collector of
sentences-a view that some ancient translators have already expressed,
e.g., Aquila (?v??????????); Symmachus (????????????); 2) Van der Palm's
modification of this view from a partial consideration of 1 Kings 8:1; in
which Solomon is spoken of as the assembler of his people and his elders
??????? i.e., congregator, coactor; 3) the view of Nachtigal and Döderlein,
that ???????=congregatio, consessus, "learned assembly, academy," according
to which the book would be marked as a collection of philosophical
disputations in the style of the Seances of Hariri, or the Collectiones
Patrum of Cassian (an acceptation clearly at variance with such passages as
Ecclesiastes 1:12; Ecclesiastes 12:9-10, etc.); 4) the strange assertion of
Kaiser: that ??????? is the same as collectivum, and means the whole of the
Davidic Kings, from Solomon to Zedekiah, whose history the book delineates
in chronological order (Kaiser, Koheleth, the Collectivum of the Davidic
Kings, Erlangen, 1823, comp. § 6).--That no one of these explanations
deserves attention, in view of the illustrations already given, is quite as
certain as that it must also remain doubtful which of the two efforts to
explain the feminal form of the name, which our paragraph has named as the
principal, or, rather, only possible ones, deserves the preference. For the
view of the expression taken by Ewald and Köster, that it is synonymous
with Wisdom of Solomon, and in so f