The Literature of the Old Testament

by George Foot Moore

When we look the facts squarely in the face, the only counsel of wisdom is to make the most of what capricious fortune gives us in its friendly moods, to enjoy the pleasures life offers while we can, with abandon, but without excess. For the "too much" is always evil, even too much wisdom and virtue! "Be not over righteous nor put on too much wisdom, why shouldest thou die before thy time?" (vii. 16 f.).

The author's religion makes God somehow the cause of what happens under the sun, the evil and the good. In one place he seems to express the belief that all that God does is fine and opportune, if man could only understand it; but God has denied man the intelligence to penetrate the secret of his ways. So there is nothing better for man to do than to be merry, and have a good time while he is alive!

It is easy to imagine what scandal all this gave to pious souls, and it was very natural that orthodox editors should try to neutralize Koheleth's scepticism and his epicurean counsels by notes in an opposite sense. A modern editor would have put his protests into footnotes, as for example to Gibbon's famous chapters on the spread of Christianity; an ancient editor, having no footnotes, put his incontinently into the text.

To these editorial improvements belong the last verses (Eccl. xii. 13 f.), with its conclusion, "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the business of every man; for God will bring every deed into the judgment on all secrets, whether it be good or bad." The judgment after death is evidently meant. The warning against many books and much reading in xii. 12 is also a gloss, while xii. 9-11 appears to be written by an earlier editor of the book, commending it to reading and study. In the body of the book, also, several verses are obviously introduced to give an orthodox twist to the author's very heterodox utterances.

That Ecclesiastes belongs to the latest stratum of Hebrew Biblical literature is evident from both its matter and its style; but there is nothing in it by which its age can be exactly fixed.

Song of Songs.—A verse already quoted (1 Kings iv. 32) tells that, besides three thousand proverbs, Solomon composed a thousand and five songs. We shall probably not err in assuming that this verse was in the mind of the editor who prefixed the title "The Song of Songs (that is, the very best of songs), by Solomon." There is nothing in the book to indicate that Solomon was the author or that the poet meant his productions to be attributed to him.

The one theme of the book, running through many variations, is the love of man and woman, passionate and sensuous. In the second century of our era its songs were warbled at banquets or wedding feasts, a profane abuse on which a scandalized rabbi denounced damnation. In the first century it was, in spite of Solomon's name, no Holy Scripture for the straitest sect, and was not finally admitted to the canon, we may be pretty sure, until an allegorical sense had been discovered in it, or rather imposed on it: it sang, under the figure of wedded love, of the relation of the Lord to Israel. The Fathers took over all the allegory, only making the lover Christ, the beloved the Church (as still in the running titles of the Authorized Version), or the soul. The mediæval church saw in the bride the Virgin Mary. The allegorical interpretation was a necessary corollary of the dogmatic assumption that the canon of inspired scripture could contain nothing but books of religious instruction and edification. Allegorical love poetry—usually the love of God and the soul—is not uncommon in mystical sects or circles of various creeds; and the ultra-spiritual poets often revel in an ultra-sensual imagery of passion and fruition; but nothing in the Song of Songs suggests such an origin, nor have we knowledge of a Jewish mysticism of this erotic type in the centuries from which it must come.

The literary criticism of the last century chiefly spent itself in endeavours to discover in the book a lyric drama with a moral tendency, on some such theme as the triumph of pure love over lust. Great ingenuity was expended in dividing the text into regular acts and scenes and assigning the speeches to the leading actors and the chorus. In its simplest form there were but two actors, the virtuous village maiden and the harem-jaded Solomon; a more plausible scheme gave the girl a rustic lover, which added much to the piquancy of the scenes with Solomon, and to the dénouement, in which the king, foiled by the maiden's constancy, confesses virtue triumphant, and sends her back to her shepherd swain. More recent supporters of the dramatic hypothesis have modified this scheme in a way to remove some of its plainest difficulties, but have complicated it in proportion.

Other interpreters take the book for a collection of love songs, or, more specifically, of wedding songs, such as are sung to-day at village weddings in Syria and Palestine. A certain dramatic quality in the songs, and their relation to successive stages of the festivities, would give the appearance of a progressive action which has been urged for the dramatic theory. The Syrian peasant to-day, in the region of Damascus, is for his bride-week in song and salutation a king or prince; a sledge on the village threshing-floor is his throne, and the bride is queen. Through the week the royal pair are honoured by the villagers with songs and dances. If in the Hebrew songs the bridegroom-king is sometimes called Solomon, it is because Solomon was the richest and most splendid of kings. This view of the nature of the book is simpler and more probable. The several poems are not distinguished by titles, and there is room for difference of opinion about the divisions; but this is a small difficulty compared with the partition into roles in the supposed play.

The songs are fine examples of popular poetry, with traditional subjects, forms, and imagery. Nothing requires us to suppose that they are the production of one poet; we may think of them rather as an anthology of love songs, not necessarily all composed for wedding festivities, but all appropriate for use on such occasions.