For the man is on the way to his eternal home,
and the mourners go about in the street.
Ere the silver string [the tongue] be tied,
and the golden bowl [the head] break,
and the pitcher [the heart] be shivered at the fountain,
and the windlass [the breathing apparatus] break into the pit.
With a little determination the traces of development in the Biblical literature can be more or less effaced. The pious but unphilological editors of Koheleth were not deficient in this quality. After altering the introduction of the poem on old age they proceeded to furnish it with a finale. Not only the opening words of ver. i., but the comfortless expression ‘his eternal house’[[323]] in ver. 5 gave them serious offence. One remedy would have been to transpose (with the Syriac translator) two of the letters of the Hebrew, and thus change ‘home of his eternity’ into ‘home of his travail’ (i.e. the place where ‘the weary are at rest’). They preferred, however, to add two lines—
and the dust return to the earth as it was,
and the spirit return unto God who gave it.
This no doubt is a direct contradiction of iii. 21. But the ancients probably got over this, as most moderns still do, by supposing that the earlier passage did but express a sceptical suggestion which skimmed the surface of Koheleth’s mind.