[333]. So Aquila, Pesh., Vulg., Grätz, Renan, Klostermann (v’kāthab).
[334]. I.e. the assemblies of ‘wise men’ or perhaps of Soferim. Surely ba’alē must refer to persons. The meaning ‘assemblies’ is justified by Talmudic passages quoted by Grätz, Delitzsch, and Wright.
[335]. So Klostermann. ‘Shepherd’ must, I think, mean teacher (comp. Jer. ii. 8, iii. 15 &c.); the expression is suggested by the ‘goads.’ ‘One shepherd’ (the text-reading) might mean Solomon; and we might go on to suppose the Solomonic origin of Proverbs as well as Ecclesiastes to be asserted in this verse. But the author of the Epilogue apparently considers Koheleth to be merely fictitiously Solomon, but really a wise man like any other. If so, he cannot have grouped it with Proverbs as a strictly Solomonic work.
[336]. So Klostermann, regarding this verse down to ‘commandments’ as an additional note on this difficult saying of Koheleth’s, which was liable to give offence to orthodox readers. The word ‘(is) vanity’ is supposed to have dropped out of the text. The object of the note is to show under what limitations it can be admitted that ‘all is vanity.’ Then the writer continues, ‘For this (concerns) every man; for every work’ &c., to show that the limiting precept is not less universally applicable than Koheleth’s melancholy formula.
[337]. Thus Delitzsch, who takes the ‘words of the wise’ and the ‘collections’ in ver. 11 to refer at least in part, the former to the detached sayings, and the latter to the continuous passages, which together make up Ecclesiastes. The ‘one shepherd’ is held to be God, so that the clause involves a claim of divine inspiration.
[338]. De Jong’s discussion of the Epilogue deserves special attention (De Prediker, p. 142 &c.); comp. however Kuenen’s reply, Onderzoek, iii. 196 &c.
[339]. Krochmal died in 1840, but his view on the Epilogue first saw the light in 1851 in vol. xi. of the Hebrew journal Morè nebūkē hazzemān (see Grätz, Kohelet, p. 47). His life is to be found in Zunz, Gesammelte Schriften, ii. 150 &c.
[340]. See Jost (Gesch. des Judenthums, i. 42, n. 2). Derenbourg too seems to tend in this direction (Revue des études juives, i. 179, note). Reuss, Bickell, and Kleinert too agree in denying that ‘Koheleth’ composed the Epilogue. So also apparently Geiger (Jüd. Zeitschr., iv. 10, Anm.)
[341]. L’Ecclésiaste, p. 73.
[342]. Meditations, ii. 3.