SO I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the [¹]side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.
[¹] Hebrew hand.
BUT to return: I am observing this with regard to all those afflictions which happen in this work-day world. For see now the tear of the afflicted for which there is no comforter: and that in the hand of their afflictors there is power, and yet there is no comforter.
IV. (1.) Turned I, and I see (the present tense following the perfect is equivalent to our imperfect, ‘I was again regarding;’ because this point has been touched on before, though in another form, at ii. 22, 23) with respect to all (את כל, LXX. σύμπαντα) the oppressions (with the article; we must not restrict this to the oppression of one man over another, but take the word in its general sense, as from care, sickness, misfortune, etc.) which are done (the niphal has an objective sense, ‘submitted to,’ or ‘are done upon others’) under the sun, and behold (calling attention to a manifest fact) the tear (singular. This turn of thought, which looks upon each tear as a sorrow, a type and sample of all other sorrows, is very beautiful. Compare Revelation vii. 17, and xxi. 4, Isaiah xxv. 8, for the other side of this,——‘God shall wipe away every tear,’ etc.) of the oppressings (the same word as before, העשׁקים, which the LXX., rendering ad sensum, express by a passive participle; but the meaning of the passage really requires the same word in both clauses: as far as Koheleth’s argument here is concerned, the existence of the oppressor and oppressed are equally mysterious), and there is nothing to them of comfort (the LXX. render by a participle, ‘comforting,’ ‘no one comforts them’), and in the hand of their oppressors might (this means, no doubt, ‘that the power of the oppressors was so great,’ it was impossible to escape them; but hidden underneath is the thought——which again increases the mystery——that there is a mighty hand which could restrain these if it would), and nothing to them of comfort (repeated, and so emphatic).
2 Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.
Then I for my part pronounced happy the dead who are at this time dead, above the living in their present [query? pleasant!] lives;