CHAPTER VII.
A GOOD name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.
Section IV. continued.——Providential Paradoxes leading up to the conclusion, Fear God.
(1.) GOOD is a name, (2.) good more than spikenard’s fame; and a deathday is better than one’s birthday.
VII. (1.) Good is a name, above ointment good (there is an alliteration here which gives great pungency to the sentence. The Masorets commence this paragraph with a large letter. The Jews have discovered many mysteries in these letters, but here, perhaps, it is sufficient reason to allege that a new division of the subject begins); and the day (but without the article) of the death above the day of his birth (equivalent to one’s birth, for there is no nominative expressed. Some have remarked that the second clause being connected by a conjunction with the first, is to be looked upon as containing a consequence of the fact stated in the first; which is quite true if not pressed too far. Possibly the idea might be presented thus——
All the ointment’s costly fame
Is not so good as a good name,
And thus it comes that dead saints die