274

Position of the Nominative.

made by the king of Sodom, and assigns, as the reason of his declinature (verse 23),—

Lest thou shouldest say, "I have enriched Abram ; and in 1 Kings 21. 7, where Jezebel says to Ahab, I will give to thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite. As in these two passages, so likewise generally (though not universally) elsewhere than in Ecclesiastes and Canticles, "N, when expressed separately from the verb to which it is the nominative, is placed before the verb, as in Genesis 48. 22; Judges 17.2; 1 Samuel 12. 2; 2 Samuel 19. 21 (20); Psalms 2. 6 ; 3. 6 (5); 17. 4, 6; 116. 11; Job 5. 3; 19. 25; 2 Chron. 2. 7; 6. 2. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, however, is placed invariably after the verb, except where some other word intervenes, as in I. 12, 16. In connection with this point, it is a noteworthy circumstance that in the only instances (two in number) in which is used as the nominative to a preterite in the Song of Solomon, it is placed immediately after its verb, exactly as it is placed nineteen times in the Book of Ecclesiastes :

5. 5. I arose to open to my

beloved.

6. I opened to my beloved.

In Proverbs 24. 32 likewise,

קמתי אני לפתח לדודי

פתחתי אני לדודי

follows its verb

in the imperfect tense with vau conversive, similarly as follows the simple preterite in the Book of Ecclesiastes; for there is no reason to doubt that, as indicated by the accents, N in this passage is nominative to the preceding rather than to the following verb :

אָשִׁית לִבִּי ראיתי לקחתי מוסר : ואחזה אָנֹכִי אָשִׁית לִבִּי

Τι

Preterites with the Nominative.

275

Now while it appears from such passages as 2 Samuel 12. 28, Job 13. 13, Ezekiel 16. 60, 62, that the placing of " after its verb is not confined exclusively to the Solomonic Scriptures, yet, considering the infrequency of this arrangement except in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the fact of its occurrence in Proverbs 24. 32 and Song 5. 5, 6 is not without value in connection with the question of authorship.

It may be further observed that the manner in which is used in the Book of Proverbs, where it occurs seven times (1. 26; 8. 12, 14, 17, 27; 23. 15; 26. 19), is confirmatory of the Solomonic authorship of Ecclesiastes. Only once in the Proverbs (8. 12) is the nominative to a preterite; and in that one instance the usage coincides exactly with the usage in Ecclesiastes 1. 12. In each passage there is inserted, between " and the verb to which it is the nominative, a characteristic feminine. noun in apposition to it :

PROVERBS 8. 12.

ECCLESIASTES 1. 12.

אני חכמה שכנתי ערמה

אני קהלת הייתי מלך

Thus then, whereas in the whole of Solomon's Proverbs and Song " is the nominative to a preterite only thrice, it is a circumstance neither. uninteresting nor insignificant, that while the usage in Proverbs 8. 12 differs from the usage in Song 5. 5, 6, each of these two usages has its exact counterpart in the Book of Ecclesiastes. So likewise, in Ecclesiastes 2. 14, 15, ND, though not peculiar to the Solomonic Scriptures (Job 13. 2 ;

276

The Preacher's personal experience.

T IT

33. 6; Hosea 4. 6), may be compared with N D in Proverbs I. 26; 23. 15, similarly as Din Ecclesiastes 7. 22 may be compared with AD in Proverbs 26. 4, and pa nom in Ecclesiastes 7. 29 with 177 in Proverbs 18. 8 and 26. 22. In Ecclesiastes 3. 14; 8. 15, also, as in Proverbs 10. 22, 24; 11. 28; 13. 13; 23. 11; 28. 10, Noл, as a separate nominative, precedes its verb, which is in the imperfect tense; whereas in Ecclesiastes 9. 15, where is preterite, NM, like, follows its verb. With reference to the Preacher's frequent use of

as a separately expressed nominative to the first person preterite, even Hengstenberg, who denies the Solomonic authorship of Ecclesiastes, observes,

'When the writer says, "I spake," the "I" is emphatic : "I spake." Some will have it that frequently occurs in this book along with the first person of the verb superfluously even where no emphasis whatever is intended, as for example in chapters i. 16, ii. 11, 14, 18, iii. 17. In such cases, however, is by no means pleonastically used. It calls attention to the importance of the person who is speaking, who is declaring his experiences.'

To the same effect Dr. Pusey also, who, on the other hand, accepts the Scriptural testimony to Solomon as the author of Ecclesiastes, says, in the notes to his sixth lecture on Daniel the Prophet,

'Of course, if the use of the personal pronoun with the personal verb, is emphatic, it is no mark at all of modernness. Solomon is giving his own personal experience, in a matter in which no other had experience so large, of the vanity of everything human, out of God. If any one will examine the cases in which is added, and those in which it is not, in Ecclesiastes, he will see that it has been added, not pleonastically, but on a definite principle.'

Testimony of the Moabite Inscription. 277

The Moabite Stone.

In connection with the syntax of conjunctions, verbs, and pronouns, the question of the authorship of Ecclesiastes may be illustrated in various interesting particulars by reference to the inscription on the Moabite Stone. The style of the inscription and the style of Ecclesiastes resemble each other (1) in the remarkable frequency with which the first personal pronoun ( in Ecclesiastes, and on the Stone) is used as a separate nominative to the preterite tense of verbs, and (2) in a sharply-drawn distinction between the historic sequence of the imperfect with vau conversive, and the aggregation of sundry facts expressed by means of preterites syntactically independent of one another. As these facts, though historical, are not consequential one on another, they are strung together by means of simple vau, used in the inscription precisely as it is used in the Book of Ecclesiastes; with the exception of a simple incidental difference in verbal arrangement, resulting from the order in which the preterite and its nominative are placed relatively to each other. In Ecclesiastes the vau is prefixed immediately to the preterite, in consequence of the preterite preceding its nominative: whereas in the Moabite Inscription, the vau is prefixed immediately to the nominative, in consequence of the nominative preceding its preterite; similarly as is the case in Psalm 31. 23, Isaiah 49. 4, Jeremiah 10. 19, and Jonah 2. 5, already mentioned in page 240.

278

I

2

Illustrative extracts from

I Mesha (am) the son of Chemoshgad, king of Moab, the D ibonite | My father reigned over Moab thirty yrs ; and I reign

3 ed after my father | And I made this high place to Chemosh in Korcha

4 because he saved me from all the spoilers,

e saved me from all the all my haters | Om

5 ri, king of Israel, he also afflicted Moab many days,

because Chemosh was angry with his la

6 nd And his son succeeded him; and he also said, I will afflict Moab. | |

In my days he said

7 and I shall look on him and on his house |

14

And Chemosh said to me, Go take Nebo over Israel |

15 went in the night, and fought against it from the rise of

the morning until noon; | and

16 took it and slew altogether seven thousand

17

and I took from thence the v

18 essels of Jehovah; and I brought them before Chemosh |

and the king of Israel built

19 Yahaz, and dwelled in it in his warring against me | And Chemosh drove him out from before me; and

20 I took from Moab two thousand men, all the poor thereof,

21

and placed them in Yahaz, and took it |

to add to Dibon | I built Korcha, the wall of the forests, and the wall of 22 the mound | and I built the gates thereof; and I built the towers

thereof and (

23 I built the king's house | and I made the prisons of the trespassers in the midst of

24 the city And (there was) no cistern in the midst of the city in Korcha; and I said to all the people, Make to 25 yourselves every man a cistern in his house | And I dug the trench for Korcha..

26 Israel I built Aroer; and I made the highway in Arnon ;