Metrical form in Ecclesiastes
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Two different scholars, Zapletal (Die Metrik des Buches Kohelet, Freiburg, Schweiz, 1904) and Haupt (Koheleth, Leipzig: his views were set forth in 1905 in English in his Ecclesiastes, Baltimore), propounded quite independently of each other the theory that the whole of the original work of Qoheleth was composed in metrical form. Both scholars have naturally proceeded to make this theory a guide in the textual criticism of the book, though the metrical criterion in the hands of Zapletal leads to far less radical results than in the hands of Haupt.
A candid study of the book leads, however, to the conclusion that, as applied to the whole book, this metrical theory is a mistake, however true it may be for parts of it. Clear, too, as some of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry are, our knowledge of Hebrew metre is still in too uncertain a state to enable any scholar to make it a basis for textual criticism with any hope of convincing any considerable number of his colleagues of the validity of his results. (See Cobb's Criticism of Systems of Hebrew Metre, 1905.) To bring any Hebrew text into conformity to the metrical rules of one of our modern schools requires the excision of many words and phrases. Such excision may, in a work clearly poetical, be often obviously right, though in many cases it seems probable that a Hebrew poet varied the length of his lines to the despair of modern students of metre. But to go through a book large parts of which are in prose and turn it into metrical form by cutting out much of its material seems unwarranted. Such methods are calculated to create doubts as to the validity of metrical criteria generally, and to cast unjust suspicion upon them even for real poetry.
The real form of Ecclesiastes was recognized as long ago as the middle of the eighteenth century. Bishop Lowth, in his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, Lect. xxiv, says: "The style of this book (Ecclesiastes) . . . possesses very little of poetical character, even in the composition and structure of the periods." He adds in a footnote: "It is the opinion of a very ingenious writer that the greater part of this book was written in prose, but that it contains many scraps of poetry, introduced as occasion served, and to this opinion I am inclined to assent." He refers to Desvceux, Tent. Phil, and Crit. in Ecdes., lib. ii, cap. i. (Cf. also J. D. Michaelis, Poetischer Entiuurf der Gedanken des Prediger-Buchs Solomon, 1751). The correctness of this view was recognized by Ewald, who in his Dichter des alien Bundes translated parts of the book as poetry and the rest as prose. Driver has recently in his edition of the text of Qoheleth (in Kittel's Biblia Hebraica, 1905) arranged all the material metrically which will at all lend itself to metrical arrangement, but treats large portions of it as prose. Briggs holds the same opinion, although he regards the conception of the book as poetic fiction belonging with Job to the Wisdom Literature.
Ewald's method is followed in the translation given below, where an attempt has been made to give in Hebrew parallelism all the parts which can justly be regarded as metrical. To suppose that the whole book was of necessity poetical in form because parts of it are, is to forget the analogy of the prophetical books, in which the degree of liberty which Hebrew writers might allow themselves in alternating between prose and poetry is amply illustrated. The thought of Qoheleth, as Genung has well said, is prosaic. It is a prose book; the writer, in spite of occasional parallelism, "has the prose temper and the prose work to do." This is true, on the whole, in spite of the fine poetical passage in ch. 12 with which the book originally closed.
