10 Therefore remove ¹sorrow │ Put away disappointment from from thy heart, and put away │ thine heart, and purge away evil from thy flesh: for │ mischief from thy flesh, for childhood and youth _are_ │ childhood and early vanity. │ expectations are evanescent. │ ¹ _Or_, anger. │ (10.) =And put away disappointment= (כעס, chapter i. 18, references) =from thy heart, and pass away evil from thy flesh; because the producings and the dawnings= (שחרות occurs here only; for the meaning of the root see Job vii. 21, Psalms lxxviii. 34, Proverbs xiii. 24. So the meaning of the word here is ‘early seekings,’ which the LXX. render _ad sensum_ by ἡ ἄνοια, ‘the ignorance;’ and the Syriac by (‡ Syriac phrase) ‘because childhood and not to know’) =is vanity= (singular; ‘each one is so,’ as a plural precedes). That the passage is ironical we cannot doubt, but it is good advice, even the very best, as it stands. Youth is the time of choice, the time of productions, or, if one will――and the expression will preserve an equivoke similar to that in the text――_conception_; but this time is evanescent. We choose our path in life when young, but then we cannot go back. He who changes his calling once rarely succeeds in it, and never if he chooses twice. CHAPTER XII. REMEMBER now thy Creator in │ But remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while │ the days of thy choice youth, the evil days come not, nor │ while these evil days come not, the years draw nigh, when thou │ and these years approach, of shalt say, I have no pleasure │ which thou shalt say there is in them; │ nothing for me in THEM of happy │ providence; XII. (1.) =And remember with respect to thy Creators= (but בורא is ‘creating’――see Isaiah xl. 28, xli. 5, xlv. 7, 18, where the participle poel occurs; hence, according to the strict meaning, it ought to be _thy creatings_) =in days of thy choosings= (with the same meaning as before; the sentence is doubtless intentionally equivocal) =until not come days of the evil= (‘the evil days’ is quite correct, but then we must remember the emphasis falls on ‘evil,’ not ‘days’), =and are caused to draw near years= (not ‘the years,’ which spoils the pathos of the passage――years are opposed to days above) =which thou sayest there is nothing to me= (emphatic) =in them of delight= (but not without a shade of the technical meaning, ‘providence’――as man grows older he _expects_ no delight; no great good fortune can come to him). 2 While the sun, or the │ before, too, is darkened the light, or the moon, or the │ sun, and the light, and the stars, be not darkened, nor │ moon, and the stars; and the the clouds return after the │ storm-cloud returns after the rain: │ tempest.