(3.) =If is caused to beget a man= (again איש, ‘should one beget’) =a
hundred= (children is to be supplied, but not prominently; begetting
is used in its widest sense), =and years many= (plural, equivalent to
‘years, and many of them’) =should live, and many= (singular) =which
they are the days of his years= (‘and the days of his years should
be ever so many,’ his life being expressed both in days and years to
give strong prominence to the fact of its duration), =and his soul not
satisfied from out of the good= (the abstract with the article, hence
equivalent to our ‘good,’ standing alone), =and moreover burial= (the
abstract of the past participle, used, of course, as the place of
burial――see Genesis xxxv. 20, xlvii. 30, but with a shade of difference
from קבר――compare Genesis xlvii. 30 with Genesis l. 5, for here, too,
we notice that קבורה is written full), =is not to be to him= (emphatic.
To have no burial, no one to lament him or erect a tomb over him――to be
worse off than Jehoiakim, Jeremiah xxii. 19, who had the burial of an
ass――is such a terrible failure to a man who had possessed a hundred
children, of whom some at least might have shown him this last honour,
that it may well be cited as an instance of failure of human felicity),
=I say a good better than his= (emphatic) =is the abortion= (_i.e._
that abortion is a better lot).
4 For he cometh in with │ For in evanescence it begins,
vanity, and departeth in │ and in darkness departs, and
darkness, and his name shall │ its name in that darkness is
be covered with darkness. │ concealed; IT has not seen
│ light; HE has not known rest;
5 Moreover he hath not seen │ the one is no better than the
the sun, nor known _any thing_:│ other.
this hath more rest than the │
other. │
(4, 5.) =For in vanity he comes, and in darkness he goes, and in
darkness= (repeated, equivalent, therefore, to ‘in that darkness’) =his
name is covered; moreover the sun not seen= (which is the lot of the
abortion), and =not knowing rest= (the lot of the person here spoken
of), =to this= there is no =more= than =that=. The Masorets, however,
by their accentuation, show that they understood the verse somewhat
differently. They render, ‘a sun he does not see and does not know;
the rest of this is more than that;’ but this rendering is obscure
and clumsy, and makes the words ‘does not know’ superfluous, besides
interrupting the argument. The LXX. render verbatim: καίγε ἥλιον οὐκ
εἶδεν καὶ οὐκ ἔγνω ἀναπαύσεις τούτῳ ὑπὲρ τοῦτον, which is clear enough
with the Hebrew before us, but is quite unintelligible without it,
hence the text has been attempted to be amended in various ways (see
Stier and Theile’s _Polyglot_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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