Page 430. I searched in mine heart. . . how to lay hold on folly.—The imaginary experimenter is resolved to test all the types of pleasure, including some which the wise call follies (that is impurities): but he adds the parenthesis, mine heart yet guiding me with wisdom: he tries the follies, not for their own sake, but to see what they will contribute to his sense of wisdom.

Page 431. I hated all my labour, etc.—Our modern word would be rather enter prize.

Page 431. The Philosophy of Times and Seasons.-The previous essay was a search for a summum bonum; the suggestion of this is that perhaps wisdom is found in multa bona: that all the particular things of life have some place in the field of wisdom; only the writer takes the metaphor of time instead of place.

Page 432. Also, he hath set the world in their heart.-The expression world is for the sense of the universal. Man cannot appreciate the attraction of the details through his craving after the underlying meaning of the whole, which the essayist proceeds to express as the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end. Bacon makes a fine use of this passage in expounding inductive philosophy [Advancement of Learning, paragraph 3 of Book I].

-declaring not obscurely, that God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror or glass, capable of the image of the universal world, and joyful to receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light; and not only delighted in beholding the variety of things and vicissitude of times, but raised also to find out and discern the ordinances and decrees, which throughout all those changes are infallibly observed. And although he doth insinuate that the supreme or summary law of nature, which he calleth The work which God worketh from the beginning to the end, is not possible to be found out by man; yet that doth not derogate from the capacity of the mind, but may be referred to the impediments, as of shortness of life, ill conjunction of labours, ill tradition of knowledge over from hand to hand, and many other inconveniences, whereunto the condition of man is subject.

Page 433. The fool foldeth his hands, etc.-The punctuation in the text suggests that these words are an objection by an imaginary antagonist: to which the essay makes rejoinder, Better an handful of quietness, etc.

Page 434. Rejoice, O young man but know thou . . . God will bring thee into judgement.-The whole sentence has been interpreted as a sarcasm: Take thy pleasures, but there will come a terrible judgment. This is impossible, for the sentence continues, Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, etc. The word judgement has reference to moral responsibility. The argument sympathizes with the pleasures of youth, provided only that this is responsible pleasure, recognizing the law of right and wrong.

Page 434. When the keepers of the house shall tremble, etc.-For the symbolism of the whole sonnet see note on page 515.

Page 435. Collectors of sentences which are given from one shepherd.-The latter words refer to the peculiarity of this book in the evolution of wisdom literature: the collection is unified [by prologue and epilogue] into the thought of a single thinker. See above, page 392.

Page 436. Ungodly men. . . called death unto them. . . they made a covenant with him.-The life of the ungodly is interpreted as equivalent to a covenant with death, replacing Israel's covenant with God. [Contrast Isaiah's discourse with the same title, where covenant with death means secret treaty that death should pass his friends by. Page 188.] The order of thought in the monologue that follows is: (1) It is certain that death ends all things. (2) Therefore enjoy while we can. (3) Antagonism to the righteous who profess other faith.

Page 438. Understanding is gray hairs unto men, and an unspotted life is ripe old age. As appears throughout the O. T. the great trial to faith was the spectacle of wickedness continuing to live and prosper, and righteousness cut off by untimely death. The present passage maintains that there is no such thing: the righteousness of the life is equivalent to length of days, or Being made perfect in a little while he fulfilled long years. This lofty conception, together with its converse, is finely stated by Young, in his Night Thoughts.

Virtue, not rolling suns, the mind matures.

That life is long which answers life's great end.
The time that bears no fruit deserves no name.
The man of wisdom is the man of years.
In hoary youth Methusalehs may die:
O how misdated on their flatt'ring tombs!

Page 440. Solomon's Winning of Wisdom.-Ecclesiastes contains an imagined experiment of Solomon to find wisdom. As if in rejoinder, this book amplifies the historic incident (I Kings 34) of the Dream of Solomon at Gibeon, in which, called upon by God to ask what he desired, Solomon chose to ask for wisdom.

Page 443. Give me Wisdom, her that sitteth by thee on thy throne.-Compare the Wisdom Hymns, especially page 410.

Page 446. The Adversary came also among them. Adversary is the translation of the word Salan. But there are two different usages of the word: as a proper name Satan is Adversary of God, or the Devil. Here and in Zechariah (page 249) the Adversary is the title of an official: an inspector of the Earth, who is adversary of the saints, and only in the sense in which any inspector is for the time being the adversary of those he is charged to inspect. There is nothing malignant in what he does: he reports upon the case of Job, and suggests tests of Job which God approves.

GENERAL NOTES

1. Verse in the Bible

It will be seen that what appears as verse in the Modern Reader's Bible differs from verse in ordinary English poetry. It is not made by rhyme, or numbering of syllables in a line; nor does it depend upon feet and longer or shorter syllables, as in Latin; nor upon alliteration, as in Early English. Its basis is something which is called Parallelism of clauses.

The LORD of hosts is with us;

The God of Jacob is our refuge.

He maketh wars to cease unto the ends of the earth;
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;

He burneth the chariots in the fire.

The ear catches, in the first passage two clauses, in the second passage three clauses, which run parallel with one another. It is this parallelism of clauses which constitutes Biblical verse.

That such parallelism of clauses gives the sense of recurrent rhythm which is the essence of verse in all languages the reader may satisfy himself by a simple experiment. Let him take such a poem as the National Hymn of the Promised Land (page 53), and, commencing at a particular point, let him read on omitting every alternate line. What he thus reads will come out as plain prose.

He hath remembered his covenant for ever, the covenant which he made with Abraham, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a statute, saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan, when they were but few in number; and they went about from nation to nation. He suffered no man to do them wrong: "Touch not mine anointed ones."

Now let him read again, putting in the omitted lines: he will feel how a sense of rhythm is given by the addition of the parallel lines. The difference is like that between walking and dancing: what makes the dance is the poise of the body maintained from one movement to another.

He hath remembered his covenant for ever,

The word which he commanded to a thousand generations;

The covenant which he made with Abraham,

And his oath unto Isaac;

And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a statute,

To Israel for an everlasting covenant:

Saying, Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan,
The lot of your inheritance:

When they were but a few men in number;
Yea, very few, and sojourners in it;
And they went about from nation to nation,
From one kingdom to another people.
He suffered no man to do them wrong;
Yea, he reproved kings for their sakes;
"Touch not mine anointed ones,

And do my prophets no harm."

It needs only a little practice for the ear to accommodate itself to this Parallelism as a basis of rhythm. And upon this basis we have a verse system showing all the range and niceties of effect which belong to English or Greek verse. In the full Modern Reader's Bible such intricacies are explained for those who are interested in questions of prosody. But for the ordinary reader no detailed explanation is necessary if, as in the present work, the verse is so printed as to bring out the rhythm to the eye.

It may assist if two further remarks on parallelism are added. (1) Distinguish Similar and Dissimilar parallelism. The first obtains where, in a given sequence, all lines are parallel with one another.

Yet he commanded the skies above,

And opened the doors of heaven;

And he rained down manna upon them to eat,

And gave them of the corn of heaven

Man did eat the bread of the mighty;
He sent them meat to the full.

Dissimilar parallelism implies that particular lines adhere together with a bond that is closer than the bond which unites them all into a sequence.

The LORD is my light and my salvation;

Whom shall I fear?

The LORD is the strength of my life;

Of whom shall I be afraid?

This passage is obviously a single sequence; and yet the third line is closely parallel with the first, the fourth with the second. The printing indicates such dissimilar parallelism, on the principle that Similar lines are similarly indented. (2) The unit in such parallelism is either the single line or the couplet. But there is also another unit, unlike anything in modern verse. This is the ‘strain': it consists of a couplet, either line of which may be strengthened by an additional line, but not both.

Strive thou, O LORD, with them that strive with me:

Fight thou against them that fight against me.

Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for mine help:

Draw out also the spear and stop the way against them that pursue me:

Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.

Let destruction come upon him at unawares;

And let his net that he hath hid catch himself;
Into that very destruction let him fall.

All three are 'strains': the first is a simple couplet; the second is a couplet with the first line strengthened; the third has the second line strengthened. It is very important for the appreciation of Biblical lyrics to accustom the mind to this idea of an elastic unit. When once this idea is grasped it becomes easy to see, for example, that the two divisions of the psalm entitled the Drama of Night and Morning (page 318) are perfectly symmetrical, although one contains eight lines, the other nine: as printed it is obvious to the eye that each portion is made up of four strains.

2. Metrical and Rhetorical Figures

The term 'Figures' in poetry is apt to suggest technicalities. But the leading metrical and rhetorical figures in Biblical verse are closely connected with the interpretation of particular passages. The printing of these passages brings out the figure; but it is an assistance if the reader has in mind the chief figures he is likely to meet with.

In the Envelope Figure the opening lines are repeated at the close: what comes between is to be understood in the light of this opening and close. A clear example is the psalm, Man the Viceroy of God (page 286). More often we have a modified Envelope: the close is not a repetition of the opening, but modifies it, or continues its thought. Compare The Consecrated Life (page 322); or the Song of the Thunderstorm (page 285, and see note, page 495).

As in ordinary poetry, Refrains are found recurring in different parts of a poem. Compare God our Refuge and Strength (page 103), or Exiled from the House of God (page 313). For more elaborate refrains see note (page 497) on the Song of the Redeemed (page 294).

There are regularly Stanzas of parallel lines: triplet stanzas, page 297; quatrains (pages 279, 299); and others. In Biblical poetry we sometimes have Mixed Stanzas: two different stanzas in the same poem. Compare the great Ode on The World Within and The World Without (page 288): the note (page 496) shows how the shifting from the one stanza to the other reflects the thought of the poem.

Instead of regular stanzas, some poems are in Strophes: this is simply the verse analogue for the Paragraph in prose, hence the strophes are of varying lengths. Examples: Prefatory Psalm (page 271); National Hymn of the Promised Land (page 53).

The antistrophic structure, so familiar to the reader of Greek poetry, is frequent in the lyrics of the Bible. The idea is of stanzas running in pairs, strophe and antistrophe; the antistrophe exactly balances its strophe, but the rhythm may change altogether between one pair and another. A clear example is the first of the psalms in David's Inauguration of Jerusalem (page 68): where the pairs of strophes run (in lines) 6,6; 3,3; 4,4. Such poems often have an Introduction, or Conclusion, or both, outside the antistrophic structure. Thus the Vision of Judgement (page 293) has an elaborate introduction, pictur