origin is not yet exhausted; we shall meet with many such in the course of the Exposition. Not only the language, however, but also the style and the artistic form of the book, show that it is the most recent product of the Bibl. Chokma literature, and belongs to a degenerated period of art. From the fact that the so-called metrical accent system of the three books - Psalms, Job, and Proverbs - is not used in Ecclesiastes, it does not follow that it is not a poetical book in the fullest sense of the word; for the Song and Lamentations, these masterpieces of the שׁיר and קינה, the Minne-song and the Elegy, are also excluded from that more elevated, more richly expressive, and more melodious form of discourse, perhaps to preserve the spiritual character of the one, and not to weaken the elegiac character of the other, to which a certain melancholy monotone andante is suitable. So also, to apply that system of accentuation to the Book of Koheleth was not at all possible, for the symmetrical stichs to which it is appropriate is for the most part wanting in Koheleth, which is almost wholly written in eloquent prose: unfolding its instruction in the form of sentences without symmetrical stichs. - It is, so to speak, a philosophical treatise in which “I saw,” and the like, as the expression of the result of experience; “I said,” as the expression of reflection on what was observed; “I perceived,” as the expression of knowledge obtained as a conclusion from a process of reasoning; and “this also,” as the expression of the result, - repeat themselves nearly terminologically. The reasoning tone prevails, and where the writer passes into gnomic poetry he enters into it suddenly, e.g., Ecc 5:9, or holds himself ready to leave it quickly again, e.g., Ecc 5:12; Ecc 7:13. Always, indeed, where the Mashal note is struck, the discourse begins to form itself into members arranged in order; and then the author sometimes rises in language, and in the order of his words, into the true classic form of the proverb set forth in parallel members, e.g., Ecc 7:7, Ecc 7:9; Ecc 9:8. The symmetry of the members is faultless, Ecc 5:5; Ecc 8:8; Ecc 9:11; but in other places, as Ecc 5:1; Ecc 7:26; Ecc 11:9, it fails, and in the long run the book, altogether peculiar in its stylistic and artistic character, cannot conceal its late origin: in the elevated classical style there quickly again intermingles that which is peculiar to the author, as representing the age in which he lived, e.g., Ecc 7:19; Ecc 10:2, Ecc 10:6, Ecc 10:8-10, Ecc 10:16., Ecc 11:3, Ecc 11:6. That in the age of the Mishna they knew how to imitate classic masterpieces, is seen from the beautiful enigma, in the form of a heptastich, by Bar-Kappara, jer. Moëd katan iii. 1, and the elegy, in the form of a hexastich on the death of R. Abina, by Kar-Kippuk,
