Page:Job and Solomon (1887).djvu/241

 done) over the mysteries of human life, which introduces the concluding part of the section (ix. 1-12). These twelve verses are full of a restrained passion. Such being the unfree condition of man that he cannot even govern his sympathies and antipathies, and so regardless of moral distinctions the course of destiny, and there being no hereafter, what remains but to take such pleasure as life—especially wedded life—can offer, and to carry out one's plans with energy? Yet, alas! it is only too true that neither success nor freedom of action can be reckoned upon, for 'the race is not to the swift,' and men are 'snared' like the fishes and the birds.

The section which begins at ix. 13 is of still more varied contents. It begins with a striking little story about the 'poor wise man,' a Themistocles in common life, 'who by his wisdom delivered the city, and no one remembered that poor man' (ix. 14, 15). Surely here (as in iv. 13, 14, viii. 10) we catch the echo of contemporary history. It is not a generalisation (comp. Prov. xxi. 22), but a fact which the author gives us, and it may plausibly be conjectured that he was the 'poor wise man' himself. The rest of the section (down to x. 15) contains proverbs on wisdom and folly, and some bitterly ironical remarks on the exaltation of servants and burden-bearers above the rich and the princely.