Introduction to Proverbs

 Introduction to Proverbs 

from Ezra Nehemiah’s commentary on Ecclesiastes (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2009, p. 106) —

Because you never know –

VI. 10 Whatever is was known already, also what we are - known already. There’s no gainsaying any of it:  11 the more words only the more bullshit, and who’s the better for that?  12 Who knows what’s better anyway, who lives [as we do], we shadows in sunlight, a few empty days. And then what? Who knows that [either], what’s coming next?

Notes

vi. 10.  Though it has absolutely nothing to do with this verse, Fabianski’s essay on preference for the niphil perfect participle over the plural cohortative to translate נשׄמע is well worth reading again.

     11.   bullshit.  הבל.

     13.  knows.  ידצ, LXX ti&v oi]den. Who has a clue?

Commentary

“Stuff is as stuff is,” as God said to Job, if at much (much!) greater length (Job 38-42). “Stuff is as stuff is: Who are you to know?” And adamantine Job suddenly sees there is nothing to do but to shrug his melting shoulders, gather his ashen cards, and go home. Who had never been satisfied before has to be now. As Murphy says, these verses in Ecclesiastes are finally about “the basic inability of humans to find out what is good for them.” We might be able to if we lived in the fantasy world of Proverbs, where push always comes to shove, where there is for every action always the right equal and opposite reaction, where the wise ever prosper and fools will stumble. But we don’t. That’s a blabberer’s bullshit world anyway. The real world doesn’t work that way at all. If it did in the past, it doesn’t now. (See 7:10.) I mean, if it ever did! (See 8:15.)

01.31.18