"HEART" IN ECCLESIASTES

In a companion post (“Translating II Samuel 3”), I elaborated on George Hammond's observation that a literal rendering of the Hebrew language, such as the KJV often does, can be very helpful in cases where the same repeated phrase is suddenly and purposely turned on its head. Hammond also highlights the occurrences of the Hebrew word leb (“heart”), which are so many that “the speaker's leb becomes a character, and the idiom takes on a new life.” The various cliches containing this word thereby “lose their staleness because of the way leb is used in more imaginative contexts throughout the book.” By contrast, Hammond says “the modern versions do not allow their readers such an insight. Partly it is a matter of not wishing to sound archaic, partly a wish to avoid redundancies.”

Regarding the meaning of leb, which I will lump together with its variant lebab, here is what several commentators have to say:

    Longman: “As is well known, leb refers not to the emotions, as in English, but to the mind and will, or even the core of one's personality.”

    Luc: In the OT, the words [leb and lebab] have a dominant metaphorical use in reference to the center of human psychical and spiritual life, to the entire life of a person.”

    Sorg: “Viewed as a bodily organ, the heart is the seat of strength and of physical life...In the metaphorical sense leb is the seat of man's spiritual and intellectual life, the inner nature of man. Here the close connection between spiritual and intellectual processes and the functional reactions of the heart's activity is particularly clear...In the OT leb is also the seat of man's feeling, thinking and willing.”

For those who are interested in statistics, by my best count, leb appears 39 times in Ecclesiastes.

    A. Of those occurrences, twenty are closely associated with “wise” or “wisdom.”

    B. Roughly thirteen times leb is found within a proverbial statement.

    C. Seow lists nine times within the book in which the word functions as an independent entity.

    D. Six times the author states that he “applied my mind to know.”

Recognizing that there is some uncertainty in the above numbers, it is still intriguing to me that in each case, the number of of occurrences falls just short of numbers frequently standing for perfection or completion in biblical symbolism. These “perfect” numbers include seven and its multiples, ten, and 40. Thus, these statistics drive home to the reader, at least on a subliminal level, the fact that, as the Teacher in the book realizes, our unaided human mind will always fall short of totally comprehending the truth of existence. If this is a valid observation, then the reader would only be able to pick up on that fact by a consistent translation of leb/lebab as “heart.”

Here are some additional comments regarding the four sub-categories of use given above:

Category A: It is first necessary to understand the meaning of the word "wisdom" in the Bible. To that end, here is what Estes has to say: “The underlying sense of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible is skill in a variety of context. In the Old Testament wisdom books wisdom is defined especially in the moral sense of skill in living. More specifically, wisdom is skill in living according to Yahweh's moral order.”

Enns, in an essay, provided a list of recurring words in Ecclesiastes, two of which are heart and wise/wisdom. He feels that the use of these key terms has utility in “alerting the reader to conceptual interconnections...observing such interconnections will force the reader to allow Qohelet (the Teacher) himself to set the agenda for how he wishes to be understood.” So with that in mind, here are the texts in which these key words intersect. I will leave it as a homework assignment to let Qohelet speak to you through these passages: Ecclesiastes 1:13,16-17: 2:3,9,14,16,19,21; 7:4,7,23,25; 8:5,16-17; 9:1; 10:1-2.

Category B: The proverbial occurrences of “heart” in Ecclesiastes are often divided into two sub-categories, those pertaining to those who are wise and those characteristic of the foolish. Thus, the wise man (or woman) has a heart which always keeps foremost in mind its mortality (7:2,3,4a), knows when and how to obey a command (8:5), and inclines to the right (10:2a). Conversely, the foolish heart is only concerned with pleasure (7:4b), is set to do evil (8:11; 9:3), and inclines to the left (10:2b).

Category C: Consider some of the things that the heart does in some of these passages:

        2:10      finds pleasure in toil

        2:23      cannot rest at night

        5:2        utters words before God

        7:22      knows what you have said in secret

        11:9      cheers you when you are young

Category D: Longman says, “'I devoted myself' occurs in 1:17; 8:9,16. It is formed from the verb natan with leb 'heart' as the direct object. Natan is a frequently occurring verb with the basic meaning of 'to give,' but in the present idiom it means 'to set' or 'to determine'...Qohelet thus uses the idiom to indicate his focused, deeply personal, disciplined pursuit of the object of his study.” Similarly, Grisanti states, “In connection with leb/lebab, ntn lebbe describes a person's great devotion (or lack of it) to a given task/person/truth.”

Longman also mentions that some scholars suggest emending 7:25 to also include a form of this idiom. And in the same category, 1:13 and 2:3 should also be placed even though the idiomatic forms used there are somewhat different. In each case, the Teacher is carefully attempting experiments involving wisdom, labor, or pleasure to see if any of them have any lasting worth for man during his brief time on earth.

One of the strangest of these experiments occurs in the somewhat difficult Ecclesiastes 2:3 with its two-fold use of “heart” in the context of wine drinking. Seow says that “the author followed his heart and the heart led him wisely...The point of the verse is probably to assert the rationality of the action. The indulgence in pleasure did not stem from an inexplicable impulse, nor did it originate from wisdom. The action of the heart was deliberate and thoughtful.”

Qohelet's conclusion from all these scientific experiments is capsulized in the last two appearances of the idiom in Ecclesiastes 8:9,16. Basically he “saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun (8:17)” and resigns himself to that reality. I have personally witnessed a series of such “experiments” carried out by a young fellow chemist at work who in turn devoted himself to photography, wine drinking, bow and arrow shooting, stamp collecting, antique bottle digging, and who knows how many other hobbies until he went to a Christian retreat and became saved. At that point, his futile search for meaning in the physical world stopped forever.