Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Vol 37.4 (2013): 485-509

© The Author(s), 2013. Reprints and Permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0309089213483978
http://JSOT.sagepub.com

The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the

Riddler

DOUG INGRAM
116 Ilkeston Road, Trowell, Nottingham NG9 3PX

Abstract
This article builds on the author’s contention, expressed elsewhere, that Ecclesiastes is
fundamentally ambiguous by design. This is done by examining the seven occurrences of
the name ‘Qohelet’ or the title ‘the qohelet’ in the book. The article argues that ambiguity
is a ‘deliberate didactic device’, employed by Qohelet, the teacher, to provoke his students
to grapple with the meaning of his words, and to apply the strategies developed in relation
to the ambiguities (including the riddles) of his words to the ambiguities of life in the
world beyond the text. However, Qohelet is a character in the book and the author not
only portrays him as a teacher who uses riddle and ambiguity, but also presents Qohelet
himself as a riddle to be solved.

Keywords: Ecclesiastes, Qohelet, ambiguity, riddle, teacher, education, proverb.

1. Introduction
I have for some time argued that the book of Ecclesiastes is funda-
mentally ambiguous by design.1 It is not unusual now for scholars writing

1. See my book, Ambiguity in Ecclesiastes (LHBOTS, 431; New York/London: T&T

Clark International, 2006), and my booklet, Ecclesiastes: A Peculiarly Postmodern Piece
(Cambridge: Grove Books, 2004).
486 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

on Ecclesiastes to note points of ambiguity in the book. Some have

written about the ambiguity of certain words, most notably what is often
taken as the key word in the book, ğĔė,2 or certain passages in the book,
most notably the opening verses of Ecclesiastes.3 There is at least one
other person who maintains that the book is riddled with ambiguity and
that this is the intention of the author.4
Of course, deliberate ambiguity is rather dif¿cult to prove, especially
when the word ‘ambiguity’ itself is somewhat slippery and can be taken
to indicate a range of different things5—hence William Empson’s famous
book entitled Seven Types of Ambiguity.6 However, I detect a return from
what Donald Levine calls, ‘The Flight from Ambiguity’,7 and a corre-
sponding openness to acknowledging the presence of deliberate
ambiguity in biblical texts.8

2. See n. 43 below.
3. See in particular Edwin M. Good, ‘The Un¿lled Sea: Style and Meaning in
Ecclesiastes 1:2-11’, in J.G. Gammie et al. (eds.), Israelite Wisdom: Theological and
Literary Essays in Honor of Samuel Terrien (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), pp.
59-73; L. Wilson, ‘Artful Ambiguity in Ecclesiastes 1,1-11’, in A. Schoors (ed.), Qohelet
in the Context of Wisdom (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1998), pp. 357-65; and
Charles F. Melchert, Wise Teaching: Biblical Wisdom and Educational Ministry (Harris-
burg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1998), pp. 119-20.
4. Gary D. Salyer writes, ‘The Book of Ecclesiastes confronts the critic with intricate
reading problems that constantly generate a sense of ambiguity in the reader. Their
cumulative effect is a very distinctive “rhetoric of ambiguity”… What I mean by “rhetoric
of ambiguity” is a literary design which frustrates the reader in such a way that the “whole
truth” is never disclosed in any satisfactory way. The reader is left suspended in a state of
literary limbo regarding the text’s ¿nal meaning. An ambiguous text is characterized by
the enduring and resolute presence of multiple interpretations which seem equally
justi¿ed’ (Vain Rhetoric: Private Insight and Public Debate in the Book of Ecclesiastes
[Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic Press, 2001], p. 93).
5. See Chapter 1 of my Ambiguity in Ecclesiastes.
6. William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (London: The Hogarth Press, 1930,
1947, 1953).
7. Donald N. Levine, The Flight from Ambiguity (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1985).
8. See, e.g., Tom Thatcher’s Jesus the Riddler: The Power of Ambiguity in the
Gospels (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2006). The inÀuence of
Thatcher’s book will be apparent in this article. Many other examples could be given of
studies which argue for deliberate ambiguity in biblical texts: e.g. Eric S. Christianson,
‘The Big Sleep: Strategic Ambiguity in Judges 4–5 and in Classic ¿lm noir’, BibInt
15.4–5 (2007), pp. 519-48; Colleen M. Conway, ‘Speaking Through Ambiguity: Minor
Characters in the Fourth Gospel’, BibInt 10.3 (2002), pp. 324-41; Mark Douglas Given,
Paul’s True Rhetoric: Ambiguity, Cunning, and Deception in Greece and Rome
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 487

My purpose in this article is not to revisit questions of the ambiguity of

Ecclesiastes. I am going to work on the assumption that the book has been
shown to be fundamentally ambiguous (at least for readers today, though
I would argue it was always so) and to explore instead what purpose such
ambiguity might serve. My contention is that the translation of the word
ĭğėĪ as ‘teacher’ (in the NRSV, for example) captures well the context for
which the book of Ecclesiastes was designed—it was intended as a
teaching tool and the ambiguity of the book is part of the didactic strategy
of the author.9 (However, I prefer to use ‘Qohelet’ because it retains the
ambiguity of the Hebrew, besides which ĭğėĪ doesn’t actually mean
‘teacher’.10) I envisage a context not unlike my own—and perhaps that is
no surprise, because this is what readers and commentators have done
with Ecclesiastes throughout the known history of its interpretation.11 The
context I refer to is this: I teach in a theological college which primarily
prepares women and men for ordained ministry. Some of our students
come to college believing they have a thorough understanding of their
faith, theology and traditions. I see my role less as ‘teaching’ them what
to believe, and even less as con¿rming them in the beliefs they already
hold, but more as facilitating their learning by helping them to think
through their beliefs very carefully and in dialogue with other views. Of
course this involves passing on information about the Old Testament and
its background and the history of its interpretation that they didn’t

(Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001); P.R. Raabe, ‘Deliberate Ambiguity in
the Psalter’, JBL 110 (1991), pp. 213-27; Hanna Roose, ‘“A Letter as by Us”: Intentional
Ambiguity in 2 Thessalonians 2.2’, JSNT 29 (2006), pp. 107-24.
9. Contra, e.g., Tremper Longman III, who criticizes those who ‘believe the group
[Qohelet] has assembled is a classroom of sorts’ and who ‘thus translate “Teacher” ’. This
approach, he states, ‘has its fatal Àaws’ (The Book of Ecclesiastes [NICOT; Grand Rapids
and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998], p. 1). However, Longman also states that ‘Ecclesiastes
1:12–12:7 does carry the tone of a lecture of a teacher to his students’ (p. 58). Naoto
Kamano claims that ‘Qoheleth is presented as the Teacher par excellence, who effectively
crafts his discourse for the reader-audience of Ecclesiastes’ (Cosmology and Character:
Qoheleth’s Pedagogy from a Rhetorical-Critical Perspective [BZAW, 312; Berlin: W. de
Gruyter, 2002], p. 1).
10. See pp. 500-501, below.
11. Johannes Pedersen observed, ‘very different types have found their own image in
Ecclesiastes, and it is remarkable that none of the interpretations mentioned is completely
without some basis. There are many aspects of our book; different interpreters have
highlighted what was most ¿tting for themselves and their age, and they understood it in
their own way’ (Scepticisme Israélite [Paris: Alcan, 1931], p. 20, quoted in Roland
Murphy, Ecclesiastes [WBC, 23A; Waco, TX: Word Books, 1992], p. lv).
488 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

previously know. But it also involves helping students engage with the
many signi¿cant challenges that serious academic study of the Old
Testament throws up. It means studying dif¿cult passages and taking
seriously what they actually say—not what we think they say, or what our
churches presume they say. It means considering how the Church has
used and misused or even abused Scripture in the past—and how it
continues to do so today. It means engaging with a range of different
interpretations of Scripture by both Christian and other interpreters. It
means exploring our own traditions and examining how they correlate
with what we ¿nd in the Old Testament. It means comparing what we
¿nd in the Old Testament with how we experience life—and what other
people living in circumstances very different from our own ¿nd in the
Old Testament and how that correlates with their experience of life. It
means asking dif¿cult questions; examining deeply held and dearly
cherished beliefs. It is learning that should be ‘transformative’ in the
sense that it should make a difference to what we think and how we act,
and, indeed, to who we are. It should enable us to come to our study of
the Bible (and our contemplation of the world about us) prepared to be
changed by what we ¿nd there. It should help us to enable others among
whom we minister also to experience such change.
So, that’s my context. That’s what I bring to the text of Ecclesiastes.
Only it’s not as simple as that! What I bring to Ecclesiastes is now formed
in part by how I have been changed by my encounter with Ecclesiastes
over some twenty years and more. I believe that my engagement with this
book has transformed how I think and act. It has had a signi¿cant impact
on how I ‘teach’, or, better, how I seek to help students learn: one of the
signi¿cant inÀuences on my development as a teacher has been Qohelet
the teacher in Ecclesiastes.
Of course, another matter that we might deal with at this point is: Were
there at the time Ecclesiastes was written institutions at all like the one in
which I teach? However, this is a debate I do not intend to enter here. My
presumptions are that Ecclesiastes was written in the post-exilic period,
probably in the fourth or third century BCE, and that it is likely that Jewish
schools of some sort existed at this time. This would meet with fairly
wide agreement among those who have written on this subject.12 It seems

12. See, e.g., James L. Crenshaw, Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Deadening
Silence (New York: Doubleday, 1998), and ‘Education, OT’, in Katharine Doob Saken-
feld (ed.), The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, II (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
2007), pp. 195-205; G.I. Davies, ‘Were there Schools in Ancient Israel?’, in John Day,
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 489

very clear that there were ‘schools’ elsewhere in the ancient Near East for
some considerable time before this, though biblical scholars disagree over
whether such schools existed in Israel in the pre-exilic period.13 There is
no convincing biblical evidence to indicate that there were, though a
number of scholars have been persuaded by the available epigraphic
evidence, but even that is rather scant.14 There is more agreement on the
existence of schools in the post-exilic period, though here, too, the
evidence is meagre and not wholly persuasive.15 Of particular interest for
my purposes are two quotes from a recent article on education in the Old
Testament by James Crenshaw: he writes, ‘The authors of the books of
Job and Ecclesiastes were instructed in international wisdom, but we do
not know anything about their teachers. The latter [that is, Ecclesiastes]
even democratised education, according to the ¿rst epilogue.’ Crenshaw

Robert P. Gordon and H.G.M. Williamson (eds.), Wisdom in Ancient Israel (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 199-211; E.W. Heaton, The School Tradition of
the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); David W. Jamieson-Drake,
Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah: A Socio-Archeological Approach (JSOTSup,
109; Shef¿eld: Almond Press, 1991); André Lemaire, ‘The Sage in School and Temple’,
in J.G. Gammie and L.G. Perdue (eds.), The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East
(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), pp. 165-81, and ‘Education: Ancient Israel’, in
ABD, II, pp. 305-12; Stuart Weeks, Early Israelite Wisdom (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994); R.N. Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition in the Old Testament (Berlin: W.
de Gruyter, 1974).
13. Thus, e.g., Crenshaw writes, ‘The strongest evidence for the existence of schools
is epigraphic. These inscriptions leave little doubt that schools existed in Israel from about
the eighth century, if not earlier’ (Education, p. 112); but Weeks states, ‘there is neither
any strong evidence for schools nor any convincing reason to suppose that they would
have existed’ (Early Israelite Wisdom, p. 156).
14. Davies states that ‘The growing corpus of epigraphic evidence is beginning to
place the matter beyond doubt’ (‘Were there Schools?’, p. 209), but Grabbe, writing in a
book published the same year, says, ‘Judging from recent writings on the subject, the
consensus of scholarship seems de¿nitely to be moving away from the idea of schools in
Israel’ (Lester L. Grabbe, Priests, Prophets, Diviners, Sages: A Socio-Historical Study of
Religious Specialists in Ancient Israel [Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International,
1995], p. 174).
15. Ben Sira is often regarded as the ¿rst concrete evidence of such schools; for
example, in a recent book Martin A. Shields states, ‘Sirach contains the earliest unequivo-
cal evidence for a school in Israel’ (The End of Wisdom: A Reappraisal of the Historical
and Canonical Function of Ecclesiastes [Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006], p. 43, my
emphasis), but, as Crenshaw points out, ‘Even Ben Sira’s unique reference to a school
may be a metaphor for his book’ (‘Education, OT’, p. 198).
490 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

then states that ‘In all probability, Israelite sages composed their own
texts for use in scribal schools’.16 I plan to build on this probability.

2. Qohelet in Ecclesiastes 1.1: Who Is Qohelet?

The opening verse of Ecclesiastes already introduces the reader to an
enigma,17 perhaps to a deliberate riddle.18 The verse opens the book thus:
‘The words of Qohelet, the son of David, king in Jerusalem’. If we take
Tom Thatcher’s de¿nition of a riddle, as ‘an interrogative statement that
generates confusion through the use of intentional ambiguity and asks for
an answer that will render the statement clear’,19 we might observe that
the implicit question raised by this verse—and creating the riddle—is
this: ‘Who is Qohelet?’ The phrases ‘son of David’ and ‘king in Jerusa-
lem’ appear to identify Solomon as the person in question, and, indeed,
for the most part chs. 1 and 2 correlate well with this identi¿cation. It
may initially seem, then, that the ‘confusion’ and ‘ambiguity’ are easily
resolved, because the statement is rendered clear by the identi¿cation of
Qohelet as Solomon. Not much of a riddle, it appears! But much of the
rest of the book sits awkwardly with Solomon as the speaker20 and, as is

16. Crenshaw, ‘Education, OT’, pp. 199, 200. However, Weeks argues that ‘claims for
the use of wisdom literature in schools are entirely speculative’ (Ancient Israelite Wisdom,
p. 156). Norbert Loh¿nk con¿dently explains how the epilogues served to ensure that
Ecclesiastes was accepted as ‘a schoolbook in Jerusalem’ (Qoheleth [CC; Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2003], pp. 11-13).
17. Melchert observes, ‘From the opening line of the text, reader-learners are drawn
into a puzzle about the identity of the author that escalates into an enigma about the worth
of anything and everything, including reading itself’ (Wise Teaching, p. 114). Robert Fyall
states, ‘The use of the mysterious name Qoheleth…is the ¿rst of the book’s many riddles’
(Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Lamentations [The People’s Bible
Commentary; Oxford: The Bible Reading Fellowship, 2005]).
18. Chambers English Dictionary (Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1990), de¿nes
‘enigma’ thus: ‘a statement with a hidden meaning to be guessed: anything very obscure: a
mysterious person or situation: a riddle’. This ¿ts my purposes here very well.
19. Thatcher, Jesus the Riddler, p. 8. Thatcher explores in more depth what riddles are
in his book, The Riddles of Jesus in John: A Study in Tradition and Folklore (Atlanta, GA:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2000). Cf. Claudia V. Camp and Carol R. Fontaine, ‘The
Words of the Wise and Their Riddles’, in Susan Niditch (ed.), Text and Tradition: The
Hebrew Bible and Folklore (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1990); and James L. Cren-
shaw’s article, ‘Riddles’, in ABD, IV, p. 721.
20. Stuart Weeks argues, ‘It seems apparent that Qohelet’s identity as Solomon,
although implied by 1:1 in combination with 1:12, is essentially con¿ned to those verses:
there is nothing else in the text that would push us towards such an identi¿cation’. He
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 491

well known among Ecclesiastes scholars, the epilogue in 12.9-14 seems

to describe Qohelet as a sage and perhaps as a teacher, with no clear
indication that he is a king. Moreover, the further question arises: If the
verse is supposed to identify the speaker of these words as Solomon, why
not simply name him and dispense with the cryptic word ‘Qohelet’
altogether? After all, the start of Proverbs unambiguously ascribes the
proverbs to Solomon (though that ascription is not without its dif¿culties)
in a verse which is very similar to Eccl. 1.1, ‘The proverbs of Solomon,
the son of David, king of Israel’.
The opening of Song of Songs also speci¿cally associates the ‘song’
with Solomon, although the wording is not so similar: ‘The Song of
Songs, which is Solomon’s’ (Song 1.1) (and again the association raises
problems). Perhaps, then, the author of Ecclesiastes (or the editor—for
the purposes of this article it doesn’t much matter) is deliberately
obscuring the identity of the person whose words are recorded in the
book,21 initially hinting that it is Solomon, but then revealing that this
early resolution of the riddle is not, in fact, the right answer.22 Such is
often the nature of riddles. I remember a rather crude riddle from my
childhood (which needs to be delivered orally rather than in writing!):
‘What is brown and comes steaming out of Cowes [the hearer, of course,
hears “cows”] backwards?’ One particular answer may immediately
spring to our minds, which is the intention of the gleeful young riddler
and is what makes the riddle ‘work’. The ‘right’ answer, however, is less
obvious: the Isle of Wight ferry. For those who don’t know, Cowes is a
town on the Isle of Wight which lies to the south of mainland Britain;
ferries steam out of the town of Cowes on their way to the mainland.

continues, ‘if we set Solomon aside, then the Qohelet of the monologue emerges as a
rather different sort of character—a successful businessman, who uses the vocabulary of
commerce to describe the world, and whose priorities seem to have been shaped by ideas
of pro¿t and loss’ (Ecclesiastes and Scepticism [LHBOTS, 541; New York; London: T&T
Clark International, 2012], pp. 32, 42).
21. At the start of his book, Thatcher describes a riddle in this way: ‘A “riddle” is an
interrogative statement that intentionally obscures its referent (the thing or idea that it is
talking about) and asks the audience to name it. Riddles obscure their referents through
controlled ambiguity, the artful use of language that could reasonably refer to more than
one thing’ (Jesus the Riddler, p. 3, my emphasis).
22. Thomas Krüger says, ‘The book of Qoheleth takes up the convention of the
authorization of wisdom teachings but uses it in a way that thwarts and, as it were,
“deconstructs” its intentions: Qoheleth is not an Israelite king who is known from OT
traditions’ (Qoheleth [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004], p. 39).
492 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

Whether any of those ferries actually is or ever was brown or actually

does or ever did come out of the port in reverse, I don’t know. But it
didn’t much matter for the purposes of the riddle—everyone who knew
that Cowes was on the Isle of Wight understood and groaned appro-
priately. In some riddles, the ‘right’ answer is far from obvious. Again as
a child I encountered the riddle, ‘What is black and white and read [the
hearer, of course, hears “red”] all over?’ The answer is ‘a newspaper’.
However, the same riddle today elicits the reply, ‘A zebra with sunburn’
(or, even more obscurely, ‘A panda in a liquidiser’). There is a double
riddle here, because the presumed ‘right’ answer is ‘a newspaper’, but the
new ‘right’ answer is different, precisely to mislead the hearer, or
‘riddlee’ as Thatcher calls the hearer or reader of riddles.23 A key aspect
of such riddles is to ‘toy’ with the hearer in order to illicit a particular
response.
Thatcher explains that while ‘riddling’ in modern Western culture is
mostly a leisure activity with little riding on it apart from some embar-
rassment, in other cultures it can at times be a much more serious activity:
In many traditional cultures, riddles are performed in social settings where the
issue of group membership is more explicit: greetings, rituals ‘involving
initiation and death’, courtship and wedding ceremonies, and ‘the educational
encounter between teacher and student’. In these situations, riddles remind
people that they are members of the same knowledge group, even when the
group seems to be changing. People greet one another with riddles to demon-
strate that they are able to communicate on the same wavelength; they perform
riddles at weddings and funerals to show that the change in the family does not
threaten the overall unity of beliefs and values that hold society together;
teachers use riddles to transmit cultural wisdom from one generation to
another.24

Thatcher goes on to argue that Jesus frequently used riddles in his

teaching; my argument is that the book of Ecclesiastes also employs
riddles as a teaching strategy, and that it casts Qohelet as a teacher who,
among other things, uses riddles to facilitate his students’ learning. The
word ėĖĜĚ, which is the normal word for ‘riddle’ in the Old Testament, is
not used in Ecclesiastes. This is the noun which occurs eight times
(alongside three occurrences of the verb, ĖĘĚ) in the story of Samson and
his riddle about the lion, the bees and the honey—the clearest example of

23. Thatcher, Jesus the Riddler, p. 3.

24. Thatcher, Jesus the Riddler, p. 24. His quotes are from Thomas A. Burns,
‘Riddling: Occasion to Act’, Journal of American Folklore 89 (1976), pp. 143-45.
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 493

a riddle in the Old Testament.25 However, the noun is not common,

occurring only another nine times in total in the Old Testament.26 Of
these, three are used in the context of teaching27 and on ¿ve occasions
ėĖĜĚ is used in parallel with the word ğĬġ,28 the word usually translated
‘proverb’,29 which is used in connection with Qohelet in Eccl. 12.9,
‘Besides being wise, the Teacher also taught the people knowledge,
weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs’. (Two occurrences
of ėĖĜĚ are explicitly used in connection with Solomon—when the Queen
of Sheba tests him with riddles30—and the word is used once at the start
of Proverbs, which is also associated with Solomon.31) However, the
English word ‘proverb’ isn’t suf¿cient to cover the range of meaning of
the Hebrew word ğĬġ, which includes such things as sayings, aphorisms,
allegories, riddles, discourses, etc., as well as proverbs.32 Thus, when
Eccl. 12.9 refers to Qohelet ‘arranging many proverbs’, or ĠĜğĬġ, this
may well include riddles, particularly as Prov. 1.6 speci¿cally links
riddles with the ‘words of the wise’, using exactly the same expression
that we ¿nd in Eccl. 12.11.33 Proverbs 1.5-6 says, ‘Let the wise also hear
and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill, to understand a
proverb and a ¿gure, the words of the wise and their riddles’. Ecclesiastes

25. The noun occurs once in each of the verses in Judg. 14.12-19; the verb occurs in
vv. 12, 13, 16. The only other occurrence of the verb is in Ezek. 17.2. Ezek. 17.1-10 gives
a further good example of a ‘riddle’ using both the nominal and the verbal form of the
root.
26. Num. 12.8; 1 Kgs 10.1; 2 Chron. 9.1; Pss 49.5; 78.2; Prov. 1.6; Ezek. 17.2; Dan.
8.23; Hab. 2.6.
27. Pss. 49.5; 78.2; Prov. 1.6. Ps. 78 starts, ‘Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; //
incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable (ğĬġ); //
I will utter dark sayings (ėĖĜĚ) from of old.’ Ps. 49 appears to start with a teacher’s
summons, ‘Hear this, all you people’, then goes on to say, ‘I will incline my ear to a
proverb (ğĬġ); // I will solve my riddle (ėĖĜĚ) to the music of the harp’.
28. Pss. 49.5; 78.2; Prov. 1.6; Ezek. 17.2; Hab. 2.6. Ezek. 17.2 is particularly striking
because it uses in parallel a verbal form followed by a nominal form of each root: ĖĘĚ
ğĬġ ğĬġĘ ėĖĜĚ.
29. Which itself is not particularly common, occurring only 44 times in the Old
Testament.
30. 1 Kgs 10.1; 2 Chron. 9.1.
31. See Prov. 1.1, 6.
32. Thus, e.g., Victor P. Hamilton writes, ‘Of great interest is the wide number of
translations for this word in most English translations of the Old Testament… To translate
mashal simply as “proverb” misses the wide sweep of the word, suggested by the many
suggested translations’ (‘ğ ąŘ Ćġ’, in TWOT, I, pp. 533-34 [p. 533]).
33. This precise phrase occurs only in Prov. 1.6; 22.17 and Eccl. 9.17; 12.11.
494 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

12.11 asserts that ‘The words of the wise are like goads’. If the ‘words of
the wise’ include riddles, this might well explain how they act like
‘goads’, goading the hearer or reader to ¿nd the answers to the riddles the
wise pose to them.
The identity of Qohelet is the ¿rst riddle which confronts readers of
Ecclesiastes immediately they start reading the book.34 The purpose of the
riddle is to raise questions in readers’ minds about who this character is,
to encourage them to answer the riddle and then to realize that their initial
answer (that is, Solomon) is not, in fact, the answer the author had in
mind (or that the book as a whole leads us to if we are concerned about
editorial additions or wary of talking about ‘the author’s intentions’35).
This also serves to engage readers actively in making sense of the book—
an important aspect, I believe, of how Ecclesiastes ‘works’, and how
Qohelet educates his students. The author wants his readers (as the
character Qohelet wants his students) to apply the strategies developed in
relation to the ambiguities (including the riddles) in the book, to the
anomalies and ambiguities of life in the world beyond the text.
If the ¿rst verse of the book is understood as a riddle, it may be that
readers should consider less ‘obvious’ interpretations of other parts of
the verse to help them work out who Qohelet is. Thus, for example, in
my childish riddle, different meanings have to be provided for ‘cows’
(Cowes) and ‘steaming’, and ‘brown’ may indicate ‘rusty’. ‘Backwards’
also has a different sense—not ‘coming out of the rear end’ (which any-
way is a rather strange meaning for ‘backwards’), but ‘in reverse’. The
words which may need reconsideration in Eccl. 1.1 are ‘son of’ and
‘king’. It is well known that ‘son of’ in the Hebrew Bible does not always
indicate a ¿rst generation male offspring, but can refer to a more distant

34. A century ago, George Barton stated that ‘Qoheleth…is a crux’ (Ecclesiastes
[ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1912], p. 67); around half a century later, Robert Gordis
wrote, ‘The name Koheleth remains as enigmatic today as ever before’ (Robert Gordis,
Kohelet: The Man and his World: A Study in Ecclesiastes [New York: KTAV, 1968],
p. 203); towards the end of the twentieth century Murphy noted that ‘the meaning of
ĭğėĪ (qǀhelet) remains a mystery’ (Ecclesiastes, p. 1); and at the start of the twenty-¿rst
century Ellen F. Davis argued that ‘It is ¿tting that the book begins with a puzzle, the
author’s peculiar name’ (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs [Westminster
Bible Companion; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2000], p. 169).
35. Where I refer to ‘the author’, I mean ‘the implied author’. This is not the same
person as ‘Qohelet’, who is a character created by the author; nor is it the same person as
the narrator, who is also created by the author.
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 495

descendant, or even a person related in some other way, for example as a

disciple or pupil.36 The plural ‘sons of David’ is used elsewhere in the Old
Testament with such an extended sense.37 Thus ‘son of David’ here might
indicate a ‘davidide’ in a very broad sense, perhaps even indicating that
Qohelet lived in Jerusalem, the city of David. This would be a reasonable
extension of the usage found elsewhere in the Old Testament and would
not be an unacceptable extension of what the word means in the context
of a riddle.
The word for ‘king’, ĝğġ, is a very common word in the Old Testa-
ment which most often refers to someone we might call a king, but on a
number of occasions refers to a lesser ruler.38 There may be two roots ĝğġ
in the Old Testament, one associated with kingship, sovereignty, author-
ity, and the like, and the other with advice or counsel.39 However, ĝğġ
as ‘king’ occurs over 2,500 times, while the noun probably never has
the sense ‘counsellor’ (though the Aramaic noun in Dan. 4.24 means
‘counsel’) and the verb means ‘counsel’ only once, in Neh. 5.7, and this
may be a loanword from Aramaic. Nonetheless, some commentators have
made this connection,40 and Nel points out that ‘The cognate word in Akk.
malkum…designates an adviser, and not a king’.41 Indeed, the root is very

36. Crenshaw explains, ‘Ben-dawid (son of David) does not necessarily mean one of
David’s children. In Hebrew usage it can refer to grandchildren or simply a remote
member of the Davidic dynasty. Furthermore, the word ben also denotes close relation-
ships of mind and spirit without implying actual physical kinship (sons of the prophets =
disciples or guild members; sons of God = servants)’ (Ecclesiastes, p. 56).
37. See, e.g., 2 Chron. 13.8; 23.3; 32.33; Ezra 8.2.
38. Robert D. Culver, e.g., writes, ‘Since the Bible was written when sovereignty (seat
of authority) in civil government was viewed somewhat differently than it is today,
of¿cials and functionaries whom men today would designate by other titles (commander,
governor, chieftain, etc.) are regularly designated melek… melek is simply the most
common word for chief magistrate and is similar in meaning to several other words
usually translated lord, captain, ruler, prince, chief and such like’ (TWOT, I, p. 1199).
39. See BDB, pp. 572-76. We should note the theory propounded in BDB that the
word developed from an original denotation of ‘counsellor’ and came to be construed as
‘king’ as the one ‘whose opinion is decisive’ (p. 572).
40. Robert Davidson, e.g., states, ‘The word translated “king” may indeed mean
simply “counselor” ’ (Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs [The Daily Study Bible Series;
Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1986], p. 7). The Dictionary of Classical
Hebrew explores the possibility of translating ĝğġ as ‘counsel’ on a few occasions in the
Old Testament (see V, p. 322). See also, J.A. Soggin, ‘ź Ąğ Ąġ melek king’, in TLOT, II,
pp. 672-80 (672).
41. Philip J. Nel, ‘ĝğġ’, in NIDOTTE, II, pp. 956-65 (965).
496 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

often associated with counsel or advice in Aramaic, and if Ecclesiastes

was read against a background of Aramaic literature, this connection
might well have been made. Viewing Qohelet as a ‘counsellor’ certainly
ties in better with the description of him in 12.9-11, where he is described
as a wise person and may be one of a body known as ‘the wise’—perhaps
a group of people employed as state advisers because of their wisdom.42 I
can imagine a reader or hearer reaching the epilogue and exclaiming, ‘Ah,
yes! So perhaps that’s what ĝğġ in 1.1 means. I didn’t think “king” was
quite right somehow!’

3. Qohelet in Ecclesiastes 1.2: The Ambiguity of Qohelet’s First

Words
‘The riddle of Qohelet’ does not ¿nish with 1.1. The second time we
encounter Qohelet is in the very next verse, ‘Vanity of vanities, says
Qohelet, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” ’ A great deal has been
written on the Hebrew word ğĔė in Ecclesiastes, rendered here as
‘vanity’, and I also have written on this at some length elsewhere,43 so I
will make only brief comment here. Many commentators regard ‘all is
vanity’ as the book’s ‘motto’, the function of which is ‘to guide the reader
toward a proper interpretation of Qohelet’s words’,44 or which ‘controls
the way we read’45 the book, or which ‘will profoundly affect our under-
standing of Qohelet’s message’,46 etc. The problem is that the com-
mentators offer a wide range of translations of this word from ‘transient’
or ‘temporary’, to ‘enigmatic’ or ‘mysterious’, through to ‘meaningless’,
‘absurd’, ‘futile’, etc., which make a signi¿cant difference to the way the
book as a whole is understood. Kathleen Farmer captures it well when she
asks, ‘How is it possible for one small book to generate such opposite and

42. Though this is disputed. See especially Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition.
43. See Chapter 4 of my Ambiguity in Ecclesiastes, and the literature referred to there.
Many commentaries contain extended discussion of this word. A recent detailed
discussion can be found in Douglas B. Miller, Symbol and Rhetoric in Ecclesiastes: The
Place of Hebel in Qohelet’s Work (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002). New
proposals continue to be made about how ğĔė functions in Ecclesiastes, as is evidenced by
Weeks’s discussion in Ecclesiastes and Scepticism, pp. 104-20.
44. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, p. 59.
45. Michael V. Fox, Qoheleth and his Contradictions (Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic
Press, 1989), p. 168.
46. Daniel C. Fredericks, Coping with Transience: Ecclesiastes on Brevity in Life
(The Biblical Seminar, 18; Shef¿eld: JSOT Press, 1993), p. 14.
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 497

contradictory theories about its meaning?’, then answers, ‘One important

reason is the ambiguity of the thematic word hebel… Ecclesiastes has
been understood in radically different ways by readers in part because the
thematic metaphor “all is hebel” is fundamentally ambiguous.’47 Here,
then, is another riddle, where the implicit question is ‘What does the word
ğĔė mean?’ A number of answers to this riddle are possible, and again I
would argue that this is a deliberate didactic device employed by the
author (or by the character and teacher, Qohelet) to encourage his readers
(or students) to engage for themselves with the question and work
towards a resolution through the course of the rest of the book. Before
coming to similar conclusions to mine, Charles Melchert asks the
questions, ‘If the author was seeking to transmit clearly and unequivo-
cally his conclusions, why has he chosen words that are so ambiguous
and open textured? Is it possible the author did not intend precision in
meaning? If not, might that suggest a different way of reading this text?’
Melchert goes on to say,
What if this opening af¿rmation [‘all is ğĔė’] does not seek to be simply
accepted or assimilated but seeks to arouse contention among reader-learners
and thereby stimulate more testing by their own experience, evidence, and
argument—perhaps even discussion? If that were the case, would it not be
useful to choose a word that might well be read with different connotations, so
as to allow or even encourage various assessments of the assertion itself?
Indeed, is that not exactly what has occurred among the readers and scholars
through the centuries? The text started a debate about the meaning of life and
its various events that continues today. Instead of offering reader-learners a
conclusion, suppose the text entices reader-learners to join in exploring
conÀicting views. If that were so, another strategy for reading is required.48

This is my point precisely: whether we regard the ¿rst two verses of

Ecclesiastes as ‘riddles’ or not, there seems clearly to be plenty of scope
for differences of interpretation. Might this not be deliberate ambiguity
used as a teaching strategy in order to prompt or provoke readers to
handle this particular text differently?49 Quite often I will start a class-
room session at college with a probing question, or perhaps a provocative

47. Kathleen A. Farmer, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes: Who Knows What Is Good?
(ITC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1991), pp. 142, 146.
48. Melchert, Wise Teaching, p. 118.
49. Melchert suggests, ‘To expect reader-learners to master the text’s doctrines or
lessons may be largely to miss the point. The value of the text may be not only the
viewpoints espoused within it but the manner in which it seduces reader-learners into
reÀecting upon life themselves’ (Wise Teaching, p. 122, Melchert’s emphasis).
498 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

quote, or even an ambiguous statement for discussion in groups, to

prompt my students to start engaging with the issues in a different way
and to start working their way towards their own conclusions. In 1.1,
then, Qohelet is the riddle; in 1.2, Qohelet poses his ¿rst riddle: the riddle
of Qohelet and Qohelet the riddler!

4. Qohelet in Ecclesiastes 7.27: What Did Qohelet Find and Not Find?
To return to the word ‘Qohelet’, we meet in Eccl. 1.2 the two words īġē
ĭğėĪ, ‘says Qohelet’, which indicate that the ambiguous motto ‘all is
ğĔė’ is speci¿cally ascribed to Qohelet. We encounter very similar words
to these in 7.27. This is the only time that Qohelet’s monologue in 1.3–
12.7 is interrupted50 and the interruption is the two words ĭğėĪ ėīġē,
‘says Qohelet’. It is as if readers are being reminded that these are still
Qohelet’s words, though scholars disagree about why this reminder is
given.51 These words come in another very puzzling passage which has
left scholars Àoundering as they try to pin down just what it is that
Qohelet is saying in these verses. Perhaps we have another deliberate
riddle here.
Even in English translation, the passage sounds awkward and is
dif¿cult to follow—and, indeed, some scholars resort to emending the
text or excising parts of it in order to make sense of these verses.52 As
divided in the MT, the passage displays an alternation between ‘¿nding’
and ‘not ¿nding’ at the end of clauses:

50. It may be that Qohelet’s monologue doesn’t actually start until 1.12, but the
argument here is unaffected.
51. Salyer argues that the frame narrator uses these words to distance himself from
Qohelet’s opinion expressed here (Vain Rhetoric, p. 344). Fredericks maintains that the
words indicate that ‘[this] is a climatic point of some sort, and probably indicates a more
profound moment of reÀection’ (Daniel C. Fredericks and Daniel J. Estes, Ecclesiastes
and the Song of Songs [Apollos Old Testament Commentary; Nottingham: Apollos;
Downers Grove, IL; InterVarsity Press, 2010], p. 185). Antoon Schoors claims that the
phrase ‘underlines that Qoh now expresses his own position’, as opposed to the material
that he quotes in v. 26 and in the second half of v. 28 in order to refute it’ (The Preacher
Sought to Find Pleasing Words: A Study of the Language of Qoheleth, Part II: Vocabu-
lary [OLA, 143; Louvain: Peeters, 2004], pp. 173-75).
52. See, e.g., M.V. Fox, Ecclesiastes: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS
Translation (JPS Bible Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004),
p. 52; Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes: Introduction, Translation and Notes (AB, 18C;
New York: Doubleday, 1997), pp. 252, 264-65; Shields, The End of Wisdom, p. 188.
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 499

Ĝĭēĩġ ėę ėēī
ĢĘĔĬĚ ēĩġğ ĭĚēğ ĭĚē ĭğėĪ ėīġē
Ĝĭēĩġ ēğĘ ĜĬħģ ėĬĪĔČĖĘĥ īĬē
Ĝĭēĩġ Ħğēġ ĖĚē ĠĖē
Ĝĭēĩġ ēğ ėğēČğĞĔ ėĬēĘ
Ĝĭēĩġ ėęČėēī ĖĔğ
īĬĜ ĠĖēėČĭē ĠĜėğēė ėĬĥ īĬē
ĠĜĔī ĭĘģĔĬĚ ĘĬĪĔ ėġėĘ

However, the marking of these divisions is late and it hides the dif¿culty
facing a reader of the unaccented text in determining what is and is not
found. If v. 28 is presented in a way which separates out the occurrences
of ‘¿nding’ and ‘not ¿nding’, the interpretative challenges are more
apparent:
ĜĬħģ ėĬĪĔČĖĘĥ īĬē
Ĝĭēĩġ ēğĘ
Ħğēġ ĖĚē ĠĖē
Ĝĭēĩġ
ėğēČğĞĔ ėĬēĘ
Ĝĭēĩġ ēğ
ĖĔğ

I have included ĖĔğ (the ¿rst word in v. 29) here because, once the
requirement to follow Masoretic divisions is removed, this opens up
further possibilities for translation which are more in accord with the way
that ĖĔğ is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.53
Thus, for example, the passage might be read so that the occurrences of
‘¿nding’/‘not ¿nding’ are at the start of their respective clauses, rather
than at the end (as the Masoretic divisions indicate). This would give
balanced opening and closing lines of 13 words each, both of which start
with Ĝĭēĩġ ėę ėēī, include references to ‘¿nding’ and ‘seeking’, and in
which there is a wordplay surrounding the use of ĢĘĔĬĚ and ĭĘģĔĬĚ
(which, of course, in the unpointed text could be the same word in
singular and plural), with the reference to ĠĖē and ėĬē in between:

53. When ĖĔğ means ‘only’, or similar, and is used without a preposition or a suf¿x,
it always occurs at the end of the clause and not at the beginning, as would be the case
here. This is usually also the case when it takes a suf¿x. When ĖĔğ appears at the start of
a clause (usually, but not always followed by a preposition), it means ‘besides’, ‘in addi-
tion’, ‘apart from’ or the like. Thus the usual translation (‘See this alone I found’) treats
ĖĔğ in a way in which it is never used elsewhere. See Longman, The Book of Ecclesiastes,
p. 202, for a different reading and similarly Craig G. Bartholomew, Ecclesiastes (Baker
Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Academic, 2009), p. 264.
500 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

ĜĬħģ ėĬĪĔČĖĘĥ īĬē ĢĘĔĬĚ ēĩġğ ĭĚēğ ĭĚē ĭğėĪ ėīġē Ĝĭēĩġ ėę ėēī
Ħğēġ ĖĚē ĠĖē Ĝĭēĩġ ēğĘ
ėğēČğĞĔ ėĬēĘ Ĝĭēĩġ
ĖĔğ Ĝĭēĩġ ēğ
ĠĜĔī ĭĘģĔĬĚ ĘĬĪĔ ėġėĘ īĬĜ ĠĖēėČĭē ĠĜėğēė ėĬĥ īĬē Ĝĭēĩġ ėęČėēī

This might be translated: ‘ “See, I found this”, said Qohelet, “by adding
one thing to another to ¿nd a conclusion that I sought. I did not ¿nd a
man/person among a thousand, but I did ¿nd a woman/wife among all
these. This is not all I found. See, I found this, that God made man/people
straightforward, but they sought many schemes.” ’ Many questions remain
about these verses (not least concerning the waw on ėĬēĘ),54 but the point
for my purposes here is that the unaccented passage makes it extremely
dif¿cult to determine exactly what is and what is not found. The riddle,
then, is to answer the implicit question ‘What is “found” and what is “not
found” in this passage?’

5. Qohelet in Ecclesiastes 1.2; 7.27 and 12.8: Masculine or Feminine;

De¿nite or Inde¿nite?
To return to the speci¿c reference to Qohelet, what is not obvious in
English translation is that the Hebrew in 7.27 is different from the similar
phrase in 1.2—ĭğėĪ ėīġē rather than ĭğėĪ īġē; that is to say, the
feminine form of the verb is used rather than the masculine form. The
word ĭğėĪ appears to be a feminine participial form from a verb meaning
‘to assemble’, or ‘gather’,55 but the word occurs nowhere else in the Old
Testament. Very occasionally elsewhere in the Old Testament feminine
participles are used in what looks like a similar way,56 which might
indicate that the feminine participle may be used for a role that could be
carried out by a man. The evidence is not strong, however, and the name

54. I deal with this passage in depth in my essay, ‘ “Riddled with Ambiguity”:
Ecclesiastes 7:23–8:1 as an Example’, in Mark Boda, Tremper Longman and Cristian RaĠă
(eds.), The Words of the Wise Are Like Goads: Engaging Qohelet in the Twenty-First
Century (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013), pp. 219-40.
55. Scholars have long debated what Qohelet assembled or gathered, whether people
for religious or educational purposes (hence the translations ‘preacher’ [e.g. KJV, NKJV,
RSV] and ‘teacher’ [e.g. NRSV, NIV, NLT]), or things—perhaps wise sayings. See Chapter 3
of my Ambiguity in Ecclesiastes for further details.
56. ĭīħĤ in Ezra 2.55 and Neh. 7.57, and ĠĜĔĩė ĭīĞħ in Ezra 2.57 and Neh. 7.59 are
often offered as examples.
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 501

or title Qohelet is without any clear precedent and remains enigmatic.57

The mystery is further heightened by the use of the masculine verb in the
phrase ‘says Qohelet’ in 1.2, but the feminine verb in 7.27. Almost all
scholars put this down to a scribal error whereby the hƝ from the
beginning of ĭğėĪė has ended up on the end of the verb.58 However, on
all the occasions where we have encountered the word ĭğėĪ to this point
in the book (1.1, 2, 12) the noun has been anarthrous, that is, it has not
taken an article, and therefore has appeared to be a name rather than a
title. Two of the remaining three occurrences (12.9, 10, both of which are
in the epilogue) also function as anarthrous masculine nouns, but the
other one complicates matters even further. This occurs in the inclusio in
12.8, where we read these words: ‘ “Vanity of vanities”, says the qohelet;
“all is vanity” ’. Here the noun does take a masculine verb, but it is the
only occasion in the MT of Ecclesiastes where ĭğėĪ takes the de¿nite
article,59 which would seem to make it some kind of a title or role rather
than a proper name as it appears to be elsewhere in the book. We thus
have the phrase ‘says Qohelet’ (or ‘says the qohelet’) three times in
Ecclesiastes, and on each occasion it is slightly different:60
ĭğėĪ īġē 1:2
ĭğėĪ ėīġē 7:27
ĭğėĘĪė īġē 12:8

I am inclined to think that, rather than being due to scribal error, or

incorrect division of words, this repeated phrase is designed to further the
mystery that enshrouds the person whose words are recorded in the book
of Ecclesiastes. My inclination here is strengthened by the observation
that such variation is typical of the book.61 It also furthers my argument
that the name Qohelet is a riddle, and all three phrases occur in contexts

57. Ellul says, ‘ “Qohelet”, it seems to me, represents neither a title nor a function.
Rather it is a gratuitous designation…which has ironic and questioning overtones that
the book as a whole expresses’ (Jacques Ellul, Reason for Being: A Meditation on
Ecclesiastes [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990], p. 18).
58. In fact, R.N. Whybray says of ĭğėĪ ėīġē in 7.27, ‘the verb is feminine; but all
commentators agree that this is an error due to wrong word-division’ (Ecclesiastes
[NCBC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1989], p. 126,
my emphasis).
59. This is also the only time ĭğėĘĪ takes the plene form of the Üǀlem.
60. The LXX renders all three identically: FJ>QFOP
’&LLMITJBTUI K.
61. I discuss this in my Ambiguity in Ecclesiastes, but it merits separate treatment in
an article.
502 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

which pose riddles that the author ascribes directly to Qohelet (12.8
concluding Qohelet’s words with the same riddle with which they started
in 1.2). Again, the riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the riddler.

6. Qohelet in Ecclesiastes 1.12: ‘I am Qohelet—guess who I am!’

I have not so far considered 1.12, where the word ĭğėĪ also occurs: ‘I,
Qohelet, was king over Israel in Jerusalem’. This verse, too, is puzzling
because it looks like an introductory verse, but such an introduction
seems somewhat redundant in light of 1.1. Why do we have Qohelet’s
words introducing himself as ‘king in Jerusalem’ when that information
has already been supplied? Moreover, this ‘introduction’ is twelve verses
into the book. There are two further anomalies which add to the strange-
ness of the verse. First, the verb rendered here as ‘was’ is a perfect verb
which might most obviously be read to indicate a completed action, ‘I
was king’ or ‘I have been king’.62 If it were intended clearly to indicate
the present tense, either the participial form could have been used, or an
imperfect verb, or, more probably, the verb might have been omitted
altogether as in the closest parallel uttered by David in 2 Sam. 19.23,
ğēīĬĜČğĥ ĝğġČĜģē. The implication of the perfect form of the verb could
be that the writer is not at the time of writing king over Israel. Perhaps
this is a hint that Qohelet is not in fact King Solomon,63 perhaps even that
he makes no pretence at being a king, but is rather an adviser over Israel.
Farmer describes the ‘use of the completed-action form of the verb’ here
as a riddle: ‘Qohelet…uses the form of a self-introduction to pose a type
of riddle. In effect he is saying, “Given these clues (I was king over Israel
in Jerusalem and known for my wisdom), guess who I am”.’64

62. This is how the perfect verbs are mostly used in Ecclesiastes. Antoon Schoors
points out, ‘In Qoh, perfect tense is generally used with reference to past acts or situations;
thus very often in the ¿rst person, when the author recalls his intellectual activity…or
when he tells what happened in the past’ (The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words: A
Study of the Language of Qoheleth, Part I [Leuven: Peeters, 1992], p. 172).
63. This point is made by R. Lux (‘ “Ich, Kohelet, bin König…” Die Fiktion als
Schlüssel zur Wirklichkeit in Kohelet 1:12–2:26’, EvT 50 [1990], pp. 331-42 [335]). It
should be noted, though, that a number of scholars argue that the use of the perfect form
of a stative verb often indicates a state which commenced in the past and continues in the
present. This is correct, but the use here in Ecclesiastes contributes to the enigmatic nature
of Qohelet.
64. Farmer, Who Knows What Is Good?, p. 154.
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 503

Secondly, the preposition ‘over’ (ğĥ) is also unusual, because, although

the construction with this preposition does occur a number of times else-
where, the much more common expression in the Old Testament is just
ğēīĬĜ ĝğġ, as, indeed, it is in Prov. 1.1 and the two other occasions when
exactly the same phrase, ğēīĬĜ ĝğġ ĖĜĘĖČĢĔ ėġğĬ, is used (2 Chron.
30.26; 35.3). It is perhaps noteworthy that on the two occasions when the
root ĝğġ meaning ‘to advise’ occurs (Neh. 5.7; Dan. 4.24), it is followed
by the preposition ğĥ.

7. Qohelet in Ecclesiastes 12.9, 10: Qohelet, the Wisdom Teacher?

The ¿nal two references to Qohelet in Ecclesiastes are to be found at the
start of the epilogue, where we read, ‘Besides being wise, Qohelet also
taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many
proverbs. Qohelet sought to ¿nd pleasing words, and he wrote words of
truth plainly’ (12.9, 10). There are many anomalies and puzzles about
these two verses and the epilogue in general,65 but two questions in
particular suggest that these verses also may be intended as a riddle,
which it is left to the reader to try to resolve: ‘Who is Qohelet in these
verses?’ and ‘What is the narrator’s view of the words of Qohelet
recorded earlier in the book?’ The second question is further complicated
by the issue of whether there is just one epilogue or two; and, if there are
two, whether they take the same or different views of Qohelet’s words.
Unlike the start of the book, here at its conclusion there is no explicit
indication that Qohelet is a king (if that’s what the word means there, of
course!), and were it not for the third person description of Qohelet in 1.1
and his own words in 1.12, this is not a conclusion the reader would be
likely to come to on the basis of the epilogue alone—or probably even on
the basis of the epilogue and all the rest of the book, apart from 1.1 and
1.12! Rather, Qohelet is described as someone who is wise and who
teaches the people—though both of these could be true of a king,
especially if that king was Solomon. However, the activities which
Qohelet undertakes in these verses more readily suggest that he was a
sage and teacher: the words translated as ‘wise’, ‘knowledge’, ‘weighing’,
‘studying’, ‘arranging’ and ‘proverbs’ in v. 9 all occur much more often

65. Shields explains that ‘the task of interpreting the epilogue is beset by dif¿culties.
There are a number of hapax legomena and rare or obscure terms, as well as grammatical
dif¿culties and ambiguities’ (The End of Wisdom, p. 54). In fact, just about everything of
any signi¿cance in vv. 9-12 is disputed!
504 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

in the wisdom literature than elsewhere (though, of course, proverbs are

elsewhere associated with Solomon66); and ‘teaching’, ‘¿nding pleasing
words’ and ‘writing words of truth plainly’ are all activities one might
readily associate with a teacher. It is true that the word ĠĞĚ, ‘wise’, is an
adjective and could be used of any wise person, as, indeed, it is used of
Solomon; however, it often functions like a noun meaning ‘wise one’ or
‘sage’, as may be the case when the plural is used in v. 11, ‘The sayings
of the wise are like goads’. Hence it would seem reasonable to read it as
‘wise one’ or ‘sage’ here also. Thus, for example, the NASV renders the
start of 12.9, ‘In addition to being a wise man…’, and the NJPS translation
says, ‘A further word: Because Koheleth was a sage…’ The actual noun
‘teacher’ does not occur either67 (despite the translation of ‘Qohelet’ as
‘the teacher’ in many English versions), but the description of Qohelet as
someone who ‘taught the people’ might reasonably be taken to imply that
he was a teacher. Hence, for example, Choon-Leong Seow maintains that
ĠĞĚ ‘is used here in the technical sense of someone who is a wisdom
teacher (Jer. 18.18; Prov. 1.6; 22.17; 24.23) and not just the generic sense
of a wise person’.68 Nonetheless, just as Qohelet is not explicitly identi¿ed
as Solomon at the start of the book, though that identi¿cation is strongly
hinted at, so here at the end of the book, Qohelet is not explicitly identi-
¿ed as a wisdom teacher, though that identi¿cation is strongly hinted
at. The riddle, it seems, remains ¿nally unresolved. This is typical of
Ecclesiastes and, indeed, of Qohelet the teacher: riddles are frequently left
without de¿nitive resolution, prompting readers and students to work out
for themselves what is the ‘correct’ answer to these puzzles.
Moreover, v. 10, which moves on from describing Qohelet himself to
describing his words, contains a number of puzzling features which add to
the continuing sense of mystery surrounding Qohelet’s identity. Firstly,
the ¿rst half of the verse refers to Qohelet ‘seeking to ¿nd’ using two key
words from Eccl. 7.27-29, where we noted that Qohelet ‘sought’ but ‘did
not ¿nd’ as much as he ‘did ¿nd’, and anyway it was rather unclear just

66. See Prov. 1.1 and 1 Kgs 5.12.

67. But the noun ‘teacher’ does not occur often in the Old Testament. Where it does, it
is usually either a participial form of the verb used here, Ėġğ, or a participial form of the
verb from which ‘torah’ comes, ėīĜ, or perhaps a nominal form from this root.
68. Seow, Ecclesiastes, p. 384. He does add, ‘This does not necessarily imply,
however, that Qohelet was a professional teacher in a “wisdom school” ’ (his emphasis).
Whybray disagrees with Seow, arguing that ĠĞĚ is used in Ecclesiastes ‘in a quite general
sense as in the Book of Proverbs’ (Ecclesiastes, p. 170).
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 505

what he found. I argued that the riddle there was to answer the implicit
question ‘What is “found” and what is “not found” in this passage?’ Then
in 8.17 we read these words: ‘I saw all the work of God, that no one can
¿nd out what is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in
seeking, they will not ¿nd it out; even though those who are wise claim to
know, they cannot ¿nd it out.’ This time ‘not ¿nd out’ is repeated three
times, and again seeking seems not to achieve very much, however hard
one works at it, and even the wise cannot ¿nd it out (whatever precisely
‘it’ refers to). Similarly, in 3.11 we read, ‘He [that is, God] has made
everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and
future into their minds, yet they cannot ¿nd out what God has done from
beginning to end.’69 And again, 7.14 says, ‘In the day of prosperity be
joyful, and in the day of adversity consider; God has made the one as well
as the other, so that mortals may not ¿nd out anything that will come after
them’. It seems that in Ecclesiastes, ‘seeking’ and trying to ‘¿nd’ are
rather futile (hebel-ish?) enterprises, so when we hear in the epilogue that
Qohelet ‘sought to ¿nd’ we may be forgiven for wondering if he suc-
ceeded. This is even more the case when we discover that he sought to
¿nd ‘pleasing words’; ‘pleasing’ hardly seems an apt description for the
words ascribed to Qohelet earlier in the book. Did Qohelet then fail in this
search also? Or is this description intended to be ironic?
The second half of the verse serves only to compound the problem.
The word translated ‘he wrote’ is a passive participle in Hebrew which
seems awkward,70 and is usually emended by commentators either to the
in¿nitive absolute or to the third-person perfect. If the passive participle
is retained, it should probably be translated something like, ‘that which is
written uprightly [or, perhaps, “honestly”] are truthful words’. This leaves
a puzzle over the relationship between the two halves of the verse and the
relationship between the ‘pleasing words’ and the ‘truthful words’ (and
this puzzle is not wholly resolved by emending the verse):
x ‘Qohelet sought to ¿nd pleasing words, and what were written
honestly (by him) are truthful words’, where Qohelet both sought
to ¿nd pleasing words and wrote truthful words; or
x ‘Qohelet sought to ¿nd pleasing words, but what were written
honestly (by him) are truthful words’, where Qohelet sought to
¿nd pleasing words, but ended up writing words of truth (even
though they were unpleasant); or

69. This verse poses some very tricky interpretative challenges!

70. See Schoors, The Preacher Sought, Part I, pp. 45-46, 169-70.
506 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

x ‘Qohelet sought to ¿nd pleasing words, but what were written

honestly (by others) are truthful words’, where Qohelet sought to
¿nd pleasing words, but others wrote truthful words.

8. Qohelet and the Narrator: What Does the ‘Frame Narrator’ Think
of Qohelet?
This feeds into our second question about the epilogue: ‘What is the
narrator’s view of the words of Qohelet earlier in the book?’ Does he
commend Qohelet’s words to the reader,71 or defend them against criti-
cism;72 or does he perhaps intend to guide the reader towards a ‘proper’
interpretation of Qohelet’s words,73 or seek to highlight what he thought
was important in the book;74 or does he provide an orthodox conclusion to
ease acceptance of Qohelet’s words,75 or perhaps to encourage the use of
Ecclesiastes as ‘a schoolbook in Jerusalem’;76 or does he hope to connect
Ecclesiastes to other wisdom literature, especially Proverbs;77 or does he

71. See, e.g., Seow, Ecclesiastes, pp. 392-94. J. Stafford Wright says, ‘these verses
put the imprimatur on the book’ (‘Ecclesiastes’, in Frank E. Gaelelein [ed.], The
Expositor’s Bible Commentary, V [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991], pp. 1137-97 [1196]).
72. Gordis argues that the epilogue may be ‘an apology and defense of the book
against such criticisms as Wisdom of Solomon chap. 2, contains’ (Koheleth, p. 350).
73. Craig G. Bartholomew notes that the contradictory views expressed in Ecclesias-
tes set up ‘gaps’, and argues: ‘Ecclesiastes itself gives us clues as to how the gap between
empiricistic skepticism and the carpe diem perspective is to be ¿lled… [T]he epilogue is,
I think, crucial in indicating ¿nally how the narrator intends us to ¿ll in the gaps’ (Read-
ing Ecclesiastes: Old Testament Exegesis and Hermeneutical Theory [Rome: Editrice
Ponti¿cio Istituto Biblico, 1998], p. 253). He continues, ‘12:13-14 ensures a foolproof
reading of Ecclesiastes’ (p. 254).
74. Shannon Burkes refers to ‘the ¿nal verses (12:9-14), which sum up for the reader
what this particular editor would like one to take away from the work, in case one might
be led to the wrong conclusions’ (Death in Qoheleth and Egyptian Biographies of the Late
Period [Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999], p. 1).
75. Michael V. Fox writes, ‘The caution the epilogue expresses is a public, protective
stance, intended to ease acceptance of Qohelet’s pungent words’ (A Time to Tear Down
and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1999], p. 372).
76. Loh¿nk argues that the ¿rst epilogue enabled the book to be ‘recognized as a
school textbook’, and the second epilogue ‘defended the orthodoxy of the book’ and
ensured its continued use in the classroom (Qoheleth, pp. 11-13).
77. Gerald H. Wilson argues: ‘It is probable that the editor(s) who appended Qoh
12:9-14 shaped these verses in light of Proverbs 1–9, which already occupied their present
position’ (‘ “The Words of the Wise”: The Intent and Signi¿cance of Qohelet 12:9-14’,
JBL 103.2 [1984], pp. 175-92 [189]).
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 507

disapprove of Qohelet’s words and hope to subdue the unorthodoxy of the

book;78 or does he use Qohelet’s words to warn students away from the
teachings of ‘the wise’;79 or has he actually fundamentally misunderstood
Qohelet’s words;80 or are there two epilogues, one of which commends
Qohelet, the other being more critical,81 possibly one from the writer of
the rest of the book and the other the words of an editor;82 or has the
author of Ecclesiastes perhaps deliberately created tension between
Qohelet’s words and those of the frame narrator whose voice we hear in
1.1 and 12.9-14, and who also speaks the words ‘says (the) Qohelet’ in
1.2; 7.27 and 12.8?83
All these possibilities ¿nd support among modern scholars, and it is
notable that even in the most recent works there is disagreement regard-
ing the extent of any secondary additions, from none (Salyer; Provan;
Bartholomew; Krüger), or possibly none (Davis), to 12.13b-14 (Fox;
Seow), or 12.9-14 (Brown; Tamez; Huwiler; Burkes; Christianson;

78. Longman argues, ‘Qohelet’s speech is a foil, a teaching device, used by the second
wise man in order to instruct his son (12:12) concerning the dangers of speculative, doubt-
ing wisdom in Israel’ (The Book of Ecclesiastes, p. 38). Weeks’s view of Ecclesiastes is
very different from Longman’s, but on this point he argues similarly: ‘the epilogist seems
concerned not to reÀect or commend what Qohelet has just said, but, in turn, to normalize
it, to warn against it, and to extract from it a more conventionally pious viewpoint’
(Ecclesiastes and Scepticism, p. 172).
79. Shields says, ‘One could say that the epilogist “leaked” Qoheleth’s words in order
to discredit the sages and deter any would-be students of the sages from attaching
themselves to the wisdom movement’ (The End of Wisdom, p. ix).
80. Melchert writes of 12.12-13, ‘Here is the voice of a censor warning reader-learners
not to take too seriously what has been said in the preceding book. In recommending that
everything can be summed up in a one-line wise saying, he either profoundly mis-
understands Qohelet’s message(s), or else he seeks to mislead reader-learners’ (Wise
Teaching, p. 135).
81. See, e.g., J.A. Loader, who maintains: ‘When we read Ecclesiastes from the
perspective of the ¿rst redactor, we have before us a different book than when we read it
from the standpoint of the second redactor’ (Ecclesiastes: A Practical Commentary
[Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986], p. 135).
82. This is the position that Seow (Ecclesiastes, p. 38) and Fox (A Time to Tear Down,
pp. 95-96, 144) adopt.
83. Salyer argues, ‘both Qoheleth and the frame narrator are literary creations whose
roles dissent because they represent two epistemological poles which were perceived as
conÀicting by the implied author. Indeed, the implied author of Ecclesiastes created their
adversarial and mutually subversive relationship for the purpose of exploiting those well-
perceived differences in order to say something about the prospects and limitations of all
human knowing’ (Vain Rhetoric, pp. 215-16).
508 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 37.4 (2013)

Melchert; Ogden and Zogbo); and whether there are one (Huwiler;
Longman; Krüger; Shields) or two epilogues (Tamez; Fox; Seow;
Loh¿nk; Ogden and Zogbo); and whether the message of the book is to
be sought in Qohelet’s words (Christianson), or in the theology of the
frame narrator (Longman), or perhaps in the way the epilogue guides us
to ‘¿ll in the gaps’ (Provan; Bartholomew); and whether there is a funda-
mental incongruity between the frame and Qohelet’s words (Brown;
Melchert; Longman; Shields)—and if there is, whether this is part of the
book’s message (Salyer; Shields; Longman), or a ‘garish, “establishment-
issue” frame’ (Christianson)—or whether the epilogue is basically in
harmony with the rest of the book (Provan; Huwiler; Fox; Seow). There
seems little doubt that the epilogue is, or the epilogues are, puzzling;
perhaps again we have an intentional riddle whereby the reader is
supposed to answer the question, ‘What is the narrator’s view of the
words of Qohelet earlier in the book?’

9. Conclusion
In this article I have explored all seven of the occurrences of the name or
title ‘Qohelet’ or haqqohelet (the qohelet) in the book of Ecclesiastes in
order to demonstrate that on each occasion there are puzzling features
which raise questions about the identity of this key character in the book,
whose words constitute the bulk of its content. I hope I have shown
convincingly that these puzzles surrounding Qohelet or haqqohelet justify
using the expression ‘the riddle of Qohelet’ in relation to this enigmatic
person. It is my contention that Qohelet is presented to readers as a riddle
to be solved. Further, like many riddles through the ages, this riddle
deliberately toys with readers and seeks to lead them initially to the
wrong answer, before providing them with the right answer, or at least
giving further information which indicates that the ¿rst answer may not
be the correct one. It is nothing new to argue that readers are initially
supposed to guess that Qohelet is Solomon and then realize that this guess
was incorrect, though I’m not aware of any systematic study that has
considered this a ‘riddle’. What I think may be new is the argument that
this is a deliberate didactic device used throughout the book whereby
ambiguity is employed in order to engage readers and learners in ‘solv-
ing’ for themselves the various riddles that the book throws up, and by
this means to educate readers to ‘solve’ the innumerable riddles that life
and faith throw up. However, I don’t believe that readers are expected to
 INGRAM The Riddle of Qohelet and Qohelet the Riddler 509

come up with many de¿nitive answers to life’s riddles. Rather, they are
supposed to ¿nd satisfactory ways to cope with these riddles, without
having to ¿nd answers to them all. After all, Ecclesiastes makes it abun-
dantly clear that no matter how much we may seek and no matter how
wise we may be, there are severe limits to our ability to ¿nd. It seems we
should expect ‘not to ¿nd’ as much as ‘to ¿nd’.
This supports the second part of my thesis, that ‘Qohelet the riddler’
might be an apt description of the main speaker in Ecclesiastes, and that
his riddling is part of the way in which he, as a teacher of the people,
intends to educate his students. I have given some examples of this in
the article, and my earlier work, in which I sought to demonstrate that
Ecclesiastes is riddled with intentional ambiguity, feeds into this dis-
cussion—and conversely this discussion takes the earlier studies a stage
further because it provides an explanation for the use of ambiguity in
Ecclesiastes.