Kohelet’s Pursuit of Truth: A New Reading of Ecclesiastes by Benjamin J. Segal (review)

One review comment on the back cover of this book aroused my interest in Segal’s work. The writer of the excerpt, Rabbi Harold Kushner, recounts that his Hebrew high school teacher warned him not to read Koheleth. “Since then,” he says, “I’ve read every commentary on Kohelet I could find.” His appraisal of S.’s work in light of that remarkable statement engendered my eagerness to read: “Segal’s is the most insightful, most lucid, most persuasive one I have ever read.”

For anyone who is preaching or teaching the Book of Ecclesiastes, I recommend this commentary for its unique translation alone. Though the comments and translational notes are not thorough, on some of the more complicated portions of Ecclesiastes they will give you another voice with which to interact without taking up much of your time—and there are some very insightful notes. The main portion of the commentary (pp. 11–97) contains the whole of the Hebrew text of Ecclesiastes (by and large the MT) divided into sections and interspersed with translation and commentary. The author usually does not “show his work” (i.e., how he came to his translation), which does make the work of less use for those primarily interested in the technicality of the Hebrew.

Yet, having seriously engaged the words of Ecclesiastes and an impressive array of commentators, S. offers a thoughtful and intriguing—and not obviously objectionable— vision of the whole. For S., Ecclesiastes is “a tale of a failed search for certain knowledge” (p. 1). S.’s “principal contention” is the following: “This is not a philosophical tract, but the tale of Kohelet’s search” (p. 114). It is a narrative of one man’s experience of life “under the sun,” that is, “in the empirical world” (p. 139), “a retrospective collection of pieces composed over a lifetime” (p. 140), presented with all of their seeming contradictions. “Kohelet sees and describes life unadorned and undisguised, honestly and movingly” (p. 155; quoted from Haim Shapira, Ecclesiastes: The Biblical Philosopher [in Hebrew] [Or Yehuda: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir, 2011] 223). The author of Ecclesiastes, who, according to S., is responsible for creating Koheleth and the narrator, gives “advice as to how to best survive” in a world whose way “is beyond the ken of mortal man” (p. 1). “The purpose of [Ecclesiastes] . . . is . . . to be a goad to further thought by offering challenges” (p. 147). It “has a lot more to do with asking questions than supplying definitive answers” (p. 113). “It is not an answer to all challenges, but a challenge to all answers” (p. 150).

The above assessments occur in the “Brief Introduction” (pp. 1–7) and final section of the commentary, entitled “Review Essays and Further Thoughts” (pp. 101–62). These sections “expand upon points included in the introduction and in the commentary and offer new perspectives,” emphasizing “wherein the commentary differs from others” (p. 99). Here, too, S. offers a discussion of his theory of reading texts (texts are complex and often multivalent but not unlimited), a contention that there is change and progression in Koheleth’s thought (his explanation for the “contradictions,” which he places in conversation with eight other explanations), a substantial defense of the translation “vapor” over against other proposals, an outlined three-part structure, and other typical introductory issues (i.e., date, authorship, and literary/religious contexts). The final two parts of the book contain several literary reflections on Ecclesiastes and twenty thought-provoking questions for discussion (e.g., “At what age should one first read Ecclesiastes?”; p. 162).

My main critique of S.’s book, aside from my reservations about accepting his suggestion that there is subtle change and progression in Koheleth (too subtle to be sure), is its cursory treatment of the more obscure passages in Ecclesiastes. S. does make an interesting comment that the obscurities may be meant to embody one of the messages of the book: the world is...