4 and the doors shall be shut in the street; when the sound of the grinding is low, and one shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of music shall be brought low;
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
And the doors is low - The house is viewed from without. The way of entry and exit is stopped: little or no sound issues forth to tell of life stirring within. The old man, as he grows older, has less in common with the rising generation; mutual interest and social contact decline. Some take the doors and the sound of the mill as figures of the lips and ears and of the speech.
He shall rise - Here the metaphor of the house passes out of sight. The verb may either be taken impersonally ( "they shall rise," compare the next verse): or as definitely referring to an old man, who as the master of the house rises out of sleep at the first sound in the morning.
All the daughters of musick - i. e., Singing women Ecclesiastes 2:8.
Be brought low - i. e., Sound faintly in the ears of old age.
And the doors shall be shut in the streets -
5. The doors - the lips, which are the doors by which the mouth is closed.
6. Be shut in the streets - The cavities of the cheeks and jaws, through which the food may be said to travel before it is fitted by mastication or chewing to go down the aesophagus into the stomach. The doors or lips are shut to hinder the food in chewing from dropping out; as the teeth, which prevented that before, are now lost.
7. The sound of the grinding is low - Little noise is now made in eating, because the teeth are either lost, or become so infirm as not to nsuffer their being pressed close together; and the mouth being kept shut to hinder the food from dropping out, the sound in eating is scarcely heard. The teeth are divided into three kinds: -
1. The dentes incisores, or cutting teeth, in the front of the jaw.
2. The dentes canini, or dog teeth, those in the sides of the jaws, for gnawing, or tearing and separating hard or tough substances. And,
3. Dentes molares, or grinding teeth, the posterior or double teeth, in both jaws, generally termed the grinders; because their office is to grind down the substances that have been cut by the fore teeth, separated into their parts or fibres by the dog teeth, and thus prepare it for digestion in the stomach.
8. He shall rise up at the voice of the bird - His sleep is not sound as it used to be; he slumbers rather than sleeps; and the crowing of the cock awakes him. And so much difficulty does he find to respire while in bed, that he is glad of the dawn to rise up and get some relief. The chirping ot the sparrow is sufficient to awake him.
9. All the daughters of music shall be brought low - The Voice, that wonderful instrument, almost endless in the strength and variety of its tones, becomes feeble and squeaking, and merriment and pleasure are no more. The tones emitted are all of the querulous or mournful kind.
And the (f) doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the (g) grinding shall be low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the (h) bird, and all the (i) daughters of music shall be brought low;
(f) The lips or mouth.
(g) When the jaws will scarce open and not be able to chew any more.
(h) He will not be able to sleep.
(i) That is the wind pipes or the ears will be deaf and not able to hear singing.
And the doors shall be shut in the streets,.... The Midrash and Jarchi interpret these of the holes of the body; in which they are followed by our learned and ingenuous countryman, Dr. Smith; who, by them, understands the inlets and outlets of the body; and, by the "streets", the ways and passages through which the food goes, and nourishment is conveyed; and which may be said to be shut, when they cease from their use: but it seems much better, with Aben Ezra and others, to interpret them of the lips; which are sometimes called the doors of the mouth, or lips, Psalm 141:3; which are opened both for speaking and eating; but, in aged persons, are much shut as to either; they do not choose to speak much, because of the disagreeableness of their voice, and difficulty of speech, through the shortness of breath, and the loss of teeth; nor do they open them much to eat, through want of appetite; and while eating, are obliged, for want of teeth, to keep their lips close, to retain their food from falling out; they mumble with their lips both in speaking and eating; and, particularly in public, aged persons care not to speak nor eat, for the reason following: though some understand it, more literally, of their having the doors of their houses shut, and keeping within, and not caring to go abroad in the streets, because of their infirmities so the Targum,
"thy feet shall be bound from going in the streets;''
when the sound of the grinding is low; which the above Jewish writers, and, after them, Dr. Smith, understand of the stomach, grinding, digesting, and concocting food, and of other parts through which it is conveyed, and the offices they perform; but sound or voice does not seem so well to agree with that; rather therefore this is to be understood, as before, of the grinding of the teeth, through the loss of which so much noise is not heard in eating as in young men, and the voice in speaking is lower; the Targum is,
"appetite of food shall depart from thee;''
and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird; that is, the aged person, the least noise awakes him out of sleep; and as he generally goes to bed soon, he rises early at cock crowing, or with the lark, as soon as the voice of that bird or any other, is heard; particularly the cock, which crows very early, and whose voice is heard the most early, and is by some writers (f) emphatically called the bird that calls men to their work;
and all the daughters of music shall be brought low; either those that make music, and are the instruments of it, as the lungs, the throat, the teeth, mouth, and lips, so the Targum and Midrash; or those that receive music, as the ears, and the several parts of them, the cavities of them, particularly the tympanum and auditory nerve; all which, through old age, are impaired, and become very unfit to be employed in making music, or in attending to it: the voice of singing men and singing women could not be heard with pleasure by old Barzillai, 2-Samuel 19:36. These clauses are expressive of the weakness which generally old age brings on men; very few instances are there to the contrary; such as of Caleb, who, at eighty five years of age, was as strong as at forty; and of Moses, whose natural force abated not at an hundred and twenty; nor indeed as of Cyrus, who, when seventy years of age, and near his death, could not perceive that he was weaker then than in his youth (g).
(f) "Inque suum miseros excitat ales opus", Ovid. Amorum, l. 1. Eleg. 6. v. 66. "Cristatus ales", ib. Fast. l. 1. v. 455. (g) Cicero in Catone Majore, sive de Senectute, c. 8.
doors--the lips, which are closely shut together as doors, by old men in eating, for, if they did not do so, the food would drop out (Job 41:14; Psalm 141:3; Micah 7:5).
in the streets--that is, toward the street, "the outer doors" [MAURER and WEISS].
sound of . . . grinding--The teeth being almost gone, and the lips "shut" in eating, the sound of mastication is scarcely heard.
the bird--the cock. In the East all mostly rise with the dawn. But the old are glad to rise from their sleepless couch, or painful slumbers still earlier, namely, when the cock crows, before dawn (Job 7:4) [HOLDEN]. The least noise awakens them [WEISS].
daughters of music--the organs that produce and that enjoy music; the voice and ear.
From the eyes the allegory proceeds to the mouth, and the repugnance of the old man to every noise disturbing his rest: "And the doors to the street are closed, when the mill sounds low; and he rises up at the voice of a bird; and all the daughters of song must lower themselves." By the door toward the street the Talm. and Midrash understand the pores or the emptying members of the body, - a meaning so far from being ignoble, that even in the Jewish morning prayer a Beracha is found in these words: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the world, who hast wisely formed man, and made for him manifold apertures and cavities. It is manifest and well known before the throne of Thy Majesty, that if one of these cavities is opened, or one of these apertures closed, it is impossible for him to exist and to stand before Thee; blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Physician of the body, and who doest wondrous words!" The words which follow הטּ בּשׁ are accordingly to be regarded as assigning a reason for this closing: the non-appearance of excretion has its reason in defective digestion in this, that the stomach does not grind (Talm.: וגו בשרקבן
(Note: Cf. Berachoth 61b: The stomach (קורקבן) grinds. As hamses is properly the caul of the ruminant, so this word קוּרקבן is the crop (bibl. מראה) of the bird.)
בשביל). But the dual דּלתים suggests a pair of similar and related members, and בּשּׁוּק a pair of members open before the eyes, and not such as modesty requires to be veiled. The Targum therefore understands the shutting of the doors properly; but the mills, after the indication lying in הטּ grinding maids, it understands of the organs of eating and tasting, for it translates: "thy feet will be fettered, so that thou canst not go out into the street; and appetite will fail thee." But that is an awkward amalgamation of the literal with the allegorical, which condemns itself by this, that it separates the close connection of the two expressions required by בּשׁפל, which also may be said of the reference of dlt' to the ears, into which no sound, even from the noisy market, penetrates (Gurlitt, Grtz). We have for דלתים a key, already found by Aben Ezra, in Job 41:2, where the jaws of the leviathan are called פּניו דּלתי; and as Herzf. and Hitz. explain, so Samuel Aripol in his Commentary, which appeared in Constantinople, 1855, rightly: "He calls the jaws דלתים, to denote that not two דלתות in two places, but in one place, are meant, after the manner of a door opening out to the street, which is large, and consists of two folds or wings, דלתות, which, like the lips (השׂפתים, better: the jaws), form a whole in two parts; and the meaning is, that at the time of old age the lips are closed and drawn in, because the teeth have disappeared, or, as the text says, because the noise of the mill is low, just because he has no teeth to grind with." The connection of סגּרוּ and בּשׁפל is, however, closer still: the jaws of an old man are closed externally, for the sound of the mill is low; i.e., since, when one masticates his food with the jaws of a toothless mouth, there is heard only a dull sound of this chewing (Mumpfelns, vid., Wiegand's Deut. W.B.), i.e., laborious masticating. He cannot any more crack or crunch and break his food, one hears only a dull munching and sucking. - The voice of the mouth (Bauer, Hitz., Gurlitt, Zckl.) cannot be the meaning of קול הט; the set of teeth (Gurlitt indeed substitutes, Ecclesiastes 12:3, the cavity of the mouth) is not the organ of voice, although it contributes to the formation of certain sounds of words, and is of importance for the full sound of the voice.
בּשּׁוּק, "to the street," is here = on the street side; שׁפל is, as at Proverbs 16:19, infin. (Symmachus: ἀχρειωθείσης τῆς φωνῆς; the Venet.: ἐν τῷ ταπεινῶσθαι τὴν φωνήν), and is to be understood after Isaiah 29:4; טחנה stands for רחים, as the vulgar Arab. tahûn and matḥana instead of the antiquated raḥâ. Winzer now supposes that the picture of the night is continued in 4b: et subsistit (vox molae) ad cantum galli, et submissius canunt cantatrices (viz., molitrices). Elster, with Umbreit, supposes the description of a storm continued: the sparrow rises up to cry, and all the singing birds sink down (flutter restlessly on the ground). And Taylor supposes the lament for the dead continued, paraphrasing: But the bird of evil omen [owl, or raven] raises his dirge, and the merry voice of the singing girls is silent.
These three pictures, however, are mere fancies, and are also evidently here forced upon the text; for יקוט קול cannot mean subsistit vox, but, on the contrary (cf. Hosea 10:14), surgit (tollitur) vox; and יקום לקול cannot mean: it (the bird) raises itself to cry, which would have required יקום לתת קולו, or at least לקּול, after למלחמה קום, etc.; besides, it is to be presumed that צפור is genit., like קול עוגב and the like, not nom. of the subj. It is natural, with Hitz., Ewald, Heiligst., Zck., to refer qol tsippor to the peeping, whispering voice ("Childish treble" of Shakespeare) of the old man (cf. stiphtseph, Isaiah 29:4; Isaiah 38:14; Isaiah 10:14; Isaiah 8:19). But the translation: "And it (the voice) approaches a sparrow's voice," is inadmissible, since for ל קום the meaning, "to pass from one state to another," cannot be proved from 1-Samuel 22:13; Micah 2:8; קום signifies there always "to rise up," and besides, qol tahhanah is not the voice of the mouth supplied with teeth, but the sound of the chewing of a toothless mouth. If leqol is connected with a verb of external movement, or of that of the soul, it always denotes the occasion of this movement, Numbers 16:34; Ezekiel 27:28; Job 21:12; Habakkuk 3:16. Influenced by this inalienable sense of the language, the Talm. explains צף ויקום by "even a bird awakes him." Thus also literally the Midrash, and accordingly the Targ. paraphrasing: "thou shalt awaken out of thy sleep for a bird, as for thieves breaking in at night." That is correct, only it is unnecessary to limit ויקוּם (or rather ויקום,
(Note: Vav with Cholem in H. F. Thus rightly, according to the Masora, which places it in the catalogue of those words which occur once with a higher (יקום) and once with a lower vowel (yקוּם), Mas. fin. 2a b, Ochlaweochla, No. 5; cf. also Aben Ezra's Comm. under Psalm 80:19; Zachoth 23a, Safa berura 21b (where Lipmann is uncertain as to the meaning).)
which accords with the still continued subordination of Ecclesiastes 12:4 to the eo die quo of Ecclesiastes 12:3) to rising up from sleep, as if it were synonymous with ויעור: the old man is weak (nervously weak) and easily frightened, and on account of the deadening of his senses (after the figure of Ecclesiastes 12:2, the darkening of the five stars) is so liable to mistake, that if even a bird chirps, he is frightened by it out of his rest (cf. hēkim, Isaiah 14:9).
Also in the interpretation of the clause haשׁיר וישּׁחוּ, the ancients are in the right track. The Talm. explains: even all music and song appear to him like common chattering (שׂוּחה or, according to other readings, שׂיחה); the proper meaning of ychsw is thus Haggad. twisted. Less correctly the Midrash: בנות השיר are his lips, or they are the reins which think, and the heart decides (on this curious psychol. conception, cf. Chullin 11a, and particularly Berachoth 61a, together with my Psychol. p. 269). The reference to the internal organs if priori improbable throughout; the Targ. with the right tact decides in favour of the lips: "And thy lips are untuned, so that they can no more say (sing) songs." In this translation of the Talm. there are compounded, as frequently, two different interpretations, viz., that interpretation of בן השׁ, which is proved by the כל going before to be incorrect, because impossible; and the interpretation of these "daughters of song" of "songs," as if these were synonymous designations, as when in Arab. misfortunes are called banatu binasan, and the like (vid., Lane's Lex. I p. 263); בּת קול, which in Mish. denotes a separate voice (the voice of heaven), but in Syr. the separate word, may be compared. But ישׁחוּ (fut. Niph. of שׁחח) will not accord with this interpretation. For that בן השׁ denotes songs (Hitz., Heiligst.), or the sound of singing (Bttch.), or the words (Ewald) of the old man himself, which are now softened down so as to be scarcely audible, is yet too improbable; it is an insipid idea that the old man gives forth these feeble "daughters of song" from his mouth. We explain ישׁחו of a being bowed down, which is external to the old man, and accordingly understand benoth hashshir not of pieces of music (Aq. πάντα τὰ τῆς ᾠδῆς) which must be lowered to pianissimo, but according to the parallel already rightly acknowledge by Desvoeux, 2-Samuel 19:36, where the aged Barzillai says that he has now no longer an ear for the voice of singing men and singing women, of singing birds (cf. בּר זמירא of a singing bird in the Syrian fables of Sophos, and banoth of the branches of a fruit tree, Genesis 49:22), and, indeed, so that these are a figure of all creatures skilled in singing, and taking pleasure in it: all beings that are fond of singing, and to which it has become as a second nature, must lower themselves, viz., the voice of their song (Isaiah 29:4) (cf. the Kal, Psalm 35:14, and to the modal sense of the fut. Ecclesiastes 10:10, יגּבּר, and Ecclesiastes 10:19, ישׂמּח), i.e., must timidly retire, they dare not make themselves heard, because the old man, who is terrified by the twittering of a little bird, cannot bear it.
In - Or, towards the streets: which lead into the streets. This may be understood either of the outward senses, which, as doors, let in outward objects to the soul: or rather the mouth, the two lips, here expressed by a word of the dual number, which like a door, open or shut the way that leads into the streets or common passages of the body; which also are principal instruments both of speaking and eating. And these are said to be shut, not absolutely, but comparatively, because men in old age grow dull and listless, having little appetite to eat, and are very frequently indisposed for discourse. When the sound - When the teeth are loose and few, whereby both his speech is low, and the noise which he makes in eating is but small. Shall rise - From his bed, being weary with lying, and unable to get sleep. The bird - As soon as the birds begin to chirp, which is early in the morning, whereas young men, can lie and sleep long. The daughters - All those senses which are employed in music. Brought low - Shall be cast down from their former excellency, and become incapable either of making musick, or of delighting in it.
*More commentary available at chapter level.