Ecclesiastes 8:2

8:2 Obey the king’s command, ¹ 

because you took ²  an oath before God ³  to be loyal to him. ⁴ 

Ecclesiastes 10:12

Words and Works of Wise Men and Fools

10:12 The words of a wise person ⁵  win him ⁶  favor, ⁷ 

but the words ⁸  of a fool are self-destructive. ⁹ 

[8:2]  ¹ tc The Leningrad Codex (the basis of BHS) reads אֲנִי (’ani, 1st person common singular independent personal pronoun): “I obey the king’s command.” Other medieval Hebrew mss and all the versions (LXX, Vulgate, Targum, Syriac Peshitta) preserve an alternate textual tradition of the definite accusative marker אֶת־ (’et) introducing the direct object: אֶת־פִּי־מֶלֶךְ שְׁמוֹר (’et-pi-melekh shÿmor, “Obey the command of the king”). External evidence supports the alternate textual tradition. The MT is guilty of simple orthographic confusion between similar looking letters. The BHS editors and the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project adopt אֶת־ as the original reading. See D. Barthélemy, ed., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 3:582–83.

[8:2]  ² tn The phrase “you took” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for smoothness.

[8:2]  ³ tn The genitive-construct שְׁבוּעַת אֱלֹהִים (shÿvu’at ’elohim, “an oath of God”) functions as a genitive of location (“an oath before God”) or an adjectival genitive of attribute (“a supreme oath”).

[8:2]  ⁴ tn The words “to be loyal to him” do not appear in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[10:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “of a wise man’s mouth.”

[10:12]  ⁶ tn The phrase “win him” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[10:12]  ⁷ tn Or “are gracious.” The antithetical parallelism suggests that חֵן (khen) does not denote “gracious character” but “[gain] favor” (e.g., Gen 39:21; Exod 3:21; 11:3; 12:36; Prov 3:4, 34; 13:15; 22:1; 28:23; Eccl 9:11); cf. HALOT 332 s.v. חֵן 2; BDB 336 s.v. חֵן 2. The LXX, on the other hand, rendered חֶן with χάρις (caris, “gracious”). The English versions are divided: “are gracious” (KJV, YLT, ASV, NASB, NIV) and “win him favor” (NEB, RSV, NRSV, NAB, MLB, NJPS, Moffatt).

[10:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “lips.”

[10:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “consume him”; or “engulf him.” The verb I בלע (“to swallow”) creates a striking wordplay on the homonymic root II בלע (“to speak eloquently”; HALOT 134-35 s.v בלע). Rather than speaking eloquently (II בלע, “to speak eloquently”), the fool utters words that are self-destructive (I בלע, “to swallow, engulf”).