Ecclesiastes 8:2-4

Context

8:2 Obey the king’s command,¹

because you took² an oath before God³ to be loyal to him.⁴

8:3 Do not rush out of the king’s presence in haste – do not delay when the matter is unpleasant,⁵

for he can do whatever he pleases.

8:4 Surely the king’s authority⁶ is absolute;⁷

no one can say⁸ to him, “What are you doing?”

[8:2] ¹tc 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] ²tn The phrase “you took” does not appear in the Hebrew text, but is supplied in the translation for smoothness.

[8:2] ³tn 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] ⁴tn The words “to be loyal to him” do not appear in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[8:3] ⁵tn Or “do not stand up for a bad cause.”

[8:4] ⁶tn Heb “word.”

[8:4] ⁷tn Heb “supreme.”

[8:4] ⁸tn Heb “Who can say…?”