Pengkhotbah 2:5

2:5 I designed ¹  royal gardens ²  and parks ³  for myself,

and I planted all kinds of fruit trees in them.

Pengkhotbah 9:1

Everyone Will Die

9:1 So I reflected on all this, ⁴  attempting to clear ⁵  it all up.

I concluded that ⁶  the righteous and the wise, as well as their works, are in the hand of God;

whether a person will be loved or hated ⁷  –

no one knows what lies ahead. ⁸ 

[2:5]  ¹ tn Heb “made.”

[2:5]  ² tn The term does not refer here to vegetable gardens, but to orchards (cf. the next line). In the same way the so-called “garden” of Eden was actually an orchard filled with fruit trees. See Gen 2:8-9.

[2:5]  ³ tn The noun פַּרְדֵּס (pardes, “garden, parkland, forest”) is a foreign loanword that occurs only 3 times in biblical Hebrew (Song 4:13; Eccl 2:5; Neh 2:8). The original Old Persian term pairidaeza designated the enclosed parks and pleasure-grounds that were the exclusive domain of the Persian kings and nobility (HALOT 963 s.v. פַּרְדֵּס; LSJ 1308 s.v παράδεισος). The related Babylonian term pardesu “marvelous garden” referred to the enclosed parks of the kings (AHw 2:833 and 3:1582). The term passed into Greek as παράδεισος (paradeisos, “enclosed park, pleasure-ground”), referring to the enclosed parks and gardens of the Persian kings (LSJ 1308). The Greek term has been transliterated into English as “paradise.”

[9:1]  ⁴ tn Heb “I laid all this to my heart.”

[9:1]  ⁵ tn The term וְלָבוּר (velavur, conjunction + Qal infinitive construct from בּוּר, bur, “to make clear”) denotes “to examine; to make clear; to clear up; to explain” (HALOT 116 s.v. בור; BDB 101 s.v. בּוּר). The term is related to Arabic baraw “to examine” (G. R. Driver, “Supposed Arabisms in the Old Testament,” JBL 55 [1936]: 108). This verb is related to the Hebrew noun בֹּר (bor, “cleanness”) and adjective בַּר (bar, “clean”). The term is used in the OT only in Ecclesiastes (1:13; 2:3; 7:25; 9:1). This use of the infinitive has a connotative sense (“attempting to”), and functions in a complementary sense, relative to the main verb.

[9:1]  ⁶ tn The words “I concluded that” do not appear in the Hebrew text, but are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[9:1]  ⁷ tn Heb “whether love or hatred.”

[9:1]  ⁸ tn Heb “man does not know anything before them.”