In this section, Qohelet’s thoughts turn back to the arrogant foolishness of those people—powerful or seemingly insignificant—who believe that their deeds will bring triumph and eternal glory to their name. Only God, who assigns each person his or her lifespan, is timeless. While the pleasure or pain of the immediate moment may be all we can be sure of, time and chance happen to all, and even our best efforts and actions may never be recognized or remembered.

Yet, as Qohelet reiterates throughout his book, the wise person must persevere, even struggle, in his or her work in this world under the sun—while he or she has the time.

In the left-hand illumination here, the hourglass with which the philosopher-king measures minutes and hours holds, he imagines, not sand but floating, fleeting vapour (hevel in Hebrew). Dice tossed on the surface before him suggest the gamble of every moment.  At his side the intricately carved frieze, the fruit of many hours of a nameless craftsman’s days, shows careless damage, even as it fills the room with beauty.

The illumination on the right-hand page offers a view of a lion fountain in the Alhambra palace in Granada, originally built by its fourteenth-century craftsmen as a water-clock that sprayed water from a different lion’s mouth for each hour of the day. Three centuries earlier, Sephardic poet and philosopher, Solomon ibn Gabirol, had described a similar fountain in a wondrous Andalusian palace that reflected its master’s vast power.

The poem that Ibn Gabirol—not only poet but also philosopher—composed about the palace reveals his own struggle with Qohelet’s assertion of the limits of human deeds. In this illumination, the entire panegyric poem is inscribed in micrography, in a pattern that still decorates the Alhambra’s Generalife Gardens. 

Ibn Gabirol characterizes the shifting light and lifelike animal statuary in his patron’s palace as a microcosm of creation, yet asserts that the memory evoked by the poet’s imagination will outlast the actual stone that will (and indeed did) ultimately crumble. (Like Qohelet’s mist, it vanished.)

The caper sprig in the foreground symbolizes Israel’s quality of perseverance in the Babylonian Talmud (Beitsa 25b). Able to sprout among dry rocks, with no water or nourishment, and produce a fresh bud, blossom, and fruit every day, the caper reminded the rabbis of Israel’s ability to persevere through adversity with only God’s unseen—Qohelet might say inscrutable—support.

References

Band, Debra, and Fisch, Menachem. 2023. Qohelet: Searching for a Life Worth Living (Waco: Baylor University Press)

Demiriz, Y. 2017. Islam Sanatinda: Geometrik Süsleme (Istanbul: Hayalperest)

Hareuveni, Nogah. 1984. Tree and Shrub in Our Biblical Heritage, trans. by Helen Frenkly (Kiryat Ono, Israel: Neuot Kedumim)

Scheindlin, Raymond P. 1996. ‘Poet and Patron: Ibn Gabirol’s Poem of the Palace and Its Gardens’, Prooftexts 16.1: 35

______. 2016. Vulture in a Cage: Poems by Solomon ibn Gabirol (New York: Archipelago), p.221