Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Nir cohen - Prof. Mat." <nir AT ccet.ufrn.br>]

karl,

טוב מראה עינים מהלך־נפשׁ גם־זה הבל ורעות רוח

1. i think you should include with your questions an explanation 
why you reject the usual interpretations, which remains an enigma 
for most of us. i personally see nothing wrong with them here, that 
would require a total grammatical reshuffle of the clause.

2. the formula TOV (noun1) M-(noun2) is the usual comparative in
hebrew, especially late BH and talmudic. in my opinion it fits 
perfectly the available timing evidence for a late qohelet.  
also note that HLK occurs here as a noun in smixut.

3. also GM-ZH in versicle b indicates reference to a noun, not a verb. 
but, oddly, it refers to a SINGLE noun, though TWO are mentioned. 
perhaps this was the background for your rejection in item 1. but 
this is solved if e.g. you put versicle a in quotation marks! 
as to versicle a, i suggest two possible readings: 

   "eye evidence (objective) is better than mental cogitation (subjective)" 

but this would perhaps put it in the 17th century AD! or:

   "one should prefer the senses to being absorbed with thoughts": 

this sounds more suitable to an early post-exilic book. but the important
element in both is the quotation mark around them. thus, ZH refers not to any
of the two nouns, but to versicle a as a unit.

nir cohen