The Divine Violence in the Book of Qoheleth 547 judgement on it, but in fact, he arrives at a deeper and more personal observation: with hnhw, “and behold”, Qoheleth draws attention to something new, the tears of the oppressed, caused by the power and the violence (jk) practised by the oppressors (10). This is the true heart of his observation. 2. “And they had no one to comfort them” Facing the tears of the oppressed and the presence of the oppressors, Qoheleth adds, twice, his own comment: μjnm μhl ˆyaw — “And there was no one to comfort them”. There is no plausible reason to eliminate or correct the second occurrence of this expression as some do, suggesting the reading of μqnm, “a vindicator”, instead of μjnm, “comforter”, along the lines of the Vulgate and the Targum (11). The Masoretic text is secure; the repetition is to be explained in the light of the use of synonymous parallelism which gives the text notable rhetorical force. The repetition also anticipates what is going to be said later in 4,4 with regard to a man’s envy of his neighbour (12). The expression μjnm μhl ˆyaw is typical of Qoheleth but similar expressions are to be found in Lam 1,2 (μjnm hl ˆya); 1,9.17 (hl μjnm ˆya); 1,21 (yl μjnm ˆya). In the book of Lamentations, the personified Jerusalem laments over the suffering of the Exile and the absence of anyone to comfort her. In these texts it is not just a question of the absence of human comforters — all her one-time friends have become enemies — as for example in Ps 69,21, but the comforter of whose absence she is most aware is the Lord even if people are still able to hope in the mercy of the Lord (13). The verb μjn is very frequent in the texts of the so-called Deutero- Isaiah (14), a fact rarely taken into account by commentators on Qoheleth. One thinks, in particular, of Is 51,12, where the Lord says to (10) The noun jk refers to the violence of the oppressors only in this place in the Hebrew Bible. Cf. SCHOORS, The Preacher Sought, II, 358. (11) Cf. a summary discussion of the problem in SCHOORS, The Preacher Sought, II, 365. (12) Cf., for example, the proposal by L. SCHWIENHORST – SCHÖNBERGER, Kohelet (HThK/AT; Freiburg – Basel – Wien 2004) 292. (13) Cf. U. BERGES, Klagelieder (HThKAT 21A; Freiburg – Basel – Wien 2002) 99-100. (14) For the verb μjn, cf. H. SIMIAN-YOFRE, “μjn”, TWAT V, 366-383 and, again, SCHOORS, The Preacher Sought, II, 364-365. We should note that the verb μjn used in the Pi normally governs the accusative and not the lamed, as happens in Qoh 4,1 and in the passages quoted from Lamentations.