A Common Destiny for All (9:1–12)

Enjoy life with your wife (9:8–9a). These verses include some of the most remarkable parallels between a scriptural text and other ancient Near Eastern texts found anywhere in the Bible. The song from the tomb of King Intef, from the Egyptian Harpers’ Songs, confronts human mortality and offers the following advice: “Put myrrh on your head, / Dress in fine linen, / Anoint yourself with oils fit for a god!”34 Another of the Harpers’ Songs, Neferhotep I, has similar advice: “Take fine perfumes pleasing to your nostrils, with garlands, lotuses, and berries at your breast, with your sister, who is in your heart, happy at your side”35 (“sister” here refers to one’s wife).

Blind harpist with part of the Herper Song of Intef above his head

Jim Forest

Another strikingly similar text is in the Old Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, where the hero laments over mortality to an ale-wife, and she gives him this advice:

When the gods created mankind,

For mankind they established death,

Life they kept for themselves.

You, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,

Keep enjoying yourself, day and night!

Every day make merry,

Dance and play day and night!

Let your clothes be clean!

Let your head be washed, may you be bathed in water!

Gaze on the little one who holds your hand!

Let a wife enjoy your repeated embrace!36

Our three different sources, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Israelite, have essentially the same message: “In light of the brevity of life, enjoy yourself!” This, of itself, may not be too remarkable, but the specific nature and sequence of the advice (feasting, wearing clean clothes, anointing with oils and perfumes, and enjoying one’s wife) suggests a common wisdom tradition.