Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Pengkhotbah 7:8

Return rebellious children: In the Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Talmud Chagigah 2:1:10), it explains why this happened to him, and there are more verses that he expounds: He killed those that spoke words of Torah. They said, if he saw a student excelling in Torah, he killed him. Not only that, but he went to the school house and saw children in front of their Torah teacher. He said, what are those sitting doing here? [The profession of this one is builder,] etc. When they heard this, they left us (the rabbis) and went away. And Rabbi Meir told him, that which it is written (Job 42:10), "(And the Lord blessed) Job twice all that he had" - he [explained it to mean] that He doubled his money. But [Acher] answered him that Rabbi Akiva expounded it, that He blessed him by the merit of commandments and good deeds which were from his beginning. He brought him (Ecclesiastes 7:8), "The end of a matter is better than the beginning of it." Rabbi Meir expounded it about a man who had children in his youth but they died, and had children in his old age and they lived. He said, your teacher, Rabbi Akiva, did not expound it so; rather, the end of a matter is good in the case that it is good from the beginning, and this applies to me. My father Abuya was one of the leading Jerusalemites. On the day he came to circumcise me, he invited all the leading Jerusalemites and sat them in one room, and sat Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua in another place. After they ate and drank, they started to clap and dance. Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua said, "While they are occupied in theirs let us be occupied with ours." They sat occupied with words of the Torah. Fire descended from Heaven and surrounded them. [Abuya] said to us, "My teachers! Why do you come to burn down my house?" They said to him, "Heaven forbid! But we were sitting reviewing the words of the Torah, from the Torah to the Prophets, from the Prophets to the Writings, and the words were joyful as at their giving on Sinai. And were they not [then originally] given in fire?" [So Abuya] said, "If that is the power of Torah, if this son of mine survives, I dedicate him to Torah." Since his intent was not for Heaven, it did not succeed with him. And in place of that which in our Gemara (Bavli) is, "behind the curtain," there it is, "behind the holy of holies." And also found there is that once he rode [on an animal] on Yom Kippur which fell out on a Shabbat and he heard, etc. And it brings that [passage] from Kiddushin (39b), such that he saw a man taking the chicks and sending away the mother. And when approaching, [that man] fell and he died. But [Acher] did not know to expound the [relevant verse] like Rabbi Yaakov - as it is brought there. And also found [there] is that he saw the tongue of Rabbi Yehudah the baker in the mouth of a dog, and he was the great man from Kiddushin. But Rabbi Natan says, "When his mother was pregnant with him, she passed by idolatry, smelled of that kind and ate it. And that kind was bubbling in her body like the poison of a viper." Later [Elisha] fell sick. They told Rabbi Meir, "Your teacher is sick." He went to visit him. He said, "Are you repenting?" He said, "If I repent, will they accept [me]?" He said to him, "Is it not written (Psalms 90:3), 'You bring back a man up to extinction, saying, "Repent, sons of man!"'" Elisha cried and passed away. Rabbi Meir said, "It seems that he passed away repentant." After they buried him, fire descended from Heaven and burned [his grave]. They told Rabbi Meir, "Your teacher’s grave is on fire." He went and spread his garment over it. He said, "'Stay for the night, etc.' (Ruth 3:13) - stay here in this world, which compares to the night; 'and it will be in the morning,' for the world to come. 'If he will act as a redeemer, good' - the redeemer, this is the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is written (Psalms 145:9), 'The Lord is good to all.' 'Let him redeem. But if he does not want to act as redeemer for you, I will do so myself.'" They said to [Rabbi Meir], "[What would you say] if they say to you in that world, 'Whom do you want to bring close first, your father or your teacher?'" He said to us, "I would bring my teacher close first and afterwards my father." They said to him, "Will they listen to you?" He said to them, "Did we not teach, 'One saves the case of a scroll with the scroll?' One saves Elisha with the merit of his Torah."

We have a tradition based on Tana de bey Eliyahu Rabbah chapter 5 that when someone concludes his life on earth in a happy frame of mind his entire life may be considered as having been a happy one. This is also the meaning of Job 8,7: והיה ראשיתך מצער ואחריתך ישגה מאד, "though your beginning was full of pain, your end will be a great achievement." Solomon has expressed a similar thought in Kohelet 7,8 when he said that "a good ending is better than a good beginning." When the Torah speaks of ויחי יעקב, this means that the last 17 happy years which Jacob lived in Egypt made his entire life, i.e. שני חייו appear as years during which he had lived to the full. The Torah chose the word ויהי which always signifies some painful experience to tell us that though there had been many painful experiences in Jacob's life on earth they were all converted to positive experiences in light of his last seventeen years in Egypt.