Ecclesiastes 7:29 - Exposition

Lo, this only (or, only see! this ) have I found . Universal corruption was that which met his wide investigations, but of one thing he was sure, which he proceeds to specify—he has learned to trace the degradation to its source, not in God's agency, but in man's perverse will. That God hath made man upright. Koheleth believes that man's original constitution was yasbar , "straight," "right," "morally good," and possessed of ability to choose and follow what was just and right ( Genesis 1:26 , etc.). Thus in the Book of Wisdom (Wis. 2:23) we read, "God created man to be immortal, and made him an imago of his own nature ( ἰιότητος ). Nevertheless, through envy of the devil, came death into the world, and they that are his portion tempt it." But they (men) h ave sought out many inventions ( chishshebonoth ); 2 Chronicles 26:15 , where the term implies works of invention, and is translated "engines," i . e . devices, ways of going astray and deviating from original righteousness. Man has thus abased his free-will, and employed the inventive faculty with which he was endowed in excoriating evil ( Genesis 6:5 ). How this state of things came about, how the originally good man became thus wicked, the writer does not tell. He knows from revelation that God made him upright; he knows from experience that he is now evil; and he leaves the matter there. Plumptre quotes, as illustrating our text, a passage from the 'Antigone' of Sophocles, verses 332, 365, 366, which he renders—

"Many the things that strange and wondrous are,

None stranger and mere wonderful than man …

And lo, with all this skill,

Wise and inventive still,

Beyond hope's dream,

He now to good inclines,

And now to ill."

We may add AE schylus, 'Choeph.,' verses 585, etc.—

πολλὰ μέν γᾶ τρέφει

δεινὰ δειμάτων ἄχη …

ἀλλ ὑπέρτολμον

ἀνδρὸς φόνημα τίς λέγοι ;

"Many fearful plagues

Earth nourishes …

But man's audacious spirit

Who can tell?"

Horace, 'Carm.,' 1.3. 25—

"Audax omnia perpeti

Gens humans ruit per vetitum nefas."

"The race of man, bold all things to endure,

Hurries undaunted to forbidden crime."

Vulgate, Et ipse se infinitis miscuerit quaestionibus , "And he entangled himself in multitudinous questions." This refers to unhallowed curiosity and speculation; but, as we have seen, the passage is concerned with man's moral declension, declaring how his "devices" lead him away from "uprightness."