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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 7:29 - 7:29
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“Lo, this only have I found, that God created man upright; but they seek many arts.” Also here the order of the words is inverted, since זֶה, belonging as obj. to מָץָ (have I found), which is restricted by לְבַד, is amalgamated with רְאֵה (Lo! see!). The author means to say: Only this (solummodo hocce) have I found, that ...; the רְאֵה is an interjected nota bene. The expression: God has made man יָשָׁר, is dogmatically significant. Man, as he came from the Creator's hand, was not placed in the state of moral decision, nor yet in the state of absolute indifference between good and evil; he was not neither good nor bad, but he was טוב, or, which is the same thing, ישׁר; i.e., in every respect normal, so that he could normally develope himself from this positively good foundation. But by the expression ישׁר `שׁ, Koheleth has certainly not exclusively his origin in view, but at the same time his relative continuation in the propagation of himself, not without the concurrence of the Creator; also of man after the fall the words are true, ישׁר עשׂה, in so far as man still possesses the moral ability not to indulge sinful affections within him, nor suffer them to become sinful actions. But the sinful affections in the inborn nature of weak sinful man have derived so strong a support from his freedom, that the power of the will over against this power of nature is for the most part as weakness; the dominance of sin, where it is not counteracted by the grace of God, has always shown itself so powerful, that Koheleth has to complain of men of all times and in all circles of life: they seek many arts (as Luther well renders it), or properly, calculations, inventions, devices (hhishshevonoth,
(Note: If we derive this word from hhěshbon, the Dagesh in the שׁ is the so-called Dag. dirimens.)
as at 2Ch 26:15, from hhishshevon, which is as little distinguished from the formation hhěshbon, as hhizzayon from hhězyon), viz., of means and ways, by which they go astray from the normal natural development into abnormities. In other words: inventive refined degeneracy has come into the place of moral simplicity, ἁπλότης (2Ch 11:3). As to the opinion that caricatures of true human nature, contrasts between the actual and that which ought to be (the ideal), are common, particularly among the female sex, the author has testimonies in support of it from all nations. It is confirmed by the primitive history itself, in which the woman appears as the first that was led astray, and as the seducer (cf. Psychol. pp. 103-106). With reference to this an old proverb says: “Women carry in themselves a frivolous mind,” Kiddushin 80b.
(Note: Cf. Tendlau's Sprichw. (1860), No. 733.)
And because a woman, when she has fallen into evil, surpasses a man in fiendish superiority therein, the Midrash reckons under this passage before us fifteen things of which the one is worse than the other; the thirteenth is death, and the fourteenth a bad woman.
(Note: Duke's Rabb. Blumenl. (1844), No. 32.)
Hitzig supposes that the author has before him as his model Agathoclea, the mistress of the fourth Ptolemy Philopator. But also the history of the Persian Court affords dreadful examples of the truth of the proverb: “Woe to the age whose leader is a woman;”
(Note: Ibid. No. 118.)
and generally the harem is a den of female wickedness.