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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 9:14 - 9:14
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“A little city, and men therein only a few, - to which a great king came near, and he besieged it, and erected against it high bulwarks. And he met therein a poor wise man, and who saved the city by his wisdom; and no man thought of that poor man.” What may be said as to the hist. reference of these words has already been noticed. The “great king” is probably an Asiatic monarch, and that the Persian; Jerome translates verbally: Civitas parva et pauci in ea viri, venit contra eam - the former is the subj., and the latter its pred.; the object stands first, plastically rigid, and there then follows what happened to it; the structure of the sentence is fundamentally the same as Psa 104:25. The expression אֶל בּוא, which may be used of any kind of coming to anything, is here, as at Gen 32:9, meant of a hostile approach. The object of a siege and a hostile attack is usually denoted by עַל, 2Ki 16:5; Isa 7:1. Two Codd. of de Rossi's have the word מְצוֹרִים, but that is an error of transcription; the plur. of מָצוֹר is fem., Isa 29:4. מְצוֹדִים is, as at Ecc 7:26, plur. of מָצוֹד (from צוּד, to lie in wait); here, as elsewhere, בַּחַן and דָּיֵק is the siege-tower erected on the ground or on the rampart, from which to spy out the weak points of the beleaguered place so as to assail it.
The words following בָהּ וּמָצָא are rendered by the Targ., Syr., Jerome, Arab., and Luther: “and there was found in it;” most interpreters explain accordingly, as they point to Ecc 1:10, יֹאמַר, dicat aliquis. But that מץ taht in this sequence of thought is = וְנַמְצָא (Job 42:15), is only to be supposed if it were impossible to regard the king as the subject, which Ewald with the lxx and the Venet. does in spite of §294b. It is true it would not be possible if, as Vaih. remarks, the finding presupposed a searching; but cf. on the contrary, e.g., Deu 24:1; Psa 116:3. We also say of one whom, contrary to expectation, a superior meets with, that he has found his match, that he has found his man. Thus it is here said of the great king, he found in the city a poor wise man - met therein with such an one, against whom his plan was shattered. חָכָם is the adjective of the person of the poor man designated by ish miskēn (cf. 2Ch 2:13); the accents correctly indicate this relation. Instead of וּמִלַּט־הוּא, the older language would use וַיְמַלֵּט; it does not, like the author here, use pure perfects, but makes the chief factum prominent by the fut. consec. The ē of millēt is that of limmēd before Makkeph, referred back to the original a. The making prominent of the subject contained in millat by means of hu is favourable to the supposition that umatsa' has the king as its subject; while even where no opposition (as e.g., at Jer 17:18) lies before us this pleonasm belongs to the stylistic peculiarities of the book. Instead of adam lo, the older form is ish lo; perhaps the author here wishes to avoid the repetition of ish, but at Ecc 7:20 he also uses adam instead of ish, where no such reason existed.
Threatened by a powerful assailant, with whom it could not enter into battle, the little city, deserted by its men to a small remainder capable of bearing arms (this idea one appears to be under the necessity of connecting with מעט ... ואן), found itself in the greatest straits; but when all had been given up as lost, it was saved by the wisdom of the poor man (perhaps in the same way as Abel-beth-maacha, 2 Sam 20, by the wisdom of a woman). But after this was done, the wise poor man quickly again fell into the background; no man thought of him, as he deserved to have been thought of, as the saviour of the city; he was still poor, and remained so, and pauper homo raro vifit cum nomine claro. The poor man with his wisdom, Hengst. remarks, is Israel. And Wangemann (1856), generalizing the parable: “The beleaguered city is the life of the individual; the great king who lays siege to it is death and the judgment of the Lord.” But sounder and more appropriate is the remark of Luther: Est exemplum generale, cujus in multis historiis simile reperitur; and: Sic Themistocles multa bona fecit suis civibus, sed expertus summam intratitudinem. The author narrates an actual history, in which, on the one hand, he had seen what great things wisdom can do; and from which, on the other hand, he has drawn the following lesson: