Ecclesiastes 1:15

15 What is 1crooked cannot * be straightened and what is lacking cannot * be counted.

Ecclesiastes 1:15 Meaning and Commentary

Ecclesiastes 1:15

[That which is] crooked cannot be made straight
By all the art and cunning, wisdom and knowledge of man, that he can attain unto; whatever he, in the vanity of his mind, may find fault with in the works of God, either of nature of providence, and which he may call crooked, it is not in his power to make them straight, or to mend them; see ( Ecclesiastes 7:13 ) . There is something which, through sin, is crooked, in the hearts, in the nature, in the principles, ways and works, of men; which can never be made straight, corrected or amended, by all the natural wisdom and knowledge of men, which shows the insufficiency of it: the wisest philosophers among men, with all their parade of wit and learning, could never effect anything of this kind; this only is done by the Spirit and grace of God; see ( Isaiah 42:16 ) ; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered;
the deficiencies in human science are so many, that they cannot be reckoned up; and the defects in human nature can never be supplied or made up by natural knowledge and wisdom; and which are so numerous, as that they cannot be understood and counted. The Targum is,

``a man whose ways are perverse in this world, and dies in them, and does not return by repentance, he has no power of correcting himself after his death; and a man that fails from the law and the precepts in his life, after his death hath no power to be numbered with the righteous in paradise:''
to the same sense Jarchi's note and the Midrash.

Ecclesiastes 1:15 In-Context

13 And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with.
14 I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind.
15 What is crooked cannot be straightened and what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said to myself, "Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge."
17 And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind.

Cross References 1

  • 1. Ecclesiastes 7:13
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