All this have I tried by wisdom I said, I will be wise; but it was far from me.
Solomon tested everything by wisdom, and the result was a confession: the thing he reached for stayed out of reach. The wisest man in Israel says his own wisdom failed him — so where else can wisdom be found?
God gave Solomon wisdom beyond any other man. Yet this verse is where the whole book has been heading.
But it is just the point of Ecclesiastes to show how the wisdom of the wisest failed here, as in the book of Job the perfection of human goodness. The perfect man has to own his vileness before God, and the wisest men the incompetence of mere human wisdom.
Owning that failure is itself an act of wisdom.
Wisdom is strength. He had tried wisdom; he tells us what he proved by wisdom. But the wise man makes a wise confession: "I said I will be wise; but it was far from me." He owns his ignorance. Everything has left him unsatisfied. He cannot find out by wisdom what is far off and very deep. All is imperfection.
The book records the search of a man with every advantage — ability, position, and means. Wisdom itself did not save him from the outcome.
It is the experience of a man with no equal in his ability, his circumstances, and his means. What can the man do who comes after the king? He searched for happiness, and found only vanity and chasing after the wind in all that is "done under the sun." How could it be otherwise, if man is an outcast from paradise and does not look in faith to Him who is above the sun? … Nor did wisdom itself help; it only deepened the dissatisfaction and the sorrow.
after-check: meaning kept
The more he learned, the more the horizon receded.
There are fields of knowledge beyond man's capacity to explore or even reach. He may, like Solomon, reach this point: from all he knows he learns how little he knows. The knowledge he gains is the mother of many a question the student cannot answer.
One writer traces the failure back a few verses, to a middle course Solomon had settled into.
The strange sight in Ecclesiastes 7:15 makes the writer try a middle course between righteousness and wickedness, still keeping a certain fear of God. But in that middle course he was wrong: wisdom was far from him. Wisdom has its difficulties, which man cannot solve.
The search ends in a dead end. So something must break in from outside it.
At its best, this kind of wisdom could not by itself solve even one of the most serious questions that perplex men. Apart from revelation, those questions will go on perplexing them. And this is what the book of Ecclesiastes is designed to show. In it, wisdom is the object of the most earnest search, by a man whom God had given special human wisdom, so that he was wiser than all other men. But the cry goes up from this eager seeker after what he prized and longed for: "I said I will be wise, but it was far from me." Death baffles him. … Revelation must come in then; and here what joy to realise that it has indeed come in!
Writers on this passage point to the same answer: what Solomon could not reach is a Person, given to us.
Then comes a most touching confession of the wise man's conscious lack of wisdom. Christ is made wisdom to us. In Him we find and have what Solomon found altogether beyond him — beyond him how far! a double depth: how could anyone find it out?
That changes the position of anyone who now comes with hard questions.
No question brought to Jesus on earth ever puzzled Him. He is the true Solomon, the greater than Solomon, and His wisdom could meet and answer every hard question. Nor is it different now, for Christ, risen from the dead and glorified in heaven, "has been made to us wisdom from God" (1 Cor. 1:30). He will answer in wisdom and in grace every question the troubled, anxious sinner brings to Him.
- Tested. Solomon tested everything with the wisdom God gave him, using ability, position and means no other man could match.
- Failed. The book shows the wisdom of the wisest man breaking down. His search only deepened his dissatisfaction and sorrow.
- Owned. His confession of ignorance was itself the wise act: what is far off and very deep lies beyond him.
- Revealed. What wisdom cannot solve, revelation must answer — and revelation has come in.
- Found. What stayed far from Solomon is near to us in Christ, made wisdom to us from God, with an answer for every hard question.
Whatever hath been, is far off, and exceeding deep who will find it out?
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
I turned, I and my heart, to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom and reason, and to know wickedness to be folly, and foolishness to be madness;
Solomon sets his whole heart on one task: to reach the root of wisdom, of "the scheme of things," and of evil itself. Can a mind this determined, and this well equipped, reach the bottom of what it is looking for?
One writer reads the rest of the chapter as one driving effort to reach the root of the matter. Notice what the search finds, and what it never finds.
Verses 23-29. Again he applies his heart to know, to search and to go to the root of the matter — to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness. ... Here, at least, is an acknowledgement that sin is in the world and has corrupted the old creation, but what about the remedy? He knows nothing of that, because the new creation, which lifts man out of the condition where sin has put him, is the subject of God's revelation.
Verse 25 follows a confession. The searcher had already said that the wisdom he wanted stayed out of his reach.
He had tried wisdom, and he tells us what he proved by it. But the wise man makes a wise confession: "I said, 'I will be wise,' but it was far from me." He owns his ignorance. Everything has left him unsatisfied. He cannot find out by wisdom that which is far off and exceedingly deep.
He is not only after facts. He wants to know "the wickedness of folly" — to see evil for what it is. One commentator retells that turning and searching, then points to the One who gives the wisdom Solomon never reached.
A most touching confession follows (from verse 28) of the wise man's conscious lack of wisdom. Christ is made wisdom to us. In Him we find and have what Solomon found altogether beyond him — how far beyond him! It was a double depth. Who could find it out? He turned, he and his heart, to know and to investigate, to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know wickedness as folly.
He searches with the best natural equipment a man ever had. That is the point of the book, and it explains why his results read like the conclusions of thoughtful people everywhere.
He has used his highest power of reasoning to reach these conclusions. They match the conclusions of other wise men, moralists and philosophers among the pagans... The writings and philosophies of other nations give definite proof that Ecclesiastes is the book of the natural man, that reason speaks and not revelation... God's ways are mysterious. Man cannot solve them; he cannot work out how God governs the world.
Another writer places this hunt for wisdom at the end of a string of dead ends. His verdict is blunt.
The self-sufficient effort to be righteous only ends in shame; to be active in evil ends in death. Finally, to strive after wisdom by the knowledge of things below is labour in vain... in a word, that God made man upright, but he has sought out many inventions apart from God.
The search was not wasted. Its collapse clears the ground for something the searcher could never produce.
At best, a wisdom like this could not solve even one of the most serious questions that trouble men. Apart from revelation, those questions will go on troubling them. This is what the book of Ecclesiastes sets out to show. In it, wisdom is the object of the most earnest search. The searcher was a man to whom God had given special human wisdom, so that he was wiser than all other men... Revelation must come in then; and here what joy to realise how it has indeed come in!
- Search. He sets his heart to know, to investigate, and to reach the root of the matter.
- Equipment. He searches with the highest power of reasoning. Yet he searches as the natural man: reason speaks here, not revelation.
- Verdict. What he learns is moral, not just factual: wickedness is folly, and sin has corrupted the old creation.
- Limit. The wisdom he wanted stayed far off and very deep. He owns his ignorance: to strive after wisdom in things below is labour in vain.
- Remedy. He knows the ruin but not the cure. Revelation must come in: Christ is made wisdom to us — what Solomon found altogether beyond him.
and I found more bitter than death the woman whose heart is nets and snares, [and] whose hands are bands whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be caught by her.
After chapters of searching, the Preacher reports what he actually found, and it is a trap. That raises two hard questions: is this a verdict on women as such, and why does one man escape while another is caught?
The words come at the end of a long search, and they cost the writer something. He is not describing a danger he watched from a safe distance.
He turned, he and his heart, to know and to investigate, to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know wickedness as folly. And he found a bitterness beyond death in the woman who sets a trap with a seductive heart and with hands that keep fast hold. How deeply the king had drunk from this deadly cup!
The verse names a heart, nets and hands. One writer traces that trap back to the serpent, then notes what the Preacher cannot supply.
"And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters." He speaks here as a Hebrew who knew at least what had happened to man. God made man upright, but people have sought out many schemes. The serpent deceived the woman, and her heart is often a snare and a net, and her hands drag a man down into the vile things of the flesh. Here at least is an admission that sin is in the world and has corrupted the old creation. But what about the remedy? He knows nothing of that.
This is what his search turned up, not a rule laid down by God. He is reporting a count, and it comes up short.
He has found two things. First, about woman, judged by the experience of the world, he has found none good. Among men he found one in a thousand. In short, God made man upright, but man has sought out many inventions apart from God.
Wisdom can show a man what is wrong without giving him the power to fix it. And the verse does not say how God made women; it says what the enemy can do with something God made good.
So wisdom may show the person who has it what is wrong, and make him feel the bitterness of it, while he knows all the time that he has no power to correct it… And woman, God's provision for man from the start, his suited help, is found to become an instrument of his everlasting ruin when the enemy makes her his tool.
The second half of the verse puts people in two groups. The dividing line is not intelligence. Solomon shows why: he had more wisdom than anyone, and it did not keep him.
Did Solomon think that his superior wisdom would keep evil company from harming him? His wisdom should have warned him to keep far away from the temptation. This is a lesson for us: it takes more than wisdom to keep us from evil. It takes the grace of God, and that is learned only in communion with Him.
The same writer names where deliverance comes from, and points to others who asked God for a wife and were not disappointed.
Deliverance could come by God's good hand alone: the one who goes astray is taken captive… Others have looked to God for a helpmate, and not in vain — but not the king who trusted his wisdom and had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines.
The chapter ends with a man admitting he could not find what he was looking for. One writer points beyond the book for the answer.
Finally, from verse 28 comes a most touching confession: the wise man knew he lacked wisdom. Christ is made wisdom to us. In Him we find and have what Solomon found completely beyond his reach — and how far beyond!
- Search. The Preacher set his heart to investigate wickedness and folly. What he brought back was not a theory but a wound. He had drunk deeply from this cup himself.
- Snare. Heart, nets, hands. The trap begins with a seductive heart and ends with hands that keep fast hold, dragging a man down into the vile things of the flesh.
- Source. Woman was God's provision for man, his suited help. She becomes an instrument of ruin only as a tool of the enemy. That is a good gift twisted, not a bad gift.
- Safety. Wisdom did not save the wisest man alive. Escape takes more than wisdom. It takes the grace of God, learned in communion with Him, and deliverance comes by His good hand alone.
- Saviour. The book admits the disease and knows no remedy. Christ is made wisdom to us — in Him believers have what Solomon searched for and never found.
See this which I have found, saith the Preacher, [searching] one by one to find out the reason;
The verse reintroduces the speaker by his title, and that title is a translated one. The Hebrew word behind it points to gathering rather than preaching:
The title the book carries in our English translation comes from the Septuagint. It is an attempt to translate the Hebrew word "Koheleth"… But the Hebrew word Koheleth can hardly mean preacher. It comes from the verb "kahal," which means "to gather" or "assemble." … Perhaps the word "debater" comes closest to the meaning of the original. Koheleth is found nowhere else in the Bible, but in Ecclesiastes it appears seven times.
Another writer explains what the gatherer meant to do with the people he gathered:
And here he takes a title found nowhere else outside this book — Preacher. He would gather around him the people who wanted to hear, and teach them, for that is what the term means.
The phrase describes a method: one item added to the next until they come to a total. No one was better equipped for that count than the man making it here.
What makes this especially pointed is who the Preacher is. If anyone could look at man as he is on the earth and escape the sense of misery, you would expect it to be king Solomon… It does not come from lack of power, interest, or research, and no more from lack of ability or resources. He gave his heart to seek and search out by wisdom everything that is done under the heavens.
Solomon had the full range of experience to draw on, and he wrote his findings down under inspiration:
Solomon, the writer, goes through his experience of wisdom, of riches, of labour, and of everything his heart as a man could want… He records it by inspiration. So when he proves it all to be nothing but emptiness and frustration of spirit, this is not simply the complaint of a disappointed man. It is a conviction recorded by God.
The count is made from one place only: inside the world, by natural wisdom. That limit shapes everything the Preacher can reach:
Whether we translate the word Koheleth as "preacher," "debater," "assembler," or "one of an Assembly," the whole drift of the teaching proves that the voice speaking is wisdom from under the sun, natural wisdom. The wisest of men sets out to watch life under the sun and to test it, so that he can find out for everyone what all his searching comes to. Then he reports it all to an assembly of his fellow men. He is not presented as knowing any wisdom revealed by God. He has not heard of a righteousness that comes by faith, or of God's mercy, or of forgiveness of sins.
He adds and adds, but the work of God stays out of reach:
He had learned a great deal about the works of creation, as other passages record. But man is only a finite being, and he cannot fathom the infinite. Solomon discovered this. "Then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out"… A man may, like Solomon, reach this point: he learns from all he knows how little he knows, and the knowledge he gains gives birth to many a question he cannot answer.
The confession that follows is honest, and it is exactly the point where the New Testament answers him:
Last of all comes a deeply moving confession: the wise man knows he lacks wisdom. Christ is made wisdom to us. In Him we find and have what Solomon found completely beyond his reach — and how far beyond him it was! A double depth: how could anyone find it out?
- Gatherer. The title "Preacher" comes from a Hebrew word meaning to gather. He collects hearers around him and tells them what his search found.
- Counted. Adding one thing to another is a full investigation. The man making it lacked no power, interest, research, ability or resources, so no one can say the count was too small.
- Under the sun. But the whole count is made by natural wisdom. This man is not presented as knowing any wisdom revealed by God, or His mercy, or forgiveness of sins.
- Unfinished. So the sum never comes out. However hard a man toils in seeking, he will not find it out, and he learns only how little he knows.
- Found. The wise man's confession that he lacks wisdom is where Christ meets him. Christ is made wisdom to us, and in Him we have what lay completely beyond Solomon.
which my soul yet seeketh, and I have not found one man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found.
Solomon has been searching, adding one thing to another to reach a total. Here he reports what the count came to: one man in a thousand, and no woman at all. Is this a judgment on women, or a confession about the man who did the searching?
The verse belongs to a man admitting defeat. Whatever Solomon set out to find, the sum he arrives at is a blank. One commentator reads the verses from 28 on as a confession that the wise man lacked wisdom:
Last of all comes a deeply moving confession (from verse 28): the wise man knows he lacks wisdom. Christ is made wisdom to us. In Him we find and have what Solomon found completely beyond him — and how far beyond him it was! It was a double depth: how could anyone find it out?
The count is not a survey of the sexes. It is what Solomon found when he judged people by the experience of the world. Read that way, the verse leads straight into a statement about how the human race began and where it went wrong:
He has found two things. First, as to woman, judged by the experience of the world, he has found none good. Among men, he found one in a thousand. And, in a word, God made man upright, but man has sought out many inventions apart from God.
Solomon's failure is tied to how he lived. He had a thousand women in his own household and still came away empty. How a man searches decides what he finds:
The king had gone looking for his pleasure there, and he was bitterly disappointed. He had found one man in a thousand who suited him, but not one woman. Others have looked to God for a helper, and not in vain. But not this king. He trusted his own wisdom, and he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines… Life is only a failure where God and His way are forgotten. The wise man made his folly in leaving that way all the more obvious. Here he tells the tale sadly, for everyone's profit.
Solomon himself wrote a detailed picture of the ideal woman. He still says he never found her. So whose failure was it?
Proverbs 31, probably written by Solomon, describes the ideal woman in much detail. Yet he never succeeded in finding her. But God could have found one for him!
Taken alone the verse can sound like a sweeping charge against women. Commentators reject that reading. Wisdom can see what is wrong without being able to mend it. And what Solomon met was not woman as God made her:
The wise man sees the evil clearly. He knows what ought to be, but he learns that he cannot do it. Woman was God's provision for man from the start, the helper suited to him. Yet when she becomes a tool of the enemy, she becomes an instrument for his everlasting ruin.
So the verse shows what fallen human nature has become, not what God made. God's own thought about woman is different:
This tells of fallen human nature; but the true thought of woman is that she is the glory of the man, his true helper. This is fulfilled in the relationship of the church to Christ.
Ecclesiastes can name the disease. What it cannot do is heal it — and that limit is the honest boundary of the book:
Here, at least, he admits that sin is in the world and has corrupted the old creation. But what about the remedy? He knows nothing of that. The new creation lifts man out of the condition sin has put him in, and that new creation is what God reveals.
The warning still stands today. The company a person keeps shapes a life one way or the other:
The companionship of a holy woman, chosen under God's guidance, is an immense help and comfort to the Christian. But the influence of an unholy woman is enough to wreck the spiritual life and testimony of the very best.
- Not found. Solomon counted after a long search. The honest result is a blank, and he says so.
- Not sought God's way. He trusted his own wisdom and had a thousand women in his household. Others asked God for a helper and did not search in vain.
- Not God's design. Woman was God's provision for man, the helper suited to him. Solomon describes that provision turned into a tool of the enemy.
- Not the last word. The true thought of woman stands: she is the glory of the man, his true helper. The church's relationship to Christ fulfils it.
- Not the remedy. Ecclesiastes admits that sin has corrupted the old creation, but the cure lies outside its reach. Christ is made wisdom to us, and in Him we have what Solomon never found.
Only see this which I have found that God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices.
Solomon ends his long search with one certainty. It is not about the world but about man. God made him straight, and he went crooked by his own choosing. So the verse answers the two questions every honest person asks: what were we made to be, and who is to blame for what we have become?
(The writers below quote an older translation. It has "many inventions" where the ESV has "many schemes.")
Solomon tested wisdom to its limits. This is what survived the testing:
Finally, trying to gain wisdom by the knowledge of things below is labour in vain. He has found two things... and, in a word, that God made man upright, but he has sought out many inventions apart from God.
"Upright" says less than it seems. It describes a creature with no evil in him, not one who has the character of holiness.
When Adam came from the hand of God, he was good, but you could not call him holy. There was no evil in him at all. God made the man upright before he sought inventions. His innocence was untouched. But holiness and righteousness are more than the goodness and innocence of creation. Holiness means the inner power that rejects evil, in separation to God. Righteousness means keeping to the relationship in which one is set.
Uprightness is straightness. So what is its opposite in this verse?
On the other hand, we read that "God made man upright." That stands in contrast with the craft implied in the "many inventions" they have since "sought out."
The verse defends the Creator. If God made man straight, the misery around us is not His doing.
God did not make man in the condition he is in now. He did not throw the world into its moral confusion, let alone its physical misery... According to that word, He made man upright. He formed the world and every creature in it good. But man departed from God, and lost Him morally. No wonder there is misery, once the foundations are out of place — man has left God, and fallen through proud rebellion. The only possible source of happiness is the communion of God with His creatures.
This also settles what God owns in us. Our nature is His work; its ruined state is not.
Sin is not my nature as created, but a certain state of my nature — its departure from God... The sin is not the nature. It is the nature's corruption and fall. God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions for himself... God disowns man's present state, not his nature.
The word is broad. It covers devices, engines, even a city — all that men build to be content without God:
God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions, or devices. The same word appears as "engines" in 2 Chronicles 26:15. Cain went out from the presence of God and built a city, and his descendants made harps and organs. Men made themselves as happy as they could without God.
Ask why man ever needed such devices, and the answer points to the fall:
Men say that "necessity is the mother of invention." Men must invent now to meet their needs. But how did man come to need those inventions? They are the sign of the fall... What is it that baffles all his wisdom? He has no possible invention that can do away with death, or meet judgment... The first knowledge we find after the fall is of his nakedness. The first invention was an apron to cover it.
Does human progress undo the damage?
Their progress in the things that announce civilization, or follow after it, did not stop the earth from filling with violence and corruption... The things that now make this world pleasant to man, that refine his manners, that extend his power over nature, can sit side by side with the reign of sin and death... But we do not forget that man was a sinner when he discovered and invented.
Man still hides what he is. The change begins when he stops.
He is no longer upright, though he seeks to hide it. The Spirit of God convicts him of sin. When the cry goes up, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" then the man is beginning to straighten himself. And when we experience God's full forgiveness, what is there to hide? What need for guile?
- Made straight. God's work was upright — innocent, with no evil in it. But innocence is not yet holiness and righteousness.
- Bent by choice. The ruin came from man's departure from God; God owns the nature He created, not the fallen state it is now in.
- Devices instead of God. The "inventions" are man's devices. First an apron to hide nakedness, then Cain's city, harps and engines. All are ways to be as happy as possible without God.
- Progress proves nothing. Refinement and power over nature can run alongside violence and corruption. Man was a sinner when he invented. No invention removes death or judgment.
- Straightened by mercy. Uprightness was lost, and disguises went on. Then comes the cry "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" There the hiding ends, and a man begins to be straightened.