Context No. 3551 of 4322 · Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 7:15-29: in context

15All this I have seen in my days of vanity: there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who lives long in his evildoing. 16Don’t be overly righteous, neither make yourself overly wise. Why should you destroy yourself? 17Don’t be too wicked, neither be foolish. Why should you die before your time? 18It is good that you should take hold of this. Yes, also don’t withdraw your hand from that; for he who fears God will come out of them all. 19Wisdom is a strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city. 20Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and doesn’t sin. 21Also don’t take heed to all words that are spoken, lest you hear your servant curse you; 22for often your own heart knows that you yourself have likewise cursed others. 23All this I have proved in wisdom. I said, “I will be wise;” but it was far from me. 24That which is, is far off and exceedingly deep. Who can find it out? 25I turned around, and my heart sought to know and to search out, and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity, and that foolishness is madness. 26I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and traps, whose hands are chains. Whoever pleases God shall escape from her; but the sinner will be ensnared by her. 27“Behold, I have found this,” says the Preacher, “to one another, to find an explanation 28which my soul still seeks, but I have not found. I have found one man among a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all those. 29Behold, I have only found this: that God made mankind upright; but they search for many inventions.”

The Preacher offers hard-won, balanced wisdom. He observes that a righteous person may perish while a wicked one lives long, so life under the sun does not always reward as we expect. He warns against extremes, and states a truth Paul would later echo: surely there is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. No one is without fault.

The chapter also contains some bitter, culturally shaped lines that we do not read as God's own final verdict on one another. The enduring insight comes at its close: God made human beings upright, but they have sought out many schemes. That is the heart of it. God made us good and straight, but we have complicated and corrupted ourselves with countless devices and inventions of our own. The trouble with the world is not in how God made us, but in how far we have wandered from the uprightness he gave. The fault is not in our Maker but in our wandering.

Do I acknowledge that no one, including myself, is without sin, and that our troubles come not from how God made us but from how far we have wandered from the uprightness he gave?

Sources

Ecclesiastes 7:20: "Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and doesn't sin."
Ecclesiastes 7:29: "God made mankind upright; but they search for many inventions."
Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God."