Bird's-eye view
The Preacher, having surveyed the maddening cycles of life under the sun, now turns his attention to his own investigative process. He is a man on a quest for an explanation, a spiritual audit of the human condition. This short passage is a raw and candid summary of his findings, and it is startling to our modern, egalitarian sensibilities. He is adding up the accounts, one by one, trying to make sense of it all. His search reveals a profound scarcity of righteousness among mankind, but he notes a particular and pronounced scarcity among women. This is not, as some would have it, a misogynistic outburst. It is a sober, inspired assessment of the nature of the fall and its differing effects on men and women. The passage concludes by tracing the problem back to its source: God's original creation was good and upright, but we, mankind collectively, have abandoned that created simplicity for a labyrinth of our own clever and corrupting inventions. The problem is not with the hardware, but with the rebellious software we have all installed.
In essence, Solomon is giving us a spiritual census report. He finds that true, dependable righteousness is exceedingly rare. The one-in-a-thousand man is a statistical rarity, a testament to the depth of our depravity. The fact that he found no such woman is a commentary on the unique way the fall twisted the female sex, a twisting that Paul picks up on in the New Testament. The ultimate conclusion, however, removes the blame from God. God made us straight; we have made ourselves crooked. This is a foundational statement on the nature of sin: it is our own project, our own perverse ingenuity at work.
Outline
- 1. The Preacher's Ledger (Eccl 7:27-29)
- a. The Method: An Audit of Humanity (Eccl 7:27)
- b. The Findings: A Scarcity of Righteousness (Eccl 7:28)
- i. The Rare Man (Eccl 7:28a)
- ii. The Nonexistent Woman (Eccl 7:28b)
- c. The Verdict: God's Upright Creation vs. Man's Crooked Inventions (Eccl 7:29)
Context In Ecclesiastes
This passage comes in the second half of the book, where Solomon is applying the reality of God's sovereignty to the futility of life "under the sun." He has already established that all is vanity, a chasing after the wind. He has shown that God is in control of all the appointed times and seasons. Now, he is drilling down into the moral and spiritual condition of humanity that makes this life so vexing. Chapter 7 is a collection of proverbs about wisdom and folly, life and death. These verses (27-29) serve as a personal testimony from the Preacher, a summary of his own empirical research into the human heart. It is a bleak diagnosis that sets the stage for the book's ultimate conclusion: that the only sane response to a crooked world is to fear God and keep His commandments, for He will bring every deed into judgment.
Key Issues
- The Nature of Empirical Wisdom
- The Rarity of Human Righteousness
- The Biblical Understanding of Male and Female Natures After the Fall
- The Origin of Sin and Human Responsibility
- The Meaning of "Many Devices"
The Spiritual Audit
When a business is failing, the owner has to go through the books, line by line, to figure out where the loss is happening. This is what Solomon is doing here for the whole human race. He is not engaged in idle speculation; he is conducting an audit. He is adding "one thing to another to find an explanation." The word for "explanation" is the same word that can be translated as "account" or "reckoning." He is trying to get the books to balance. He is looking at the assets and liabilities of the human race, and the report is grim. This is not the detached observation of a philosopher, but the pained cry of a king who has seen it all and is still seeking an answer his soul longs for. It is the quest that every thinking man must embark upon: why are things the way they are?
His search is exhaustive. He has sifted through humanity, looking for a particular kind of person, a person of integrity and true wisdom. The numbers he gives are not meant to be taken as a precise statistical survey, but as a form of poetic hyperbole to make a sharp theological point. Uprightness is not the default human condition; it is a shocking exception.
Verse by Verse Commentary
27 “See, I have found this,” says the Preacher, “adding one thing to another to find an explanation,
The Preacher, or Qoheleth, presents himself as a diligent researcher. He is not just giving off-the-cuff opinions. He wants his readers to know that his conclusions are hard-won, the result of a painstaking process. He has been adding up the evidence, piece by piece, like an accountant. The phrase "one thing to another" suggests a methodical, case-by-case study of individuals. He has been looking for a "reason" or an "account," trying to make sense of the moral chaos he observes. This is the task of wisdom: not simply to experience the world, but to analyze it, to look for the underlying patterns and principles. He is inviting us to look at his ledger.
28 which my soul still seeks but has not found. I have found one man out of a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all these.
Here is the first entry in his ledger, and it is a gut punch. He confesses that the ultimate explanation, the thing his soul craves, still eludes him on a purely human level. But he has found some preliminary results. In his extensive survey of humanity, he found that a truly righteous and wise man is a one-in-a-thousand phenomenon. Think about that. Not one in two, or one in ten. One in a thousand. This is a stark statement of universal human depravity from the Old Testament. Uprightness is not a common virtue. But then the statement gets even more pointed. "A woman among all these I have not found."
Now, our modern sensibilities immediately recoil. Is this a blanket condemnation of all women? No, the Bible is filled with examples of godly women. But it is an inspired statement about the different ways the fall has corrupted men and women. The temptation in the garden was brought to Adam through his wife. The curse in Genesis 3:16 specifically addresses the woman's desire: "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." This is not a desire for romantic affection, but a desire to usurp, to control, to rule him. The same Hebrew word for "desire" is used in Genesis 4:7, where sin's desire is to have Cain. Solomon, in his search for a person who was not bent on this kind of intrigue, found it exceedingly rare in men, and he found it non-existent in the women he surveyed. The temptation for a man is often a brutish, straightforward rebellion. The temptation for a woman, Solomon says, is often more subtle, more relational, and, in his experience, more pervasive. He is not saying women are more sinful than men, but that their sin takes on a different, and perhaps more fundamentally deceptive, character.
29 See, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.”
After the shocking audit of verse 28, Solomon brings it all back to the foundation. Lest we think that this mess is God's fault, he sets the record straight. This is the one clear thing he has found, the bottom line of his investigation. The problem is not with the Creator. God's original design was "upright." The Hebrew word is yashar, which means straight, right, and just. Adam, representing all mankind (men and women), was created in a state of moral rectitude. There was no crookedness in him.
So where did the crookedness come from? "They have sought out many devices." The blame lies entirely with us. "They" refers to mankind, the same "men" (in the generic sense of humanity) whom God made upright. We are the ones who went searching. And what did we search for? "Many devices." The word here means inventions, schemes, or clever contrivances. Instead of the simple, straightforward path of obedience to God, we have opted for complexity, for loopholes, for workarounds, for clever ways to be our own gods. Sin is an invention. Rebellion is a human project. We have abandoned the beautiful simplicity of the garden for the tangled, complicated, and ultimately self-destructive machinery of sin. We are all engineers of our own demise.
Application
First, we must take the Preacher's diagnosis seriously. We live in an age that wants to tell us that people are basically good. Solomon's audit shows this to be a lie. Righteousness is not our native condition; it is a supernatural gift, and it is rare. We should not be surprised by the sin we see in the world, or in the church, or in our own hearts. We are all, by nature, crooked. This should drive us to our knees in humility.
Second, this passage forces us to wrestle with the biblical teaching on the differences between men and women. It is not fashionable to say that sin affects the sexes differently, but the Bible says it does. Rather than being offended, we should be humbled. Men must be on guard against their particular temptations to tyranny and overt rebellion. Women must be on guard against their particular temptations to manipulation and usurpation. The fall created a war between the sexes, and the only peace treaty is found at the foot of the cross, where we all stand as equals: condemned sinners in need of a Savior.
Finally, the ultimate takeaway is the gospel. God made us upright. We sought out many schemes. This is the story of the Bible in miniature. But the story doesn't end there. The "one man in a thousand" points us to the one Man who was truly upright, the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not seek out His own devices, but did only the will of His Father. He lived the perfectly "straight" life that we could not. And on the cross, He took all of our crookedness, all of our wicked inventions, upon Himself. He who was upright was made crooked for us, so that in Him, we might be made straight again. Our salvation is not found by trying to untangle our own devices, but by abandoning them entirely and clinging to the simple, upright righteousness of Jesus Christ.