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Selected Verse: Ecclesiates 1:15 - King James
Verse |
Translation |
Text |
Ec 1:15 |
King James |
That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. |
Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse
A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] |
Investigation (Ecc 1:13) into human ways is vain labor, for they are hopelessly "crooked" and "cannot be made straight" by it (Ecc 7:13). God, the chief good, alone can do this (Isa 40:4; Isa 45:2).
wanting-- (Dan 5:27).
numbered--so as to make a complete number; so equivalent to "supplied" [MAURER]. Or, rather, man's state is utterly wanting; and that which is wholly defective cannot be numbered or calculated. The investigator thinks he can draw up, in accurate numbers, statistics of man's wants; but these, including the defects in the investigator's labor, are not partial, but total. |
Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834] |
He saw clearly both the disorder and incompleteness of human actions (compare the marginal reference), and also man's impotence to rectify them. |
Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible, by John Wesley [1754-65] |
Crooked - All our knowledge serves only to discover our miseries, but is utterly insufficient to remove them; it cannot rectify those disorders which are either in our own hearts and lives, or in the men and things of the world. Wanting - In our knowledge. Or, counted out to us from the treasures of human learning. But what is wanting, will still be so. And that which is wanting in our own knowledge, is so much that it cannot be numbered. The more we know, the more we see of our own ignorance. |
Adam Clarke Commentary on the Whole Bible - Published 1810-1826 |
That which is crooked cannot be made straight - There are many apparent irregularities and anomalies in nature for which we cannot account; and there are many defects that cannot be supplied. This is the impression from a general view of nature; but the more we study and investigate its operations, the more we shall be convinced that all is a consecutive and well-ordered whole; and that in the chain of nature not one link is broken, deficient, or lost. |
27 TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:
4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:
13 Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?
13 And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.