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

That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. (That which is) crooked cannot be made straight - `be brought into position' (Hengstengberg).

That which is crooked cannot be made straight; all our knowledge serves only to discover our diseases and miseries, but is oft itself utterly insufficient to heal or remove them; it cannot rectify those confusions and disorders which are either in our own hearts and lives, or in the men and things of the world. That which is wanting, to wit, in our knowledge, and in order to man’ s complete satisfaction and felicity, cannot be numbered; we know little of what we should or might know, or did know in the state of innocency, or shall know in the future life.

Ecclesiastes 1:15 [That which is] crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.Ver. 15. That which is crooked cannot be made straight.] Most men are so wedded and wedged to their wicked ways, that they cannot be rectified but by an extraordinary touch from the hand of Heaven. Hesiod, speaking of God, saith that he can easily set crooked things straight, and only he. Holy Melanchthon, being himself newly converted, thought it impossible for his hearers to withstand the evidence of the gospel; but after he had been a preacher a while, he complained, that ‘ old Adam was too hard for young Melanchthon’ ; and yet, besides the singular skill and learning that God had given him - for the which he merited to be called the phoenix of Germany - Ad eum modum in hoc vitae theatro versatum Philippum Melanchthonem apparet, saith a friend and scholar of his - i.e., It well appeareth that Melanchthon was, Solomon-like, on this wise busied upon the theatre of his life, that, seeing and observing all he could, he made profit of everything, and stored his heart, as the bee doth her hive, out of all sorts of flowers, for the common benefit. Howbeit, he met with much crossness and crookedness that wrung mahy tears from him, as it did likewise from St Paul, not in open enemies only, as Eccius and other Papists, but in professed friends, as Flaccius, Osiander, &c., who not only vexed him grievously while alive, but also fell foul upon him when he was dead, as Zanchins complaineth. Of all fowl, we most hate and detest the crows, and of all beasts the jackals, a kind of foxes in Barbary; because the one digs up the graves and devours the flesh, the other picks out the eyes of the dead. But to return to the text: sinful men grow aged and crooked with good opinions of themselves, and can seldom or never be set straight again. The Pharisee sets up his counter for a thousand pound, - "I am not as other men," saith he, "nor as this publican"; he stands upon his comparisons, nay, upon his disparisons, and although he turn aside unto his crooked ways, as Samson did to his Delilah, yet he thinks much to be "led forth with the workers of iniquity," but cries, "peace shall be upon Israel." How many are there that, having "laden themselves with thick clay," are bowed together, as he in the gospel was, and can in nowise lift up themselves! They neither can nor will ( O curvae in terras animae, &c.), but are frample and foolish. The Greek word for crooked, comes of a Hebrew word that signifies a fool, and every fool is conceited; he will not part with his bauble for the Tower of London. Try to straighten these crooked pieces, and they will sooner break than bend, venture all, than mend anything. Plato went thrice to Sicily to convert Dionysius, and could not do it.

(15) Made straight.—The verb occurs only in this book (Ecclesiastes 7:13; Ecclesiastes 12:9, “set in order”) and in Rabbinical Hebrew. So likewise “that which is wanting” is peculiar to this passage, and to later Hebrew.

Verse 15. 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.

15. That which is crooked] The words are apparently a proverbial saying quoted as already current. The complaint is that the search after wisdom brings the seeker face to face with anomalies and defects, which yet he cannot rectify. The Hebrew words are not the same, but we may, perhaps, trace an allusive reference to the promise of Isa 40:4 that “the crooked shall be made straight,” and the Debater in his present mood looks on this also as a delusive dream. There is nothing left but to take things as they are and “accept the inevitable.” Comp. chap. Ecclesiastes 7:13, as expressing the same thought. that which is wanting] The second clause presents the negative aspect of the world’s defects as “crooked” did the positive. Everywhere, if there is nothing absolutely evil, there is an “incompleteness” which we cannot remedy, any more than our skill in arithmetic can make up for a deficit which stares us in the face when we look into an account, and the seeker had not as yet attained to the faith which sees beyond that incompleteness the ultimate completeness of the Divine order.

He saw clearly both the disorder and incompleteness of human actions (compare the marginal reference), and also man’s impotence to rectify them.

15. That which is crooked — This refers to the discouraged state of the writer’s mind. It should be translated, That which is bowed cannot be set up.