Ecclesiastes 5:8

If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of justice in a province,.... Which is a very disagreeable sight, but often seen; the poor are oppressed, and judgment and justice

If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.

Here is an account of another vanity, and a sovereign antidote against it. Marvel not, as if it were inconsistent with God’ s wisdom, and justice, and truth to suffer such disorders, or a just cause for any man to throw off that fear and service of God which I have now commended to thee. He that is higher than the highest, the most high God, who is infinitely above the greatest of men, and therefore, if he saw meet, could crush them in an instant, regardeth, not like an idle spectator, but like a judge, who diligently observes and records all these miscarriages, and will so effectually punish them, that neither they shall have any cause of triumph in their former successes, nor good men to be grieved at the remembrance of them. There be higher than they; either, 1. The high and holy angels, who are employed by God in the government of kings and kingdoms, as we read in the Book of Daniel, and elsewhere, and for the defence of God’ s people, 91:11 . Or, 2. God; and so it is an emphatical repetition of the same thing, which is frequent in Scripture; there is a higher than they. Or, as the words are by others fitly rendered, the Most High (for plural words are oft understood of God singularly) is above them, and therefore can control them, and will certainly call them to an account.

Ecclesiastes 5:8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for [he that is] higher than the highest regardeth; and [there be] higher than they.Ver. 8. If thou seest the oppression of the poor.] And so mayest be drawn to doubt of Divine providence, and to withdraw thine awful regard to the divine Majesty, to forego godliness, and to turn fiat atheist, as Diagoras and Averroes did. Marvel not at the matter.] Nil admirari prope res est una Numici. A wise man wonders at nothing; he knows there is good cause why God should allow it so to be, and gives him his glory. Opera Dei sunt in mediis contrariis, saith Luther: God’ s works are effected usually by contraries. And this he doth ινακαιμαλλονθαυμαζηται, that he may be the more marvelled at, saith Nazianzen. Hence he commonly goes a way by himself, drawing light out of darkness, good out of evil, heaven out of hell, that his people may feelingly say, "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders." "Verily there is a reward for the righteous; verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth." For he that is higher than the highest regardeth.] And "wherein they deal proudly, he is above them," and overtops them; sets a day for them, and "sees that their day is coming." "The Most High cuts off the spirit of princes" - he slips them off, as one should slip off a flower between his fingers; or he cuts them off, as grapegatherers do the clusters off the vines; such a metaphor there is in the original - "He is terrible to all the kings of the earth," those dread sovereigns, those hammers of the earth and scourges of the world, as Atillas styled himself; such as Sennacherib, whom God so subdued and mastered, that the Egyptians, in memory of it, set up his statue in the temple of Vulcan, with this inscription, Eμετιςορεωνευσεβηςεστο: Let all that behold me learn to fear God. It was therefore excellent counsel that Jehoshaphat gave his judges: "Take heed what you do, for ye judge not for man, but for the Lord, who is with you in the judgment. Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord our God be upon you; take heed and do it." Look upon him that overlooks all your doings, saith he, and then learn to sit upon the tribunal, in as great though not in so slavish a fear of doing wrong, as Olanes in the history did upon the flayed skin of his father Sisannus, nailed by Cambyses on the judgment seat; or as a Russian judge that fears the boiling caldron or open battocking; or the Turkish senate, when they think the great Turk to stand behind the arras at the dangerous door.

(8) The interpretation of this verse depends on the sense we give to “marvel.” There are some who take it of simple surprise. “You need not think it strange; the instances of oppression which you observe are only parts of a gigantic scheme of mutual wrong-doing, the oppressors of one being themselves oppressed in turn by their superiors.” But instead of “Do not wonder,” the meaning “be not dismayed” is preferable. (Comp. Psalms 48:5; Job 26:11; Isaiah 13:8; Jeremiah 4:9.) The verse then supplies the answer to the gloomy view of Ecc 4:4. In the view that the last clause speaks of the Divine rectification of earthly injustice, I am confirmed by observing that the author of this book delights in verbal assonances, and constantly links together words similar in sound. An English version might admit the meaning: “Over the high oppressor stands a higher, and over both, those who are higher still; “though even here there is the difficulty that the highest of all are spoken of in the plural number, of which it is a very awkward explanation that the “higher” is the king, and that the women and favourites who govern him are the “higher still.” But I cannot but think that the language of the Hebrew, that over the “gebôh” there be “gebôhim,” is intended to suggest Elohim to the reader’s mind. On the word “province,” see Note, Ecclesiastes 2:8; and on “matter,” Ecclesiastes 3:1.

Verse 8. If thou seest the oppression of the poor] For this was a frequent case under all governments; and especially in the provinces or colonies which being far from the seat of government, were generally oppressed by the sovereign's deputies. Marvel not at the matter] החפץ hachephets, the will, i.e., of God; which permits such evils to take place; for all things shall work together for good to them that love him. "Marvel not, Ye righteous, if his dispensations here Unequal seem. What, though disorders reign? He still presides, and with unerring hand Directs the vast machine. His wisdom can From discord harmony produce; and make Even vice itself subservient to his ends."

8. If thou seest the oppression of the poor] From the follies of the religious life we pass to the disorders of the political. As in ch. Ecclesiastes 4:16, the thinker looks on those disorders of the world, “the poor man’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,” and teaches others how he has learnt to think of them. The words “wonder not” tells us with scarcely the shadow of a doubt who had been his teachers. In that counsel we have a distinct echo from one of the floating maxims of Greek proverbial wisdom, from the Μηδὲνθαυμάζειν (“wonder at nothing”) of Pythagoras, and Cebes (Tabula, p. 232), which has become more widely known through the Nil admirari of Horace (Epist. i. 6. 1). Why men were not to wonder at the prevalence of oppression is explained afterwards. The word for “province” may be noted as one distinctly belonging to later Hebrew, found chiefly in the books of the Persian period, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and Daniel; once only in those of earlier date, 1 Kings 20:14-17. for he that is higher than the highest] The first impression made by the verse is that the Debater tells men not to wonder or be dismayed at the prevalence of wrong, on the ground that God is higher than the highest of the tyrants of the earth and will in the end punish their wrong-doing. So understood, the first and the last “higher” both refer to “God,” or, as some take it, the last only, the first referring to the king as distinct from satraps or other officers, and the train of thought is supposed to be “Wonder not with the wonder of despair, at the seeming triumph of evil. The Supreme Judge (ch. Ecclesiastes 3:17) will one day set all things right.” The last “higher” is however plural in the Hebrew, and if it be understood of God, it must be by a somewhat unusual construction connecting it with the plural form (Elohim) of the name of God. We have, it may be noted, another example of a like construction in the use of the plural form for Creator in ch. Ecclesiastes 12:1, and for “the Holy” in Proverbs 9:10; Proverbs 30:3. Over and above the grammatical difficulties, however (which, as has been shewn, are not insuperable), it may be said that this thought is hardly in keeping with the tone of the Debater’s mind at this stage of his progress. Belief in the righteous government of God can hardly remove, though it may perhaps silence, the wonder which men feel at the prevalence of evil. It seems better accordingly to fall back upon another interpretation. The observer looks upon the state of the Persian or Syrian or Egyptian Monarchy and sees a system of Satraps and Governors which works like that of the Pachas in modern Asiatic Turkey.

Matter - Rather, purpose (as in the margin, and Ecclesiastes 3:1), referring either to the will of God or to the edict of an oppressive ruler. For he ... they - literally, for high watches over high and the highest over them, i.

8. From thoughts of the majesty of God the transition is easy to the authority and government — alas! so often mis-government! — established among men.