Ecclesiastes 7:29

Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright,.... The first man Adam, as the Targum and Jarchi interpret it; and not Adam only, but Eve also with him; for these were both made by the

Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. Summary of his investigations. They have sought out many inventions. Theoretical "inventions" [ chishªbonowt (H2810)].

This only have I found; though I could not find out all the streams of wickedness, and their infinite windings and turnings in the world, yet I have discovered the fountain of it, to wit, original sin, and the corruption of nature, which is both in men and women. God hath made man, God made our first parents, Adam and Eve, upright, Heb. right, without any imperfection or corruption, conformable to his nature and will, which is the rule of right, after his own likeness, understanding, and holy, and every way good. They, our first parents, and after them their posterity treading in their steps, have sought out many inventions; were not contented with their present state, but aimed at higher things, and studied new ways of making themselves more wise and happy than God had made them, and readily hearkened to the suggestions of the devil to that end. And we their sinful and wretched children, after their example, are still prone to forsake the certain rule of God’ s word, and the true way to happiness, and to seek new methods and inventions of attaining to it, even such as Solomon hath discoursed of in this book.

Ecclesiastes 7:29 Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.Ver. 29. That God hath made man upright,] viz., In his own image - i.e., " knowledge" in his understanding part, "rightness" in his will, and "holiness" in his affections: his heart was a lump of love, &c., when he came first out of God’ s mint, he shone most glorious, clad with the royal robe of righteousness, created with the imperial crown. But the devil soon stripped him of it; he cheated and robbed him of the crown, as we use to do children, with the apple, or whatsoever fruit it was that he tendered to Eve: Porrexit pomum et surripuit paradisum. He also set his limbs in the place of God’ s image, so that now, Is qui factus est homo differt ab eo quem Deus fecit, as Philo saith, man is now of another make than God made him. Totus homo est inversus decalogus, Whole evil is in man, and whole man in evil. Neither can he cast the blame upon God, but must fault himself, and flee to the second Adam for repair. But they have sought out many inventions.] New tricks and devices, like those poetic fictions and fabulous relations, whereof there is neither proof nor profit. The Vulgate Latin hath it, Et ipse se infinitis miscuit quaestionibus; And he hath entangled himself with numberless questions and fruitless speculations. See 1 Timothy 1:4; 1 Timothy 6:4, "doting about questions," or question sick. Bernard reads it thus, Ipse autem se implicuit doloribus multis, but he hath involved himself in many troubles, the fruit of his inventions, shifts, and shirking tricks. Bernard, lib. i. Legis Allegor.

Verse 29. Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright] Whatever evil may be now found among men and women, it is not of God; for God made them all upright. This is a singular verse, and has been most variously translated: עשה האלהים את האדם ישר והמה בקשו חשבנות רבים asah haelohim eth haadam yashar vehemhah bikkeshu chishbonoth rabbim. "Elohim has made mankind upright, and they have sought many computations." "He hath meddled with endless questions." - VULGATE. "Many reasonings." - SEPTUAGINT, SYRIAC, and ARABIC. "They seek dyverse sotylties."COVERDALE. And he himself mengide with questions without eend. - Old MS. Bible. The Targum considers the text as speaking of Adam and Eve. "This have I found out, that the Lord made the first man upright before him, and innocent: but the serpent and Eve seduced him to eat of the fruit of the tree, which gave the power to those who ate of it to discern between good and evil; and was the cause that death came upon him, and all the inhabitants of the earth; and they sought that they might find out many stratagems to bring this evil upon all the inhabitants of the world." I doubt much whether the word חשבנות chishbonoth should be taken in a bad sense. It may signify the whole of human devices, imaginations, inventions, artifice, with all their products; arts, sciences, schemes, plans, and all that they have found out for the destruction or melioration of life. God has given man wondrous faculties; and of them he has made strange uses, and sovereign abuses: and they have been, in consequence, at one time his help, and at another his bane. This is the fair way of understanding this question.

29. They have sought out many inventions] The Hebrew word implies an ingenuity exercised mainly for evil but takes within its range, as in 2 Chronicles 26:15, the varied acts of life which are in themselves neither good nor evil. This inventive faculty, non-moral at the best, often absolutely immoral, was what struck the thinker as characterising mankind at large. In this thought again we have an unmistakable echo of the language of Greek thinkers. Of this the most memorable example is, perhaps, the well-known chorus in the Antigone 332–5 πολλὰτὰδεινὰκοὐδὲνἀνθρώπουδεινοτέρονπέλει.σοφόντιτὸμηχανόεντέχναςὑπὲρἐλπίδʼ ? ἔχων,ποτὲμὲνκακόν, ἀλλοτʼ ? ἐπʼ ? ἐσθλὸνἕρπει.“Many the things that strange and wondrous are,None stranger and more wonderful than man.And lo, with all this skill,Wise and inventive stillBeyond hope’s dream,He now to good inclinesAnd now to ill.”Looking to the relation in which the poem of Lucretius stands to the system of Epicurus it is probable that the history of human inventions in the De Rerum Natura, v. 1281–1435 had its fore-runner in some of the Greek writings with which the author of Ecclesiastes appears to have been acquainted. The student will find another parallel in the narrative of the progress of mankind in the Prometheus Bound of Ζschylus (450–514). Both these passages are somewhat too long to quote.

God hath made - Rather, God made. A definite allusion to the original state of man: in which he was exempt from vanity.

29. Man… many inventions — The one abiding and ever-true result of Koheleth’s search is this — that the “inventions,” devices of man’s own heart, are enough to account for all the appalling wickedness of the race.