Ecclesiastes 9:14

[There was] a little city, and few men within it,.... Which some take to be a piece of history, a real matter of fact; that as the city of Abel, when besieged by Joab, was delivered by the counsel of

There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: A little city ... So Abel, which the wisdom of one woman

It matters not whether this was a real history, or only a parable to represent the common practices of men in such cases.

Ecclesiastes 9:14 [There was] a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:Ver. 14. There was a little city.] Such as was Lampsacum, besieged by Alexander, and saved by Anaximenes; Rhodes, besieged by the great Turk; Rochelle, by the French king; Geneva, by the Duke of Savoy. This last, a little city, a small people surrounded with enemies, and barred out from all aid of neighbour cities and churches, yet is strangely upheld. Well may they write as they do on the one side of their coin, Deus noster pugnat pro nobis, Our God fights for us. Brightman. Scultet.

(14) Idle attempts have been made to find a historic reference in this passage. What is here told is so like the story (2 Samuel 20) of the deliverance of Abel-beth-Maachah by a wise woman, whose name, nevertheless, has not been preserved, that we cannot even be sure that the writer had any other real history in his mind.

Verse 14. There was a little city, and few men within it] Here is another proof of the vanity of sublunary things; the ingratitude of men, and the little compensation that genuine merit receives. The little history mentioned here may have either been a fact, or intended as an instructive fable. A little city, with few to defend it, being besieged by a great king and a powerful army, was delivered by the cunning and address on a poor wise man; and afterwards his townsmen forgot their obligation to him. Those who spiritualize this passage, making the little city the CHURCH, the few men the APOSTLES, the great king the DEVIL, and the poor wise man JESUS CHRIST, abuse the text. But the Targum is not less whimsical: "The little city is the human body; few men in it, few good affections to work righteousness; the great king, evil concupiscence, which, like a strong and powerful king, enters into the body to oppress it, and besieges the heart so as to cause it to err; built great bulwarks against it - evil concupiscence builds his throne in it wheresoever he wills, and causes it to decline from the ways that are right before God; that it may be taken in the greatest nets of hell, that he may burn it seven times, because of its sins. But there is found in it a poor wise man - a good, wise, and holy affection, which prevails over the evil principle, and snatches the body from the judgment of hell, by the strength of its wisdom. Yet, after this deliverance, the man did not remember what the good principle had done for him; but said in his heart, I am innocent," c. What a wonderful text has this been in the hands of many a modern Targumist and with what force have the Keachonians preached Christ crucified from it! Such a passage as this receives a fine illustration from the case of Archimedes saving the city of Syracuse from all the Roman forces besieging it by sea ana land. He destroyed their ships by his burning-glasses, lifted up their galleys out of the water by his machines, dashing some to pieces, and sinking others. One man's wisdom here prevailed for a long time against the most powerful exertions of a mighty nation. In this case, wisdom far exceeded strength. But was not Syracuse taken, notwithstanding the exertions of this poor wise man? No. But it was betrayed by the baseness of Mericus, a Spaniard, one of the Syracusan generals. He delivered the whole district he commanded into the hands of Marcellus, the Roman consul, Archimedes having defeated every attempt made by the Romans, either by sea or land: yet he commanded no company of men, made no sorties, but confounded and destroyed them by his machines. This happened about 208 years before Christ, and nearly about the time in which those who do not consider Solomon as the author suppose this book to have been written.

14. there was a little city] The city has been identified by one commentator (Hitzig) with Dora, which was besieged unsuccessfully by Antiochus the Great in b.c. 218 (Polyb. 9:66). Josephus describes it, in his narrative of its siege by Antiochus Sidetes (Ant. xiii. 7, § 2), as “a city hard to be taken,” but we know nothing of any special incidents corresponding to the allusion in this passage. The term “great king” fits in with the hypothesis, as also does the fact that the siege was raised, but that is all. The spiritualising interpretations which have found favour with Jewish and Christian commentators, in which the history represents something like the attack of Satan on the town of Mansoul (as in Bunyan’s Holy War), must be rejected as altogether arbitrary and fantastic. and built great bulwarks against it] The “bulwarks,” as in the Old Testament generally, are the out-works of the besiegers, the banks or mounds from which missiles were thrown into the city (comp. Deuteronomy 20:20; 2 Samuel 20:15; 2 Chronicles 26:15).

A parable probably without foundation in fact. Critics who ascribe this book to a late age offer no better suggestion than that the “little city” may be Athens delivered 480 b.c.

14. Little city… great king — It is not known of what city or of what king this is told. There were nations and cities within the limits of the Persian empire that steadily and successfully defied the king’s power.