A Devotional from Ecclesiastes 7:27–29
27 Behold, this have I found, saith the preacher, counting one by one, to find out the account: 28 Which yet my soul seeketh, but I find not: one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. 29 Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions. Ecclesiastes 7:27–29
My morning Bible readings are divided up into daily sections. I read every day from five places in God’s word. I came across this passage in the poetic section this morning. It made me laugh.
Solomon had been given a wisdom from God like no other man who ever lived. Behind Christ, Solomon was the most wise. We read in this passage that Solomon was trying to find out what makes people tick, trying to understand them. The thing that made me laugh was that he said he had not found a woman that he understood. Out of a thousand women, he could not find a single one that he ”got”.
Someone has well said, “a man comprehending a woman is difficult, it can be compared to trying to discern what the color of the number seven smells like.“
Figuring out a woman is a hard thing for a man to do. If the most wise man ever had difficulty then certainly the rest of the guys will struggle. I don’t care what anyone says, God made us different and not just on the outside, the genders are just wired different. I suspect that women feel the same way, is there a lady reading that can confirm my theory?
In spite of the difficulty, husbands have been commanded to try to understand their wives.
1 Peter 3:7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
Husbands are commanded to, “dwell with them according to knowledge”. I wonder how far an attempt to really know and understand would go in improving a marital relationship in spite of how futile the attempt may seem? I wonder if a wife would appreciate the effort? I would hope that she would. The fellas may never get complete comprehension but they would probably get some valuable insight along the way.
Solomon may not have found a woman that he understood out of a thousand but his odds were not that much better with men. The wise King only found one dude that he could comprehended among a thousand men. I think the point of this passage is that when sin entered into the world it made us all irrational in ways. The next verse is key,
Ecclesiastes 7:29 “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.”
God made mankind sinless and righteous but at the fall in the Garden of Eden all of that changed. We all go wrong ways, make self destructive choices that just do not make sense. I think we could sum up all of mankind with the words of Isaiah.
Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned every one to his own way; And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Thankfully, the penalty God assigned to our wrong, irrational, self destructive decisions, all of our sins, has been paid by Christ. If we will simply accept the payment Jesus made, we can be saved and restored to fellowship with our Creator.
I, like Solomon really don’t understand women. I actually don’t understand men. Come to think of it, I don’t even understand my self. I just understand that God loved me in spite of me and made a way to fix my mistakes.
I love him for that, don’t you?
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