7:23-29 Solomon, in his search into the nature and reason of things, had been miserably deluded. But he here speaks with godly sorrow. He alone who constantly aims to please God, can expect to escape; the careless sinner probably will fall to rise no more. He now discovered more than ever the evil of the great sin of which he had been guilty, the loving many strange women,

Verse 27. - Behold, this have I found. The result of his search, thus forcibly introduced, follows in ver. 28. He has carefully examined the character and conduct of both sexes, and he is constrained to make the unsatisfactory remark which he there puts forth. Saith the preacher. Koheleth is here treated as a feminine noun, being joined with the feminine form of the verb, though elsewhere it is grammatically regarded as masculine (see on Ecclesiastes 1:1). Many have thought that, after speaking so disparagingly of woman, it would be singularly inappropriate to introduce the official preacher as a female; they have therefore adopted a slight alteration in the text, viz. אָמַר חַקֹּחֶלֶת instead of אָמְרָה קֹהֶלֶת, which is simply the transference of he from the end of one word to the beginning of the next, thus adding the article, as in Ecclesiastes 12:8, and making the term accord with the Syriac and Arabic, and the Septuagint, εϊπεν ὁ Ἐκκλησιαστής. The writer here introduces his own designation in order to call special attention to what is coming. Counting one by one. The phrase is elliptical, and signifies, adding one thing to another, or weighing one thing after another, putting together various facts or marks. To find out the account; to arrive at the reckoning, the desired result.

Behold, this have I found,.... That a harlot is more bitter than death; and which he found by his own experience, and therefore would have it observed by others for their caution: or one man among a thousand, Ecclesiastes 7:28;

(saith the preacher); of which title and character see Ecclesiastes 1:1; it is here mentioned to confirm the truth of what he said; he said it as a preacher, and, upon the word of a preacher, it was true; as also to signify his repentance for his sin, who was now the "gathered soul", as some render it; gathered into the church of God by repentance;

counting one by one, to find out the account; not his own sins, which he endeavoured to reckon up, and find out the general account of them, which yet he could not do; nor the good works of the righteous, and the sins of the wicked, which are numbered before the Lord one by one, till they are added to the great account; as Jarchi, from the Rabbins, interprets it, and so the Midrash: but rather the sense is, examining women, one by one, all within the verge of his acquaintance; particularly the thousand women that were either his wives or concubines; in order to take and give a just estimate of their character and actions. What follows is the result.

27. this—namely, what follows in Ec 7:28.

counting one by one—by comparing one thing with another [Holden and Maurer].

account—a right estimate. But Ec 7:28 more favors Gesenius. "Considering women one by one."

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