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Why does Solomon say this?

I. THAT GOD SHOULD BE STUDIED IN THESE ORGANS.

1. In them Divine wisdom is manifest. Take —

(1) The mechanism of these organs. "The eye, by its admirable combination of coats and humours, and lenses, produces on the retina, or expansion of nerve at the back of the socket or bony cavity in which it is so securely lodged, a distinct picture of the minutest or largest object; so that, on a space that is less than an inch in diameter, a landscape of miles in extent, with all its variety of scenery is depicted with perfect exactness of relative proportion in all its parts." Nor is the ear less wonderful. It is a complicated mechanism lying wholly within the body, showing only the wider outer porch through which the sound enters. It conveys the sounds through various chambers to the innermost extremities of those nerves which bear the messages to the brain. So delicate is this organ, that it catches the softest whispers and conveys them to the soul, and so strong that it can bear the roll of the loudest thunders into the chamber of its mistress.

(2) The adaptation of these organs. How exquisitely suited they are to the offices they have to fulfil! "Conveying the impressions of the outer universe to the spiritual dweller within, we can," says an eminent author, "by attending to the laws of vision and sound, produce something that, in structure and in mechanism or physical effect, bears some analogy to them. But this is not sight; this is not hearing. These imply perception. Oh, this is the highest and deepest wonder of all! The mechanical structure we can trace out and demonstrate. We can show how by the laws of transmission and refraction, the picture is made on the retina of the eye; and how, by the laws of sound, the yielding, tremulous, undulating air affects the tympanum or drum of the ear. But we can get no farther. How it is that the mind receives its perceptions, how it is that it is affected, what is the nature of nervous influence, or of the process by which, through the medium of the nerves and the brain, thought is produced on the mind — of all this we are profoundly ignorant.

2. In them Divine goodness is manifest.

3. In them Divine intelligence is symbolised.

II. THAT GOD SHOULD BE SERVED BY THESE ORGANS. The service for which God intends us to use them is to convey into our understandings His ideas, into our hearts His Spirit; translate the sensations they convey to us into Divine ideas; apply Divine ideas to the formation of our characters. God's ideas should become at once the spring and rule of all our activities.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

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KJV: The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the LORD hath made even both of them.

WEB: The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, Yahweh has made even both of them.