Ecclesiastes 9:14

"A little city, and men therein only a few, - to which a great king came near, and he besieged it, and erected against it high bulwarks. And he met therein a poor wise man, and who saved the city by his wisdom; and no man thought of that poor man." What may be said as to the hist. reference of these words has already been noticed. The "great king" is probably an Asiatic monarch, and that the Persian; Jerome translates verbally: Civitas parva et pauci in ea viri, venit contra eam - the former is the subj., and the latter its pred.; the object stands first, plastically rigid, and there then follows what happened to it; the structure of the sentence is fundamentally the same as Psa 104:25. The expression אל בּוא, which may be used of any kind of coming to anything, is here, as at Gen 32:9, meant of a hostile approach. The object of a siege and a hostile attack is usually denoted by על, Kg2 16:5; Isa 7:1. Two Codd. of de Rossi's have the word מצורים, but that is an error of transcription; the plur. of מצור is fem., Isa 29:4. מצודים is, as at Ecc 7:26, plur. of מצוד (from צוּד, to lie in wait); here, as elsewhere, בּחן and דּיק is the siege-tower erected on the ground or on the rampart, from which to spy out the weak points of the beleaguered place so as to assail it. The words following בהּ וּמצא are rendered by the Targ., Syr., Jerome, Arab., and Luther: "and there was found in it;" most interpreters explain accordingly, as they point to Ecc 1:10, יאמר, dicat aliquis. But that מץ taht in this sequence of thought is = ונמצא (Job 42:15), is only to be supposed if it were impossible to regard the king as the subject, which Ewald with the lxx and the Venet. does in spite of 294b. It is true it would not be possible if, as Vaih. remarks, the finding presupposed a searching; but…

Solomon, in this chapter, for a further proof of the vanity of this world, gives us four observations which he had made upon a survey of the state of the children of men in it: - I. He observed that commonly as to outward things, good and bad men fare much alike (Ecc 9:1-3). II. That death puts a final period to all our employments and enjoyments in this world (Ecc 9:4-6), whence he infers that it is our wisdom to enjoy the comforts of life and mind the business of life, while it lasts (Ecc 9:7-10). III. That God's providence often crosses the fairest and most hopeful probabilities of men's endeavour, and great calamities often surprise men ere they are aware (Ecc 9:11, Ecc 9:12). IV. That wisdom often makes men very useful, and yet gains them little respect, for that persons of great merit are slighted (Ecc 9:13-18). And what is there then in this world that should make us fond of it?