Ecclesiastes 7:13,14

But Wisdom Includes A Recognition That We Cannot Interfere With God's Doings. Thus We Must Accept From God What He Is Pleased To Give (Ecclesiastes 7:13).

Ecclesiastes 7:13

‘Consider the work of God. For who can make that straight which he has made crooked?'

In Ecclesiastes 3:13 the work of God was that which has been done from the beginning even to the end, which man cannot fathom. Compare Ecclesiastes 8:17 where we were assured that no man can find out the work of God, whether wise or not. And in Ecclesiastes 1:15 we were informed that the crooked cannot be made straight, which faced us with the fact that we cannot change what God has created and make it different, nor can we make the imperfect perfect.. Thus the aim here in considering the work of God is not in order to understand it, or in order to change it, but in order to recognise that God controls all, and that what He is doing cannot be altered or fathomed by man. None can change what God has been pleased to do.

‘For who can make that straight which he has made crooked?' This basically indicates that if God has made the world in a certain way, no one can thus change it apart from Him (compare Ecclesiastes 1:15). It is not actually saying that the world was made crooked. It is simply taking two opposites as an example, and saying that whatever choice God makes cannot be affected by man, that to alter whatever God chose as the basis of the world is impossible. So if for example He had chosen to make all crooked, then it would be impossible to straighten it. We cannot alter anything that God has chosen to do.

Some suggest that the idea is that it is no good our trying to set the world to rights, for it has been made crooked and we cannot make the crookedness straight, or that the problem of sin is such that man cannot of himself put it right. But this is probably to read in more than the writer intended, for in fact God did not make the world ‘crooked' in that way. It was man who introduced sin into the world.

Ecclesiastes 7:14

‘In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider. God has even made the one, side by side with the other, to the end that man should not find out anything that will be after him.'

Here he tells us that we must take from God what comes. When prosperity comes we should enjoy it, when adversity comes it should make us consider our ways (‘when God's judgments are in the earth the people learn righteousness'). For God has caused both to this end. Indeed His final aim was to make things so changeable that it ensured that man could not fathom the future, and would not know which was coming.

So in the end we are to leave everything in the hands of God. It is not for us to fathom out His ways, but to live rightly before Him within the covenant, accepting what comes from His hand.

‘What will be after him.' In Ecclesiastes 3:22; Ecclesiastes 6:12 this indicates the future, signifying after he has died.