Ecclesiastes 7:15

there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness The writer looks back on what he calls "the days of his vanity," his fleeting and profitless life, and notes, as before in ch. Ecclesiastes 2:14; Ecclesiastes 2:16, the disorders and anomalies of the world. The righteous are "of all men most miserable;" (1 Corinthians 15:19) the ungodly "prosper in the world" and "come in no peril of death, but are lusty and strong," Psalms 73:4 (P. B. version). Here indeed those disorders present themselves in their most aggravated form. It is not only, as in ch. Ecclesiastes 3:19, that there is one event to the righteous and the wicked, but that there is an apparent inversion of the right apportionment of good and evil. The thought is the same as that of Psalms 73, and the Debater has not as yet entered, as the Psalmist did, into the sanctuary of God, and so learnt to "understand the end of these men" (Psalms 73:17). The same problem in the moral order of the Universe furnishes a theme for the discussions of the Book of Job.