Ecclesiastes 7:20

For there is not a just man upon earth The sequence of thought is again obscure. We fail at first to see how the fact of man's sinfulness is the ground of the maxim that wisdom is a better defence than material strength. The following train of associations may perhaps supply the missing link. There had been a time when the presence of tenrighteous men would have preserved a guilty city from destruction (Genesis 18:32). But no such men were found, and the city therefore perished. And experience shews that no such men altogether faultless will be found anywhere. No one therefore can on that ground claim exemption from chastisement. What remains for the wise man but to fall back on the wisdom which consists in the "fear of God" (Ecclesiastes 7:13), the reverential awe which will at least keep him from presumptuous sins. Substantially the thought is that of a later teaching, that "in many things we offend all" (James 3:2), and therefore that a man is justified by faith (the New Testament equivalent for "the fear of the Lord" as the foundation of a righteous life), and not by works, though not without them. Here again we may compare the Stoic teaching, "Wise men are rare. Here and there legends tell of one good man, or it may be two, as of strange præter-natural being rarer than the Phœnix.… All are evil and on a level with each other, so that this differs not from that, but all are alike insane" (Alex. Aphrod. de Fato28).