Ecclesiastes 7:27

saith the Preacher The passage is remarkable as being the solitary instance in the book in which the name Koheleth, feminine in form, yet elsewhere treated as masculine, is joined with the feminine form of the verb. It is possible, however, that this may be only an error of transcription, the transfer of a single letter from the end of one word to the beginning of another, restoring the verse to the more common construction, as found, e. g.in chap. Ecclesiastes 12:8, where, as here, adopting this reading, the article is prefixed to the word Koheleth, elsewhere treated as a proper name.

counting one by one The words remind us, on the one hand, of Diogenes the Cynic, with his lantern, looking for an honest man at Athens, and answering, when asked where such men might be found, that good menwere to be found nowhere, and good boysonly in Sparta (Diog. Laert. vi. 2. 27); and on the other, of Jeremiah's search to see "if there were any in Jerusalem that sought after God" (Jeremiah 5:1-5). The words, as it were, drag their slow length along, as if expressing the toil and weariness of the search. And after all he had failed to find.