Ecclesiastes 8:12

Though a sinner do evil an hundred times The definite number is used, of course, as in Proverbs 17:10; or the "hundred years" of Isaiah 65:20; or the "seventy times seven" of Matthew 18:22, for the indefinite. There is no adequate reason for inserting "years" instead of "times." By some grammarians it is maintained that the conjunctions should be read "Becausea sinner …" and "althoughI know," but the Authorised Version is supported by high authority.

yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God The adverb "surely" has nothing answering to it in the Hebrew, and seems an attempt to represent the emphasis of the Hebrew pronoun. Better, perhaps, I for my part. We may compare the manner in which Æschylus utters a like truth on the moral government of the world:

δίχα δʼ ἄλλων μονόφρων εἰμί. τὸ γὰρ δυσσεβὲς ἔργον

μετὰ μὲν πλείονα τίκτει, σφετέρᾳ δʼ εἰκότα γέννᾳ.

"But I, apart from all,

Hold this my creed alone:

For impious act it is that offspring breeds,

Like to their parent stock."

Agam. 757, 8.

There is an obviously intentional contrast between what the thinker has seen(Ecclesiastes 8:9), and what he now says he knowsas by an intuitive conviction. His faith is gaining strength, and he believes, though, it may be, with no sharply defined notion as to time and manner, that the righteousness of God, which seems to be thwarted by the anomalies of the world, will in the long run assert itself. There is at least an inward peace with those who fear God, which no tyrant or oppressor can interfere with. The seeming tautology of the last clause is best explained by supposing that the term "God-fearers" had become (as in Malachi 3:16) the distinctive name of a religious class, such as the Chasidim(the "Assideans" of 1Ma 2:42; 1Ma 7:13; 2Ma 14:6), or "devout ones" were in the time of the Maccabees. The Debater, with the keen scent for the weaknesses of a hypocritical formalism, which we have seen in ch. Ecclesiastes 5:1-7, says with emphatic iteration, as it were, "when I say -God-fearing" I mean those that do fear God in reality as well as name." So in French men talk of la vérité vraie, or we might speak of "a liberal indeed liberal," "religious people who arereligious," and so on.