Ecclesiastes 7:15

In his righteousness—In his wickedness— Notwithstanding his righteousness—Notwithstanding his wickedness. This and the preceding verse contain the third advice. We should receive both prosperity and adversity as coming from the hand of God, without either immoderate joy or unbecoming despondency. The one must be enjoyed, and the other submitted to, from a deep sense of God's wisdom, who has thus ordered the affairs of this world, that we might have sufficient proofs of his goodness and other perfections, and yet that we should not be able to reconcile every thing which happens to us with those very attributes, or fully to discover his ways. This point of doctrine, viz. that the ways of Providence are inscrutable, so directly contradicts the pride of men who pretend that their reason can account for every thing, that it was proper for the author to support it with some proof: but he chose to do it rather by alleging experience, the most unexceptionable of all arguments, than in any other way. And the instance that he alleges is full to the point. The conduct of the Almighty, in the distribution of good and evil in this world, is not to be accounted for, since it does often happen that the sinner is not punished, and that the righteous is not rewarded. Desvoeux.