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"Before I was afflicted I went astray" (Psa. 119: 67).
"To humble thee and to prove thee" (Deut. 8: 2).
This second reference well illustrates the teaching of Ecclesiastes:--
"Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years
in the wilderness, to humble (exercise) thee and to prove thee, to know what was in thine
heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments or no. And He humbled thee, and
suffered thee to hunger and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy
fathers know: that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live."
This is parallel with the teaching of I Cor. 10: 13:--
"God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able: but will
with the temptation also make the issue, that ye may be able to bear up under it."
And again, in Heb. 12: 11:--
"No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless
AFTERWARDS it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are
exercised thereby."
Oh, the tragedy of unlearned lessons! The trial passed through without being
exercised, the suffering endured without result, the heavy stroke without the blessed fruit.
God has so ordered the affairs of men that this world shall not yield only joy and
gladness; sorrow, vexation and worry at every turn beset the sons of men, not out of
caprice or indifference, but that they may be exercised, humbled therewith. And the
Christian too passes through sore trials, so that he may learn to lean harder and more
completely upon his Lord.
Has the reader been "exercised" thereby? Have you gone on your knees with your
trouble to ask that you may not miss its lesson? Have you realized that He who sends the
trial makes the issue?
As a conclusion to the opening investigation Koheleth says:--
"That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be
numbered" (1: 15).
This conclusion, namely the utter inability of man to "reform" this age, is stated again
in 8: 13:--
"Consider the work of God, for who can make that straight which He hath made
crooked."
Well may the gloomy Dane say:--
"The world is out of joint. Oh, cursed spite
That ever I was set to put it right."