is retrospective; and עוד, from עוּד, means redire, again and again, continually, as at Gen.. Gen 46:29. He always anew sought, and that, as biqshah naphshi for בקשׁתי denotes, with urgent striving, violent longing, and never found, viz., a woman such as she ought to be: a man, one of a thousand, I have found, etc. With right, the accentuation gives Garshayim to adam; it stands forth, as at Ecc 7:20, as a general denominator - the sequence of accents, Geresh, Pashta, Zakef, is as at Gen 1:9. “One among a thousand” reminds us of Job 33:23, cf. Ecc 9:3; the old interpreters (vid., Dachselt's Bibl. Accentuata), with reference to these parallels, connect with the one man among a thousand all kinds of incongruous christological thoughts. Only, here adam, like the Romanic l'homme and the like, means man in sexual contrast to woman. It is thus ideally meant, like ish, 1Sa 4:9; 1Sa 6:15, and accordingly also the parall. אשּׁה. For it is not to be supposed that the author denies thereby perfect human nature to woman. But also Burger's explanation: “a human being, whether man or woman,” is a useless evasion. Man has the name adam κατ ̓ ἐξ. by primitive hist. right: “for the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man,” 1Co 11:8. The meaning, besides, is not that among a thousand human beings he found one upright man, but not a good woman (Hitz.), - for then the thousand ought to have had its proper denominator, אדם בני, - but that among a thousand persons of the male sex he found only one man such as he ought to be, and among a thousand of the female sex not one woman such as she ought to be; “among all these” is thus = among an equal number. Since he thus actually found the ideal of man only seldom, and that of woman still seldomer (for more than this is not denoted by the round numbers), the more surely does he resign himself to the following resultat, which he introduces by the word לבד (only, alone), as the clear gain of his searching:
Verse 29
Ecc 7:29 “Lo, this only have I found, that God created man upright; but they seek many arts.” Also here the order of the words is inverted, since זה, belonging as obj. to מץ (have I found), which is restricted by לבד, is amalgamated with ראה (Lo! see!). The author means to say: Only this (solummodo hocce) have I found, that ...; the ראה is an interjected nota bene. The expression: God has made man ישׁר, is dogmatically significant. Man, as he came from the Creator's hand, was not placed in the state of moral decision,
