Ecclesiastes Chapter 1 verse 15 Holy Bible
That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
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That which is bent may not be made straight, and that which is not there may not be numbered.
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That which is crooked cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
read chapter 1 in DARBY
That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
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read chapter 1 in WBT
That which is crooked can't be made straight; and that which is lacking can't be counted.
read chapter 1 in WEB
A crooked thing `one' is not able to make straight, and a lacking thing is not able to be numbered.
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Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 15. - That which is crooked cannot be made straight. This is intended as a confirmation of ver. 14. By the utmost exercise of his powers and faculties man cannot change the course of events; he is constantly met by anomalies which he can neither explain nor rectify (comp. Ecclesiastes 7:13). The above is probably a proverbial saying. Knobel quotes Suidas: Χύλον ἀγκύλον οὐδέποτ ὀρθόν. The Vulgate takes the whole maxim as applying only to morals: "Perverse men are hardly corrected, and the number of tools is infinite." So too the Syriac and Targum. The Septuagint rightly as the Authorized Version. The writer is not referring merely to man's sins and delinquencies, but to the perplexities in which he finds himself involved, and extrication from which is impracticable. That which is wanting cannot be numbered. The word חֶסְדון, "loss, defect," is ἅπαξ λεγόμενον in the Old Testament. We cannot reckon where there is nothing to count; no skill in arithmetic will avail to make up for a substantial deficit. So nothing man can do is able to remedy the anomalies by which he is surrounded, or to supply the defects which are pressed upon his notice.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(15) Made straight.--The verb occurs only in this book (Ecclesiastes 7:13; Ecclesiastes 12:9, "set in order") and in Rabbinical Hebrew. So likewise "that which is wanting" is peculiar to this passage, and to later Hebrew.
