deep (literally or figuratively) · conjunction + adjective, masculine singular absolute
out
יִמְצָאֶֽנּוּyim.tza.'E.nu
H4672
properly · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Romans 11:33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
1 Timothy 6:16 Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and p…
Job 28:28 And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.
Psalms 139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
Job 11:7-8 Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?
Job 28:12-23 But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?
Psalms 36:6 Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Ecclesiastes 7:23–end
Solomon had hitherto been proving the vanity of the world and its utter insufficiency to make men happy; now here he comes to show the vileness of sin, and its certain tendency to make men miserable; and this, as the former, he proves from his own experience, and it was a dear-bought experience. He is here, more than any where in all this book, putting on the habit of a penitent. He reviews what he had been discoursing of already, and tells us that what he had said was what he knew and was well assured of, and what he resolved to stand by: All this have I proved by wisdom, Ecc 7:23. Now here,
I. He owns and laments the deficiencies of his wisdom. He had wisdom enough to see the vanity of the…
That . . . far off . . . deep--True wisdom is so when sought independently of "fear of God" (Ecc 7:18; Deu 30:12-13; Job 11:7-8; Job 28:12-20, Job 28:28; Psa 64:6; Rom 10:6-7).
John Gill on Ecclesiastes 7:24
That which is far off,.... Or, "far off is that which has been" (g). That which has been done by God already, in creation and providence, is out of the reach of men, is far from their understandings wholly to comprehend or account for; and likewise that which is past with men, what has been done in former ages, the history of past times, is very difficult to come at: or rather, according to Schmidt, and Rambachius after him, what was of old is now afar off or absent; the image of God in man which consisted of perfect wisdom, and was created at the same time with him, is now lost, and that is the reason why wisdom is far from him;
and exceeding deep, who can find it out? the primitive perfec…
"For that which is, is far off, and deep, - yes, deep; who can reach it?" Knobel, Hitz., Vaih., and Bullock translate: for what is remote and deep, deep, who can find it? i.e., investigate it; but mah-shehayah is everywhere an idea by itself, and means either id quod fuit, or id quod exstitit, Ecc 1:9; Ecc 3:15; Ecc 6:10; in the former sense it is the contrast of mah-shěihyěh, Ecc 8:7; Ecc 10:14, cf. Ecc 3:22; in the latter, it is the contrast of that which does not exist, because it has not come into existence. In this way it is also not to be translated: For it is far off what it (wisdom) is (Zckl.) [= what wisdom is lies far off from human knowledge], or: what it is (the essence of wisd…
The Church Fathers
What Ecclesiastes is saying is this: Before I turned my thoughts to ponder over God's work, I was not aware of God's magnificence. I said, I must have wisdom; that is, I must inquire into the nature of every cause; and wisdom withdrew farther away from me than it ever was before. By that I mean, formerly I was not in quest of wisdom because I was unaware of it, and afterwards, when I began to seek it, I could not find it.
Even if all minds, in fact, should combine their researches and all tongues would concur in their utterance, never, as I have said, could anyone achieve a worthy result in this matter. Solomon, the wisest of all, presents this thought clearly to us when he says, "I have said: I will be wise; and it departed farther from me"; not that it really fled but because wisdom appears unattainable particularly to those to whom knowledge has been given in an exceptionally high degree by the grace of God.
Consider therefore how it is written in the book of Ecclesiastes, "I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me. That which is far off, and exceeding deep, who shall find it out?" [Consider] what is said in the Psalms, "The knowledge of you is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." And Solomon says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing." [Therefore] I frequently designed to stop and to cease writing; believe me, I did. But lest I should be found to disappoint you, or by my silence to lead into impiety those who have made enquiry of you and are given to disputation, I constrained myself to write briefly, what I have now sent to your piety.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Ignorance · General scriptures concerning — General scriptures concerning
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
it didn’t work: The Teacher was not able to find the wisdom that he sought or the reason for things. Such reasons are hidden in the mind of God (3:11; 8:17).
Rashi on Ecclesiastes 7:24
That which was is far beyond me. The distant things that were in the Creation.
And so very deep it is; who can find it, for I am not permitted to delve into them, what is above and what is below, what is before and what is after.57See Maseches Chagigah 11b. Furthermore—
