Ecclesiastes 3:16 - Exposition

And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment . Koheleth records his experience of the prevalence of iniquity in high places. The place of judgment ( mishat ); where justice is administered. The accentuation allows (cf. Genesis 1:1 ) this to be regarded as the object of the verb. The Revised Version, with Hitzig, Ginsburg, and others, take מְקוֹם as an adverbial expression equivalent to "in the place." The former is the simpler construction. "And moreover," at the commencement of the verse, looks back to Ecclesiastes 3:10 ," I have seen the travail," etc. That wickedness ( resha ) was there. On the judicial seat iniquity sat instead of justice. The place of righteousness ( tsedek ). "Righteousness" is the peculiar characteristic of the judge himself, as "justice" is of his decisions. That iniquity ( resha ) was there . The word ought to be translated "wickedness" or "iniquity" in both clauses. The Septuagint takes the abstract for the concrete, and at the end has apparently introduced a clerical error, which has been perpetuated in the Arabic and elsewhere, "And moreover I saw under the sun the place of judgment, there was the ungodly ( ἀσεβής ); and the place of the righteous, there was the godly ( εὐσεβής )." The Complutensian Polyglot reads ἀσεβὴς in both places. It is impossible to harmonize these statements of oppression and injustice here and elsewhere ( e . g . Ecclesiastes 4:1 ; Ecclesiastes 5:8 ; Ecclesiastes 8:9 , Ecclesiastes 8:10 ) with Solomon's authorship of the book. It is contrary to fact that such a corrupt state of things existed in his time, and in writing thus he would be uttering a libel against himself. If he was cognizant of such evils in his kingdom, he had nothing to do but to put them down with a high hand. There is nothing to lead to the belief that he is speaking of other countries and other times; he is stating his own personal experience of what goes on around him. It is true that in Solomon's latter days disaffection secretly prevailed, and the people felt his yoke grievous ( 1 Kings 12:4 ); but there is no evidence of the existence of corruption in judicial courts, or of the social and political evils of which he speaks in this book. That he had a prophetical for, sight of the disasters that would accompany the reign of his successor, and endeavors herein to provide consolation for the future sufferers, is a pious opinion without historical basis, and cannot be justly used to support the genuineness of the work.