Sentence Not Executed Speedily
10 So I saw the wicked buried. Indeed they came also from holiness. They went and were forgotten in the city where they did this. This also is vanity. 11 Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. 12 Though a sinner commits crimes a hundred times, and lives long, yet surely I know that it will be better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him. 13 But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he lengthen days like a shadow, because he doesn’t fear God. 14 There is a vanity which is done on the earth, that there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the work of the wicked. Again, there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. 15 Then I commended mirth, because a man has no better thing under the sun than to eat, to drink, and to be joyful: for that will accompany him in his labor all the days of his life which God has given him under the sun. 16 When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on the earth (even though eyes see no sleep day or night), 17 then I saw all the work of God, that man can’t find out the work that is done under the sun, because however much a man labors to seek it out, yet he won’t find it. Yes even though a wise man thinks he can comprehend it, he won’t be able to find it.
Delay is identified as the mechanism by which wrongdoing spreads, and the moral order is then asserted in the same breath as the evidence against it.
Verse 11 is the most useful sentence in the book about how corruption grows: because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
The cause is not permission but latency. Nothing has been approved; the consequence has merely not arrived yet, and the interval is read as a verdict. And the phrase fully set describes a hardening — a disposition settling into place while nothing happens.
That explains something the book keeps reporting without explaining. Wickedness in the seat of justice Ecclesiastes 3:16, oppression with power on the wrong side Ecclesiastes 4:1, officials layered over officials Ecclesiastes 5:8 — all of it grows in the same gap.
Then verses 12 and 13 assert the moral order, and the verb is worth noticing in a book this careful about knowledge: surely I know that it will be better with those who fear God. Not I have seen. Known, and held against what the next verse observes.
Because verse 14 states the contradiction without flinching: righteous men treated according to the work of the wicked, and wicked men according to the work of the righteous. The exchange runs both ways, and it is called vanity.
The two statements are left standing next to each other. What is known and what is seen do not agree, and the book declines to resolve it by discarding either.
Verse 15 supplies the fourth commendation of eating and drinking, and it is the only one introduced with a verb of approval: then I commended mirth.
And verses 16 and 17 close the chapter on the limit: however much a man labors to seek it out, he won't find it — and a wise man who thinks he can won't be able to.
settled What this mark means