Ecclesiastes 7:27,28 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Behold, saith the preacher Or, the penitent, who speaks what he hath learned, both by deep study and costly experience; this have I found And it is a strange thing, and worthy of your serious observation; counting one by one Considering things or persons, very exactly and distinctly, one after another; to find out the account That I might make a true and just estimate in this matter; or, as it is in the margin, to find out the reason. Which yet my soul seeketh It seems so wonderful to me, that I suspected that I had not made a sufficient inquiry, and therefore I returned and searched again, with more earnestness; but I find not That it was so he found, but the reason of the thing he could not find out. One man A wise and virtuous man; among a thousand With whom I have conversed; have I found He is supposed to mention this number in allusion to his thousand wives and concubines, as they are numbered, 1 Kings 11:3; but a woman One worthy of that name, one who is not a dishonour to her sex; among all those, have I not found In that thousand whom I have taken into intimate society with myself. It is justly observed by different commentators here, that “we are not hence to infer, that Solomon thought there were fewer good women than men: but that he knew he had not gone the right way to find the virtuous woman, when he deviated so widely from the original law of marriage; and instead of seeking one rational companion, the sole object of his endeared affections, he had collected a vast multitude for magnificence and indulgence. The more valuable part of the sex would not willingly form one in such a group; and, if any of them were previously well disposed, the jealousies, party interests, contests, and artifices which take place in such situations, would tend exceedingly to corrupt them, and render them all nearly of the same character. Solomon therefore here speaks the language of a penitent, warning others against the sins into which he had been betrayed; and not that of a waspish satirist, lashing indiscriminately one half of the human species.” Scott.