And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all [things] that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.
Ver. 13. And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom.] God had given Solomon a large heart, and great store of wisdom; and this made him not more idle, but more industrious, more sedulous and serious in seeking and …
Searching out by wisdom,] i.e., By the best skill that he had, maturely and methodically, the causes, properties, and effects, with the reason of all things that are, and are done under heaven. Neither did he this in pride and curiosity (as Hugo de Sancto Victore here sharply censureth him), but soberly and modestly, setting down his disquisitions and observations of things political and natural for the use of posterity. And forasmuch as these a are now lost - because haply too much admired and trusted to, by those that had the use of them under the first temple, in and with the which some Jews say they were burnt - what a high price we all set upon this and the other two books of Solomon, the wisest of men, as, not Apollo, but the true God of heaven hath called him, and commended him unto us! Surely, as in the Revelation, heaven never opened but some great mystery was revealed, some divine oracle uttered; so we may be confident that the Holy Ghost never sets any penman of Scripture a work but for excellent purpose. And if we disregard it, he will complain of us as once, - "I have written for them the great things of nay law, but they were counted as a strange thing." Hos 8:12 As for those other worthy works of Solomon (the fruits of this privy search into the natures of the creatures here mentioned), that the injury of time bereft us of, how much better may we say of them, than a godly and learned man b once did of Origen's Octapla, Huius operis iacturam deplorare possumus, compensare non possumus, This great loss we may well bewail, but cannot help.
a 1 Kings 4:32,33 .
b Rolloc., De Vocatione, p. 130.