For all this I laid to my heart, even to explore all this: that the righteous, and the wise, and their works, are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hatred, man doesn’t know it; all is before them.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 1. Of God. He seems to treat both alike, so that the just themselves cannot say whether their sufferings be a punishment or a trial. Saint Jerome Calmet.—Knoweth not certainly, and in an ordinary manner. Worthington.—Hatred. Hebrew and Septuagint “yet love and hatred man knoweth not.” Bible.—Prosperity or adversity proves nothing. Calmet.—Mortals cannot tell whether their afflictions tend to their greater improvement, like Job’s, or they are in punishment of sin, like those of Pharao, and of the Egyptians. This they shall know after death. Worthington.—Yet the wicked know already that they are displeasing to God. Salmeron in 2 Cor. xii. “The just and … their works are in the hand of God, even love and hatred; men know not,” and so forth Dieu. Amama.