Ecclesiastes 5:1

Keep thy foot In the Heb., LXX. and Vulg. this verse forms the conclusion to chap. 4. The English version is obviously right, however, in its division of the chapter. The moralist reviews a new region of experience. "Vanity" has been found in all that belongs to the outward secular life of men. Is their higher life, that which we call their religion, free from it? Must not the Debater, from his standpoint, rebuke the follies and sins even of the godly? Here, as might be expected, we have an intermingling of two elements of thought, the traditional teaching which the thinker has learnt from psalmist and prophet, and the maxims which have come to him from his Greek, probably from his Epicurean, teachers. Both, it will be seen, find echoes in the precepts that follow. The precepts are suggestive as shewing the kind of religion which the Debater had seen in Palestine, the germs of the formalism and casuistry which afterwards developed into Pharisaism. To "keep the foot" was to walk in the right way, the way of reverence and obedience (Psalms 119:32; Psalms 119:101). The outward act of putting the shoes off the feet on entering the Temple (Exodus 3:5; Joshua 5:15), from the earliest times to the present, the custom of the East, was the outward symbol of such a reverential awe. We note, as characteristic, the substitution of the "house of God" for the more familiar "house of the Lord" (2 Samuel 12:20; Isaiah 33:1, and elsewhere). Possibly the term may be used, as in Psalms 74:8; Psalms 83:12, to include synagogues as well as the Temple. The precept implies that he who gives it had seen the need of it. Men went to the place where they worshipped with little thought that it was indeed a Beth-el, or "house of God."

and be more ready to hear The words have been differently interpreted: (1) "And to draw near to hear is better than to offer the sacrifice …;" and (2) "To hear (obey) is nearer (i.e.is the truer way for thy foot to take) than to offer the sacrifice …" The general spirit of the maxim or precept is identical with that of 1 Samuel 15:22; Psalms 40:6-8; Psalms 50:8-14; Psalms 51:16-17. The "sacrifice of fools" as in Proverbs 21:27 is that offered by the ungodly, and therefore an abomination.

for they consider not that they do evil The A.V. is perhaps sufficiently expressive of the meaning, but the following various renderings have been suggested: (1) " they know not, so that they do evil," i.e.their ignorance leads them to sin; (2) " they (those who obey, hear) know not to do evil," i.e.their obedience keeps them from it. Of these (1) seems preferable. Protests against a superstition that was not godliness, the δεισιδαιμονία of the Greeks (Acts 17:22), were, it need scarcely be said, part of the current teaching of Epicurus and his followers. So Lucretius;

"Nec pietas ullast velatum sæpe videri

Vertier ad lapidem atque omnes accedere ad aras,

Nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas

Ante deûm delubra, nec aras sanguine multo

Spargere quadrupedum, nec votis nectere vota,

Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri."

"True worship is not found in veiled heads

Turned to a statue, nor in drawing near

To many an altar, nor in form laid low

Upon the ground, nor sprinkling it with blood

Of bulls and goats, nor piling vows on vows;

But rather in the power which all surveys

With mind at rest and calm."

De Rer. Nat. v. 1198 1203.