Ecclesiastes 7:13

who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked The sequence of thought is as follows. To "consider the work of God" intelligently is one application of the wisdom which has been praised in Ecclesiastes 7:11-12. In so considering, the mind of the Debater goes back to Ecclesiastes 7:10, and he bids men accept the outward facts of life as they come. If they are "crooked," i.e.crossing and thwarting our inclinations, we cannot alter them. It is idle, to take up a Christian phrase that expresses the same thought, to seek to "change our cross." We cannot alter the events of life, and our wisdom is not merely to accept them as inevitable, but to adapt ourselves to them. It is a striking example of Rabbinic literalism that the Chaldee Targum refers the words to the impossibility of removing bodily deformities, such as those of the blind, the hunchback, and the lame. The word and the thought are clearly the same as in ch. Ecclesiastes 1:15.