chbrooking
Puritan Board Junior
“Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?”
(Ecclesiastes 7:16-17 ESV)
The ESV cross references suggest that Rom 12:3 may shed some light on this. That verse says, "“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”
This would suggest that "Be not overly righteous" means, "Don't consider yourself more righteous than you are". That's not the natural sense of the words, though, and I haven't found any similar syntactical construction to make comparison. I'll admit, this is the most palatable solution I can find, but I'm just not sure that's what the text says.
I also considered using the interpretation of Prov. 26:4-5 as a pattern for the interpretation of these two verses. Perhaps I'm just too dull, but I can't seem to unpack the poetry here.
Solutions? Thoughts?
(Ecclesiastes 7:16-17 ESV)
The ESV cross references suggest that Rom 12:3 may shed some light on this. That verse says, "“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”
This would suggest that "Be not overly righteous" means, "Don't consider yourself more righteous than you are". That's not the natural sense of the words, though, and I haven't found any similar syntactical construction to make comparison. I'll admit, this is the most palatable solution I can find, but I'm just not sure that's what the text says.
I also considered using the interpretation of Prov. 26:4-5 as a pattern for the interpretation of these two verses. Perhaps I'm just too dull, but I can't seem to unpack the poetry here.
Solutions? Thoughts?