Consider the work of God: Who can straighten what He has bent?
Parallel translations
- WEB Consider the work of God, for who can make that straight, which he has made crooked?
- KJV Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?
- NKJV Consider the work of God; For who can make straight what He has made crooked?
- NASB Consider the work of God, For who is able to straighten what He has bent?
- NLT Accept the way God does things, for who can straighten what he has made crooked?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Consider God's work, for no one can straighten what He has made crooked. It matters because we must humbly accept God's sovereign ordering rather than fight it.
Overview
The Preacher calls us to reflect on God's sovereign governance, echoing 1:15. What God appoints, including life's hardships and limits, cannot be undone by human effort. This summons us to humble trust rather than vain resistance, resting in the wisdom of God whose seemingly 'crooked' providences work toward good purposes, as the cross of Christ supremely shows (Romans 8:28).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 17
- Eccl 1:15What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
- Job 12:14What He tears down cannot be rebuilt; the man He imprisons cannot be released.
- Ps 107:43Let him who is wise pay heed to these things and consider the loving devotion of the LORD.
- Eccl 3:11He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom the work that God has done from beginning to end.
- Isa 14:27The LORD of Hosts has purposed, and who can thwart Him? His hand is outstretched, so who can turn it back?
- Isa 5:12At their feasts are the lyre and harp, tambourines and flutes and wine. They disregard the actions of the LORD and fail to see the work of His hands.
- Rom 9:15For He says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
- Eph 1:11In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will,
- Rom 9:19One of you will say to me, “Then why does God still find fault? For who can resist His will?”
- Isa 46:10–11I declare the end from the beginning, and ancient times from what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and all My good pleasure I will accomplish.’
- Job 37:14Listen to this, O Job; stand still and consider the wonders of God.
- Isa 43:13Even from eternity I am He, and none can deliver out of My hand. When I act, who can reverse it?”
- Job 9:12If He takes away, who can stop Him? Who dares to ask Him, ‘What are You doing?’
- Dan 4:35All the peoples of the earth are counted as nothing, and He does as He pleases with the army of heaven and the peoples of the earth. There is no one who can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’”
- Job 11:10If He comes along to imprison you, or convenes a court, who can stop Him?
- Job 34:29But when He remains silent, who can condemn Him? When He hides His face, who can see Him? Yet He watches over both man and nation,
- Ps 8:3When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place—
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The search that finds everything 'under the sun' to be vapor exposes the emptiness of life without God and drives us to the one who alone gives meaning, the resurrection that makes our labor not in vain.
How Ecclesiastes 7:13 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.