Bible Strands
Ecclesiastes 1:15
What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The speaker is Qohelet addressing an unspecified audience immediately after cataloging the futility of all human activity under the sun. He states this observation right before claiming his own superior accumulation of wisdom and knowledge.
The words — The Hebrew מְעֻוָּת (meʿûwāt) means “something bent,” paired with חֶסְרוֹן (ḥeserôn), meaning “something missing.” Both are coupled with לֹא יוּכַל (lōʾ yūḵal), “it is not able,” to declare that neither defect nor deficiency can be remedied.
The thread — This theme of unalterable reality appears in Ecclesiastes 3:14, which notes that God’s work endures forever with nothing added or taken away, and echoes in Matthew 6:27, where human anxiety cannot alter divine boundaries.
Why it lands — The verse demands acceptance of inherent limitations without attempting to force correction or complete what is fundamentally unfixable. It asks the reader to stop striving against fixed conditions and recognize the boundary between human effort and immutable reality.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.
Cross-references
- Ecclesiastes 7:12 For wisdom, like money, is a shelter, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of its owner.
- Matthew 6:27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
- Ecclesiastes 3:14 I know that everything God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God does it so that they should fear Him.
- Isaiah 40:4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground will become smooth, and the rugged land a plain.
- Job 11:6 and disclose to you the secrets of wisdom, for true wisdom has two sides. Know then that God exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves.
- Job 34:29 But 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,
- Lamentations 3:37 Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it?
- Daniel 4:35 All 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?’”