Ecclesiastes 7:29 – In praise of simplicity?
NASB – ‘God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.’
NIV – ‘God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes.’
RSV – ‘God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices.’
ESV – ‘God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.’
AV – ‘God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.’
This verse in its GNB version…
‘This is all that I have learnt: God made us plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated’
…has been recruited by at least one preacher as the text for a sermon on simplicity. No doubt many useful things were said in the course of the sermon. And no doubt it is true that often, in our waywardness, we complicate our lives terribly. But, by selecting an idiosyncratic translation of the verse, the preacher missed the main point of the text, on which the main translations are agreed (see above).