“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
to be a paradigm of bad writing. The nasty trick it exemplifies is using a paradox to get one up on the reader without committing to a specific meaning.
If the race is not to the swift, who does win? The lucky? Contrast two aphorisms “the race is to the swift” and “the race is to the lucky”. The second of these is useless. You cannot assess some-one’s luck ahead of time, you have to discover who is lucky by waiting to see who wins and then say smugly “see I told you the lucky one would win.”
This passage irritates me because the writer forces the reader to create the meaning of the passage from nothing and then the writer appropriates the readers efforts. There is something important to be said on this theme:
The race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, but the odds are never quite so short as the book maker offers and the greatest number are drowned when the sea takes the unshinkable ship with no lifeboats.
I’ve no doubt that the author of Ecclesiastes would say “that’s it, you have got my meaning exactly” but that would be a lie; it is my meaning, I said it and he didn’t.
Tiiba, I’ve always considered this bible quote
“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
to be a paradigm of bad writing. The nasty trick it exemplifies is using a paradox to get one up on the reader without committing to a specific meaning.
If the race is not to the swift, who does win? The lucky? Contrast two aphorisms “the race is to the swift” and “the race is to the lucky”. The second of these is useless. You cannot assess some-one’s luck ahead of time, you have to discover who is lucky by waiting to see who wins and then say smugly “see I told you the lucky one would win.”
This passage irritates me because the writer forces the reader to create the meaning of the passage from nothing and then the writer appropriates the readers efforts. There is something important to be said on this theme:
The race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, but the odds are never quite so short as the book maker offers and the greatest number are drowned when the sea takes the unshinkable ship with no lifeboats.
I’ve no doubt that the author of Ecclesiastes would say “that’s it, you have got my meaning exactly” but that would be a lie; it is my meaning, I said it and he didn’t.