Albert Barnes Commentary Ecclesiastes 9:14-15

"There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man." — Ecclesiastes 9:14-15 (ASV)

A parable probably without foundation in fact. Critics who ascribe this book to a late age offer no better suggestion than that the “little city” may be Athens delivered 480 BC from the host of Xerxes through the wisdom of Themistocles, or Dora besieged 218 BC by Antiochus the Great.

Ecclesiastes 9:16–17 are comments on the two facts—the deliverance of the city and its forgetfulness of him who delivered it—stated in Ecclesiastes 9:15.