Matthew Poole and continuators on Ecclesiastes 8:2

2 I counsel thee to keep the kings commandment , and that in regard of the oath of God .

Which Verb is necessarily understood to make the sense full and compleat. See the like defects of speech, Ps. 120. 7. Isa. 5. 9. &c.

Observe and obey all his commands. Which is not to be understood universally, as if the King should have commanded them to deny or blaspheme God, or to worship Idols, in which case every Christian Man, who reads and believes the Bible, must needs confess that the Israelites especially were obliged to obey God rather than Man, but onely of such commands as are not contrary to the will of God.

Either 1. Because of that Oath which thou hast taken to keep all God's Laws, whereof this of Obedience to Superiours is one. Or 2. Because of that Covenant or Oath of Fealty and Allegiance whereby thou hast engaged thy self to him, of which see 1 Chron. 11. 3. & 29. 24. Ezek. 17. 16, 18. Though this may also be understood, and is by some learned Interpreters taken as a limitation of their Obedience to Kings, the words being thus rendred, as the Hebrew will very well bear, but according to the word of the Oath of God, Obey the Kings commands, with this caution that they be agreeable and not contrary to the Laws of God which thou art obliged by thy own and by thy Parents Oaths o[illegible: 1+ letters]t renewed, to observe in the first place.