Chapter 7 gets even gloomier, and it also gets misogynistic. It's structured in short aphorisms, rather like much of Proverbs, and it doesn't really cohere. Our sad sack friend first asserts that death is better than birth, and sadness is apparently to be preferred to happiness. At least he denies the just world fallacy we have seen in much of proverbs and elsewhere in the Tanakh. (Verse 15), and he then makes the rather odd suggestion that we would destroy ourselves by being overrighteous or overwise. Not sure where that's coming from with that exactly, but he goes on to say that being perfectly righteous or perfectly wise is impossible, which I am down with, although he seems to contradict himself at the very end.
Then he starts hating on women. First we get the woman who is a trap, who we encountered in proverbs. Then he says he has found one upright man in 1,000 -- the contradiction, not quite impossible after all -- but never an upright woman. I really could do without this guy.
7 A good name is better than fine perfume,
and the day of death better than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
the living should take this to heart.
3 Frustration is better than laughter,
because a sad face is good for the heart.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.
5 It is better to heed the rebuke of a wise person
than to listen to the song of fools.
6 Like the crackling of thorns under the pot,
so is the laughter of fools.
This too is meaningless.
7 Extortion turns a wise person into a fool,
and a bribe corrupts the heart.
8 The end of a matter is better than its beginning,
and patience is better than pride.
9 Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit,
for anger resides in the lap of fools.
10 Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”
For it is not wise to ask such questions.
11 Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing
and benefits those who see the sun.
12 Wisdom is a shelter
as money is a shelter,
but the advantage of knowledge is this:
Wisdom preserves those who have it.
13 Consider what God has done:
Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?
14 When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider this:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, no one can discover
anything about their future.
15 In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these:
the righteous perishing in their righteousness,
and the wicked living long in their wickedness.
16 Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?
17 Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?
18 It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.[a]
19 Wisdom makes one wise person more powerful
than ten rulers in a city.
20 Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous,
no one who does what is right and never sins.
21 Do not pay attention to every word people say,
or you may hear your servant cursing you—
22 for you know in your heart
that many times you yourself have cursed others.
23 All this I tested by wisdom and I said,
“I am determined to be wise”—
but this was beyond me.
24 Whatever exists is far off and most profound—
who can discover it?
25 So I turned my mind to understand,
to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things
and to understand the stupidity of wickedness
and the madness of folly.
26 I find more bitter than death
the woman who is a snare,
whose heart is a trap
and whose hands are chains.
The man who pleases God will escape her,
but the sinner she will ensnare.
27 “Look,” says the Teacher,[b] “this is what I have discovered:
“Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things—
28 while I was still searching
but not finding—
I found one upright man among a thousand,
but not one upright woman among them all.
29 This only have I found:
God created mankind upright,
but they have gone in search of many schemes.”
Footnotes
- Ecclesiastes 7:18 Or will follow them both
- Ecclesiastes 7:27 Or the leader of the assembly
1 comment:
At a loss to add anything meaningful — which would be superfluous, considering the passage's author finds no meaning in life — I instead add some comic relief with the following prototypically Jewish humor that puts a comic spin on our author's big bummer of a passage.
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Two old Jewish men are discussing the catastrophes that have befallen their people. From the destructions of the First and Second Temples under the Babylonians and Romans, respectively, and the scapegoating of Jews in the Middle Ages, through anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe and the Shoah, the two friends commiserate about all the tragedies that compel the observance of Tishah B'Av.
One of the men says to the other, "When I think about all the indescribable horrors our people have experienced, I sometimes think it would be better if we'd never been born."
The other man responds, "Yeah, but who's so lucky? Maybe one in 100,000."
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