Ecclesiastes7chapter 7

Ecclesiastes 7:1-4

The better-than proverbs open with reputation and mortality together: a good name outlasts precious ointment, and the day of death is set above the day of birth, since a life's worth is only known once it is finished. Bridges reads the house of mourning as better than the house of feasting because it is the end of all men and the living lay it to heart, sorrow doing work that laughter cannot. The heart of the wise sits in the house of mourning while the heart of fools sits in the house of mirth, the same contrast the book has carried since chapter 2, weighed rather than resolved.

Ecclesiastes 7:5-7

The rebuke of the wise is set above the song of fools, hard words that do good against easy words that do none. Henry reads the thorns crackling under a pot as the exact figure for a fool's laughter, loud, quick and without lasting heat, itself called vanity. Verse 7 adds a warning the wise man needs as much as the fool, oppression can madden even a wise man and a gift can destroy the heart it is meant to buy.

Ecclesiastes 7:8-10

The end of a thing outweighs its beginning, and patience of spirit outweighs pride of spirit, a pairing Gill reads as one proverb doubled for weight. The counsel against hasty anger follows directly, since anger rests only in the bosom of fools, a settled resident rather than a passing guest. The question about the former days being better than these is refused as unwise, not because the past holds nothing but because the question itself serves complaint more than understanding.

Ecclesiastes 7:11-12

Wisdom paired with inheritance profits those who still see the sun, a Preacher's way of saying wisdom serves the living and not the dead. Wisdom and money are both called a defence, but the excellency of knowledge is stated as its advantage over money, wisdom gives life to the one who has it, where money only shelters. Bridges reads the comparison as deliberately close rather than dismissive of wealth, the book has already called riches a gift of God, and here ranks wisdom only just above it.

Ecclesiastes 7:13-14

Consider the work of God: The counsel to consider the work of God turns on a question with no answer offered, who can make straight what he has made crooked. In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider, God having set the one against the other so that man should find nothing after him, which Henry reads as the Preacher's warning against presuming to map out his own future from either state. The crooked and the straight both come from God's hand, and the wise response to each is named rather than a program for reversing either.

Ecclesiastes 7:15-18

The Preacher reports two anomalies from his own observation, a just man perishing in his righteousness and a wicked man prolonging his life in his wickedness, cases that do not fit the tidy expectation that virtue is always rewarded and vice always punished. Be not righteous over much, neither make thyself over wise, has drawn several readings named without a verdict: Gill and much of the bench read it as a caution against a self-righteous, censorious strictness that goes beyond what God requires, while others read it as the world's own excuse for sin reported rather than the Preacher's counsel. Clarke reads verses 17 and 18 as balancing warnings against both extremes, and the closing line, he that feareth God shall come forth of them all, anchors the whole passage back to the fear of God the book keeps returning to.

Ecclesiastes 7:19-22

Wisdom is credited with more strength than ten rulers in a city, and the plain admission follows at once, there is not a just man upon earth that does good and sins not, the book's own doctrine of universal sin stated without qualification. The counsel not to take heed to every word spoken guards the reader from a servant's curse overheard, since as Henry notes, everyone has said the same of others in his own heart. The closing clause, thine own heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast cursed others, turns the warning back on the reader before he can apply it only to his servants.

Ecclesiastes 7:23-26

The Preacher reports the limit of his own search: he resolved to be wise, but wisdom stayed far from him, exceeding deep, past what he could find. His search widened to the reason of things and the wickedness of folly and madness, and it turned up one thing he calls more bitter than death, a woman whose heart is snares and nets. Gill and Henry both read the line as the Preacher's report from his own household rather than a doctrine of womankind, tied to Solomon's own history of wives who turned his heart in 1 Kings 11, and the verse closes on the man who pleases God escaping her rather than on the woman alone.

Ecclesiastes 7:27-29

The Preacher states his method plainly, counting one by one to find out the account, and reports that his search for one true man in a thousand succeeded where his search for a woman among as many did not, a finding read as the record of a particular search rather than a ranking of the sexes, since the chapter has already said no one on earth does good and sins not. Delitzsch reads the report as building toward the verse it exists to reach rather than standing as a conclusion on its own. That verse closes the chapter and answers the whole passage, God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions, the book's own Genesis 3 in a single sentence, the corruption traced to man's own seeking rather than to his Maker.