Ecclesiastes 7:26 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And I find By my own sad experience, which Solomon here records as a testimony of his true repentance for his foul miscarriages, for which he was willing to take shame to himself, not only from the present, but from all succeeding generations; more bitter than death is the woman The strange woman, of whom he speaks so much in the Proverbs; more vexatious and pernicious, as producing those horrors of conscience, those reproaches, diseases, and other plagues, both temporal and spiritual, from God, which are far worse than the mere death of the body, and, after all these, everlasting destruction; whose heart is snares and nets Who is full of crafty devices to ensnare men; and her hands By gifts, or lascivious actions, as bands Wherewith she holds them in cruel bondage, so that they have neither power nor will to forsake her, notwithstanding all the dangers and mischiefs which they know attend upon such practices. Whoso pleaseth God Hebrew, he that is good before God, who is sincerely, and in the judgment of God, truly pious; shall escape her Shall be preserved from falling into her hands. Hereby he intimates, that neither a good temper of mind, nor great discretion, nor a good education, nor any other thing, except God's grace, is a sufficient preservative from the dominion of fleshy lusts; but the sinner Who rests satisfied without the saving grace of God and true piety, and therefore lives in known and wilful sin; shall be taken by her Shall be entangled and held in her chains.