Koheleth seems to have had a suspicion all the time that his view of life was a low one. He intimates that he had tried for a better, but failed to reach it: "I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me." "Far remaineth" (so Ecclesiastes 7:24 should read) "Far remaineth what was far, and deep remaineth what was deep."
I. From his lower standpoint he now sets himself to inquire into the origin of evil. "I applied my mind," he says, "to discover the cause of wickedness, and vice, and mad folly." He finds it, as he thinks, in woman. By her fatal gift of beauty she often lures men to a doom more bitter than death; and at the best she has but a shallow, unbalanced nature, capable of doing much mischief, but incapable of doing any good. In these notions Koholeth does not stand alone. The depreciatory estimate of women used to be accepted almost as a truism, and was not unfrequently adopted by women themselves. It is a woman whom Euripides represents as saying that one man is better than a thousand of her sex.
II. To many of us these sentiments will appear almost inexplicable. Surely, we say to ourselves, the women of whom such things were said must have been very different from the women of the present day; and no doubt they were different through no fault of their own, but by reason of the treatment to which they had been subjected. Contempt for women was at one time universal, and it inevitably had on them a deteriorating effect. As soon as woman received fair play, she proved herself not only equal to man, but superior, lacking, no doubt, some of his best qualities, but possessing others which more than compensated for the deficiency. Scarcely any one in the present day whose opinion deserves a moment's consideration would agree with Koheleth. Instead of his arithmetical calculation about the thousand men and the thousand women, most persons would substitute Oliver Wendell Holmes': that there are at least three saints among women for one among men.
A. W. Momerie, Agnosticism,p. 236.
Ecclesiastes 7 and Ecclesiastes 8:1-15
I. The endeavour to secure a competence may be not lawful only, but most laudable, since God means us to make the best of the capacities He has given us and the opportunities He sends us. Nevertheless we may pursue this right end from a wrong motive, in a wrong spirit. Both spirit and motive are wrong if we pursue our competence as though it were a good so great that we can know no happy content and rest unless we attain it. For what is it that animates such a pursuit save distrust in the providence of God? Left in His hands, we do not feel that we should be safe; whereas if we had our fortune in our own hands, and were secured against chances and changes by a comfortable investment or two, we should feel safe enough.
II. Our sympathies go with the man who seeks to acquire a good name, to grow wise, to live in the golden mean. But when he proceeds to apply his theory, to deduce practical rules from it, we can only give him a qualified assent, nay must often altogether withhold our assent. The prudent man is likely: (1) to compromise conscience (Ecclesiastes 7:15-20); (2) to be indifferent to censure (Ecclesiastes 7:21-22); (3) to despise women (Ecclesiastes 7:25-29); (4) to be indifferent to public wrong (Ecclesiastes 8:1-13).
III. In the closing verses of the third section of the book, the Preacher lowers his mask, and tells us plainly that we cannot, and must not, rest in the theory he has just expounded; that to follow its counsels will lead us away from the chief good, not towards it. This new theory of life he confesses to be a "vanity" as great and deceptive as any of those he has hitherto tried.
S. Cox, The Quest of the Chief Good,p. 188.
References: Ecclesiastes 8:1. T. Hammond, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 333.Ecclesiastes 8:1-8. R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons,p. 281.Ecclesiastes 8:4. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1697, and My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi,p. 201 Ecclesiastes 8:8. U. R. Thomas, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 38; A. Mursell, Ibid.,vol. xix., p. 297.