Ecclesiastes 7
Wise parables of a scholarly sage
Dying as decent people
1It’s better to die poor with a respected nameThan rich enough to buy pricey perfume [1]
To cover the smell of the corpse.
If we can manage that, then the day we die
Will be better than the day we were born. [2]
2It’s better to go to a funeral
With a lot of people crying
Than to party with a lot of food.
We’re all going to end up dead.
We might as well accept it.
3Sorrow can enrich us more than laughter,
For sorrow can become our path to joy. [3]
4Wise people know the value of a funeral.
Fools prefer the fun of a party.
Laughter is a perfect waste of time
5It’s smarter to listen to a wise person correct youThan to a fool who just sings your praises.
6Laughter of fools is a wad of thorns crackling in a fire,
A perfect waste of time. [4]
7Pressure, arm-twisting, and extortion
Can turn wise people into fools.
Bribery can corrupt them to the heart and the bone.
Finish what you start
8It’s good to start something,But it’s better to finish.
And it’s better to be patient
Than to have too much pride.
9Don’t lose your temper.
When you make fools angry,
It sticks in their guts.
10Don’t bother saying,
“The good ol’ days were better than this.”
That’s an ignorant thing to say.
11A wise mind is as valuable
As a healthy inheritance.
If you put wisdom to use
You’ll get a reward.
12Money can buy protection.
Wisdom gives it freely.
Plus, good sense and knowledge
Will keep you alive.
13Try to remember who God is.
If he sends you down a winding road,
Who do you think you are
To take a shortcut?
14Enjoy the easy-going days while you can.
When the hard days come remember this,
God made both days, easy and hard.
We never know what’s going to happen.
Don’t kill yourself trying to get holy
15During my insignificant life,I’ve seen it all.
Good people dying while doing good things.
And bad people wickedly living on and on.
16So, don’t go crazy-righteous.
You can kill yourself overdoing it.
17But don’t go crazy-wicked, either.
And don’t be a fool.
You don’t want to die before your time.
18Stay level-headed about both of those,
The roles of the good and the bad.
But in the end, here’s the key to success:
Treat God with respect.
19There’s more strength in wisdom
Than in the top 10 officials in anyone’s town.
20No one’s perfect.
Surely, everyone on earth
Has sinned at least once.
Don’t snoop
21Don’t try to listen in on what others are saying.You might overhear someone trash-talking you.
22You know exactly what they’re doing
Because you’ve done it plenty of times.
23Everything I’ve been talking about was part of my experiment, testing wisdom. I thought it would make me wise. But it didn’t. 24Wisdom remains elusive, hidden, and far away. No one has found it.
25I decided to study the wise and the wicked,
To understand the whys in life—
Why it’s foolish to live like the devil,
And why it’s crazy to act like a fool.
Seductive women are bitter trappers
26I discovered that a flirting, seductive womanCan sour into bitterness worse than death.
Her hands are traps, her heart’s a net.
Wise people of God stay away,
Sinners go in for the hug.
27So, this is what I’ve found.
It’s my list of wise sayings,
Which I wanted to understand.
28I thought long and hard about it all,
But it makes no sense to me.
29There is one fact I found, though:
God made humans as simple creatures.
But we complicate our lives
By the schemes and plots we invent.
Footnotes
Burial involved washing the body and wrapping it in cloth laced with expensive ointment and perfume. The fragrance helped cover the smell of the decaying body, so mourners weren’t distracted by it. One expensive ointment was nard, which has the earthy fragrance of the cyprus tree. It was one of the most expensive perfumes and anointing oils available. Nard was extracted from spikenard plants native to India’s Himalayan Mountains, some 2,500 miles (4,000 km) east of what is now Israel. It took about a year’s salary for the average working person to buy a flask of 16 ounces (half a liter). See Matthew 26:7 and Mark 14:3.
The Hebrew language says only that “the day of death is better than the day of birth.” But the context of the two lines that begin the poem suggests that the day of death is better because we leave life with a good reputation behind. We leave this world a better place, however slightly. That’s one interpretation. Another is that the Scholar was usually awfully pessimistic, preferring death to life.
See a similar statement in Proverbs 14:13.
It’s unclear what the writer meant by comparing laughter to thorns in a fire One possibility is that thorns don’t provide much heat, and they quickly go up in smoke. So, if you want to heat a pot of stew or warm yourself on a cold night, you need something more substantial than thorns and briars.
