05/16/2025 – Day 320 – Ecclesiastes – Chapters 7 – 8 / Commentary on 7:26: “And I found more bitter than death the woman who is a trap, her heart a net, and her hands chains.”
I think this verse could lean one to unfairly tag Solomon as a “mysogynist”. But I think my Apologetics Study Bible really sheds a light over a larger context , so that our space of “What we don’t know that we don’t know” is reduced, albeit never eliminated in this world. Here it is:
“7:26 Solomon wrote here out of his bitter personal experience with marriage. (Jimmy insert: Duh, you had like 100+ wives, what did you expect? And foreign non-believing wives in the one true Go on top of it). As a Near Eastern potentate he had a large hare, and his foreign wives led him astray ( 1 Kings 11:4). He was not a hater of women, but realized that an unwise marriage can become a trap. Like most Israelis wisdom literature, Ecclesiastes was written for a male audience of educated elite, young men being trained for government service. Solomon viewed marriage from that perspective. Had the book been written for women, it would have spoken of the misery of the woman married to a cruel and brutal man. Much of Ecclesiastes is taken up with reflections on Genesis 3, the account of the first sin, which is one reason that the book is so concerned with the death and the brevity of life (see Genesis 3:19). It was the woman’s being deceived — in which her husband, standing by (‘with her,’ Genesis 3:6), failed to intervene — that brought sin to the human scene, a condition in which all people now participate in (Ecclesiastes 7:20-29). In effect, Solomon urged his readers not to repeat Adam’s mistake. But he was not devaluing marriage as such: indeed, a good, lifelong marriage is on the great joys of life. (9:9).”
Comment – One of the great joys of life when husband and wife both Yeshua (Jesus) at the center of their relationship at all times. Have you heard the expression: “I am second!”, embraced by both husband and wife.
Soli Deo Gloria!