Ecclesiastes chapter 7

vs 21

And why wouldn't you want to hear that? Such behaviour requires some sort of action, surely! A beating or somesuch.

vs 22

But in fact, we all say things like that sometimes. And hence we see the idea of not judging others, because not only will we be judged by the same measure, but we will be found guilty by that same measure.

vs 23

It's not that there isn't wisdom in what he has said so far. But the wisdom hasn't really led him to any enormous conclusions, and it certainly hasn't led him to break free of the cycle of meaninglessness.

vs 24

I think the idea of wisdom is still reflected in this verse, implicitly. The NIV put it in, but no-one else has. But it still reads that way. So it is wisdom that is far off and profound, outside of our discovery. Not all wisdom obviously, but all of wisdom.

vs 25

He might not be able to grasp everything, but he can know the general scheme of things (I guess this is what we call 'science' - in the loose sense that we are looking at the scheme of things, whether it be a biological scheme, a physical scheme, or a cultural one). He can also know how stupid foolishness, or a lack of wisdom, is.

vs 26

Snap. So much wisdom is about finding a good woman. We can't ignore the fact that marriage relationships (and no doubt other liaisons) were a part of life, and an important one, in ancient times. Such relations can obviously be sinful as well as good, and this is a description of one such. I actually think it's quite a good picture.

vs 27

So not doing anything super difficult - just adding ideas together.

vs 28

Now, I think we can choose how to read this. Either you can read it that there's a righteous man 1 in every 1000, and that women are worse than men, or you can see this as a somewhat poetic statement, where a,a+1, which is not uncommon in Hebrew poetry at all. So there are so few righteous people, men and women alike. I don't think he's really seeking to divide here, but to show that righteousness is not really the province of men or women. Sure, the way he's written it does slightly suggest women are a bit more troublesome. But in a maleocentric world, that's going to happen to be the case - not only that he is going to say it, but that it's going to be true.

vs 29

So we got a good start, but then we fudged it.