Ecclesiastes 7:25-29

The connections between wisdom and righteousness on the one hand, and folly and wickedness on the other, are especially close in this pericope. As in Proverbs 1-9, Solomon personified folly as a woman (Ecclesiastes 7:26). As Solomon sought to understand wisdom (Ecclesiastes 7:25), he learned that the person who wants to please God will escape folly and wickedness, but the person who prefers to sin will not (Ecclesiastes 7:26). Folly is worse than death (Ecclesiastes 7:26).

The "man" in view in Ecclesiastes 7:28 is the "person" who is pleasing to God (Ecclesiastes 7:26). The Hebrew word for "man" here (adam) is generic, and refers to people, rather than males in contrast to females. Solomon meant in Ecclesiastes 7:28 b that a person who is pleasing to God is extremely rare (cf. Job 9:3; Job 33:23). The reference to "woman" (Ecclesiastes 7:28 c) is a way of expressing in parallelism (with "man") that no one really pleases God completely. A paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 7:28 b-c is, "I have found very few people who please God, no one at all really." The idea definitely is not that one out of 1,000 males pleases God, but no females at all do. This is a good example of Hebrew parallelism that, if unobserved, can lead to a bizarre interpretation.

"This is one man’s experience [i.e., the writer’s], and he does not universalize it." [Note: Ibid., p. 72.]

"Some commentators have suggested that this woman whose heart is a snare and a trap (Ecclesiastes 7:26) is but the personification of that wickedness which is folly itself. She is the ’strange woman’ of Proverbs 1-9. Perhaps this interpretation is the closest to what Solomon intended, for the topic is wisdom from Ecclesiastes 7:20 to Ecclesiastes 8:1." [Note: Kaiser, Ecclesiastes . . ., p. 88.]

Who is responsible for the universal failure to please God? Solomon said people are, not God (Ecclesiastes 7:29). God made us upright in the sense of being able to choose to please or not please God. Nevertheless, we have all gone our own way in pursuit of "many devices." The same Hebrew word translated "devices" in Ecclesiastes 7:29 reads "explanation" in Ecclesiastes 7:25; Ecclesiastes 7:27. The point is not that people have turned aside to sin, but that they have sought out many explanations. They have sought many explanations of what? In the context, Solomon was talking about God’s plan. Failing to fully understand God’s scheme of things, people have turned aside to their own explanations of these things.