"7 A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
5 It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise
than to hear the song of fools.
6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
so is the laughter of the fools;
this also is vanity.
7 Surely oppression drives the wise into madness,
and a bribe corrupts the heart.
8 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
9 Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.
10 Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
11 Wisdom is good with an inheritance,
an advantage to those who see the sun.
12 For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money,
and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.
13 Consider the work of God:
who can make straight what he has made crooked?
14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him."
Ecclesiastes 7:1-14
In 5-9 the message seems to be that instruction is better than foolish banter. There are few things more sad than the spectacle of a man who seems incapable of being serious about anything, and who gains the reputation of being shallow and superficial in everything he says. The graphic metaphor in 6 underlines this very scathingly, and with justification. Infinitely better to receive the rebuke of a wise man, unpleasant and painful as it may be, than to be exposed to the affront of a hail-fellow-well-met's idle and empty pleasantry. In 10 we need to recognise that not all looking back 'to the good old days' is wrong (as witness Jeremiah's moving words in Jeremiah 6:16, about asking for the old paths), but it can so easily become so by having a wrong attitude to life, when we simply sentimentalise and wear rose-coloured spectacles and therefore fail to recognise realities. In 11 the AV margin reads 'wisdom is as good as an inheritance', and this seems to be borne out by what is said in 12 about wisdom giving life to those who have it. The Preacher's philosophy comes out very clearly in 14: we are to enjoy life when the sun shines upon us, but when adversity comes we are to learn its lessons. God has His purpose for both prosperity and adversity and we must be careful not to miss the lessons of either, but learn from both alike. And it is simply unrealistic to assume that we will not have our share of both in the course of our lives.