Chapter 7: We now meet a stretch of verses with disjointed sayings, like those we saw in Proverbs: Better is this than that - and many examples are given. He says sorrow is better than laughter - meaning empty headed laughter. Sorrow makes one see things as they are.

In 15-18: He has seen the righteous perishing, and the wicked prospering: this is is an advance over earlier thoughts so common before, in which the writer bravely tried to tell self that God makes all things right before the end of life. He did know indeed that God is just - but not knowing that there is retribution in a future life, had to as it were hold on in the deark, believing what seemed impossible. It is likely that only by the time of the great persecution of Antiochus IV of Syria, c. 170, did many Jews come to see that-- stimulated by 1) the hideous deaths of some of the Maccabean martyrs--2) the encounter wit Greek thought, which helped them to see a man has two parts, not one, so that there is something to survive. Before that they held on bravely to two things: the firm belief in survival (shown by insistence on necromany) and the unitary concept of man. Holding on in the dark is spiritually good: then the will adheres to God all the more strongly. Cf. Wm. Most, Our Father's Plan, 129-31.

But he who fears God will come out well - and in view of the second set of texts given in our introduction he seems to imply: he will come out well in the future life.

In vv. 26-28 we meet verses often misunderstood as being against women as such. Rather he has sought for wise persons. He says he has found hardly any men - one in all-- and no women. This of course is Semitic. He hardly means to say his own mother was wicked, or the mother of his children. He is saying that one should avoid loose women - a common thought in the wisdom books.