which claimed to give the secret of history, and which even afterwards satisfied some wise men (e.g. Sirach)—the theory that the good are rewarded and the bad punished in this world—is not borne out by Koheleth's experience,—
There is (many) a righteous man who perishes in spite of his
righteousness, and there is (many) an ungodly man who lives long in
spite of his wickedness (vii. 15; contrast the interpolated passage
viii. 12, 13).
But though Koheleth, like Job, despairs of essential wisdom,
he 'turns' with hope to the wide field of wisdom—or, as he
calls it, 'wisdom and reasoning,' i.e. moral inquiries pursued
on the inductive method. And what is the result of his inquiry?
He gives it with much deliberateness, stating that he
(viz. 'the Koheleth,' see on xii. 8) has put one fact to another
in order to form a conclusion (ver. 27) and it is that women-*tempters
are more pernicious than Death (man's great enemy
personified, as so often). Or, putting it in other words, which
I am forced to paraphrase to bring out their meaning—words
to which the well-known poem of Simonides is chivalry itself—'A
few rare specimens of uncorrupted human nature I have
found, so rare that one may reckon them as one among a
thousand; but not one of these truly human creatures was a
woman.'[1] The latter statement is the stronger, and shows
that our author agrees with Ecclus. xxv. 19, that 'all wickedness
is but little to the wickedness of a woman.' And so much
in earnest is he, that he even tries a third mode of expressing
his conclusion. Carefully limiting himself he says, 'Lo! this
only have I found; that God made mankind upright, but
they have sought out many contrivances' (ver. 29); that is,
men and women are both born good, but are too soon sophisticated
by civilisation (and the leaders in this downward
process, we may infer from the context, are the women).
Koheleth scarcely means to imply that civilisation is bad in
- ↑ So Klostermann. The ordinary interpretation is, 'One man among a thousand (men) I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found;' i.e. I have tested a thousand men and a thousand women; I have found one true man, but not one true woman. The objection is that 'ādām elsewhere (e.g. ver. 29) means human beings without distinction of sex.
