Ecclesiastes 7:5

The chapter opens with a proverb in two halves, and both halves weigh what lasts against what passes. The first sets a good name beside precious ointment. The Hebrew word for name, shêm, carries a person’s whole standing: their reputation, character and honour, and the memory they leave among their neighbours and before God. A good name is the respect that a life of integrity and wisdom earns, and it outlasts the one who earned it. Proverbs makes the same judgment when it sets a good name above great riches (Proverbs 22:1).

Ointment, shemen, is oil, often olive oil and often perfumed. Fine ointment was costly, and people used it to honour a guest, to treat the sick, to make themselves pleasant to be near, and to prepare the dead for burial. It gave real pleasure and some standing, and then its fragrance faded. The Hebrew line has a play on sound, since shêm and shemen sound alike, and the KJV’s “better” and “precious” both translate ṭôwb, the broad Hebrew word for good. So the proverb says, in effect, that a good name is better than good oil.

Verse 2 unfolds the opening proverb with two houses. The house of mourning is the home where a death has happened. In Israel grief was shared: family and neighbours gathered there to lament, often over many days and sometimes with fasting, and everyone present stood face to face with how frail a human life is. The word for mourning, ʼêbel, means lamentation, the grief and wailing for the dead. The house of feasting is a place of banqueting. Its word, mishteh, means drinking and so a feast, the kind of celebration held at a wedding or a harvest, where plenty and good cheer let people forget their troubles for a while.

Offered the choice, most of us would go to the feast. The Preacher says the house of mourning does us more good, and he gives the reason: “for that is the end of all men.” The word for end, çôwph, means a conclusion or termination. Death is the end of every person, whatever their wealth or rank, and the house of mourning tells the truth about it. Scripture says the same plainly: “it is appointed unto men once to die” (Hebrews 9:27). This belongs to the Preacher’s wider verdict on life under the sun, “Vanity of vanities” (Ecclesiastes 1:2), and it opens a run of sayings that carries on through the chapter (Ecclesiastes 7:1–14).

Then comes the purpose: “the living will lay it to his heart.” The heart, lêb, is in Hebrew the whole inner person, the mind and the will as well as the feelings. To lay something to heart is to take it to mind, think it through, and let it shape what we choose and value. Moses longed for Israel to be wise enough to consider their latter end (Deuteronomy 32:29), and the psalmist asks God to teach us to “number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). A funeral does this for the living. It turns the mind from passing things toward what lasts, and toward the God to whom every life must give account.

“It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.” The rebuke, gᵉʻârâh, is a chiding or reproof, a firm correction meant to turn someone from a wrong course. The verb for hearing, shâmaʻ, is used in both halves of the verse, and it means to hear with attention, often with the sense of heeding and obeying. So the verse is about what we choose to listen to. In Israel a rebuke from an elder or a wise man was an accepted, if painful, form of guidance, a way of bringing someone back to the right path for their own good and for the good of the community.

The song, shîyr, is singing or music. In the mouth of fools it stands for what is pleasant to hear and changes nothing in us: entertainment, flattery and words that soothe a man’s pride and leave his faults alone. A wise rebuke stings and heals. Proverbs says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6), it counts the ear that listens to life-giving reproof as wise (Proverbs 15:31–32), and it warns us away from the company of the fool (Proverbs 14:7). God himself disciplines those he loves, as a father corrects a son (Hebrews 12:5–6), and a wise man’s rebuke can carry that same love. Hearing it well means acting on it, as James says of the word of God, where we are called to do what we hear (James 1:22).

“Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad; and a gift destroyeth the heart.” After all this praise of wisdom, the Preacher adds a sober warning: wisdom is precious, and it can still be broken. Oppression, ʻôsheq, covers injury, fraud and extortion, the distress they cause and the unjust gain they bring. In Israel the poor and the weak often suffered it at the hands of corrupt officials, powerful landowners or biased courts. Under that weight even a wise man can be driven mad. The verb, hâlal, first means to shine, then to make a show or boast, and from there to be clamorously foolish or to rave.

The second half names a quieter danger. The gift, mattânâh, is a present, and in a good sense a sacrificial offering, but here it is the gift given to sway a judgment, a bribe. It destroys the heart. The verb ʼâbad means to wander away and lose oneself, and so to perish or to destroy. A bribe corrupts the inner sense of right and wrong from which every decision comes. The law forbade bribes for this reason (Exodus 23:8), warning that a gift blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous (Deuteronomy 16:19), and Proverbs says that the wicked take a bribe to pervert justice (Proverbs 17:23).

This belongs to the Preacher’s honest account of life under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:3). Human wisdom is good and has its limits, and it holds firm when it is rooted in righteousness and the fear of the LORD. The verse is also a warning to anyone who holds power, because the harm of oppression spreads, and it can unhinge even the wise.

“Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” The end, ʼachărîyth, is the last part or outcome of something, and the word also reaches to the future. The beginning, rêʼshîyth, is the first in time or order, the word used for firstfruits, and “a thing” is dâbâr, a word or matter. Beginnings are full of hope and still untested. The end shows whether a work, a friendship or a life was sound, and it brings the fruit of the labour and the lessons learned on the way. This is the general rule behind verse 1, where the day of death outranks the day of birth, and it calls us to see things through. Much of life looks like chasing the wind (Ecclesiastes 1:14), and the wise judge it by its end. Paul’s chain of tribulation, patience, experience and hope (Romans 5:3–5) follows the same pattern, as a hard season ends in a deeper knowledge of God’s faithfulness.

The second half moves from outcomes to character. “Patient in spirit” is literally long of spirit, from ʼârêk, long, and rûwach, which means wind, breath and spirit. It describes someone slow to anger, forbearing and steady under delay or provocation. Scripture gives this very quality to God, who proclaimed himself merciful and gracious (Exodus 34:6) and is slow to anger (Numbers 14:18). “Proud in spirit” is literally high of spirit, from gâbâhh, lofty or high. The proud spirit takes offence when its will is crossed, acts rashly and refuses to learn. “Pride goeth before destruction” (Proverbs 16:18), and God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Patience is what lets a person wait for the end of a thing, so the two halves of the verse belong together, and James speaks of patience having its perfect work (James 1:2–4).

“Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.” The warning follows straight on from the patient spirit, and “spirit” here is the same word, rûwach. To be hasty, bâhal, is to tremble inwardly, to be suddenly alarmed or agitated. A hasty spirit is easily flustered and quickly provoked, and it reacts before it thinks. The verb “to be angry” and the noun “anger” are both forms of kaʻaç, a word for being troubled, grieved and indignant, and the noun is the same word translated “sorrow” in verse 3.

The reason is a picture of anger moving in. It “resteth”, nûwach, a verb for coming to rest and settling down, and it rests in the bosom, chêyq, the enclosed inner place of a person. In a wise man anger may rise and pass. In a fool it settles and stays, and it shapes his thoughts, words and deeds. Proverbs says the same in many ways: a quick-tempered man acts foolishly (Proverbs 14:17), the one slow to anger has great understanding (Proverbs 14:29) and is better than the mighty (Proverbs 16:32), the hot-tempered man stirs up strife while the patient man calms it (Proverbs 15:18), and a fool gives full vent to his anger (Proverbs 29:11). James tells believers to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger (James 1:19–20).

“Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.” People in every generation look back to a golden age, and Israel had its own: the united kingdom under David and Solomon, or the wilderness years when God fed his people by miracle. The Preacher forbids the complaint. “Say” is ʼâmar, the ordinary word for saying, which can also mean to think, and the warning fits the grumbling thought as well as the spoken words. “Former” is riʼshôwn, first or former, and “days” is yôwm, the same word as “the day of death” in verse 1. “Better” is again ṭôwb.

The question comes from a selective memory. It sets an idealised past against a present seen in full, troubles and all, and it breeds discontent, ingratitude and blindness to what God is doing now. That is why the Preacher says it is asked without wisdom. “Enquire” is shâʼal, to ask or inquire, and “wisely” is chokmâh, wisdom, the skill of living well that the whole book is seeking. A wise question looks at the present honestly and receives it from God. The verses that follow say exactly this, praising wisdom and calling us to take both the day of prosperity and the day of adversity as God’s appointment (Ecclesiastes 7:11–14). There is a season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1–8), and the days God gives now hold their own gifts.

Paul learned to be content in whatever state he was in (Philippians 4:11), and Hebrews tells believers to be content with what they have (Hebrews 13:5). James warns against the opposite mistake, boasting about tomorrow as if it were ours (James 4:13–15). Past and future both belong to God, and the present is the day he has given us to live in.

Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), and in him “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). The sayings of this passage find their fullest meaning in him.

He entered the house of mourning. At the tomb of Lazarus Jesus wept with Mary and Martha (John 11:35), called himself the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), and then called Lazarus out of the grave (John 11:43–44). Death is still the end of all men, and for those in Christ it has become a sleep from which they will rise, because he has been raised as the firstfruits of those who sleep (1 Corinthians 15:20–22). The house of mourning still holds grief, and it holds hope as well, because God will wipe away every tear and death itself will be gone (Revelation 21:4).

He knew sorrow from the inside. Isaiah calls him “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), whose appearance was marred by suffering (Isaiah 52:14). He endured the cross for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2), and through his sorrow our hearts are made better in the deepest sense, as God gives a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26). He calls his followers to take up the cross and follow him (Matthew 16:24), and he promised them a joy that no one would take from them (John 16:22).

His words are the rebuke of the wise in its fullest form. He rebuked the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy (Matthew 23:13–36) and called his disciples to deny themselves and take up their cross daily (Luke 9:23). The world’s songs promise ease, and he calls us to build on the rock of his words, which alone stand (Matthew 7:24–27), for he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). His rebuke is always love.

He was oppressed, and his heart stayed whole. He suffered false accusation, an unjust trial and crucifixion (Matthew 27:1–26), and Isaiah foresaw him oppressed and afflicted (Isaiah 53:7). He was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15), and the money that corrupted Judas left Christ’s heart pure. He who knew no sin was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). As the Lamb of God (John 1:29) he is the clearest picture of the patient spirit, showing the character the psalm gives the LORD, slow to anger and rich in mercy (Psalm 103:8). He endured the contradiction of sinners against himself (Hebrews 12:3), he was gentle and humble in heart (Matthew 11:29), and he humbled himself to death on a cross (Philippians 2:8).

In him, too, the end of a thing is better than its beginning. His birth was glorious, and his finished work on the cross (John 19:30) and his resurrection began a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). Through his death he conquered the power of death (Hebrews 2:14–15), and God has given him the name above every name (Philippians 2:9–11). His is the good name above all others, and those who belong to him share it as children of God made new in him. For a believer, then, the day of death really is better than the day of birth.

These ten verses give us an honest wisdom. They let us look at death with hope, because the God who numbers our days measures our lives by their end, and the end of those who are his is precious to him. They show that sorrow, rebuke and patient waiting are among his instruments for good, and that a heart taught in the house of mourning is a heart made better. They warn plainly that pressure and gain can bend even the wise, that anger nursed becomes a fool’s companion, and that grumbling over the past is an unwise question.

Above all they show us who God is. He is slow to anger, and he makes his people long of spirit like himself. He appoints every day, the day of birth and the day of death, the former days and these, and each comes from his hand. In Christ he has given us an end better than any beginning, and so the house of mourning holds hope for his people, and today comes to them as his gift.