Ecclesiastes 7
Ecclesiastes 7 is the seventh chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book contains philosophical speeches by a character called '(the) Qoheleth' ("the Teacher"), composed probably between the 5th and 2nd centuries BC. Peshitta, Targum, and Talmud attribute the authorship of the book to King Solomon.
Ecclesiastes 7 | |
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Illustration from the Washington Haggadah on Ecclesiastes 7:26, concerning a custom that a man points to his wife when mentioning maror (Mediaeval). | |
Book | Book of Ecclesiastes |
Category | Ketuvim |
Christian Bible part | Old Testament |
Order in the Christian part | 21 |
This chapter deals with suffering and sin. The style of the first half (verses 1–14) is similar to that of the 'sentence literature' collections (such as Proverbs 10:1–22:16) and, as in such collections, the sayings are linked by catchwords and thematic ties with the previous ones, with a series of "better ... than" presenting dialectic pairs of issues. The second half exposes the 'crookedness of life' (verse 13) that moves to the 'crookedness of humanity' (verse 29).