Ecclesiastes 7:23-29

In Dispraise of Women. All the foregoing maxims have been tested, yet Qoheleth has not attained wisdom (Ecclesiastes 7:23); the true inwardness of things, the ultimate reality, is beyond his efforts (Ecclesiastes 7:24; cf. Job 28:12, also Ec. If.). Yet he has learned that wickedness is folly and folly is madness, and has made the further discovery of something more bitter than death, a seductive woman (cf. Proverbs 5, 7). His investigation has been painstaking and thorough (Ecclesiastes 7:27), and with heart as well as head (Ecclesiastes 7:28), and his conclusion is that while perfect men are very scarce, perfect women are still scarcer. Whether Qoheleth has suffered some bitter personal experience or has in mind the intrigues of the harem in Persian and Greek life we cannot say. He (or more likely a glossator) however, acquits God of responsibility for human wrong-doing; it is man's inventive faculty that has too often taken the wrong course.