Ecclesiastes 7:2

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting The customs of Jewish mourning must be borne in mind to appreciate the full force of the maxim. The lamentation lasting for seven (Sir 22:10) or even for thirty, days, as in the case of Aaron (Numbers 20:29), and Moses (Deuteronomy 24:8), the loud wailing of the hired mourners (Jeremiah 22:18; Matthew 9:23; Mark 5:38), the visits of consolation (John 11:31), the sad meals of the bread and wine of affliction (Jeremiah 16:7; Hosea 9:4; Job 4:17), the sight of these things checked the pride of life and called out sympathy, and reminded the visitor of the nearness of his own end,

"Sunt lachrymæ rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt."

"We needs must weep the chance and change of life,

And mortal sorrows touch a mortal's heart."

Virg. Æn. i. 462.

The words manifestly record a personal experience, and lead us to think of the writer as having learnt to "visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction" (James 1:27), and having found that there was some "profit" at least in this.