Ecclesiastes 7:5

It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise The word for "rebuke" is characteristic of the sapiential books of the Old Testament (Proverbs 13:1; Proverbs 17:10). Here also the teacher finds the moral that "pain is gain." The "rebuke" is not pleasant, but it acts with a power to heal. The "song of fools" points to the type of lyric poetry of which we have examples in Anacreon, perhaps to the more wanton and impure poems which entered so largely into Greek life, and are preserved in such abundance in the Anthologia Græca. The comic drinking songs of a people represent at all times the lowest form of its animal life, and with these also, either in his own country or in Greek-speaking lands, the writer of the book had become acquainted. Amos 6:5 indicates the existence of a like form of revelry in the older life of Israel. Such songs left a taint behind them and the man was permanently the worse for it. In Ephesians 5:4 we may probably trace a reference to the same form of literature.