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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ecclesiastes 7:3 - 7:3
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The joy of life must thus be not riot and tumult, but a joy tempered with seriousness: “Better is sorrow than laughter: for with a sad countenance it is well with the heart. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, and the heart of fools in the house of mirth.” Grief and sorrow, כַּעַס, whether for ourselves or occasioned by others, is better, viz., morally better, than extravagant merriment; the heart is with רֹעַ פָּ (inf. as רַע, Jer 7:6; cf. פן רָ, Gen 40:7; Neh 2:2), a sorrowful countenance, better than with laughter, which only masks the feeling of disquiet peculiar to man, Pro 14:13. Elsewhere לֵב יִיטַב = “the heart is (may be) of good cheer,” e.g., Rth 3:7; Jdg 19:6; here also joyful experience is meant, but well becoming man as a religious moral being. With a sad countenance it may be far better as regards the heart than with a merry countenance in boisterous company. Luther, in the main correct, after Jerome, who on his part follows Symmachus: “The heart is made better by sorrow.” The well-being is here meant as the reflex of a moral: bene se habere.
Sorrow penetrates the heart, draws the thought upwards, purifies, transforms. Therefore is the heart of the wise in the house of sorrow; and, on the other hand, the heart of fools is in the house of joy, i.e., the impulse of their heart goes thither, there they feel themselves at home; a house of joy is one where there are continual feasts, or where there is at the time a revelling in joy. That Ecc 7:4 is divided not by Athnach, but by Zakef, has its reason in this, that of the words following אֵבֶל, none consists of three syllables; cf. on the contrary, Ecc 7:7, חָכָם. From this point forward the internal relation of the contents is broken up, according to which this series of sayings as a concluding section hangs together with that containing the observations going before in Ecc 6:1-12.