The Misogynist
Now I find woman more bitter than death; she is all traps, her hands are fetters and her heart is snares. He who is pleasing to God escapes her, and he who is displeasing is caught by her. Ecclesiastes 7:26 JPS
More bitter – We are often disturbed with some of Paul’s statements about women. With the wrong interpretation, they appear to treat women as second-class citizens, prohibited from exercising authority, forbidden to speak out, relegated to submission. Of course, all of this depends on a long history of particularly poor exegesis. Paul actually held very different views, as my book Guardian Angel demonstrates. But if we were even slightly inclined to consider Paul an opponent of women, we can hardly overlook Qohelet’s scathing remark. How in the world can a man who claims to have investigated everything in the world to its depths conclude that involvement with women is displeasing to God and more bitter than death? This demands some serious examination.
The Hebrew is so politically incorrect that several translations attempt to remove its misogynistic tone. For example, the ESV translates the passage as “I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and traps.” You’ll notice that this translation removes a general comment about women by focusing only on one particular type of woman, namely, the one that we already agree is a problem. This kind of translation is motivated by cultural acceptability, not linguistic integrity. Qohelet is talking about all women whether we like it or not.
Certainly the rabbis do not agree with Qohelet’s assessment. B. Yevamot 62b says, “Whoever is without a wife lives without good, without help, without happiness, without blessing, and without atonement.” Rabbi Joshua ben Levi adds, “and without life and without peace.”[1]
Other biblical passages oppose Qohelet. Compare Proverbs 18:22 or 31:10, where the sage proclaims the value of women and their absolute necessity in family and community. Are we to conclude that the Bible contains contradictory statements, or worse, that God’s inspired word is inconsistent when it comes to women? I think not. Ecclesiastes is unique and unusual in its entire approach to examining the human condition. It is the only place in the entire biblical text that contains such blistering remarks, not only about women but about life in general. As far as Qohelet is concerned, life boils down to this: get it while you can! Qohelet’s world is a world without revelation. It is the world inside the box, inside the frame of human understanding—and consequently limited to what men can determine without a voice from beyond. With that framework in mind, it’s little wonder the Qohelet is pessimistic. He is a man without hope. He sees a world full of pain and suffering, but he doesn’t see a God of grace. He looks at the brief span of human life but sees nothing beyond the grave. For Qohelet, life is a one way journey to death.
When Qohelet thinks about women, he notices only the obstacles they present. He certainly knows the power of lust, the shackles of sexual desire and the incredible longing for connection—but he hasn’t found what he is looking for. There is no one for him. A life-long quest becomes the fodder for another round of despair. If he can’t find the connection he so desperately desires, and he has looked harder than anyone else, then he must conclude that such a desperate desire cannot be satisfied. And women, in general, represent in living flesh precisely this deprivation. “Once bitten, twice shy” leads Qohelet to the logical end—there is nothing to be found here except heartache.
Kierkegaard came to much the same conclusion, centuries later. In spite of his deep love for a woman, he realized that the eventual end of any potential relationship would be sorrow—from death, denial or betrayal. As a result, he never engaged in the relationship. The anticipated pain overshadowed the immediate joy. His action was self-fulfilling. So is Qohelet’s. Once I determine that the outcome is all negative, I exclude any possibility that the journey is still worth it. We might apply the same logic to our daily walk with the Lord. Would we continue if we were not assured of heavenly reward? Would it still be worth the effort and the pain? Qohelet’s world ends at the grave. He determined that life wasn’t worth much this side of the tomb. What about you? If it all ended six feet under would you still find enough joy to continue?
Topical Index: women, reward, more bitter than death, mar mimmawet, Ecclesiastes 7:26
[1] Michael V. Fox, The JPS Bible Commentary: Ecclesiastes, p. 64.
Faith is mysterious stuff. How we have it. How we lose it. Ecclesiastes is almost devoid of it. The writer knows it exists, but he cannot describe a life in which it does. Why?
Knowledge is seductive. As soon as we have even a little, we think we can go charging off across the landscape ‘on our own’. We don’t need to pray before exploring it or sharing it; we don’t need constant guidance in the exercise of it. We fall for the illusion that possession is the same as application, as if knowledge were a ‘thing’ (Greek ideal form stuff).
What is knowledge? To answer that question is to understand what Solomon struggled with, and why his struggles only seem to get magnified the more of it that he had.
What do we run on? The world has placed its bet on knowledge, post Tree. We have committed ourselves like the pig to it. (Farm story; hen and pig were arguing about who had the most value. Hen stated that she was earnestly contributing every day. Pig spoke up and said “you are contributing, but I am committed”.) Our institutions of higher learning, our societies in which we draw from the gene pool of that knowledge almost exclusively, and our sciences, too, are the ways we reassure ourselves constantly that knowledge is where it is at, and, further, that knowledge will somehow ‘save’ us. From what? Is ignorance causing our problems? We seem to think so, even though highly informed people, like Solomon, still seem to struggle and stress just as much.
What we do NOT seem to take seriously is faith. In fact, in the West, we tend to treat faith as just yet another form (lol) of knowledge. The way I read him, Kierkegaard struggled with faith. He struggled over and over – especially in his prayer life – with it. He struggled to understand it, manufacture it, apply it. Neitzsche just threw up his hands. I sometimes think he was more self honest that Kierkegaard, but then, what do I know? These guys were giants of intellect to us, and I think representative of our approach to faith, as well as our failure in the face of it, for faith comes from beyond us, and is directed beyond us, and that, to our humanist idolatry, is unacceptable. The best of the human mind is but straw before one faithing human who knows (sic) that none of it comes from themselves. That is what I think Solomon lost. His Source. Of what? Faith. We started at knowledge, but at the end of the day, what is it all about? I think humanity has placed the wrong bet. We run on faith, not on knowledge, and knowledge is no substitute for faith.
Relationships run on faith (trust). Knowledge, which the West worships, has little to nothing to do with that trust. A woman responds to trust. Her heart is programmed to open to that trust. Solomon may have found that he knew everything ABOUT women, but knowledge does not open the door of the heart; indeed, as Kierkegaard found, it only keeps it closed that much more firmly. Woman’s guess: Kierkegaard probably did not trust himself, and Solomon declared that he did not trust women. Well, that means he was failing before he even started! And, given the above evidence, I don’t think either of them knew how to trust God in their relationships.
You have to trust the Source of love, yourself, and the one you love before you leap. Now, where is the word “knowledge” in that last sentence?
Again I say amen
Amen Laurita Amen
There you are, Maddie! Let’s chat sometime, as we didn’t get to that much. If you want to email me sometime I will send you my phone #. My email address is: lauritahayes (at) gmail dot com (I don’t think Mark wants us to give links, as they give him headaches).
Absolutely Laurita- will email you
Skip.
Woman problem or man problem.
Are women bitter out of their or does men ill treating women make them bitter…
How does the saying Hell knows no fury as a woman scorned.
May choice treat as a queen and become a king. Treat has a floor rug and always eat dust… Rebuking, confrontation, blame etc.
Rebuking the devil, the way we treat those keeping us from hurting ourselves.
They way we treat the women in our lives will determine the kind of community I live out my life in…
Thought provoking your last three blogs and all the comments they generated.
Back to male and female roles… Determines the rest of my life experience…
Seeker, it doesn’t need to be difficult. I think both men and women are designed to function in certain ways. Both men and women are frustrated (and bitter) to the extent that they are not, in fact, functioning in those ways. Love is a two way street, but the world does not recognize hardly ANY equal basis for any relationships in any realm; not just the sexual one. Torah is about reestablishing that missing equality so that love can flow easily back and forth. Show me one institution that the world has invented that does that. Oh, we are frustrated, all right. Um, I think that would be all of us who are living those “lives of quiet desperation” (David Thoreau, On Walden Pond).
Difficult is my second name…
Skip, thanks for asking. Absolutely, I would still passionately follow after/obey my Creator. Anything else is just rearranging the chairs on the Titanic!
If my understanding of Judaism is correct, the smallest personal unit is the family, meaning at least two, working together as one building a bigger, better ONE. Father has his role and mother has hers and the children learn accordingly. In a Roman Greco world such as ours the smallest unit is one; me, myself and I. Its all about ME. You can look after yourself.
Q. With a 50% divorce rate excluding a fatherless (usually) family unit, how does the next generation of men learn to be real men? A. With great difficulty and irresponsibility quite often. And the 50% divorce rate excludes the non-marriage or single parent (usually mother) relationship couples.
And society falls apart while we watch it. We need your male Guardian Angel book badly Skip.
“Would we continue if we were not assured of heavenly reward? Would it still be worth the effort and the pain?”
These questions correlates well with the intention behind the Satan’s question to God in Job: Would Job( or any person) fear God for nothing or without reason. The Satan’s question insinuated that all good deeds spring from selfish motives. Could Job ( or I) serve God freely out of love?