The Woman Who Is a Snare: The Identity and Nature of the Female Figure in Ecclesiastes 7:25–29

by Kyle C. Dunham¹

In what may be the most highly contested passage of Ecclesiastes, the writer Qohelet² has been judged a misogynist³ who finds women irrational,⁴ condemns them indiscriminately as seductresses,⁵ and lashes out at them with vitriol.⁶ Despite these protestations, the discourse of the passage suggests a different understanding: through intertextual links to the warnings about the strange woman in Proverbs and to Solomon’s demise through intermarriage with foreign women in 1 Kings 11, Qohelet advises self-discipline in the efforts to apply wisdom lest the reader fall prey to the allurement of illicit sexual relations—a danger that the text hints Qohelet himself has experienced.

The Literary Boundaries of Ecclesiastes 7:25–29

The passage of Ecclesiastes 7:25–29 carries several literary markers suggesting the boundaries of the literary unit. Discourse features signal a new section in 7:25, and a number of these features tie back to the royal quest for wisdom outlined in 1:12–2:26 to mark an analogous and new phase of exploration. Whereas in the royal quest for wisdom Qohelet sought clues from achievement, knowledge, and pleasure as to how best to navigate life in a fallen world, here he turns his gaze upon wisdom itself to explore the potential pitfalls thwarting its application.

The literary features marking a new phase of exploration include the following: (1) Unique syntax ties 7:25 to the royal autobiography section (1:12–2:26) to suggest a fresh phase of exploration, this time navigating potential pitfalls to the application of wisdom.⁷ (2) Reintroduction of the lexemes “heart” and “I” hints that Qohelet has given himself to a new pursuit.⁸ (3) A concentration of search terms in the unit points to Qohelet’s renewed quest.⁹ (4) The “editorial intrusion” presenting Qohelet in the third person (“says Qohelet,” אָֽמְרָה קֹהֶלֶת) in v. 27 functions to mark a major transition and signals a midpoint or hinge in the book.¹⁰ (5) Literary features in 7:23–24 mark the closure of the previous unit.¹¹ Qohelet’s earlier conclusion that wisdom is ultimately unfathomable and inaccessible now sets the stage for a new phase of inquiry. These factors collectively signal, then, a closure in v. 24 followed by a reactivation of his quest in 7:25, but this time in tandem with a new theme, viz., the limitations of discerning and applying wisdom due to mankind’s inherent sinful inclinations.¹²

 With these literary clues in mind, catchwords signal the contours and boundaries of the unit, as in the following chiastic outline:¹³

v. 25a “To seek” (בַּקֵּשׁ)

v. 25a “Insight/Schemes” (חֶשְׁבּוֺן)

v. 26a “I am finding” (מוֹצֶא)

v. 26b Bitter, ensnaring woman (הָאִישָּׁה)

v. 27 “Says Qohelet” (‎אָמְרָה קֹהֶלֶת)

v. 28 Undiscovered woman (אִשָּׁה)

v. 29a “I have found” (מָצָאתִי)

v. 29b “Insight/Schemes” (חִשָּׁבוֺן)

v. 29b “They have sought” (בִּקְשׁוּ)

The chiastic framework highlights the editorial intrusion in v. 27 as the pivot of the passage, placing emphasis likewise on the framing of the bitter, ensnaring woman of v. 26b with the undiscovered woman in v. 28. The outer frame highlights seeking and finding terminology related to schemes or insights (חֶשְׁבֹּון). Qohelet thus underscores by this structure the significance that contentious male/female relationships carry in the ardent pursuit and application of wisdom: due to the fracture in human relationships resulting from the fall and to the inborn foolish tendencies that result, aspiring wisdom-seekers must remain vigilant with respect to the application of wisdom. He reinforces his warning through intertextual links to the “strange woman” warnings of Proverbs and to the narrative of Solomon’s disastrous allegiance to foreign wives in 1 Kings 11.¹⁴

Translation of Ecclesiastes 7:25–29

Building on the foregoing assessment of the unit’s literary features, the following translation renders the Hebrew text of Ecclesiastes 7:25–29:

25 So I turned with my mind¹⁵ to understand, to explore, and to search out wisdom related to intellectual discovery, and to understand the wickedness of folly and the foolishness of madness.¹⁶ 26 Now I am discovering that more bitter than death is the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a net, and whose hands are fetters. The man who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is captured by her. 27 See, I discovered this,¹⁷ says Qohelet,¹⁸ assessing one by one¹⁹ to reach this intellectual discovery. 28 What I sought continually and ardently but did not find is this: I found one man among a thousand, but I have not found one woman among all of these. 29 See, this alone I discovered: God made mankind upright, but they have sought many schemes.

Due to space constraints, this essay will focus on v. 26 to discern the identity and nature of Qohelet’s ensnaring woman.

Qohelet’s Discovery

Qohelet’s initial discovery from his foray into wisdom and folly concerns the dangers posed by a certain female figure. This verse has been deemed as among the most misogynistic texts in the Bible²⁰ and the ensuing passage as among the most difficult of the book.²¹ Qohelet switches from the qatal 1cs mainline thread (“I turned”) to a participial form of מצא (‎וּמוֹצֶא = “and I am finding”) following the III-ה vocalization. Some interpreters view the change as marking the verse as a parenthetical example and thus not an indictment of all women.²² But this places too much weight on the participial conjugation, which appears often in proverbial sayings to express rhetorically present principles.²³ More likely, the participle carries durative force, heightening dramatic effect by relaying Qohelet’s experience as a present discovery.²⁴ The word מצא appears seventeen times in the book, mostly in the latter portions, and appears as a keyword in this pericope (7x).²⁵ The term has a rather elastic semantic range of “to find what is sought,” “to attain/reach,” “to discover/learn,” or “to obtain/achieve.”²⁶ The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew glosses these uses in the following sense: to find something to be true through examination and experience.²⁷ Cognates of מצא in Akkadian and Ugaritic shed some light on the term. The Akkadian term maṣû, related in form but distinct semantically, means “to be sufficient for,” “to reach,” or “to be able to,” while the semantically related term kašādum means “to reach,” “arrive at,” or “attain” a position, state, or entity.²⁸ The associated Ugaritic term mṣʾ denotes similarly “to reach,” “attain to,” or “arrive at,”²⁹ with a related cognate mǵy meaning “to reach something,” “come to,” or “arrive at.”³⁰

Discussion has surrounded how these cognate backgrounds might inform the meaning of מצא and whether the term is actually a Hebrew amalgamation of distinct Semitic cognates.³¹ Moshe Held argues, on this score, that the two Ugaritic terms are allographs meaning “to reach” rather than “to find” and that the two terms overlap in shaping the single Hebrew term מצא.³² Similarly, Samuel Iwry contends that the Ugaritic terms color the nuance of the Hebrew word, with ample evidence that the term often means “to come upon,” “meet,” or “reach” in the OT (Lev 25:28; Num 20:14; Judg 5:30; 6:13; 1 Sam 23:17; Pss 21:8 [9]; 116:3; Isa 10:10).³³ Moreover, he suggests that in several passages “to catch” or “apprehend” is an optimal gloss (Exod 22:1–2; Deut 22:22; Prov 6:30–31; Jer 2:26; 48:27; 50:24).³⁴ The term serves as well as a terminus technicus for a “captive” or “prisoner of war” in battle contexts (Josh 10:17; Judg 20:48; 2 Kgs 25:19; Isa 13:15; 22:3).³⁵ This connection lends credence to Ceresko’s suggestion of wordplay, which he identifies as antanaclasis, whereby a writer uses a term repeatedly but with distinct shades of meaning.³⁶ Ceresko contends that מצא, appearing eight times in 7:24–29, carries four connotations: “to grasp” (v. 24), “find” (vv. 26, 28 [3x]), “learn” (v. 27a, 29), and “reach” (v. 27b).³⁷ Beyond Ceresko’s suggested nuances for מצא in this pericope, Qohelet in a larger way plays on “catching” terminology. He contrasts thus between the bitter woman’s “catching,” as she captures (לכד [“catch”]) and ensnares (מְצוֹדִים, חֲרָמִים, אֲסוּרִים [“snares, nets, fetters”]) her prey, and his own intellectual “catching” or “discovery” (מצא [“overtake, reach, apprehend”]) of conceptual and practicable insights. So מצא connotes here that Qohelet has reached, grasped, or caught a seminal discovery—likely the discovery that he himself has been caught.

More Bitter than Death

Qohelet has apprehended a grim reality that he judges “more bitter than death.” The term מַר is understood traditionally as denoting something that tastes “bitter.”³⁸ The literal meaning of “bitter” as a sharp, pungent taste gives way often to metaphorical depictions of the human experience of deep distress or despair. In this way, the contrasting taste metaphors of sweet and bitter represent qualities or deeds that are altogether desirable or disagreeable, as in Isaiah’s indictment of moral deviance:³⁹ “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isa 5:20). Only two OT texts use מַר to characterize humans possessing a bitter nature harmful to others: Prov 5:4 and Eccl 7:26, both depicting a woman who poses a mortal risk to the wisdom-seeker.⁴⁰ Bitterness as tied to extreme suffering is also the unwelcome fate of Job, who expresses repeatedly his “bitterness of soul” (Job 3:20; 7:11; 10:1).

Despite the customary meaning, numerous interpreters read the term מַר here, however, as connoting “strength” rather than “bitterness,” thus depicting the woman as stronger than death.⁴¹ Dahood connects this to the captive power exerted by the woman: “The author depicts the tenacity with which a woman will cling to the man she has ensnared…. The grip of a woman is stronger than the grasp of death.”⁴² Yet Qohelet is making comparison to the woman herself, not her grip, which suggests that “stronger than death” would be a statement about the woman’s immortality. Such a notion contradicts the tenor of the book, where death’s inescapability is a chief concern.⁴³ The versions support the primary meaning of “bitter” for the term (lxx, Vg., and Syr.). Moreover, OT parallels where bitterness appears in the context of death hint at a common conceptual field. The Amalekite king’s experience of death will prove bitter: “Samuel said, ‘Bring me King Agag of Amalek.’ Agag came to him trembling, for he thought, ‘Certainly the bitterness of death has come’” (1 Sam 15:32). Job laments the frequency with which people die in bitterness: “Another person dies with a bitter soul” (Job 21:25). The outside woman of Proverbs is likewise “bitter” as wormwood (Prov 5:4), and her feet descend to “death” and Sheol (5:5).

Beyond the meaning of the terms, the syntax of the clause is difficult to assess for several reasons: (1) One would expect the feminine form of מַר (מָרָה) since a woman is in view. (2) The clause marks the word order by inverting the customary pronoun-participle sequence to participle-pronoun (וּמוֹצֶא אֲנִי) (“finding” is focus-fronted). (3) The clause additionally marks the word order by fronting the comparative phrase “more bitter than death” before the accusative (cf. Neh 9:8). (4) The accusative “the woman” is specially marked with the sign of the accusative (אֶת־הָאִשָּׁה) even though syntactically the whole phrase functions as the complement of the verb (i.e., “I find [X (to be) bitter]) (this usage emphasizes “the woman” topically).⁴⁴ Given the difficult syntax, Schoors interprets the clause as carrying a double accusative, with מַר as the predicate adjective and אֶת־הָאִשָּׁה as the object accusative, leading him to render the first part as a nominal clause marking a maxim: “I find (the saying): More bitter than death is the woman.”⁴⁵

This reading prompts a larger question: Is Qohelet positing his own view or citing another’s? Several interpreters read here a conventional saying that Qohelet quotes and rejects.⁴⁶ This solution in turn ties to the larger question of identifying citations in Scripture. Michael Fox has proposed three useful criteria to identify biblical quotations: (1) another subject besides the primary speaker is present in the immediate vicinity of the quotation; (2) a virtual verbum dicendi (verb or noun implying speech) is used; or (3) a switch in grammatical person and number marks a change in perspective to the quoted voice.⁴⁷ Despite the difficult syntax and the general nature of these markers, none of the criteria appears here, making apt Fox’s warning about interpreters’ tendency to find quotations as a means of imposing their own presuppositions on the text.⁴⁸ Further, if Qohelet were citing an interlocutor, determining whether he does so with approval or disapproval would remain a challenge. Thus, without clear discourse markers to identify a quotation, this approach is unpersuasive and redolent of special pleading to absolve him of misogyny.

The Identity of the Female Figure

The next question turns to the identity of the woman who is more bitter than death and how she relates to Qohelet’s conclusions. There are five basic options regarding the nature and identity of the woman and the meaning of Qohelet’s discovery about her:⁴⁹ (1) The woman represents all women, and Qohelet denigrates women in general as dangerous.⁵⁰ (2) The woman represents all women, but Qohelet is expressly reflecting on Genesis to comment on the marred marital relationships that result from the fall.⁵¹ (3) The woman is a particular kind of woman, such as the outside woman of Proverbs,⁵² a seductive “gold digger,”⁵³ or the daughters of foreign dignitaries enticing young Hellenistic Jewish men.⁵⁴ Qohelet is warning the wisdom-seeker to avoid contact with this type of woman, as she brings destruction to those who fall prey to her. (4) The woman is a specific woman, such as his own wife;⁵⁵ a spurned lover;⁵⁶ Agathoklea, the mistress of Ptolemy IV Philopator;⁵⁷ or Laodice, the estranged wife and murderer of Seleucid king Antiochus II.⁵⁸ In this view Qohelet expresses angst over his failed relationship with this woman or over the larger societal havoc this specific woman has wrought. (5) The woman is metaphorical (or quasi-metaphorical) and represents an abstract concept or archetype such as Lady Wisdom,⁵⁹ Lady Folly,⁶⁰ divine force,⁶¹ the feminine sex,⁶² pleasure/eroticism,⁶³ death,⁶⁴ or pagan philosophy.⁶⁵ Qohelet is providing in this view a sapiential conclusion, positive or negative, about the nature of wisdom/folly, divine sovereignty, or human life.

Which view best fits the context? Given the difficulty of the syntax, grammar alone does not resolve the issue. The fourth view (a specific woman) fails to convince due to its over-specificity, requiring the interpreter to mirror-read a particular socio-cultural occurrence from the life of the putative author. The second view (all [married] women in view of the fall) has some merit in that Qohelet reflects elsewhere on Genesis, but the context does not support the conclusion that marital conflict is specifically the problem in view or that the woman poses a danger only inside the marriage relationship. This leaves most likely the first view (general misogyny), third view (a particular kind of woman), or fifth view (a metaphorical woman). The grammar and larger biblical and cultural contexts favor the third view, while telling against the first and fifth views for several reasons.

First, the definite article and accusative marker on אֶת־הָאִשָּׁה (“the woman”) suggest a particular class of women (“that [kind of] woman”) rather than women generally.⁶⁶ This is the generic use of the article, common in comparisons, one that “marks out not a particular single person or thing but a class of persons, things, or qualities that are unique and determined in themselves.”⁶⁷ Furthermore, this is the only use of the definite article on the singular אִשָּׁה across the corpus of biblical wisdom (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Canticles), suggesting perhaps a backward reference to a particular kind of woman, possibly the outside woman of Proverbs.⁶⁸

Second, the relative particle אֲשֶׁר that follows “the woman” is likely the restrictive use of the relative clause (“which”), which marks a particular kind of woman rather than a statement about all women.⁶⁹ In his exhaustive study of relative clauses in the Hebrew Bible, Robert Holmstedt defines restrictive relative clauses as those in which the relative marker (e.g., אֲשֶׁר) enables the listener or reader to distinguish the head noun from other possible or real items in the field of discourse as the referent about which the assertion is believed to be true.⁷⁰ All three of Holmstedt’s criteria for restrictive clauses fit here, as the head noun is explicit, definite, and generic rather than unique. The relative clause would thus identify a class of persons, with the purview relating to a particular kind of woman in contrast to all women. The sense would equate to “the woman, namely the one who is a snare….”

A couple of possible objections to the restrictive meaning may be mentioned. One was raised long ago by Delitzsch, who asserted that the relative particle אֲשֶׁר does not modify “the woman” as a dependent relative clause because the pronoun הִיא should stand separate from אֲשֶׁר, as in the case of relative clauses where the pronoun heads a nominal clause (e.g., Gen 7:2; 17:12; Num 17:5; Deut 17:15).⁷¹ In other words, according to Delitzsch, the sequence אֲשֶׁר־הוּא/הִיא never modifies the noun it follows as a dependent relative clause (with an embedded nominative clause) but stands independent as a construction that modern linguists would call a resumptive clause or null head relative clause. This prompts Delitzsch to translate the verse as an indictment of all women: “I found woman more bitter than death; she is like hunting-nets….” Holmstedt notes that while this is a rare syntactical construction, there are thirty relative clauses in the Hebrew Bible in which the resumption of the nominative occurs in null-copula clauses.⁷² Of these thirty clauses, fourteen place the resumptive pronoun directly after the relative particle.⁷³ Thus, despite its rarity, this clause arrangement has precedent and gives indication that it should be read here as a restrictive relative clause, one of fifteen uses in the OT. A second possible objection to our reading is the Masoretic accentuation, which links the term מְצוֹדִים (“snares”) to the following term וַחֲרָמִים (“and nets”), thereby resulting in a casus pendens and in the translation “she is snares and nets.”⁷⁴ This rendering would be more in line with Delitzsch’s proposed rendering than a statement about a particular kind of woman. The versions (lxx, Syr., Vg.), however, read it as a conventional relative clause along the lines that I have argued, and the MT accents fail to resolve the text’s difficulties.

Third, the larger biblical and extrabiblical contexts bolster the conclusion that the warning pertains to the danger posed by a strange/outside woman rather than all women generally. Within the biblical context, the corollaries between the bitter woman and the outside woman of Proverbs are intriguing.

Figure 1: The Bitter Woman of Ecclesiastes and the Outside Woman in Proverbs.

Links between the “Bitter Woman” of Ecclesiastes and the “Strange/Outside Woman” of Proverbs
The Bitter Woman (Ecclesiastes)	The Strange/Outside Woman (Proverbs)
She is more “bitter” (מַר) (7:26)	She is “bitter” (מָרָה) as wormwood (5:4)
She is compared to “death” (מָוֶת) (7:26)	Her house (2:8) and her feet (5:4) go down to “death” (מָוֶת)
She is “hunting snares” (מָצוֹד), “nets” (חֵרֶם), and “fetters” (אֵסוּר), and the sinner is “ensnared” (לכד) by her (7:26)	The man’s sexual appetites “ensnare” (לכד) him (5:22), and he is “taken” (לקח) by the woman (6:25) when she “hunts down” (צוד) his precious life (6:26)
“Her heart is nets” (חֲרָמִים לִבָּהּ) (7:26)	She is “wily of heart” (נְצֻרַת לֵב) (7:10)
Her allurement centers physically on her “hands/arms” (יָדַיִם) (7:26)	Her allurement centers physically on her “eyes” (עַפְעַפַּיִם) (6:25) and “mouth” (פִּי) (22:14)
The man who falls prey is a “sinner” (חטא) (7:26)	The cords of his “sin” (חַטָאת) entangle him (5:22)
The man who is good “before God” (לִפְנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים) eludes her (7:26)	The man’s actions are “before the eyes of YHWH” (עֵינֵי יְהוָה) (5:21)
The good man “escapes” (מלט) her (7:26)	Wisdom is given to “deliver” (נצל) from her (2:16)
The “Assembler” Qohelet (קֹהֶלֶת) warns about her (7:27)	The warning is applied in the midst of the “assembly” (קָהָל) (5:14)

In addition to these connections, a number of conceptual links relate to warnings about outside women in Egyptian wisdom literature.⁷⁵ The third-millennium b.c. (sixth dynasty) Instruction of Ptahhotep cautions about the dire consequences that ensue from entanglement with an outside woman:

If you desire to keep a friendship

In the residence where you enter,

As a master, as a brother, or as a friend,

(L2) Amongst whatever people you are—

Keep from approaching the women!

The place where this is done cannot be good.

The man who intrudes on them is imprudent:

A thousand men are turned away from their best interests.

(L2) One is aroused by the limbs of faience,

(L2) But then she changes into carnelian.

A brief moment, like a dream,

And death is reached by knowing them.

It is a vile principle, conceived by an enemy,

One goes from doing it with the heart already spurning it.

(L2) Don’t do it—it is indeed an abomination—

(L2) And you will be spared from a daily penalty.

He who fails by lusting after them,

No design of his will succeed.

Several interesting parallels merit mention. First, Lana Troy has drawn attention to the dual nature of the woman as expressed by Ptahhotep, a nature that, as here, is both attractive and dangerous: “The seductress is described in terms of faience and carnelian. The blue-green faience of the woman’s limbs entrances man and, once entrapped, she turns into the fiery-orange of carnelian.”⁷⁷ Faience pertains to the bluish green hue of tin-glazed pottery, contrasted here with the red-orange gleam of carnelian, both colors connoting sexual imagery.⁷⁸ The man is ensnared by the attractive woman who in the end turns fiery red and scorches him, similar to the fate worse than death that Qohelet warns of. In Egyptian ideology, this duality of nature was evident in both the divine and human realms:

Hathor and the goddesses associated with her were perceived as having a dual nature. On the one hand, they were beneficent, bringing fertility and new life; on the other hand, they were dangerous, bringing destruction in their wake…. The duality manifested in the goddesses was also reflected in the Egyptian view of human nature, where women were seen as incorporating a good and a bad side. They were honorable if they met the standards of society, but there was always the danger that they would break the rules, in which case they were dishonorable and would be condemned.⁷⁹

This duality is evident in the conclusion of the later Demotic Papyrus Insinger that “it is in women that good fortune and bad fortune are upon the earth.”⁸⁰ This perception is likely also behind the advice given in the fifth-dynasty (ca. 2450–2300 b.c.) Egyptian writing The Instruction of Prince Hardjedef, which advises the wisdom-seeker to establish his household by taking a wife who is a “mistress of the heart.”⁸¹ The latter phrase many take to denote a “hearty wife” or “strong woman,” but the phrase more likely suggests a woman who is in control of herself, as self-control was a quality prized in ancient Egypt.⁸² Chaos or isft connoted the loss of control, as in fits of passion or anger, and was the opposite of idealized cosmic justice or maat. The outside woman who posed a danger was unruly and reckless, subverting the stability of society. Similarly, the outside woman of Proverbs is smooth and desirable, but she links ultimately to fire, death, and the underworld (Prov 5:5–6; 6:27–28; 7:25–27), metaphors for demise and devastation.

Second, Ptahhotep mentions that a thousand men are led away by her to a self-destructive path. Qohelet likewise references a thousand men in the immediate context as producing only one, presumably upright, exemplar (v. 28). The reference to a thousand men in these contexts is likely a generalization for the near universality of those who transgress. The outside woman in Proverbs also slays her multitude: “Many are those she has laid low, and numerous are her victims. Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death” (Prov 7:26–27). A warning against this pervasive risk comes likewise in the Instruction of Any, written in the eighteenth dynasty (1550–1305 b.c.):

Beware of a woman who is a stranger,

One not known in her town;

Don’t stare at her when she goes by,

Don’t know her carnally.

A deep water whose course is unknown,

Such is a woman away from her husband.

“I am pretty,” she tells you daily,

When she has no witnesses;

She is ready to ensnare you,

A great deadly crime when it is heard.

The Egyptian sage admonishes the man about the outside woman who possibly sets a trap: she carries the twofold danger of the unknown and of ensnarement in adultery, “a great deadly crime.”⁸⁴

Third, the onus for maintaining chaste relationships lies primarily with the man, not the woman. While many see in Qohelet’s counsel the vestiges of ANE misogyny,⁸⁵ it is important to note that in early Egyptian wisdom literature, as in Ecclesiastes, the man bears the primary responsibility for avoiding illicit sexual intercourse.⁸⁶ He must set the boundaries and avoid the behaviors that would ensnare him in illicit relationships. While the alluring woman is the focal character for Qohelet, the implied young male reader is the addressee who is tacitly given responsibility for maintaining sexual norms. The Instruction of Any adds this advice: “Do not go after a woman, let her not steal your heart.”⁸⁷ This latter admonition warns of the captivating allurement of adultery, as the tryst trammels the transgressor. Given these literary connections, Qohelet’s advice fits neatly within the context of wisdom warnings against illicit relationships with outside women. The most likely view, then, is that the woman Qohelet speaks of is a literal, not metaphorical, woman, since Qohelet nowhere personifies abstract qualities such as wisdom as Proverbs does. Rather, the woman is likely a female figure who resides outside the family boundaries and who poses a risk to the male wisdom-seeker. Rather than pursuing her, he is to remain faithful all his days to the wife whom God has given him (Eccl 9:9).

The Woman’s Snares

Following the restrictive relative clause headed by אֲשֶׁר, Qohelet offers three clauses to describe the woman: “(She) who is snares, whose heart is nets, and whose hands are fetters.” The term מְצוֹדִים is the plural form of מָצוֹד, usually glossed as a “snare” or “net.”⁸⁸ More specifically, the term relates to a device or instrument used stealthily to trap or kill quarry, metaphorically depicting the manipulative aggression people use to entice and entrap others.⁸⁹ The related verbal root צוד, “to hunt,” appears in Prov 6:26 to characterize the adulteress as one who “hunts down” the precious life of her victim.⁹⁰ The term מָצוֹד appears four times in the OT (Job 19:6; Prov 12:12; Eccl 7:26; 9:14) and is identified commonly as possessing two homonyms: (I) a “snare” and (II) a “mountain stronghold” or “siegeworks.”⁸⁸ The lexicons differ, however, on which of the homonyms appears where.⁹¹ The second homonym seems clearly the meaning in Eccl 9:14, where a pitched battle against a city calls for the meaning of “siegeworks.” Here in 7:26 the meaning “snare” is most likely as a parallel to “nets” and “fetters” and as attested by the versions (lxx, Vg.). The plural here and in the following phrases likely signifies habitual behavior or a repeated series of actions: she continually ensnares her victims.⁹²

The second clause equates her heart with nets. The term חֵרֶם is taken here usually to be a second homonym meaning “drag-net” or “trawling net” (cf. Ezek 26:5, 14; 32:3; 47:10; Mic 7:2; Hab 1:15–17). distinct from the more common homonym חֵרֶם, “something devoted to destruction” or “an object or person put under the ban.” (See Gustav Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina (reprint ed., Tübingen, Germany: Tobias, 2013), 6:361; HALOT, 354; DCH, 3:319. On the meaning of חֵרֶם as “something devoted to destruction,” see Kyle C. Dunham, “Yahweh War and Ḥ__erem: The Role of Covenant, Land, and Purity in the Conquest of Canaan,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 21 (2016): 7–30. Such nets were used in the ancient world for hunting and fishing. While the ancient world often idealized hunting and sometimes restricted the avocation to royalty, fishing was a common practice carried out by all classes. (Dictionary of Daily Life, s.v. “Fish and Fishing,” by Tiberius Rata and Marvin R. Wilson, 678.) In the Nile River, due to higher average water temperature and pervasive irrigation practices, more than 100 fish species flourished. Fishermen collected fish by stretching a trawling net between papyrus boats equipped with oars or by casting and retrieving a net into the river. (Ibid., 681.) In the prophets, hunting and fishing with nets often carries a menacing tone symbolic of divine judgment. The prophets declaimed that the children of Israel would be caught as an antelope in a net (Isa 51:20), that Yahweh would capture by hook or net various kings such as Zedekiah (Ezek 12:13) and Pharaoh (Ezek 29:4), and that the Babylonians would ensnare their vanquished enemies with a fishing net (Hab 1:15). ⁹³ Aalders argues, in fact, that whenever hunting or fishing is used metaphorically in the OT, the sense is always unfavorable, portraying evil intentions and actions brought upon the pursued objects. (Ibid., 136–37.) “Her heart” here connotes more than the romantic affections threatening to ensnare. The heart includes all aspects of the mind—intellect, will, and emotions—as conniving to target and entrap the mark. The wayward woman of Proverbs 7 displays such a character: “With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him. Right away he follows her, and goes like an ox to the slaughter, or bounds like a stag toward the trap” (Prov 7:21 22).

The final phrase depicting the woman observes that “her hands are fetters.” The term אֵסוּר is a rare OT term (although the verb form is more common), appearing three times (cf. Judg 15:14; Jer 37:15). The word means “fetters,” “bonds,” or “cords,”⁹⁴ specifically the material used to bind animals or people so as to control them.⁹⁵ Captured animals were sometimes ritually bound following the hunt.⁹⁶ The term connects more specifically to the OT semantic field of prisons and incarceration.⁹⁷ Prisoners in the ancient world were often shackled and placed in confinement, such as in a pit or dungeon. The psalmist’s poetic depiction of Joseph’s imprisonment thus notes: “His feet were hurt with fetters; his neck was put in a collar of iron” (Ps 105:18). Prisons were not viewed as rehabilitative institutions but as places of torture and anguish for demoralized criminals awaiting punishment.⁹⁸ The mental and physical suffering of prisoners is a common OT theme (Pss 79:11; 142:6–7; Isa 14:17; 42:22; Lam 3:34; Zech 9:11). In Judges 15:14 the term אֵסוּר is used for the new ropes with which the Judahites bind Samson to deliver him to the Philistines, whereupon Samson breaks free and slaughters his enemies with a donkey’s jawbone. The Samson connection is intriguing, given his ensnaring dalliances with Delilah (Judg 16:4–22), his conflict wherein he kills 1,000 men (Judg 15:15), and his miserable end in a Philistine prison (Judg 16:21, 25). The term יָד connotes more than simply the hands, including the fingers, wrists, and forearms, and is indicative of someone’s power and vitality.⁹⁹ The earlier-cited Instruction of Ptahhotep warns similarly of the desirable and entrancing limbs of the outside woman, conceptually connected to her alluring sexual vitality that overpowers the heedless man.

The aggregation of terms related to hunting and warfare emphasizes that the evasion of the seductress is a matter of life and death. Yet Bartholomew surmises that Qohelet’s statement that he is finding this woman more bitter than death carries more than a hint that he himself is the sinner who has been ensnared by her. His pursuits of wisdom and folly have brought him ironically and perhaps unwittingly into her embrace.¹⁰⁰ After all, Qohelet has himself “discovered” this truth, and only one who has tasted truly knows bitter taste. Such a connection finds support in a number of lexical and conceptual links to the narrative of Solomon’s marriage to foreign wives in 1 Kings 11.

Figure 2: The Bitter Woman of Ecclesiastes and Solomon’s Foreign Wives.

Links between the “Bitter, Ensnaring Woman” of Ecclesiastes and Solomon’s “Many Foreign Wives” in 1 Kings 11
Bitter, Ensnaring Woman (Eccl 7:25–29)	Many Foreign Women (1 Kgs 11:1–13)
She is “the woman” (הָאִשָּׁה) (7:26)	Solomon married many “foreign women/wives” (אִשָּׁה appears in the plural 5x) (1 Kgs 11:1, 3 [2x], 4, 8)
“Her heart is nets” (‎חֲרָמִים לִבָּהּ) (7:26)	Solomon’s wives “turned away” (נטה) “his heart” (לִבּוֹ) (11:3–4, 9)
She is compared to “death” (מָוֶת) (7:26)	Solomon becomes associated with the “detestable things” (שִׁקּוּץ) of foreign nations (11:5, 7), which will result in death and destruction according to the Deuteronomic covenant (Deut 29:16–21)
She is “snares” (מָצוֹד), “nets” (חֵרֶם), and “fetters” (אֵסוּר); the sinner is “taken” (לכד) by her (7:26)	Solomon “sticks, clings to” (דבק) these women in love (11:2)
Qohelet has not found one (good, faithful?) woman/wife in 1,000 (7:28)	Solomon has 1,000 wives and concubines (11:3)
The man who is good “before God” (לִפְנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים) escapes her (7:26)	The women turned his heart from following “after God” (אַחֲרֵי אֱלֹהִים) (11:4)
The man who falls prey is a “sinner” (חטא) (7:26)	The women cause Solomon to do “evil in the eyes of YHWH” (הָרַע בְּעֵינֵי יְהוָה) (11:6)

Collectively these connections suggest that the king who stands behind Qohelet’s explorations was himself ensnared by the bitter, outside woman, a cautionary tale for the wisdom seeker.

Conclusion

In this essay I have argued that Qohelet’s statement concerning the female figure who ensnares fits best within the biblical context as an intertextual reference to the outside woman of Proverbs and as a cautionary link to Solomon’s demise by his marriages to foreign wives in 1 Kings 11. Additional corollaries to Egyptian wisdom literature provide further warrant for interpreting the statement as a warning about the dangers posed by the outside woman. Qohelet charges his young addressee to be the responsible agent for maintaining social and sexual norms. The faithful, Israelite worshipper of Yahweh is to guard himself from destructive, harmful liaisons with outside women, including the wives of other men or unbelieving women outside the covenant boundaries (cf. Ezra 9:2; Mal 2:11–12). In making these connections, Qohelet reminds his readers that the benefits of wisdom may come to naught if foolish sins nullify its value. Association with the alluring outside woman would prove detrimental and devastating. Through attentive evasion of her charms, the reader would be spared the sickening experience Qohelet himself seems to have suffered in succumbing foolishly to her wiles.

1. Dr. Dunham is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.[↩]
2. Given that the author of Ecclesiastes does not identify himself outside the nom de plume Qohelet (Heb. קֹהֶלֶת), I will use this nomenclature to designate him. For a discussion of the meaning of Qohelet as “assembler” or “convener,” an argument for single authorship of Ecclesiastes, and a defense of Solomon as the author, see Robert V. McCabe, “Pondering the Authorship of Ecclesiastes,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 20 (2015): 3–20.[↩]
3. Leonard Swidler, Biblical Affirmations of Women (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979), 128; Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformative Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992), 205; Athalya Brenner, “Figurations of Woman in Wisdom Literature,” in A Feminist Companion to Wisdom Literature, ed. A. Brenner, 50–66 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 60; Carole R. Fontaine, “‘Many Devices’ (Qoheleth 7.23–8.1): Qoheleth, Misogyny and the Malleus Maleficarum,” in Wisdom and Psalms: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, ed. A. Brenner and C. R. Fontaine, 137–68 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 142; Mark Sneed, “(Dis)closure in Qohelet: Qohelet Deconstructed,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27 (2002): 122–23; Jennifer L. Koosed, (Per)mutations of Qohelet: Reading the Body in the Book (New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 77–78; idem, “Qoheleth in Love and Trouble,” in Approaching Yehud: New Approaches to the Study of the Persian Period, ed. J. L. Berquist, 183–93 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 184–85.[↩]
4. Sneed, “(Dis)closure in Qohelet,” 122.[↩]
5. Hans-Friedemann Richter, “Kohelets Urteil über die Frauen: Zu Koh 7,26.28 und 9,9 in ihrem Kontext,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 108 (1996): 589, 593; Koosed, (Per)mutations of Qohelet, 77.[↩]
6. Swidler, Biblical Affirmations of Women, 128.[↩]
7. The phrase סַבּוֹתִי אֲנִי (“I turned”) opening 7:25 is the first asyndetic first-person qatal verb with the pleonastic pronoun אֲנִי (“I”) appearing since chapter 3, and the verb סבב (“to turn”) occurs for the first time since the royal autobiography in 2:20, where it also appears with reference to the heart. This rare sequence opening 7:25 (Ø + qatal 1cs verb + X, followed by an infinitive construct clause) hints at Qohelet’s earlier assays into wisdom and folly, as the syntax occurs elsewhere only in the royal quest for wisdom as a unit-marker (2:3).[↩]
8. The lexeme  לִבִּי(“my heart”) likewise occurs with אֲנִי for the first time since chap. 3, marking Qohelet’s holistic participation in this new phase (“I and my heart set/turned”) while also carrying resonances with his earlier experiments.[↩]
9. The high frequency of “search” terms includes בקשׁ (“seek”; 3 of 7 times in the book), תור (“explore”; 1 of 3 occurrences), and מצא (“find”; 7 of 17 times). A new lexical participant חֶשְׁבּוֺן (“scheme/explanation”) is introduced, heralding Qohelet’s intention to explore afresh the saliency of wisdom and folly. The phrase “and to seek wisdom” (וּבַקֵּשׁ חָכְמָה) in v. 25 corresponds to “they sought many schemes” (בִקְשׁוּ חִשֶּׁבֹנוֹת רַבִּים) in v. 29 to frame the unit. Oswald Loretz likewise notes that 7:25 reactivates key search and epistemology terms utilized in 1:17 and 2:12 (“Poetry and Prose in the Book of Qoheleth (1:1–3:22; 7:23–8:1; 9:6–10; 12:8–14),” in Verse in Ancient Near Eastern Prose, ed. J. C. de Moor and W. G. E. Watson, 155–89 [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993], 183).[↩]
10. Outside the opening and closing frames (1:1–11; 12:1–14), the book encompasses four large sections: (1) experimental observations on wisdom and folly in human behavior (1:12–2:26); (2) reflective observations and instructions about human transience, finitude, and evil vis-à-vis divine timelessness, transcendence, and righteousness (3:1–7:24); (3) reflective observations and instructions concerning the applicability of wisdom to the enigmas of life (7:25–10:15); and (4) instructions about successful toil and leadership (10:16–11:10). The two largest sections are the second and third. The third-person reference to Qohelet in 7:27 may be seen thus not as a gloss or redactional vestige but as an intentional link to the larger literary structure marking the book’s latter portion.[↩]
11. The phrase “all this” (כָּל־זֹה) appears to be anaphoric, summarizing his preceding discourse rather than introducing a new unit (see Antoon Schoors, Ecclesiastes, Historical Commentary on the Old Testament [Leuven: Peeters, 2013], 567). The use of נסה (“to test”) appears elsewhere only in 2:1, providing a verbal link with the earlier testing of wisdom in the royal quest and framing the first two parts of the book (1:11–2:26; 3:1–7:24). The twofold repetition of “far” (רְחוֹקָה/רָחוֹק) (end of v. 23 and beginning of v. 24) creates a resonance with the twofold repetition of “deep” (עָמֹק) (v. 24) to signal a frustrated conclusion to his earlier efforts to gain mastery of wisdom.[↩]
12. See Timothy J. Walton, Experimenting with Qohelet: A Text-Linguistic Approach to Reading Qohelet as Discourse (Maastricht, Netherlands: Shaker, 2006), 44, 85.[↩]
13. Cf. Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Kohelet, Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament (Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 401.[↩]
14. I take the “strange woman” of Proverbs, rendered preferably as the “outside woman,” to be, as J. Blenkinsopp notes, “a married woman in search of sexual adventure outside of marriage”—thus likely a wayward Israelite woman—although some argue the term might also include literal foreign women or cult prostitutes (“The Social Context of the ‘Outsider Woman’ in Prov 1–9,” Biblica 72 [1991]: 462–65). Traditionally this seductive temptress has been characterized, as for example in the kjv, as “the strange woman” (so also nasb) and as “the foreign/alien woman” (Tyndale translated this phrase “the alien woman”). This understanding revolves around the meaning of two Hebrew words: זָרָה, traditionally glossed as “strange, foreign, illicit” (HALOT, 279), and נָכְרִי meaning “foreign, strange” (HALOT, 700). These traditional translations of “strange” and “alien” are inadequate for several reasons. First, these Hebrew words do not convey on the one hand that the woman is peculiar or odd, as the English term strange often connotes, nor is she necessarily “alien” in the sense of foreignness or even extra-terrestrialness. Quite the opposite—this woman is extremely captivating and desirable to the young man. The purview of the words, then, conveys not that the woman is undesirable owing to some inherent defect; rather, she is off limits. It is impermissible for the young man to pursue her as a sexual partner, and therefore she carries a greater danger insofar as she is alluring. Second, these terms, especially when taken in the context of Proverbs, likely do not convey that this woman is ethnically foreign to the young addressee of the book. Christopher Ansberry has provided several persuasive reasons why it seems best to understand this woman as a married, upper-class Israelite woman, the sort of female who would probably attract the attention of the youthful future socio-political leaders whom Proverbs is training (see Ansberry, Be Wise, My Son, and Make My Heart Glad: An Exploration of the Courtly Nature of the Book of Proverbs [New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2011], 51–52). (a) She is presented on the whole in Proverbs as a married woman (2:17; 5:10, 16–17; 6:26, 29, 34; 7:19) who violates her marriage covenant (2:17). (b) The relationship to which she seeks to allure the young man is adulterous (6:26; 7:10–21). (c) The woman lacks any of the distinctive characteristics of cultic prostitution, such as the Hebrew adjective קְדֵשָׁה, “consecrated, holy [woman]” (cf. Gen 38:21). (d) The Hebrew adjectives used to describe her are used elsewhere in the OT to denote Israelites who are members of another family (Gen 31:15; Deut 25:5; Ps 69:19; Prov 6:24) or not of the priesthood (Lev 22:12). (e) She is a woman of some means who enjoys costly foreign luxury goods (7:14–21). In light of this, it seems best to understand this woman as a married, upper-class Israelite woman who takes the opportunity afforded by her husband’s neglect or absence to draw the attention of a potential male suitor. Third, within the conceptual metaphors of Proverbs, this woman is connected to Lady Folly (9:13–18) as the promiscuous embodiment of reckless foolishness outside the marital bounds, while the young man’s wife (5:15–19), likely to be connected to the virtuous woman of the epilogue (Prov 31:10–31), is the incarnation of Lady Wisdom (Prov 8:1–36).[↩]
15. Heb. לִבִּי, “my heart.” The MT וְלִבִּי (“and my heart”) is the lectio difficilior and is attested by lxx (καὶ ἡ καρδία μου), Syr. (wlby), and Jerome. Vg. and σʹ suggest reading the preposition בְּ in place of the conjunction with their rendering along the lines of “I surveyed/traversed all things in my mind” (see citation of σʹ in Jerome and Vg.). Although Tg. is interpretive, it appears to support reading, also attested by a number of Masoretic mss. Internal evidence favors the reading וְלִבִּי as more likely to have given rise to בְלִבִּי than the converse, and Goldman notes the tendency of medieval Masoretic mss to alter ו to ב (BHQ, 95).[↩]
16. The four Hebrew words are absolute nouns with one waw and one definite article occurring before the third term, rendering decipherment of their relations challenging (יֶשַׁע כֶּסֶל וְהַסִּכְלוּת הוֹלֵלוֹת) (“wickedness, folly and [the] foolishness, madness”). BHQ notes there are two main avenues of interpretation: (1) understanding the nouns as complements of the infinitive לָדַעַת (“to know wickedness, folly, foolishness, and madness”) or (2) understanding the terms as two pairs of nominal clauses explaining the content of לָדַעַת (“to know that wickedness is folly and that foolishness is madness”) (95). The first view often posits a construct-genitive relationship between the pairs of terms, equating to “the wickedness of folly and the foolishness of madness” (so esv, net, nasb, niv, nrsv). lxx falls generally in the first approach with slight modification (cf. also kjv, nkjv), taking the first two terms as construct-genitive and the last two terms as independent, omitting the article: τοῦ γνῶναι ἀσεβοῦς ἀφροσύνην καὶ σκληρίαν καὶ περιφοράν (“to know the folly of the impious and hardness and madness” [nets]). Syr. follows a similar tack: “the wickedness of the fool and folly and transgression” (cf. Tg. “the punishment of the sin of the foolish” and Vg. “to know the wickedness of the fool and the error of the imprudent”). Possibly also on this side would be the putative translation of αʹ to read καὶ ἀφροσύνην πλάνας (“and misguided madness”), on the basis of a few Hexaplaric mss and the corrector hand of Sinaiticus (BHQ, 96). The second approach is favored by commentators and some English versions and may be viewed as a more natural rendering of the MT with its two noun pairs and one conjunction. Goldman demurs at this approach, however, concluding that it gives a “flat and odd content” to the final clause and preempts the results of the quest before the object of the quest is even mentioned (96). He proposes to emend in keeping with lxx and Syr. to וְסִכְלוּת וְהוֹלֵלוּת (“and folly and madness”), which leads to omitting the article, adding the conjunction to the final term, and repointing that term from the plural to the singular. I tentatively uphold the MT as the lectio difficilior and understand the verse along the lines of the first approach above.[↩]
17. The demonstrative זֶה is cataphoric.[↩]
18. The MT attests the unusual form אָֽמְרָה קֹהֶלֶת with the qatal 3fs form of אמר and the indefinite participial substantive. lxx attests a different word division, with the 3fs sufformative corresponding to the article (i.e., אָמַר הַקֹּהֶלֶת), in its rendering: εἶπεν ὁ Ἐκκλησιαστής. This reading aligns with Eccl 12:8, אָמַר הַקּוֹהֶלֶת. The Syr., Tg., Vg., and Jerome offer no aid, as they are indeterminate on the article. Goldman prefers to follow the lxx and to emend the MT on the basis of the lxx’s literalist use of the article and the parallel passage in 12:8 (64–65, 97*; cf. also BHS). Goldman’s case is strengthened by the pattern of the article’s use with Qohelet in lxx: of the seven uses of Ἐκκλησιαστής in lxx, three are articular (1:2; 7:27; 12:8) (corresponding to the possible use of the article in 7:27 and its use in 12:8), while the other four are anarthrous (1:1, 12; 12:9, 10). Thus, the lxx translator has intentionally included the article here in 7:27, whereas he omits it elsewhere. Although the evidence is somewhat inconclusive, I follow BHQ and BHS in emending the MT by altering word division to read אָמַר הַקֹּהֶלֶת.[↩]
19. Heb. “one to one” (אַחַת לְאַחַת).[↩]
20. Koosed, (Per)mutations of Qohelet, 77; idem, “Qoheleth in Love and Trouble, 184–85; Fryer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses, 205; Klara Butting, “Weibsbilder bei Kafka und Kohelet: Eine Auslegung von Prediger 7,23–29,” Texte und Kontexte 14 (1991): 2–15; Brenner, “Figurations of Woman in Wisdom Literature,” 60; Fontaine, “‘Many Devices’ (Qoheleth 7.23–8.1),” 142.[↩]
21. Norbert Lohfink, “War Kohelet ein Frauenfeind? Ein Versuch, die Logik und den Gegenstand von Koh 7,23–8,1a herauszufinden,” in La sagesse de l‘ancien testament: Festschrift Maurice Gilbert, 2nd ed., ed. S. Amsler, P. Beauchamp, P.-É. Bonnaud, et. al., 259–87 (Leuven: University Press, 1990), 260–61; Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, “‘Bitterer als der Tod ist die Frau’ (Koh 7,26): Zum Argumentationsgang von Koh 7,25–29,” in Textarbeit: Studien zu Texten und ihrer Rezeption aus dem Alten Testament und der Umwelt Israels: Festschrift für Peter Weimar, ed. K. Kiesow and T. Meurer, 443–55 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2003), 443.[↩]
22. Kurt Galling, Der Prediger (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1969), 109; Hans W. Hertzberg, Der Prediger Kommentar zum Alten Testament (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1963), 157.[↩]
23. Aarre Lauha, Kohelet, Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament (Neukirchener-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1978), 141.[↩]
24. Bo Isaksson understands the nuance to be continuation or repetition: “Again and again I have found” (Studies in the Language of Qoheleth: With Special Emphasis on the Verbal System [Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 1987] 65–66).[↩]
25. Eccl 3:11; 7:14, 24, 26, 27 (2x); 28 (3x); 29; 8:17 (3x); 9:10, 15; 11:1; 12:10.[↩]
26. BDB, 592–93; HALOT, 619–20; DCH, 5:434–39. DCH lists eleven categories of glosses for the term with slightly distinct shades of meaning. Cf. also TDOT, s.v. “מָצָא,” by S. Wagner and H.-J. Fabry, 8:465–83.[↩]
27. DCH, 5:435.[↩]
28. Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, s.v. “maṣû,” 10A:344; CAD, s.v. “kašādu,” 8:271. The term מצא appears to carry the connotation of “be sufficient for” in at least Josh 17:16: “The descendants of Joseph said, ‘The hill country is not enough (לֹא־יִמָּצֵא) for us’” (csb). Unless otherwise noted, all English scriptural citations are from the Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman, 2017).[↩]
29. Joseph Aistleitner, Wörterbuch der Ugaritischen Sprache (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1967), 192; Cyrus H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1967), 436, §1524.[↩]
30. Aistleitner, Wörterbuch, 190; Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook, 436, §1520.[↩]
31. See the discussion in Anthony R. Ceresko, “The Function of Antanaclasis (mṣʾ ‘to find’ // mṣʾ ‘to reach, overtake, grasp’) in Hebrew Poetry, Especially in the Book of Qoheleth,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44 (1982): 551–69.[↩]
32. Moshe Held, “The YQTL-QTL (QTL-YQTL) Sequence of Identical Verbs in Biblical Hebrew and in Ugaritic,” in Studies and Essays in Honor of Abraham A Neuman, ed. M Ben-Horin, 281–90 (Leiden: Brill, 1962), 289, n. 1.[↩]
33. Samuel Iwry, “והנמצא – A Striking Variant Reading in 1QIsa,” Textus 5 (1966): 35–37.[↩]
34. Ibid., 37–38.[↩]
35. Ibid., 38–42.[↩]
36. Ceresko, “Function of Antanaclasis,” 551–52.[↩]
37. Ibid., 567–68.[↩]
38. HALOT, 629; DCH, 5:472.[↩]
39. Pierre Van Hecke, “Tasting Metaphor in Ancient Israel,” in Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East, ed. A. Schellenberg and T. Krüger, 99–118 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2019), 108–110.[↩]
40. Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew, available online at https://semanticdictionary.org/semdic.php?databaseType=SDBH, accessed 21 March 2022.[↩]
41. Svi Rin and Shifra Rin, “Ugaritic-Old Testament Affinities,” Biblische Zeitschrift 10 (1957): 174–92; Mitchell Dahood, “Qoheleth and Recent Discoveries,” 308–310; Dahood, “The Phoenician Background of Qoheleth,” 276; L. Kutler, “A ‘Strong’ Case for Hebrew mar,” Ugarit-Forschungen 16 (1984): 111–18; Charles F. Whitley, Koheleth: His Language and Thought (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1979), 68. While this meaning fits well in Ezek 3:14, it does not accord with the context in this passage.[↩]
42. Dahood, “Qoheleth and Recent Discoveries,” 308.[↩]
43. Loretz deems the view that the woman is stronger than death and hence immortal “absurd” both in this context and in the literature of the ANE (“Poetry and Prose in the Book of Qoheleth,” 183).[↩]
44. See Paul Joüon and T. Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2006), §125j, 416–17; Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 261; Robert D. Holmstedt, John A. Cook, and Phillip S. Marshall, Qoheleth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017), 220. On these unusual syntactical features, Ginsburg explains that the masculine form of the adjective occurs because of the fronting (Christian D. Ginsburg, The Song of Songs and Coheleth [reprint of 1861 ed., New York: KTAV Publishing, 1970], 387). HCM comment that the customary pronoun-participle order is favored by a five-to-one margin over the participle-pronoun sequence in the Hebrew Bible (220).[↩]
45. Antoon Schoors, The Preacher Sought to Find Pleasing Words (Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 188. Graham Ogden takes a similar tack and remarks that the sign of the accusative is out of place (Qoheleth, Readings [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987], 121).[↩]
46. Schwienhorst-Schönberger, “Bitterer als der Tod,” 447–48; Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Kohelet, 403; Diethelm Michel, Untersuchungen zur Eigenart des Buches Qohelet (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), 226–31; Norbert Lohfink, Qoheleth, Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 102; R. N. Whybray, Ecclesiastes, New Century Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 125.[↩]
47. Michael Fox, “The Identification of Quotations in Biblical Literature,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 92 (1980): 423.[↩]
48. Fox writes: “The hypothesis of quotations, if applied without controls, can lead to the imposition of the exegete’s presuppositions on the text, allowing him to eliminate whatever does not seem to fit the context by attributing it to another speaker” (ibid., 431).[↩]
49. Cf. the four options in L. Schwienhorst-Schönberger, “Bitterer als der Tod,” 444.[↩]
50. Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 266–69; Ginsburg, Coheleth, 387; Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, trans. M. G. Easton (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1891), 332; Otto Zöckler, Das Hohelied und der Prediger (Leipzig: Belhagen Verlag, 1868), 181; Vincenz Zapletal, Das Buch Kohelet (Freiburg: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1911), 178; Lauha, Kohelet, 141; Tremper Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 204; E. H. Plumptre, Ecclesiastes, Cambridge Bible (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1898), 171; E. Podechard, L’Ecclésiaste (Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre, 1912), 385–86; Robert Gordis, Koheleth, the Man and His World: A Study of Ecclesiastes, 3rd ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 282; Koosed, (Per)mutations of Qohelet, 78. Also fitting essentially within this category are the interpreters who view the statement as a quoted conventional saying (see e.g., Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Michel, Lohfink, Whybray, et al.).[↩]
51. Duane A. Garrett, “Ecclesiastes 7:25–29 and the Feminist Hermeneutic,” Criswell Theological Review 2 (1988): 316; Matthew Seufert, “The Presence of Genesis in Ecclesiastes,” Westminster Theological Journal 78 (2016): 81.[↩]
52. Rashbam, 164; Hertzberg, Prediger, 154; Walther Zimmerli, Sprüche, Prediger, Das Alte Testament Deutsche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), 213; J. A. Loader, Ecclesiastes, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 92; Richard P. Belcher, Jr., Ecclesiastes, Mentor Commentary (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2017), 281; Moses Stuart, A Commentary on Ecclesiastes (New York: George P. Putnam, 1851), 224–25; Roland E. Murphy, Ecclesiastes, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, 1992), 76; Ian Provan, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 154; Ludwig Levy, Das Buch Qoheleth: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sadduzäismus (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1912), 110; George A. Barton, The Book of Ecclesiastes, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1908), 147; William P. Brown, Ecclesiastes, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 2000), 83; James L. Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 146; Johen Y. S. Pahk, “Women as Snares: A Metaphor of Warning in Qoh 7,26 and Sir 9,3,” in Treasures of Wisdom: Studies in Ben Sira and in the Book of Wisdom: Festschrift M. Gilbert, ed. N. Calduch-Benages and J. Vermeylen, 397–404 (Leuven: University Press, 1999), 398–400; Richter, “Kohelets Urteil über die Frauen,” 589; Ingrid Riesener, “Frauenfeindschaft im Alten Testament? Zum Verständnis von Qoh 7,25–29,” in ‘Jedes Ding hat seine Zeit’: Studien zur israelitischen und altorientalischen Weisheit, ed. A. A. Diesel, R. G. Lehmann, E. Otto, and A. Wagner, 193–207 (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), 200; Martin A. Shields, The End of Wisdom: A Reappraisal of the Historical and Canonical Function of Ecclesiastes (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 186–87.[↩]
53. James Bollhagen, Ecclesiastes, Concordia Commentary (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011), 274–79. This view differs from the previous in that the woman’s primary aim is to swindle the man’s property.[↩]
54. Knut M. Heim, Ecclesiastes, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 143.[↩]
55. This was a common rabbinical view. See the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot, 8a; Yevamot, 63b: “The Gemara cites a related incident: Rav Yehuda was teaching Torah to Rav Yitzḥak, his son, and they encountered the verse: ‘And I find more bitter than death the woman’ (Ecclesiastes 7:26). His son said to him: ‘For example, whom?’ His father replied: ‘For example, your mother.’”[↩]
56. Elsa Tamez, When the Horizons Close: Rereading Ecclesiastes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 102; Ellen F. Davis, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 205.[↩]
57. F. Hitzig, Der Prediger Salomo’s (Leipzig: Hirzel Verlag, 1883), 265.[↩]
58. George Athas, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Story of God Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 159.[↩]
59. Thomas Krüger, “‘Frau Weisheit’ in Koh 7,26?” Biblica 73 (1992): 394–403; Krüger, Qoheleth, trans. O. C. Dean, Jr., Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 147.[↩]
60. Thomas Frydrych, Living under the Sun, 158–59; Seow, Ecclesiastes, 262; Annette Schellenberg, Kohelet (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 2013), 120; Craig G. Bartholomew Ecclesiastes, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 226; Graham S. Ogden and Lynell Zogbo, A Handbook on Ecclesiastes (New York: United Bible Societies, 1997), 268–69; Peter J. Leithart, “Solomon’s Sexual Wisdom: Qohelet and the Song of Songs in the Postmodern Condition,” in The Words of the Wise Are like Goads: Engaging Qohelet in the 21st Century, ed. M. J. Boda, T. Longman III, and C. G. Rata, 443–60 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisen-brauns, 2013), 454; William D. Barrick, Ecclesiastes: The Philippians of the Old Testament, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2011), 135.[↩]
61. Dominic Rudman, “Woman as Divine Agent in Ecclesiastes,” Journal of Biblical Literature 116 (1997): 411–27; Rudman, Determinism in the Book of Ecclesiastes (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 101–9. Rudman appears to combine the literal and metaphorical conceptions of the woman, as she is a real woman who nonetheless acts as “the agent of a deterministic force” (106) and as “an instrument of divine judgment on humanity” (107).[↩]
62. Ronit Irshai, “‘And I Find a Wife More Bitter than Death’ (Eccl 7:26): Feminist Hermeneutics, Women’s Midrashim, and the Boundaries of Acceptance in Modern Orthodox Judaism,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 33 (2017): 76; Sneed, “(Dis)closure in Qohelet,” 115–26. This view has affinities with the first view but is distinct in that the authors identify the woman more abstractly as an “archetypal figure of a woman” (Irshai, 76) or as a figure who represents irrationality for Qohelet (Sneed, 122).[↩]
63. Fontaine, “‘Many Devices’ (Qoheleth 7.23–8.1),” 147; Ibn Ezra, El Comentario de Abraham Ibn Ezra al Libro del Ecclesiastés, trans. Mariano Gómez Aranda (Madrid: Instituto de Filología del CISC, 1992), 121.[↩]
64. Ogden, Qoheleth, 121. Specifically, Ogden sees this as premature death which takes a man before his time.[↩]
65. H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Ecclesiastes (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 173; Ernest W. Hengstenberg, A Commentary on Ecclesiastes (n.p.: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 1960), 185. Hengstenberg also connects the woman to the strange woman of Proverbs but sees that woman as the personification of folly.[↩]
66. Brown, Ecclesiastes, 83.[↩]
67. Bruce K. Waltke and Michael P. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 244, §13.5.1f. Cf. Ronald J. Williams, Williams’ Hebrew Syntax, 3rd ed., rev. John C. Beckman (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 39, §92; Joüon-Muraoka, Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 476, 479, §137i, 137n.[↩]
68. Eric S. Christianson, “Qoheleth the ‘Old Boy and Qoheleth the ‘New Man’: Misogynism, the Womb and a Paradox in Ecclesiastes,” in Wisdom and the Psalms: A Feminist Companion to the Bible, ed. Athalya Brenner and Carole R. Fontaine (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 111, n. 4.[↩]
69. Holmsted, Cook, and Marchall, Qoheleth, 221.[↩]
70. Robert D. Holmstedt, The Relative Clause in Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 6. Holmstedt’s criteria for identifying a restrictive relative clause include the following: (1) the head noun is not a unique referent (e.g., “Yahweh” or “the sun”); (2) the relative clause modifies a head noun rather than a null head; and (3) the head noun is either a definite noun or a specific indefinite noun (209).[↩]
71. Delitzsch, Ecclesiastes, 332.[↩]
72. See ibid., 166, n. 44. These are relative clauses that embed a nominative clause. The examples are Gen 7:2, 8; 9:3; 17:12; 30:33; Lev 11:29, 39; Num 9:13; 17:5; 35:31; Deut 17:15; 20:15; 29:14; 1 Kgs 8:41; 9:20; 2 Kgs 25:19; Jer 40:7; Ezek 12:10; 20:9; 43:19; Hag 1:9; Ps 16:3; Song 1:6; Ruth 4:15; Eccl 4:2; 7:26; Neh 2:13, 18; 2 Chron 6:32; 8:7.[↩]
73. Gen 9:3; Lev 11:39; Num 9:13; 35:31; Ruth 4:15; 2 Kgs 25:19; Neh 2:13, 18; Eccl 4:2; Song 1:6; Ezek 12:10; 20:9; 43:19; Hag 1:9.[↩]
74. See Whitley, Koheleth, 69.[↩]
75. Lisa Sabbahy notes that “all ancient Egyptian wisdom literature contains advice for men about staying away from the second type of woman [i.e., the dangerous, outside woman] and the consequences he will suffer if he does not” (The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, s.v. “Women, Pharaonic Egypt,” by Lisa Sabbahy [Oxford: Blackwell, 2013], 3).[↩]
76. _The_ _Instruction of Ptahhotep_, ll. 277–88, 292–97, author’s translation. See the text and translations in Zbynĕk Žába, _Les Maximes de Pta__ḥḥ__otep_ (Prague: Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, 1956), 83–84; Miriam Lichtheim, ed., _Ancient Egyptian Literature_ (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019), 103; Lana Troy, “Good and Bad Women: Maxim 18/284–288 of the Instructions of Ptahhotep,” _Göttinger Miszellen_ 80 (1984): 77–82; Nili Shupak, “Female Imagery in Proverbs 1–9 in the Light of Egyptian Sources,” _Vetus Testamentum_ 61 (2011): 314–15; Annette Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” in _Women in Ancient Societies: An Illusion of the Night_, ed. L. J. Archer, S. Fischler, and M. Wycke, 24–52 (New York: Routledge, 1994), 35–36.[↩]
77. Troy, “Good and Bad Women,” 78.[↩]
78. Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” 32.[↩]
79. Gay Robins, Women in Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 18. Hathor would thus transform from a raging lioness to a music-loving house cat (see Troy, “Good and Bad Women,” 78). For a general overview of duality in Egyptian thought, see L. Troy, Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1986).[↩]
80. Papyrus Insinger, 8,18–19, in Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 805.[↩]
81. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 93.[↩]
82. Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” 31.[↩]
83. Lichtheim, _Ancient Egyptian Literature_, 463.[↩]
84. Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” 45–46. On the capital crime of adultery in ancient Egypt, see C. J. Eyre, “Crime and Adultery in Ancient Egypt,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 70 (1984): 92–105.[↩]
85. See, e.g., Ginsburg, Coheleth, 387.[↩]
86. See Depla, “Women in Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Literature,” 37.[↩]
87. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, 470.[↩]
88. BDB, 844–45; HALOT, 622; DCH, 5:444[↩][↩]
89. See SDBH.[↩]
90. Cf. also P. W. Skehan, “Tower of Death or Deadly Snare? (Sir 26,22),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 16 (Apr 1954): 154.[↩]
91. BDB places Job 19:6; Prov 12:12; and Eccl 7:26 under the first homonym, “snare,” with Eccl 9:14 under the second, “siegeworks.” HALOT suggests “siegeworks” for Prov 12:12. DCH is non-committal about Prov 12:12 but prefers “siegeworks” for Job 19:6.[↩]
92. Waltke and O’Connor, IBHS, §7.4.2c, 121.[↩]
93. See G. C. Aalders, “The Fishers and the Hunters,” Evangelical Quarterly 30 (Jul–Sept 1958): 134.[↩]
94. BDB, 64; HALOT, 73; DCH, 1:345[↩]
95. SDBH.[↩]
96. Eberhard Otto, “An Ancient Egyptian Hunting Ritual,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 9 (Jul 1950): 164–77.[↩]
97. Although this term is rare, there are around 15 related terms in this semantic field. See The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, s.v. “Prison, Prisoner,” by Walter L. Liefeld, 4:869–70.[↩]
98. Dictionary of Daily Life, s.v. “Police & Prisons,” by D. L. Harrison and T. M. Sigler, 1397.[↩]
99. NIDOTTE, s.v. “יָד,” by M. Dreytza, 2:402–5.[↩]
100. Bartholomew, Ecclesiastes, 267.[↩]