Verse 26
26. The woman That is, the sex, better without the “the.” I find woman more bitter than death her heart, etc. The views of woman here given are such as began with Adam, were enjoined by the Jewish rabbies, and prevail in the East to this day. Woman’s emancipation coincides in its date and extent with Christianity, and the Virgin-Mother is the bright morning-star leading an ever-increasing host of faithful women who find joy and freedom in the train of a greater than Solomon. From the days of the gospel the character of woman has opened like a flower, and her past in Christianity has been brave and beautiful and true.
“Not she with traitorous kiss her Master stung,
Not she denied him with unfaithful tongue;
She, when apostles fled, could danger brave,
Last at the cross and earliest at his grave.”
The position of woman is the most false and cruel thing in heathen and Moslem lands, and Moses was, “from the hardness of their hearts,” obliged to leave it but partially mitigated among the Jews. Koheleth here speaks after the best common sense of his time: and we can see that there was need enough of a better dispensation. That he should think of woman as a demon hunting for victims!
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