Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ecclesiastes · About this commentary
The House of Mourning
Ecclesiastes 7:1-6
1 A good name is better than fine perfume; and the day of death better than the day of one’s birth. · WEB
A funeral is preferred to a feast for a stated reason, and the reason is information rather than gloom.
Verse 1 opens on a play of sound. A good name is better than fine perfume, and in Hebrew the two words are near neighbors — shem and shemen — so the proverb turns on an echo the ear catches before the mind does.
Then the second half, without transition: and the day of death better than the day of one's birth. Nothing prepares the reader for it, and no reason is given until the next verse.
Verse 2 supplies the reason, and it is the key to the whole passage. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; for that is the end of all men, and the living should take this to heart.
The preference is not for sadness. It is for accuracy. A funeral states a fact about everyone in the room; a banquet is arranged so that the same fact goes unmentioned. The wise man's advantage over the fool in this book has always been that he sees where he is Ecclesiastes 2:14, and a house of mourning is where the view is unobstructed.
Verse 3 goes further than most readers want — sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the face the heart is made good — and the claim is about formation. Something happens in grief that does not happen in mirth.
Verse 4 states it as a matter of where the heart lives rather than where the body goes: the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
And verse 6 supplies the image that fixes it. A fool's laughter is the crackling of thorns under a pot — loud, quick, hot, and gone before the water moves. Thorns make more noise than wood and boil nothing.
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