Ecclesiastes 7:26 (LSB)

Passage

And I found more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is good before God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.

Nearby Context

Ecclesiastes 7:24 What has been is far away and exceedingly deep. Who can find it?

Ecclesiastes 7:25 I turned my heart to know, to explore, and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the wickedness of foolishness and the simpleminded folly of madness.

Ecclesiastes 7:26 And I found more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is good before God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.

Ecclesiastes 7:27 “See, I have found this,” says the Preacher, “adding one thing to another to find an explanation,

Ecclesiastes 7:28 which my soul still seeks but has not found. I have found one man out of a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all these.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "found", "bitter", "than", "death", "woman", "whose", "heart", and "snares". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "found" and "bitter", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 25's "I turned my heart to know to..." into verse 27's "See I have found this says the...", so "found" and "bitter" belong inside that flow. In Ecclesiastes context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "found" and "bitter" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.