Surely oppression drives the wise into madness,
and a bribe corrupts the heart.
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
Wisdom is good with an inheritance,
an advantage to those who see the sun.
For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money,
and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.
Consider the work of God:
who can make straight what he has made crooked?
Comment: Unfortunately I don’t know Hebrew. The two commentaries which I have read don’t, to me, make much sense about the first line here -‘Surely oppression drives the wise into madness‘. Maybe madness here means something like frustration, but I think that in the hereafter I will have to ask Solomon what he meant! I have no problem with the bit about bribery! The danger of rapid anger, the discussion of wisdom, the advantage of knowledge, the need for foolishness to be avoided all make sense but each one of them has a wealth of related scriptural teaching associated with them. When I consider anger, immediately the verses ‘Be angry and sin not!’ and ‘don’t let the sun go down on your anger’ spring to mind.
‘Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun.‘ Is the inheritance here talking about money? Or maybe it means the societal blessing of being born into a family which has character and which has excellently established honorable ‘standards’? Poetry is tantalizing. We can just say ‘it doesn’t make much sense’ or we can think seriously and round out our ‘knowledge’ our ‘wisdom’ and ‘our fitness to face life’ – even if we don’t get the full answers which we would like!
Prayer: Thank You that following You, includes using our brains!
As I read it! 