Ecclesiastes 7:1

A good name [is] better than precious ointment,.... The word "good" is not in the text, but is rightly supplied, as it is by Jarchi; for of no other name can this be said; that which is not good cannot be better.

A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth. Ecclesiastes 7:1-29.-Consolation to God's people under suffering.-The sorrows of the saints are better than the joys of the worldly.

CHAPTER 7 A good name desirable; and the house of mourning and rebuke better than songs and laughter, . Exhortations to patience and perseverance, . Wisdom and money a defence, ,12. God’ s providence should render its contented: our duty both in prosperity and adversity, ,14. Prudence and the fear of God necessary in this world, . The praise of wisdom, . All men are sinners, . Other men’ s opinions of thee not too much to be minded: the motive thereto, ,22. The Preacher’ s experience thereof, . An evil woman more bitter than death, . God created man good, . Having largely discoursed of the vanity of all worldly things, and now said in the foregoing verse that no man knew what was best for him, he now proceeds to prescribe some remedies against these vanities, and to direct men to the right method of obtaining that felicity which is not to be expected or found in this world. A good name; a good and well-grounded report from wise and worthy persons. Heb. a name, which is put for a good name by a synecdoche, that only being worthy to be called a name, because evil and worthless men quickly lose their name and memory. Thus a wife is put for a good wife, , and a day for a good day, ,44. Precious ointment; which was very fragrant, and acceptable, and useful, and of great price, especially in those countries. See 133:2 . The day of death, to wit, of a good man, or one who hath left a good name behind him, which is easily understood both from the former clause, and from the nature of the thing; for to a wicked man this day is far worse, and most terrible. Yet if this passage be delivered with respect only to this life, and abstracting from the future life, as many other passages in this book are to be understood, then this may be true in general of all men, and is the consequent of all the former discourse. Seeing this life is so full of vanity, and vexation, and misery, it is a more desirable thing for a man to go out of it, than to come into it; which is the more considerable note, because it is contrary to the opinion and practice of almost all mankind, to celebrate their own or children’ s birth-days with solemn feasts and rejoicings, and their deaths with all expressions of sorrow.

Ecclesiastes 7:1 A good name [is] better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’ s birth.Ver. 1. A good name is better than precious ointment.] Yea, than great riches. The initial letter of the Hebrew word for "good" here is larger than ordinary, to show the more than ordinary excellence of a good name and fame among men. If whatsoever David doeth doth please the people, if Mary Magdalen’ s cost upon Christ be well spoken of in all the churches, if the Romans’ faith be famous throughout the whole world, if Demetrius have a good report of all good men, and St John set his seal to it, this must needs be better than precious ointments; the one being but a perfume of the nostrils, the other of the heart. Sweet ointment, olfactum afficit, spiritum reficit, cerebrum iuvat, affects the smell, refresheth the spirit, comforts the brain: a good name doth all this and more. For, First, As a fragrant scent, it affects the soul, amidst the stench of evil courses and companies. It is as a fresh gale of sweet air to him that lives, as Noah did, among such as are no better than walking dunghills, and living sepulchres of themselves, stinking much more worse than Lazarus did, after he had lain four days in the grave. A good name preserveth the soul as a pomander; and refresheth it more than musk or civit doth the body. Secondly, It comforts the conscience, and exhilarates the heart; cheers up the mind amidst all discouragements, and fatteth the bones, doing a man good, like a medicine. And whereas sweet ointments may be corrupted by dead flies, a good name, proceeding from a good conscience, cannot be so. Fly blown it may be for a season, and somewhat obscured; but as the moon wades out of a cloud, so shall the saints’ innocence break forth as the light, and their righteousness as the noonday. Buried it may be in the open sepulchres of evil throats, but it shall surely rise again: a resurrection there shall be of names, as well as of bodies, at the last day, at utmost. But usually a good name comforts a Christian at his death, and continues after it. For though the name of the wicked shall rot, his lamp shall be put out in obscurity, and leave a vile snuff behind it, yet "the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance"; they shall leave their names for a blessing. And the day of death, than the day of one’ s birth.] The Greeks call a man’ s birthday, γενεθλιον quasi γενεσιναθλων; the beginning of his nativity, they call the begetting of his misery. "Man that is born of a woman, is born to trouble," saith Job. The word there rendered born, signifieth also generated or concieved; to note that man is miserable, even as soon as he is "warm in the womb," as David hath it.

(1) There is a play on words in the original (found also in Son 1:3), which Plumptre represents by “a good name is better than good nard.” It was probably an older proverb, which the Preacher completes by the startling addition, “and so is the day of death better than that of birth.” For the use of perfumes, see Rth 3:3; 2 Samuel 12:20; Proverbs 7:17; Daniel 10:3.

CHAPTER VII The value of a good name, 1. Advantages of sorrow and correction, 2-5. The emptiness of a fool's joy, 6. Of oppression, 7. The end better than the beginning, 8. Against hastiness of spirit, 9. Comparison of former and present times, 10. Excellence of wisdom, 11, 12. Of the dispensations of Providence, 13-15. Against extremes, 16-18. The strength of wisdom, 19. Man is ever liable to sin and mistake, 20. We should guard our words, 21, 22. Difficulty of obtaining wisdom, 23-25, A bad woman dangerous, 26. There are few who are really upright, 27-29. NOTES ON CHAP. VII Verse 1. A good name] Unsatisfactory as all sublunary things are, yet still there are some which are of great consequence, and among them a good name. The place is well paraphrased in the following verses: "A spotless name, By virtuous deeds acquired, is sweeter far Than fragrant balms, whose odours round diffused Regale the invited guests. Well may such men Rejoice at death's approach, and bless the hours That end their toilsome pilgrimage; assured That till the race of life is finish'd none Can be completely blest."

1. A good name is better than precious ointment] The sequence of thought is interrupted, and the writer, instead of carrying on the induction which is to prove that all is vanity, moralizes on the other results of his experience. He has learnt to take a relative estimate of what men count good or evil, truer than that which commonly prevails among them. It lies almost in the nature of the case, that these moralizings should take a somewhat discontinuous form, like that, e.g. of the Pensιes of Pascal or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the entries, let us say, which the thinker entered, day by day, in his tablets or on his codex. They are marked, however, by a sufficient unity of tone. The same pensive cast of thought is found in all, and it raises the thinker out of a mere self-seeking, self-indulgent Epicureanism into a wider and nobler sympathy. He rises as on the “stepping-stones” of his “dead self” to higher things. Nor are the maxims indeed without a certain unity of form, and the three words “it is better” in Ecclesiastes 7:1; Ecclesiastes 7:5; Ecclesiastes 7:8 serve as a connecting link. The words and the maxims that follow in Ecclesiastes 7:2-5 have naturally been a stumblingblock to those who saw in Koheleth nothing but the advocate of a sensual voluptuousness, and with the desperate courage of men maintaining a theory, they argue (I take Grδtz as the representative of a school) that these are not the thoughts of the Debater himself, but of some imaginary opponent of the ascetic Essene type, against whom he afterwards enters his protest. The view is, it is believed, just as untenable as that of the interpreters of the opposite school, who see in the oft-repeated precepts counselling moderate enjoyment nothing but the utterances of an ideal Epicurean, set up for the purpose of being knocked down. In the maxim which opens the series there is an alliterative emphasis, which is fairly represented by the German translation (Knobel) “Besser gut Gerόcht als gόte Gerόche. The good name (shem) is better than good ointment (shemen), echoing in this respect the words of Song Son 1:3, “A good name is better than good nard,” is perhaps the nearest English approximation in this respect. The maxim itself indicates a craving for something higher than the perfumed oil, which was the crowning luxury of Eastern life (Psalms 45:8; Amos 6:6; Luke 7:37; Matthew 26:7), even the praise and admiration of our fellow-men. To live in their memories, our name as a sweet odour that fills the house, is better than the most refined enjoyment.

Name ... ointment - The likeness between reputation and odor supplies a common metaphor: the contrast is between reputation, as an honorable attainment which only wise people win, and fragrant odor,

1. Ointment — Better, perfume. Sweet perfumes are always mentioned in Scripture in accordance with the value set on them in the East. The latter part of the verse has a logical connexion with the former.