“To deliver those that are dragged to death,
    Those that totter to the slaughter,
    Spare thyself not. 
    If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not,
    Doth not He that weighs the heart observe it? 
    Yea, He that keeps thy soul knows it. 
    And He will render to every man according to his works.”

    “Put not thyself forth in the presence of the king,
    Nor station thyself in the place of great men. 
    Far better it is that one should say to thee,
    Come up hither! 
    Than that he should put thee in a lower place,
    In the presence of the prince.”

    “The lip of truth shall be established forever,
    But the tongue of falsehood is but for a moment.”

    PROVERBS SHOWING SHREWDNESS OF OBSERVATION.

    “As one that takes a dog by the ears,
    So is he that passing by becomes enraged on account of another’s
      quarrel.”

    “Where there is no wood the fire goes out;
    So where there is no talebearer contention ceases.”

    “The rich rules over the poor,
    And the borrower is servant to the lender.”

    “The slothful man says, There is a lion without,
    I shall be slain in the streets.”

    “A reproof penetrates deeper into a wise man
    Than a hundred stripes into a fool.”

    “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”

    “The way of transgressors is hard.”

    “There is that scatters, and yet increases.”

    “It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer,
    But when he goeth his way then he boasteth.”

    PROVERBS WITTILY EXPRESSED.

    “The legs of a lame man are not equal,
    So is a proverb in the mouth of fools."[361]

    “As a thorn runs into the hand of a drunkard,
    So is a proverb in the mouth of a fool."[362]

    “As clouds and wind without rain,
    So is a man who boasts falsely of giving.”

    “A soft tongue breaks bones.”

    “As vinegar to the teeth, and smoke to the eyes,
    So is the sluggard to him that sends him.”

    “The destruction of the poor is their poverty.”

    “A merry heart is a good medicine.”

But what are human wisdom and glory?  It seems that Solomon was to illustrate its emptiness.  See the king, in his old age, sinking into idolatry and empty luxury, falling away from his God, and pointing the moral of his own proverbs.  He himself was the drunkard, into whose hand the thorn of the proverb penetrated, without his heeding it.  This prudent and wise king, who understood so well all the snares of temptation and all the arts of virtue, fell like the puppet of any Asiatic court.  What a contrast between the wise and great king as described in I Kings iv. 20-34 and the same king in his degenerate old age!

It was this last period in the life of Solomon which the writer of Ecclesiastes took as the scene and subject of his story.  With marvellous penetration and consummate power he penetrates the mind of Solomon and paints the blackness of desolation, the misery of satiety, the dreadful darkness of a soul which has given itself to this world as its only sphere.