NOTES for Ecc 7:7
In form these reflections resemble the instructions collected in the Book of Proverbs of Solomon, but the character of the instructions, if taken outside the context, sharply differs from the edifying proverbs that contain advice and recommendations for a prosperous life. Wisdom, so highly valued, is reduced to the remembrance of death and the cessation of all earthly joy, and even wisdom itself proves an unreliable support in a world where oppressing others makes a wise man foolish.
These are rather reflections that might be called the fruits of sober experience, if something did not prevent us from finally accepting the pessimism that pierces the one reflecting. And only the sole conclusion found, that God made man upright, but people have gone after many schemes, helps us look again at everything said before. Then vanity of vanities is not in man's very existence, but in how he lives after falling away from the Creator?