What Koheleth thought of scribblers and tedious preachers may be gathered from the following: “But more than all these, my son, take warning for thyself: avoid the writing of endless books, as well as much (dull) preaching, which is a weariness of the flesh” (ibid. xii. 12). The bookworm, too, was no great favourite of his, for he refers to him with, as it were, a pitiful smile: “Where there is much study, there is much vexation, and he that increases knowledge, increases pain” (ibid. i. 18). And again: “The wise have (as a rule) no bread, nor the man of understanding riches, nor the man of knowledge power” (ibid. ix. 11). Women were to some poets of antiquity, just as they are to many a writer of modern times, a favourite subject for sarcasm, and Koheleth has also made a few remarks about them which, in point of satire, resemble somewhat those made by Hesiod, Simonides, and others. Though he does not compare woman to a hog, an ape, and an ass, as several ancient writers have done, yet the opinion he expresses about a certain class of women is by no means flattering to the fair sex generally. “I find,” he says, “more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are bonds: he that is deemed good before God will escape from her; but the sinner will be caught by her.” And again: “_One_ (perfect) _man_ among a thousand did I find; but _one_ perfect _woman_ among all these did I _not_ find” (ibid. vii. 26 and 28). In the Book of Proverbs, which is commonly ascribed to the same author, there are several references to women, in one of which a quarrelsome woman is compared to “the continual downpour on a very rainy day.” The husband of such a woman, the author adds, would as little succeed in hiding his wife from the outer world, as if he were trying “to hide a _wind_, or the _perfume_ of scented oil” (ibid, xxvii. 15, 16). In the same book (xxiii. 29–35) there is a humorous description of a drunkard, which ought not to be omitted, when examples are quoted to prove the existence of light humour in the Bible. It runs as follows: “Who hath woe? who hath pain? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of the eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed drinks. . . . Thine eyes shall behold strange things, and thine heart shall utter nonsensical words. Yea, thou shalt be as one that lieth down in the midst of the sea, as one that reposeth on the top of a mast. Oh, how they have stricken me (thou shalt say), how they have beaten me, and I felt not; when shall I awake? I shall yet seek it (the drink) again.”