23. All this I tested by wisdom and I said, “I am determined to be wise”— but this was beyond me.
24. Whatever exists is far off and most profound— who can discover it?
25. So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly.
26. I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner she will ensnare.
27. “Look,” says the Teacher, “this is what I have discovered: “Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things—
28. while I was still searching but not finding— I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all.