Tafsiran Pengkhotbah 7:26: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi & Kohelet Rabbah

“I found” [7:26]. I found something that is bitterer than the bitterness of death, a wife. The man is similarly captured and bound to her. A righteous man is one who is worthy to give her a divorce and a sinner is one who takes her and is bound to her.¹⁰⁴Rashi, Ecclesiastes, 7:26.

And I find more bitter than death. Which is the severest of the ten harsh things that were created in the world, as it is [stated] in [Maseches] Bava Basra, in [the chapter entitled] “The Partners.”⁶⁰10a. “And I find more bitter” and severe than it, “the woman,” this refers to heresy.

“I find more bitter than death, the woman whose heart is snares and nets, her hands, shackles. One who is good before God will escape from her, but a sinner will be captured by her” (Ecclesiastes 7:26).
“I find more bitter than death, the woman…” The Rabbis say: Because she demands from him things that he is unable to live up to, ultimately, she causes him to die a bitter death. There was an incident involving a certain person who had a neighbor who was a robber, who would go out and attack at night, and sustain his sons and daughters during the day. The wife of that person said to him: ‘How unfortunate is that woman who has adhered to you.’¹³⁷She said this about herself. She said to him: ‘Do you see the children of our neighbor, how they eat and drink?’¹³⁸They are so much better off than we are. He said to her: ‘Do you want me to do what he does?’ She said to him: ‘What is wrong with that?’ He said to her: ‘Come with me to convince him [to let] me go with him.’ They went and convinced him, and he took him with him. They went out that night, and another robber went out and set an ambush after them. This one,¹³⁹The experienced robber. who was familiar with the roads, fled and was spared, and that one,¹⁴⁰The neighbor who went out to rob for the first time. who was not familiar with the paths, was captured and hanged. They proclaimed in his regard: ‘Last of the robbers, first of the hanged.’

Whose her heart is full of [traps and] nets. An expression of a net, as in, “he catches them in his net and gathers them in his trawl.”⁶¹Chavakuk 1:15.

Her hands as chains. Once she seizes a man, he is as though bound with thick ropes.

Chains. אֲסוּרִים is] a noun meaning “bonds,” as in, “and his bonds אֱסוּרָיו melted,”⁶²Shoftim 15:14. meaning his bonds, and so did Menachem explain it.