Daily text, Monday, August 29. 2016

[Queen Esther]

More bitter than death is the woman who is like a hunter’s net, whose heart is like dragnets, and whose hands are like prison chains.—Eccl. 7:26.

http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/dt/r1/lp-e/2016/8/29

True love was rare in the days of King Solomon of ancient Israel. He wrote: “One upright man out of a thousand I found, but a woman among them I have not found. This alone I have found: The true God made mankind upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” (Eccl. 7:27-29, ftn.) Largely as a result of the influence of foreign women who practiced Baal worship, moral standards had dropped so low in his day that Solomon found it difficult to find a man or a woman with good morals. Still, the poem he wrote some 20 years earlier, the Song of Solomon, shows that enduring love can exist between a man and a woman. It also vividly portrays what that love is like and how it is displayed. Both married and single worshippers of Jehovah can learn much about such love by carefully considering this Bible book. w15 1/15 5:2