Ecclesiastes 7-8

Ecclesiastes 7

¹A good name is better than oil of great price, and the day of death than the day of birth.

²It is better to go to the house of weeping, than to go to the house of feasting; because that is the end of every man, and the living will take it to their hearts.

³Sorrow is better than joy; when the face is sad the mind gets better.

⁴The hearts of the wise are in the house of weeping; but the hearts of the foolish are in the house of joy.

⁵It is better to take note of the protest of the wise, than for a man to give ear to the song of the foolish.

⁶Like the cracking of thorns under a pot, so is the laugh of a foolish man; and this again is to no purpose.

⁷The wise are troubled by the ways of the cruel, and the giving of money is the destruction of the heart.

⁸The end of a thing is better than its start, and a gentle spirit is better than pride.

⁹Be not quick to let your spirit be angry; because wrath is in the heart of the foolish.

¹⁰Say not, Why were the days which have gone by better than these? Such a question comes not from wisdom.

¹¹Wisdom together with a heritage is good, and a profit to those who see the sun.

¹²Wisdom keeps a man from danger even as money does; but the value of knowledge is that wisdom gives life to its owner.

¹³Give thought to the work of God. Who will make straight what he has made bent?

¹⁴In the day of wealth have joy, but in the day of evil take thought: God has put the one against the other, so that man may not be certain what will be after him.

¹⁵These two have I seen in my life which is to no purpose: a good man coming to his end in his righteousness, and an evil man whose days are long in his evil-doing.

¹⁶Be not given overmuch to righteousness and be not over-wise. Why let destruction come on you?

¹⁷Be not evil overmuch, and be not foolish. Why come to your end before your time?

¹⁸It is good to take this in your hand and not to keep your hand from that; he who has the fear of God will be free of the two.

¹⁹Wisdom makes a wise man stronger than ten rulers in a town.

²⁰There is no man on earth of such righteousness that he does good and is free from sin all his days.

²¹Do not give ear to all the words which men say, for fear of hearing the curses of your servant.

²²Your heart has knowledge how frequently others have been cursed by you.

²³All this I have put to the test by wisdom; I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me.

²⁴Far off is true existence, and very deep; who may have knowledge of it?

²⁵I gave my mind to knowledge and to searching for wisdom and the reason of things, and to the discovery that sin is foolish, and that to be foolish is to be without one's senses.

²⁶And I saw a thing more bitter than death, even the woman whose heart is full of tricks and nets, and whose hands are as bands. He with whom God is pleased will get free from her, but the sinner will be taken by her.

²⁷Look! this I have seen, said the Preacher, taking one thing after another to get the true account,

²⁸For which my soul is still searching, but I have it not; one man among a thousand have I seen; but a woman among all these I have not seen.

²⁹This only have I seen, that God made men upright, but they have been searching out all sorts of inventions.

Ecclesiastes 8

¹Who is like the wise man? and to whom is the sense of anything clear? A man's wisdom makes his face shining, and his hard face will be changed.

²I say to you, Keep the king's law, from respect for the oath of God.

³Be not quick to go from before him. Be not fixed in an evil design, because he does whatever is pleasing to him.

⁴The word of a king has authority; and who may say to him, What is this you are doing?

⁵Whoever keeps the law will come to no evil: and a wise man's heart has knowledge of time and of decision.

⁶For every purpose there is a time and a decision, because the sorrow of man is great in him.

⁷No one is certain what is to be, and who is able to say to him when it will be?

⁸No man has authority over the wind, to keep the wind; or is ruler over the day of his death. In war no man's time is free, and evil will not keep the sinner safe.

⁹All this have I seen, and have given my heart to all the work which is done under the sun: there is a time when man has power over man for his destruction.

¹⁰And then I saw evil men put to rest, taken even from the holy place; and they went about and were praised in the town because of what they had done. This again is to no purpose.

¹¹Because punishment for an evil work comes not quickly, the minds of the sons of men are fully given to doing evil.

¹²Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and his life is long, I am certain that it will be well for those who go in fear of God and are in fear before him.

¹³But it will not be well for the evil-doer; he will not make his days long like a shade, because he has no fear before God.

¹⁴There is a thing which is to no purpose done on the earth: that there are good men to whom is given the same punishment as those who are evil, and there are evil men who get the reward of the good. I say that this again is to no purpose.

¹⁵So I gave praise to joy, because there is nothing better for a man to do under the sun than to take meat and drink and be happy; for that will be with him in his work all the days of his life which God gives him under the sun.

¹⁶When I gave my mind to the knowledge of wisdom and to seeing the business which is done on the earth (and there are those whose eyes see not sleep by day or by night),

¹⁷Then I saw all the work of God, and that man may not get knowledge of the work which is done under the sun; because, if a man gives hard work to the search he will not get knowledge, and even if the wise man seems to be coming to the end of his search, still he will be without knowledge.