CHAPTER 9

¹For on all this I set my heart to sort out all this—that the righteous and the wise and their acts are in God’s hand. Neither hatred nor love does man know. All before them is mere breath. ²As all have a single fate, the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, and the clean and the unclean, and he who offers sacrifice and he who does not sacrifice, the good and the offender, he who vows and he who fears the vow. ³This is the evil in all that is done under the sun, for all have a single fate, and also the heart of the sons of man is full of evil, and mad revelry in their heart while they live, and afterward—off to the dead. ⁴For he who is joined to the living knows one sure thing: that a live dog is better than a dead lion. ⁵For the living know that they will die, and the dead know nothing, and they no longer have recompense, for their memory is forgotten. ⁶Their love and their hatred as well, their jealousy, too, are already lost, and they no longer have any share forever in all that is done under the sun. ⁷Go, eat your bread with rejoicing and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already been pleased by your deeds. ⁸At every season let your garments be white, and let oil on your head not be lacking. ⁹Enjoy life with a woman whom you love all your days of mere breath that have been given to you under the sun, all your days of mere breath, for that is your share in life and in your toil that you toil under the sun. ¹⁰All that your hand manages to do with your strength, do, for there is no doing nor reckoning nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol where you are going. ¹¹I returned to see under the sun that not to the swift is the race and not to the mighty, the battle, nor to the wise, bread, nor to the discerning, wealth, nor to those who know, favor, for a time of mishap will befall them all. ¹²Nor does man know his time, like fish caught in an evil net and like birds held in a trap, like them the sons of man are ensnared by an evil time when it suddenly falls upon them. ¹³Wisdom, too, have I seen under the sun, and it is great in my eyes. ¹⁴There was a little town, and few people within it, and a great king came against it and went round it and built against it great siege-works. ¹⁵And there was found within it a poor wise man, and that person saved the town through his wisdom, but no one recalled that poor man. ¹⁶I said: Better wisdom than might, but the poor man’s wisdom is scorned and his words are unheard. ¹⁷The words of the wise gently said are heard more than the shout of the ruler among fools. ¹⁸Better wisdom than weapons, yet a single offender destroys much good.