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Wisdom brightens a man’s face,
and eases the sternness of its appearance.
2 I counsel you to keep the king’s command, because you have taken an oath before God. 3 Do not be in a hurry to go out from the king’s presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, since he will do whatever he wants. 4 For the word of the king is supreme, and who can say to him, “What are you doing?”
5 Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm,
and a wise man’s heart discerns the proper time and procedure.
6 For every matter there is a proper time and procedure,
even though a man’s misery may weigh heavily upon him.
7 Yet no man knows the future,
so no one can tell him what will happen.
8 Just as no man has authority over the wind to restrain it;,
so no man has authority over the day of his death.
Just as no man is discharged in a time of war,
so wickedness does not release those who are given over to it.
9 All this I have seen, as I applied my mind to understand all the work that is done under the sun. There is a time when one man rules over another to his own harm. 10 Then too, I saw the wicked buried: those who used to come in and go out from the holy place, and they received praise in the city where they did this. This too is futile.
11 When the sentence for a crime is not carried out swiftly, people’s hearts become filled with schemes to commit even more crimes. 12 Although a wicked man commits crime a hundred times and prolongs his life, I know that it goes better for people who fear God, who stand reverently before Him. 13 But it will not go well for the wicked, for their days do not lengthen like a shadow, and they do not stand in the fear of God.
14 There is something else done on the earth that is futile: there are righteous men who get what the actions of the wicked deserve; and again, there are wicked men who get what the actions of the righteous deserve. I say that this too is futile. 15 So I commend the enjoyment of life, for there is nothing better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad, for this will accompany him through the toils during the days of his life, which God gives him under the sun.
16 When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the activity of a man on the earth (even if his eyes do not close in sleep day or night), 17 then I saw all the work God has done. No man can comprehend all that goes on under the sun. Even if a man toils to discover it, he will not be able to find out, and if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot comprehend all of it.