Ecclesiastes 8

¹ Who is like the wise?
And who knows the interpretation of a matter?
A person's wisdom lights up their face,
and the hardness of their face is changed.

² I say: keep the king's command,
especially because of your oath to God.

³ Do not be in a hurry to leave his presence.
Do not persist in a bad cause,
for he does whatever he pleases.

⁴ Since the king's word carries authority,
who can say to him, 'What are you doing?'

⁵ Whoever keeps a command will know no harm,
and the wise heart knows the proper time and procedure.

⁶ For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter,
even though human misery weighs heavily upon them.

⁷ Since no one knows what will happen,
who can tell anyone when it will come?

⁸ No one has authority over the wind to restrain the wind,
and no one has authority over the day of death.
There is no discharge in war,
and wickedness will not deliver those who practice it.

⁹ All this I observed, applying my heart
to every deed done under the sun,
when one person has authority over another to their harm.

¹⁰ And so I saw the wicked buried—
they used to come and go from the holy place—
and they were praised in the city where they had done such things.
This too is a fleeting breath.

¹¹ Because the sentence against an evil deed
is not executed swiftly,
the hearts of people are fully set
to do evil.

¹² Though a sinner does evil a hundred times
and prolongs his life,
yet I also know that it will go well
with those who fear God,
who are reverent before him.

¹³ But it will not go well with the wicked;
like a shadow, they will not prolong their days,
because they do not stand in reverence before God.

¹⁴ There is a fleeting thing that happens on earth:
there are righteous people who receive
what the deeds of the wicked deserve,
and there are wicked people who receive
what the deeds of the righteous deserve.
I said that this too is a fleeting breath.

¹⁵ So I commend joy,
for there is nothing better for a person under the sun
than to eat and drink and be glad,
for this will accompany them in their toil
through the days of life God gives them under the sun.

¹⁶ When I applied my heart to know wisdom
and to observe the busyness done on earth—
how one's eyes see no sleep, day or night—

¹⁷ then I saw all the work of God:
that no one can discover
the work that is done under the sun.
However much a person may toil in searching,
they will not find it out.
Even if the wise claim to know,
they cannot find it out.