¹Who is like the wise man?

And who knows the interpretation of a matter?

A man's wisdom enlightens his face,

And the harshness of his face is changed.”

²I say, “Keep the king's commandment, and do so on account of God's oath. ³Do not hasten away from his presence, but walk. Do not defend an evil matter, for he will do whatever he pleases.

⁴Where the word of the king is,

There is authority.

And who will say to him,

‘What are you doing?’

⁵He who keeps the commandment

Will not experience any harmful thing,

And a wise heart will know

Both time and custom,

⁶Because for every matter there is a time and a custom,

For the wickedness of man

Is heavily against him.

⁷For he does not know what will come to pass,

For who can tell him when it will come to pass?

⁸There is no man with power over the wind

To restrain the wind,

And no-one has power over the day of death.

And there is no leave of absence in war,

Nor will wickedness save those who practise it.

⁹I have seen all this, and I have applied my heart to every kind of occupation which is practised under the sun. It is a time when one man rules over another man to his detriment. ¹⁰And so I looked at the wicked who were buried, who had come to, and who had departed from, the holy place, and who were forgotten in the city where they had done this. This too is vanity. ¹¹Where sentence is not executed, the work of the wicked is prompt, which is why the heart of the sons of men is full of boldness in them to do evil. ¹²Even if a sinner does wrong a hundred times, and lives long, yet I also know that it will go well with those who fear God, who fear in his presence. ¹³But it will not go well with the wicked man, and he will not live long, being as a shadow, because he does not fear in God's presence. ¹⁴There is a vanity which is committed on the earth, whereby there are righteous men upon whom the consequences of the work of the wicked comes, and there are wicked men upon whom the consequences of the work of the righteous comes. I say that this also is vanity. ¹⁵And I praised joy, because man has nothing good under the sun other than to eat and drink and be merry, and that will accompany him in his toil for the days of his life which God has given him under the sun. ¹⁶When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to look into the matter which is being done on the earth – for it neither by day nor by night sees sleep in its eyes – ¹⁷I saw the whole of God's work. For man cannot discover the work which is done under the sun, because man toils to seek it out, but he does not discover it, and even if a wise man says he knows it, he cannot discover it.