1Who [is] as the wise? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? The wisdom of man causes his face to shine, and the hardness of his face is changed.

2I [counsel]: keep the command of a king, even for the sake of an oath [to] God. 3Do not be troubled at his presence, you may go, do not stand in an evil thing, for all that he pleases he does. 4Where the word of a king [is] power [is], and who says to him, “What do you do?”

5Whoever is keeping a command knows no evil thing, and time and judgment the heart of the wise knows. 6For to every delight there is a time and a judgment, for the misfortune of man is great on him. 7For he does not know that which will be, for when it will be who declares to him? 8There is no man ruling over the spirit to restrain the spirit, and there is no authority over the day of death, and there is no discharge in battle, and wickedness does not deliver its possessors. 9All this I have seen so as to give my heart to every work that has been done under the sun; a time that man has ruled over man to his own evil.

10And so I have seen the wicked buried, and they went in, even from the Holy Place they go, and they are forgotten in the city whether they had so done. This [is] also vanity. 11Because sentence has not been done [on] an evil work speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of man is full within them to do evil. 12Though a sinner is doing evil one hundred [times], and prolonging [himself] for it, surely also I know that there is good to those fearing God, who fear before Him. 13And good is not to the wicked, and he does not prolong days as a shadow, because he is not fearing before God.

14There is a vanity that has been done on the earth, that there are righteous ones to whom it is coming according to the work of the wicked, and there are wicked ones to whom it is coming according to the work of the righteous. I have said that this [is] also vanity. 15And I have praised mirth because there is no good to man under the sun except to eat and to drink, and to rejoice, and it remains with him of his labor the days of his life that God has given to him under the sun.

16When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that has been done on the earth (for there is also a spectator in whose eyes sleep is not by day and by night), 17then I considered all the work of God, that man is not able to find out the work that has been done under the sun, because though man labor to seek, yet he does not find; and even though the wise man speak of knowing he is not able to find.