| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | New International Version |
| 1[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 1Who is like the wise? Who knows the explanation of things? A person's wisdom brightens their face and changes its hard appearance. |
| 2[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 2Obey the king's command, I say, because you took an oath before God. |
| 3[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 3Do not be in a hurry to leave the king's presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. |
| 4[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 4Since a king's word is supreme, who can say to him, "What are you doing?" |
| 5[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 5Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm, and the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure. |
| 6[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 6For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a person may be weighed down by misery. |
| 7[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 7Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come? |
| 8[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 8As no one has power over the wind to contain it, so no one has power over the time of their death. As no one is discharged in time of war, so wickedness will not release those who practice it. |
| 9[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 9All this I saw, as I applied my mind to everything done under the sun. There is a time when a man lords it over others to his own hurt. |
| 10[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 10Then too, I saw the wicked buried--those who used to come and go from the holy place and receive praise in the city where they did this. This too is meaningless. |
| 11[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 11When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people's hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong. |
| 12[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 12Although a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time, I know that it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him. |
| 13[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 13Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow. |
| 14[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 14There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. |
| 15[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 15So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun. |
| 16[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 16When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the labor that is done on earth--people getting no sleep day or night-- |
| 17[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 17then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it. |
| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. |
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