Ecclesiastes 7

¹ A good name is better than the best attar, And the day of one's death than the day of his birth. ² It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting In that it is the terminus of every man, Thus let the living lay this on his heart. ³ Better is vexation than mirth, For with evil on the countenance the heart may be made better. ⁴ The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, And the heart of the stupid in the house of rejoicing. ⁵ Better to hear the rebuke of a wise man Than for one to hear the song of the stupid. ⁶ For as the sound of the briars under the pot, So is the mirth of the stupid man; This too is vanity. ⁷ Extortion makes a wise man raving, And a bribe destroys the heart. ⁸ The end of a matter is better than its beginning; A long-suffering spirit is better than a haughty spirit. ⁹ Do not be rash to be vexed in your spirit, For vexation rests in the bosom of the stupid. ¹⁰ Do not say, Why is it that the former days were better than these present times? For it is not in wisdom that you ask about this. ¹¹ Wisdom is good with an allotment And an advantage to those seeing the sun. ¹² For in the shadow of wisdom it is as in the shadow of silver, And the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom keeps alive those possessing it. ¹³ See the work of the One, Elohim; For who can set in order that which He has overturned? ¹⁴ In a day of good be resting in the good, And in a day of evil, be vigilant; Indeed the One, Elohim, has made this one along with that one For this reason, that a man cannot find out anything about his hereafter. ¹⁵ I have seen all this in my days of vanity: There is the righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, And there is the wicked man who is prolonged in his evil. ¹⁶ Do not be abundantly self-righteous, And do not be thinking yourself superlatively wise; Why should you make yourself desolate? ¹⁷ Do not be abundantly wicked, and do not be frivolous; Why should you die when it is not your time? ¹⁸ It is good that you hold to this, And from that also do not let your hand rest; For he who is fearful of Elohim shall come forth from them all. ¹⁹ Wisdom itself gives more strength to the wise man Than ten authorities who are in a city. ²⁰ For there is no righteous man in the earth Who does good and never sins. ²¹ Moreover, to all the words that people speak do not give your heart's attention, That you may not hear your servant maledicting you; ²² For even many times your heart knows That you yourself also have maledicted others. ²³ All this I probed by wisdom; I said, I shall be wise, Yet it was far from me; ²⁴ Far away is that which has been, and deep, deep - Who can find it out? ²⁵ I turned about that my heart may know and explore, That it may seek out wisdom and design And may know the wickedness of stupidity and the frivolity in raving. ²⁶ I found more bitter than death: That kind of woman whose heart is like weir traps and seine nets, And her hands like bonds; The man doing well before the One, Elohim, he shall escape from her, And the sinner, he shall be seized by her. ²⁷ See, this is what I found, said the Assembler: Adding one thing to another to find a design, ²⁸ Which my soul still sought, but I could not find, I did find one wise man out of a thousand, Yet I could not find a woman among all these. ²⁹ See, I found this alone: That the One, Elohim, made humanity upright, Yet they seek many devisings.