I explored with my mind how to let my body enjoy life with wine and how to grasp folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom—until I could see what is good for people to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.

I gathered silver and gold together, even a treasure of kings and lands. I provided me singers and women which could play of instruments, to make man mirth and pastime. I gat me drinking cups also and glasses.

Thus began I to be weary of my life, in so much that I could away with nothing that is done under the Sun, for all was but vanity and vexation of mind:

and who could know whether a, wise man, he would be or a foolish, and yet he would lord it over all my toil, wherein I had toiled and wherein I had acted wisely, under the sun, - even this, was vanity.

For who could eat and who could enjoy, so well as I?

Everything, hath he made beautiful in its own time, - also, intelligence, hath he put in their heart, without which men could not find out the work which God hath wrought, from the beginning even unto the end.

I, could indeed find, to be, more bitter than death, the woman, whose heart is, snares and nets, and her hands, bonds, - whoso is pleasing before God, shall escape from her, but, he that sinneth, shall be captured by her.

Then I considered all the work of God, that man could not find out the work that was done under the sun, inasmuch as man toileth in seeking and yet cannot find, - yea, even though the wise man should say he knoweth, yet can he not find it out.

For, unto all this, I applied my heart, and, my heart, considered all this, that, the righteous and the wise and their servants, were in the hand of God, - neither love nor hatred, could any man know, every one, was before Him.

For, indeed, man could not know his own time, like fishes which were caught in a cruel net, and like little birds which were caught in a trap, - like them, were ensnared the sons of men, by a time of misfortune, when it fell upon them suddenly.

However, a poor but wise man lived in the city, and he could have delivered the city by his wisdom, but no one listened to that poor man.