For who can eat [and drink], and who can enjoy [life] apart from him?

For to the person who [is] good in his eyes, he gives wisdom, knowledge, and joy; but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and heaping up only to give [it] to [him who is] pleasing to him. This also [is] vanity and chasing wind!

I know everything God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken from it, for God so acts that humans might stand in awe before him.

For if one falls, his companion may help him up. But pity the one who falls and there is {no one} to help him up.

{Although an assailant may overpower one person, two may withstand him}. A threefold cord {is not easily broken}!

There is no end to all the people, to all who were before him. Yet the later generation will not rejoice in him, for this also [is] vanity and chasing wind!

The sleep of the laborer [is] pleasant, whether he eats little or much, but the wealth of the rich man does not allow him to rest.

That wealth was lost in a bad venture. Although he has borne a child, {he has nothing to leave to him}.

Just as he came from his mother's womb naked, {he will depart} just as he came; he will take nothing with him for his toil.

Look! I have discovered what is good and fitting: to eat and to drink and {to enjoy} all [the fruit of] the toil with which one toils under the sun during the number of the days of his life that God gives to him--for this [is] his lot.

This indeed is a gift of God: everyone to whom God gives wealth and possessions, he also empowers him {to enjoy them}, to accept his lot, and to rejoice in [the fruit of] his toil.

God gives a man wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires; yet God does not enable him to enjoy it--instead someone else ends up enjoying it. This [is] vanity--indeed, it [is] a grievous ill!

Even if a man fathers a hundred [children] and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, if his heart is not satisfied with {his prosperity} and {he does not receive a proper burial}, I deem the stillborn better than him.

He has neither seen nor known the sun, yet he has more rest than him.

Whatever is--it was already determined, {what will be--it has already been decided}. As for man, he cannot argue against what is more powerful than him.

Since the word of the king [is] supreme, no one can say to him, "What are you doing?"

For there is a [proper] time and right [procedure] for every matter, even though the trouble of man [weighs] heavy upon him.

So I recommend enjoyment. For there [is] nothing better for man under the sun than to eat and to drink and to rejoice. This will accompany him in his toil the days of his life that God gives to him under the sun.

Whoever digs a pit will fall into it. Whoever breaks through a wall, a snake will bite him.

For if a man lives many years, let him rejoice in all of them! Let him remember that the days of the darkness will be many-- all that is coming [is] vanity!