For man does not know his time. Just as fish are caught in a cruel net and like birds who are seized in a snare, so also {humans} are ensnared at a cruel time when it falls suddenly upon them.

And again I saw all the cruel things which are done under the sun; there was the weeping of those who have evil done to them, and they had no comforter: and from the hands of the evil-doers there went out power, but they had no comforter.

If you see the poor under a cruel yoke, and law and right being violently overturned in a country, be not surprised, because one authority is keeping watch on another and there are higher than they.

The wise are troubled by the ways of the cruel, and the giving of money is the destruction of the heart.