The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven. It is a great tribulation that God has given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith.

I searched in my heart how to cheer my flesh with wine (my heart yet guiding [me] with wisdom), and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what it was good for the sons of men that they should do under heaven all the days of th

I also gathered for me silver and gold, and the treasure of kings and of the provinces. I got for me men-singers and women-singers, and the luxuries of the sons of men, [and] a wife and wives.

I have seen the travail which God has given to the sons of men to be employed therewith.

I said in my heart, [It is] because of the sons of men, that God may prove them, and that they may see that they themselves are beasts.

For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts, even one thing befalls them; as the one dies, so dies the other. Yea, they all have one breath, and man has no preeminence above the beasts; for all is vanity.

And those riches perish in a bad venture. And if he has begotten a son, there is nothing in his hand.

If a man begets a hundred sons, and lives many years so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not filled with good, and moreover he has no burial, I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

It is better to hear the rebuke of a wise man, than for a man to hear the song of fools.

Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one event to all. Yea also, the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that [they go] to the dead.

For man also does not know his time. As the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it falls suddenly upon them.

Happy are thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy rulers feast in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness!

And furthermore, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.