So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold the tears of the oppressed ones, and they had no comforter! And on the side of those who oppressed them there was power, but they had no comforter.

And I commended the dead who already have died, more than the living who are living now.

There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he has neither son nor brother; yet there is no end to all his labor; and his eyes are not satisfied with riches; and he says, For whom do I labor and take good from my soul? This is also vanity. Yes, it is an evil business.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor.

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools. For they do not know that they are doing evil.

Do not be rash with your mouth, and do not let your heart be hasty to say a word before God. For God is in Heaven, and you are on earth; therefore let your words be few.

If you see the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, do not marvel at the matter. For He who is higher than the highest watches; and there are some higher than they.

If a man fathers a hundred, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, and his soul is not filled with good, and also is for him no burial; I say, a miscarriage is better than he.

For there are many things that increase vanity, and what is man the better?

Wisdom makes the wise stronger than ten mighty ones who are in the city.

Also do not listen to all words that are spoken; lest you hear your servant curse you.

Because the word of a king is that which has power; and who may say to him, What are you doing?

There is a vanity which is done on the earth: There are just ones to whom it happens according to the work of the wicked; again, there are wicked ones to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.

For all this I took to heart, even to make all this clear, that the righteous and the wise and their works are in the hand of God. No man knows either love or hatred by all that is before them.

This is an evil among all things that are 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; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly on them.

And I said, Wisdom is better than strength; but the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.

The words of the wise are heard in quiet more than the cry of him who rules among fools.

The words of a wise mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow him.

Blessed are you, O land, when your king is the son of nobles, and your leaders eat in due time, for strength, and not for drunkenness!

If the clouds are full of rain, they empty on the earth; and if the tree falls toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it shall be.

Therefore remove vexation from your heart, and put away evil from your flesh; for childhood and prime of life are vanity.

So long as the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, are darkened, or the clouds return after rain,

in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men are bowed, and the grinders cease because there are few, and those who look out of the windows are darkened,

and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and you shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and all the daughters of music are silenced;

also they are afraid of the high place, and terrors along the way, and the almond tree shall blossom, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail; because man goes to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets;

The words of the wise are like goads; yes, their collected words are like nails driven home; they are given from one Shepherd.

Your cheeks are beautiful with ornaments, your neck with chains.

Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful; you have doves' eyes.

Behold, you are beautiful, my Beloved, yea, pleasant. Also our bed is green.

The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters are of fir.

Behold his bed, Solomon's! Sixty mighty men are around it, of Israel's mighty men.

Behold, you are beautiful, My love. Behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are like doves' from behind your veil; your hair is like a flock of goats that appear from Mount Gilead.

Your teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep, which came up from the washing; they all are bearing twins and not one is barren among them.

Your lips are like a cord of scarlet, and your speech is becoming; your temples are like a piece of pomegranate behind your veil.

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, feeding among the lilies.

You are all fair, My love; no blemish is in you.

Your lips, My spouse, drop like the honeycomb; honey and milk are under your tongue; and the smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon.

Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; with henna and spikenard,

His head is like refined gold; His locks are bushy, black as a raven.

His eyes are as doves' eyes on the rivers of waters, washed with milk, sitting on a setting.

His cheeks are like a bed of spices, a raised bed of aromatic herbs. His lips are as lilies dropping flowing myrrh.

His hands are like rings of gold filled with jewels; His body an ivory plate overlaid with sapphires.

His legs are like pillars of marble set on sockets of fine gold; His face is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.

O my love, you are as beautiful as Tirzah, as lovely as Jerusalem, as inspiring as an army with banners.

Your teeth are like a flock of ewes which go up from the washing; they all are bearing twins, and a barren one is not among them.

Your temples behind your veil are like a piece of pomegranate.

There are sixty queens, and eighty concubines, and virgins without number.

How beautiful are your feet in sandals, O prince's daughter! The curves of your thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a skillful workman.

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.

How beautiful and how pleasant you are, O love, for delights!

Your stature is like a palm tree, and your breasts are like clusters of grapes.

The love-apples give a scent, and over our doors are all pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for You, O my Beloved.

Set me as a seal on Your heart, as a seal on Your arm; for love is strong as death. Jealousy is cruel as the grave; its flames are flames of fire, a flame of Jehovah.

Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me; I am weary to bear them.

And when you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood.

Come now, and let us reason together, says Jehovah; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.

If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;

your rulers are rebellious, and companions of thieves; everyone loves a bribe, and is pursuing rewards; they do not judge the orphan, nor does the cause of the widow come to them.

For You have forsaken Your people the house of Jacob, because they have become full from the east, and are fortune-tellers like the Philistines. And they clap their hands with the children of strangers.

For Jerusalem is ruined and Judah has fallen; because their tongue and their doings are against Jehovah, to provoke the eyes of His glory.

As for my people, children are their taskmasters, and women rule over them. Oh my people, your rulers cause you to go astray and destroy the way of your paths.

And Jehovah says, Because the daughters of Zion are proud, and have walked with stretched out necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet;

Woe to those who join house to house, laying field to field, until the end of space, and you are made to dwell alone in the middle of the land!

And the lyre, and the harp, the timbrel, and pipe, and wine, are at their feasts; but they do not regard the work of Jehovah. Yea, they do not see the work of His hands.

And man is bowed down, and man is humbled and the eyes of the lofty are humbled.

whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent; their horses' hoofs seem like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind.

Then I said, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities are wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land laid waste, a desolation,

And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is allied with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the woods are moved by the wind.

Behold, I and the children whom Jehovah has given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from Jehovah of Hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion.

And they shall look to the land; and behold, trouble and darkness and gloom of anguish! And they are driven away into darkness.

The bricks have fallen down, but we will build with cut stones; the sycamores are cut down, but we use cedars instead.

For the leaders of this people led them astray; and their guided ones are swallowed up.

For he says, Are not my commanders all like kings?

And my hand has found as a nest the riches of the people; and as one gathers eggs that are left, I have gathered all the earth; and there was none who moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.

For though Your people Israel are like the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return; the full end which is decreed shall overflow with righteousness.

All of them shall speak and say to you, Are you also as weak as we? Are you like us?

How you are fallen from the heavens, O shining star, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!

But you are cast out of your grave like a hateful branch, and like the clothing of those who are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; like a dead body trampled under foot.

Howl, O gate! Cry, O city! O Philistia, all of you, are melted away; for from the north a smoke comes, and no straggler in his ranks.

For the waters of Nimrim are desolation; for the hay has dried up and the grass fails, there is no green thing.

For the waters of Dimon are full of blood; for I will put on Dimon more things for the escaped ones of Moab, a lion, even for the remnant of the land.

Let my outcasts dwell with you, Moab; be a shelter to them from the face of the destroyer; for the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler ceases, the oppressors are consumed out of the land.

We have heard of the pride of Moab; very proud; even of his vanity, and his pride, and his rage; not so are his babblings.

So Moab shall howl for Moab, everyone shall howl. All of it shall howl for the foundations of Kir-hareseth; surely they are stricken.

For Heshbon's fields droop, the vine of Sibmah. The lords of the nations have crushed its choice plants, they have come to Jazer, they wander in the desert; her branches are stretched out, they have crossed the sea.

And gladness and joy are gathered out of the plentiful field; and in the vineyards there is no singing and no shouting. The treader shall tread out no wine in the presses; I have made their shouting to cease.

The cities of Aroer are forsaken; now they are for flocks; they shall lie down, and no one terrifies them.

Surely the rulers of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counselors of Pharaoh has become brutish. How do you say to Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings?

Where are they? Where are your wise men? And let them tell you now, and let them know what Jehovah of Hosts has planned against Egypt.

The rulers of Zoan have become fools, the rulers of Noph are deceived; they have also caused Egypt to go astray, the chief of her tribes.

Therefore my loins are filled with pain; pangs have taken hold on me like the pangs of a woman who travails; I was bowed down from hearing; I was troubled from seeing.

Crashings fill the noisy city, the joyous city. Your slain ones are not slain with the sword, nor dead in battle.

All your rulers fled together; they were bound without the bow; all found in you are bound together; they have fled from afar.

You have seen also the breaks in the city of David, that they are many; and you gathered the waters of the lower pool.

Whirling, He will whirl you like a ball into a large country; there you shall die, and there are the chariots of your glory, the shame of your lord's house.

Who has purposed this against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are rulers, whose merchants are the weighty of the earth?

Therefore the curse has devoured the earth, and they who dwell in it are deserted; therefore the people of the earth are burned, and few men left.

Dread, and the pit, and the snare are on you, O dweller of the earth.

And it shall be, he who flees from the sound of dread shall fall into the pit. And he who comes up out of the midst of the pit shall be taken in the snare. For the windows from on high are opened, and the foundations of the earth quake.