For, if the one should fall, the other would raise up his companion, - but alas! for him who is alone when he falleth, with no second to raise him up!

And two attacked by one would be safe, and three cords twisted together are not quickly broken.

Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.

For he came out of prison to become king, even though he had been born poor in what would become his kingdom.

I considered all the living who walk on earth, as well as the successor who would arise in his place.

There was no end to all the people, to all before whom he came, yet, they who should come later, would not rejoice in him, - surely, even this, was vanity, and a feeding on wind.

Do not let your mouth cause you to sin, and do not tell the priest, "It was a mistake!" Why make God angry at you so that he would destroy the work of your hands?"

Even if a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years -- even if he lives a long, long time, but cannot enjoy his prosperity -- even if he were to live forever -- I would say, "A stillborn child is better off than he is!"

It has not seen the sun nor had any knowledge; yet it has more rest and is better off than he.

Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this.

I have seen it all during my pointless life: both a righteous person who dies while he is righteous, and a wicked person who lives to an old age, while remaining wicked.

Thou shalt not be greatly just; and thou shalt not be exceedingly wise: wherefore wilt thou be made desolate?

Thou shalt not be greatly wicked, and thou shalt not be foolish: wherefore wilt thou die not in thy time?

Wheresoever the word of a king, it is powerful: and who shall say to him, What wilt thou do?

then I discerned all that God has done: No one really comprehends what happens on earth. Despite all human efforts to discover it, no one can ever grasp it. Even if a wise person claimed that he understood, he would not really comprehend it.

As thou wilt not know what the way of the spirit, as the bones in the womb of her being filled, so thou shalt not know the work of God who will make all.

Furthermore, they are afraid of a high place and of dangers on the road; the almond tree (hair) blossoms [white], and the grasshopper (a little thing) is a burden, and the caperberry (desire, appetite) fails. For man goes to his eternal home and the mourners go about the streets and market places.

{The Ballad of Ballads of Solomon} O that thy mouth would give me a kiss!

W Oh, that he would kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
For your love is more delightful than wine.

Take me with you—let us hurry.
Oh, that the king would bring me to his chambers.

Y We will rejoice and be glad for you;
we will praise your love more than wine.

W It is only right that they adore you.

Tell me, thou loved of my soul! Where wilt thou pasture thy flock? Where wilt thou let them recline at noon? For why should I be as one that wrappeth a veil about her, by the flocks of thy companions?

Young women of Jerusalem, I charge you
by the gazelles and the wild does of the field:
do not stir up or awaken love
until the appropriate time.

The fig-tree, hath spiced her green figs, and, the vines - all blossom, yield fragrance, - Rise up! my fair - my beautiful - one, and come away!

It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.

Young women of Jerusalem, I charge you
by the gazelles and the wild does of the field:
do not stir up or awaken love
until the appropriate time.

All of them {wield swords}; [they are] {trained in warfare}, each with his sword at his thigh [to guard] {against terror} in the night.

Y What makes the one you love better than another,
most beautiful of women?
What makes him better than another,
that you would give us this charge?

(The Chorus)“Where has your beloved gone,
O most beautiful among women?
Where is your beloved hiding himself,
That we may seek him with you?”

Return, return, O Shulamite; Return, return, that we may look upon thee. What would ye look upon in the Shulamite? As it were the dance of two camps.

The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.

O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.

I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother's house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.

His left hand would be under my head, And his right hand embrace me.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.

Why should ye be smitten any more? Ye would again turn aside! The whole head is sick, And the whole heart faint:

If Yahweh of hosts had not left us survivors, we would have been as few as Sodom, we would have become like Gomorrah.

There kneeleth the man, there falleth the man down before them; but thou, O LORD, wilt not leave them unpunished.

The brave man and the warrior [He is also removing],
The judge and the prophet,
The diviner and the elder,

And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor: the child shall behave himself proudly against the old man, and the base against the honorable.

Jehovah will go into judgment with the old men of his people and his chiefs: and ye burnt up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.

What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?

Yea, ten acres of vineyard shall yield one bath, and the seed of an homer shall yield an ephah.

A roar, hath he, like a lioness, - He will roar like wild lions - And will growl, and lay hold on prey, and carry into safety, and there be none to deliver.

Wherefore let My Lord Himself give you a sign, - Lo! a Virgin, being with child and giving birth to a son, thou wilt call his name Immanuel.

He will eat curds and honey when he knows enough to refuse evil and choose good.

For before the child is old enough to make a decision between evil and good, the land whose two kings you are now fearing will have become waste.

and because of the abundance of milk produced he will eat curds, for everyone that is left in the land will eat [only] curds and [wild] honey.

Then you must recall the Lord's instructions and the prophetic testimony of what would happen. Certainly they say such things because their minds are spiritually darkened.

A word, hath My Lord, sent unto Jacob, - And it shall alight on Israel;

The old man and they lifting up faces, he the head; and the prophet teaching falsehood, be the tail.

Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? shall the saw magnify itself against him that wieldeth it? as if a rod should wield them that lift it up, or as if a staff should lift up him that is not wood.

Therefore, thus, saith My Lord, Yahweh of hosts, Do not fear O my people dwelling in Zion, because of Assyria, - When with his rod, he would smite thee, And when his staff, he would lift up against thee in the manner of Egypt;

Cry aloud with thy voice, O daughter of Gallim! hearken, O Laishah! O thou poor Anathoth!

And thou saidst in that day, I will praise thee, O Jehovah: for thou wert angry with me, thine anger will turn back and thou wilt comfort me,

Cry aloud and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion; for great in the midst of thee is the Holy One of Israel.

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

Who made the world like a wilderness
And overthrew its cities,
Who did not permit his prisoners to return home?’

and thou art cast out of thy grave like a wild branch - like as dead men's raiment that are shot through with the sword, as they that go down to the stones of the deep, as a dead corpse that is trodden under feet -

“I will make her a swampland and a region for screech owls, and I will sweep her away with a broom of destruction.”

This is the declaration of the Lord of Hosts.

And Heshbon crieth out, and Elealeh; their voice is heard even unto Jahaz: therefore the armed men of Moab cry aloud; his soul trembleth within him.

My heart shall cry out for Moab; his fugitives shall flee unto Zoar, an heifer of three years old: for by the mounting up of Luhith with weeping shall they go it up; for in the way of Horonaim they shall raise up a cry of destruction.

This is the word which Jehovah hath spoken from of old concerning Moab.

But now Yahweh has spoken, saying, "Within three years, as a worker bound by contract would count them, the glory of Moab shall be brought into contempt, with all his great multitude; and the remnant will be very small and feeble."

in the day of thy planting wilt thou make them to grow, and on the morrow wilt thou make thy seed to flourish; but the harvest will flee in the day of taking possession, and the sorrow will be incurable.

They will all be left for the birds of prey on the hills
and for the wild animals of the land.
The birds will spend the summer on them,
and all the animals, the winter on them.

Also the chiefs of Zoan are foolish, the wise counseling Pharaoh the counsel became brutish: how shall ye say to Pharaoh, I the son of the wise, the son of kings of old?

I am come of the old regal Progeny"? Where are they? Where are now thy wise men? Let them tell thee, if they can, what the LORD of Hosts hath taken in hand against Egypt.

And it shall become a sign and a witness unto Yahweh of hosts in the land of Egypt, - For they will make outcry unto Yahweh, because of oppressors, That he would send them a saviour - and a great one Then will he deliver them.

So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

The [mournful, inspired] oracle (a burden to be carried) concerning the Desert of the Sea (the seasonally flooded plains just south of Babylon):

As windstorms in the Negev (the South) sweep through,
So it (God’s judgment) comes from the desert, from [the hostile armies of] a terrifying land.

The watchman says,
“Morning comes but also night.
If you would inquire, inquire;
Come back again.”

For the Lord said to me, "Within a year, as a worker bound by contract would count it, all the glory of Kedar will fail,

And he will uncover the covering of Judah, and thou wilt look in that day to the weapons of the house of the forest

Ye made also a ditch between the two walls for the water of the old pool: but ye have not looked unto the maker thereof, neither had respect unto him that fashioned it long ago.

Is this your exulting one? From the days of old is her antiquity, Carry her do her own feet afar off to sojourn.

Now look at the land of the Chaldeans (Babylonia)—this is the people which was not; the Assyrians allocated Tyre for desert creatures—they set up their siege towers, they stripped its palaces, they made it a ruin.

They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the LORD, they shall cry aloud from the sea.

And the moon blushed, and the sun was ashamed, for Jehovah of armies reigned in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and was honored before his old men.

O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.

As the heat in a dry place wilt thou bring down the noise of strangers; as the heat by the shade of a cloud, the song of the terrible ones shall be brought low.

Then will Yahweh of hosts prepare for all the peoples in this mountain, A banquet of fat things, A banquet of old wines, - Of fat things full of marrow, Of old wines well refined;

Should he spread forth his hands in the midst thereof, As a swimmer spreadeth forth to swim, Then would be laid low his pride, together with the devices of his hands.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

The path of equity wilt thou grant unto the just, O thou most righteous; thou shalt order the path of him that is righteous.

O Yahweh though thy hand be lifted up, - yet do they not see, Would they might see - and turn pale at a peoples zeal, - Surely, the fire of thine enemies, must consume them!

LORD, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us.

The dead shall not live; shades shall not rise; for this, thou reviewedst and thou wilt destroy them, and all remembrance to them shall perish.

Fury is not in me: who would set the briers and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together.

“Or let him (Israel) cling to My strength and rely on My protection [My stronghold],
Let him make peace with Me,
Let him make peace with Me.”

In measure, when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind.

Even a spirit of justice - to him that presideth over justice, And strength to them who would turn back the battle at the gate.

Whom, would he teach knowledge? And, whom, would he cause to understand the message? Them who are weaned from the milk? taken from the breasts?

To whom he said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

For the bed is too short to stretch oneself on, and the covering too narrow when he would wrap himself in it.

Bread corn is crushed, because he will not ever be threshing it; and if he drove the wheels of his cart and his horses over it, he would not crush it.

Alas! for them who would fain have been too deep for Yahweh by giving secret counsel, - and therefore in the dark, have been their doings, and they have said Who can see us? and - Who can understand us?

You turn things around!
Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay,
That what is made would say to its maker, “He did not make me”;
Or what is formed say to him who formed it, “He has no understanding”?

For their princes have been, in Zoan, - And, their messengers unto Hanes, would draw near.