Have they not erred, those who plan evil? But loyalty and faithfulness [belong to] those who plan good.

Who will say "I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin"?

Do not love sleep, lest you become poor; open your eyes [and] have plenty bread.

Rich and poor have [much] in common; Yahweh is the maker of all of them.

[In order] for your trust to be in Yahweh, I have made [them] known to you {today}--even you.

Have I not written for you thirty [sayings] with admonitions and knowledge?

and you shall put a knife to your throat if you have a {big appetite}.

Your morsel you have eaten, you will vomit it up, and you will waste your pleasant words.

But they who rebuke will have delight, and upon them blessings of goodness will come.

For [it is] better [that] he say to you, "Ascend here," than he humble you before a noble. What your eyes have seen,

[If] you find honey, eat what is sufficient for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it out.

Heavy [is] a stone and weighty [is] sand, but [the] provocation of a fool [is] heavier than both of them.

A ruler who lacks understanding is a cruel oppressor, [but] those who hate unjust gain will have long days.

He who tills his ground will have plenty bread, but he who follows fantasies will have plenty [of] poverty.

The poor and a man of oppression have [this] in common: Yahweh gives {light to the eyes of them both}.

And I have not learned wisdom, nor will I know knowledge of the Holy One.

This is the way of a woman committing adultery: she eats and wipes her mouth, and says "I have not done wrong."

If you have been foolish by exalting yourself, and if you have devised evil, [put your] hand to [your] mouth.

"Many daughters have done excellence, but {you surpass} all of them."

{I said to myself}, "Look! I have become great and have increased [in] wisdom more than anyone who {has preceded} me over Jerusalem. {I have acquired a great deal of wisdom and knowledge}."

Certainly no one will remember the wise man or the fool in {future generations}. When [future] days come, both will have been forgotten already. How [is it that] the wise man dies the same as the fool?

So I hated all my toil with which I have toiled under the sun, for I must leave it behind to someone who will be after me.

I have seen the busyness God gives to {humans} to preoccupy them.

So I deemed the dead who have already died more [fortunate] than the living who are still alive.

There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: wealth {hoarded} by its owner to his harm.

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.

Here is another misfortune that I have seen under the sun, and it [is] prevalent among humankind.

So do the wise [really] have an advantage over fools? {Can the poor [really] gain anything by knowing how to act in front of others}?

I have seen all these things in my vain life: Sometimes a righteous man perishes in [spite of] his righteousness, and sometimes a wicked man lives a long life in [spite of] his evil.

For your heart knows that you also have cursed others many times.

All this I have tested with wisdom. I said, "I will be wise!" but {it was beyond my grasp}.

Look! This alone I found: God made mankind upright, but they have devised many schemes."

For the living know that they will die, but the dead do not know anything. They no longer have a reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.

What they loved and hated, as well as what they desired, has already perished. They no longer have any share in what is done under the sun.

I have also seen this [example of] wisdom under the sun, and it [seemed] great to me.

There is an evil I have seen under the sun-- [it is] an error that proceeds from a ruler!

I have even seen slaves [riding] on horses and princes walking like slaves on the earth!

The sentinels who go about in the city found me. "Have you seen the one whom my {heart} loves?"

You have stolen (my) heart, my sister bride! You have stolen [my] heart with one [glance] from your eyes, with one ornament from your necklaces.

I have come to my garden, my sister bride, I have gathered my myrrh with my spice, I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk! Eat, O friends! {Drink and become drunk [with] love}!

I have taken off my tunic, {must I put it on}? I have bathed my feet, {must I soil them}?

Your teeth [are] like a flock of the ewes that have come up from the washing, all of them bearing twins, and there is none bereaved among them.

I went down to the orchard of the walnut trees to look at the blossoms of the valley, to see [whether] the vine have sprouted, [whether] the pomegranates have blossomed.

The mandrakes give [off their] fragrance, and {over our doorway is every kind of delicious fruit}; both {fresh and dried fruit I have stored up} for you, O my beloved.

{We have a little sister}, {and she does not yet have any breasts}. What should we do for our sister {on the day when she is betrothed}?

Ah, sinful nation, a people heavy [with] iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly. They have forsaken Yahweh; they have despised the holy one of Israel. They are estranged [and gone] backward.

From the sole of the foot and up to [the] head there is no health in it; bruise and sore and bleeding wound have not been cleansed, and they have not been bound up and not softened with the oil.

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

What [is the] abundance of your sacrifices to me? says Yahweh. I have had enough [of] burnt offerings of rams and [the] fat [of] fattened animals and I do not delight in [the] blood of bulls and ram-lambs and goats.

Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become to me like burden, I am not able to bear [them].

For you will be ashamed of [the] oaks [in] which you delighted, and you will be disgraced because of the gardens that you have chosen.

For you have forsaken your people, house of Jacob, because they are full from [the] east, and [of] soothsayers like the Philistines, and {they make alliances} with the offspring of foreigners.

Indeed, a man will seize his brother [in] the house of his father: "{You have a cloak}; you shall be a leader for us, and this heap of ruins [shall be] under your hand!"

The look on their faces testifies against them and they declare their sin like Sodom; they do not hide [it]. Woe to their soul! For they have dealt out evil to themselves.

Yahweh enters into judgment with the elders of his people and its princes. "And you! You have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor [is] in your houses!

What more [was there] to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? Why did I hope for [it] to yield grapes, and it yielded wild grapes?

Ah! [Those who are] wise in their own eyes and have understanding {in their view}!

Therefore as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and dry grass sinks down [in the] flame, so their root will become like [the] stench, and their blossom will go up like [the] dust. For they have rejected the instruction of Yahweh of hosts, and they have treated the word of the holy one of Israel with contempt.

And I said, "Woe to me! For I am destroyed! For I [am] a man {of unclean lips}, and I [am] living among a people {of unclean lips}, for my eyes have seen the king, Yahweh of hosts!"

"Yahweh will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your ancestor days that have not come since [the] day Ephraim departed from Judah: the king of Assyria."

for teaching and for testimony?" {surely they [who] speak like this have no dawn}.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; light has shined on those who lived in a land of darkness.

You have made the nation numerous; you have not made the joy great. They rejoice in your presence as [with] joy at the harvest, as they rejoice when they divide plunder.

For you have shattered the yoke of its burden and the stick of its shoulder, the rod of its oppressor, on the day of Midian.

"[The] bricks have fallen, but we will build [with] dressed stone. [The] sycamore-fig trees were felled, but we will replace [them with] cedars."

Therefore the Lord did not rejoice over its young men, and he did not have compassion on its orphans and widows, for everyone [was] godless and an evildoer, and every mouth [was] speaking folly. In all of this his anger did not turn away, and still his hand [is] stretched out.

Ah! Those who decree decrees of evil, and writers who have written harm,

shall I not do to Jerusalem and its idols what I have done to Samaria and her idols?"

For he says, "I have done [it] by the strength of my hand and by my wisdom, for I have understanding, and I have removed [the] boundaries of peoples, and I have plundered their stores, and like a bull I have brought down {the inhabitants}.

And my hand has found, like nest, the wealth of the peoples, and like the gathering of forsaken eggs, I myself have gathered all the earth. And [there] was no fluttering wing or open mouth or chirp."

I myself I have commanded my consecrated ones, I have also summoned my mighty warriors concerning my anger, the {ones who exalt over} my majesty.

But Yahweh will have compassion on Jacob, and he will again choose Israel and set them on their land, and the immigrant will join himself to them, and they will attach themselves to the house of Jacob.

All of them will respond and say to you, 'You yourself also were made weak like us! You have become the same as us!'

How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of dawn! You are cut down to the ground, conqueror of nations!

You will not be united with them in burial because you have destroyed your land, you have killed your people. [The] descendants of evildoers will not be mentioned for eternity!

Yahweh of hosts has sworn, saying, "{Surely} just as I have intended, so it shall be. And just as I have planned, it shall stand:

We have heard [of] the pride of Moab--exceedingly proud-- [of] his arrogance, pride, and insolence; {his boasting is not true}.

For Heshbon withers the fields, the vine of Sibmah; rulers of nations have broken down her tendrils, they reached up to Jazer, they wandered [to the] desert; her shoots spread abroad, they crossed over [the] sea.

And joy and gladness are taken away from the fruitful land, and in the vineyards no one exults, no one shouts for joy; no treader treads wine in the presses; I have put to an end to [the] jubilant shout.

For you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and you have not remembered the rock of your refuge; therefore you plant plants of pleasantness, and you {plant} a vine of a foreigner.

The princes of Zoan have become foolish; the princes of Memphis are deceived; the leaders of her tribes have led Egypt astray.

Yahweh has mixed a spirit of confusion into her midst, and they have caused Egypt to stagger in all of its doings, as {when a drunkard staggers} in his vomit.

Therefore my loins are filled [with] anguish; pangs have seized me, like [the] pangs of a woman giving birth. I am {too bent to hear}, I am {too dismayed to see}.

My downtrodden people and the son of my threshing floor, I will announce to you what I have heard from Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel.

For they have fled from [the] swords, from [the] drawn sword and [the] bent bow, and from [the] heaviness of [the] battle.

[The] oracle of [the] valley of vision: {What business do you have going} up, all of you, to the roofs,

All of your rulers have fled together without a bow; all of {you who were found} were captured. They were captured together; they had fled far away.

'What {business do you have} here, and who {do you have} here, that you have cut a grave cutting here for yourself, carving his grave [on] the height, a dwelling place for him in the rock?

Be ashamed, Sidon, for [the] sea, the fortress of the sea said, saying, "I was not in labor, and I have not given birth, and I have not reared young men, brought up young women.

and the earth is defiled beneath its inhabitants. For they have transgressed laws; they have passed by statutes; they have broken [the] everlasting covenant.

Yahweh, you [are] my God; I will exalt you. I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans {of old}, [in] faithfulness, trustworthiness.

For you have {made} [the] city heap, [the] fortified city a ruin, [the] palace of foreigners {is no longer} a city; it will {never} be rebuilt.

For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in his distress, a shelter from [the] rainstorm, a shade from [the] heat. For [the] breath of [the] ruthless [was] like a rainstorm against a wall,

And one will say, on that day, "Look! This [is] our God! We have waited for him and he saved us! This [is] Yahweh; we waited for him! Let us be glad, and let us rejoice in his salvation."

On that day, this song will be sung in the land of Judah: "{We have a strong city}; he sets up victory [like] walls and ramparts!

Trust in Yahweh forever, for in Yah, Yahweh [you have] an everlasting rock.

Yahweh, you will establish peace for us, for you have done even all of our works for us.

[The] dead do not live; dead spirits do not rise because you have punished and destroyed them, and you have destroyed all memory of them.

You have added to the nation, Yahweh. You have added to the nation; you are honored. You have extended all [the] ends of [the] land.

Yahweh, in distress they have visited you; they poured out an {incantation}; your discipline [was] on them.