It is better to mourn than to laugh
1It is good to put on perfume
or sweet-smelling oil,
but it is better if people respect you.
The day when you were born was a good day,
but the day when you die is a better day.
2It is good to go to a house
where people celebrate,
but it is better to go to a house
where people mourn,
because all people must die,
and everyone who is alive must think about this.
3It is good to laugh but it is better to be sad,
because when your face shows
that you are suffering,
it helps you to understand life better.
4Wise people want to be in a home
where people are mourning,
but fools want to be in a home
where people celebrate.
5It is better to listen to a wise man
telling you what you have done wrong
than to listen to fools who sing.
6When a fool laughs,
it is like the noise of thorn branches
burning in the fire under a pot.
Also that is useless.
7But wise people can become fools
if they think about money
and do something that is not right.
If someone accepts a gift
to do something wrong,
then he is not wise anymore.
8It is better to stop talking
than to start talking.
It is better to be patient than to be proud.
9Don't become angry quickly.
Only fools get angry quickly.
10Don't ask: ‘Why was everything
better before than it is now?’
If you say that, you are not wise.
11If you have wisdom,
it is as good as to inherit money.
It helps those who are alive,
12because wisdom protects you like money does,
but wisdom is better
because it can save wise people.
13Look what God has done
and how He has made things.
If God has made something
that looks wrong to you,
you can not make it right or straight.
14When life is good to you,
you must enjoy it and when things are bad,
you must remember:
God causes the good things
and the bad things to happen.
No one knows what will happen tomorrow.
Don't try to be too fair
15My life is worthless, but I have seen everything. I saw a righteous person who died while he was living in the right way and I saw someone doing wrong, but he lived for a long time while he did bad things. 16Don't try to be too fair and don't try too hard to show that you are wise, because then you will become angry and upset about what happens to you. 17Don't keep on doing bad things and don't keep on being foolish, because you will die before it is your time to die. 18It is good to remember both warnings. Yes, if you respect God and you serve Him, you will know what to do.
19Wisdom gives people more power than 10 rulers in the city. 20No one in the world is so righteous that he does only what is good and never sins. 21Do not listen to everything that people say. Even your slave sometimes says bad things about you. 22You know that you have also said bad things about other people.
Wisdom is too difficult for me
23I used wisdom to test all things. I said: ‘I want to be wise,’ but it was too difficult for me. 24I can not understand why things are as they are. It is too difficult to understand. 25I have tried hard to find wisdom and to know why things are as they are. I wanted to find out if someone is a fool if he does something bad, and if he is mad if he does foolish things.
26I found that some women are worse than death. They are the women who catch men in a trap like a bird and hold them so that they can not escape. A man who lives as God wants will escape from her, because God will save him, but a sinner will not get away from her. 27The Preacher says: ‘Listen to what I found out. I have thought about everything and I have tried to understand everything. 28But I did not find what I was looking for. I looked at 1 000 people and I found only one good man among them, but I did not find one good woman there. 29There is something that I have learned, and that is that God made people good, but they became bad. They found a lot of ways to be bad.’
