Ecclesiastes 9

₁I thought about all these things and I realised that it is God who decides who lives in the right way and who is wise. He decides what good people and wise people will do. People don't know what will happen to them. They don't know if God will cause people to love them or to hate them. ₂The same things happen to everyone. They happen to people who do what is right and those who do what is wrong, to people who are good and those who are bad, to people who are pure or impure, to people who sacrifice and those who don't sacrifice, to people who are doing good things and to people who sin, to people who promise something to God and to people who are afraid of promising something to Him. ₃There is something happening in this world that is wrong: It is wrong that the same things happen to everyone. Some people do bad things and they are fools while they live, and then they die. ₄While we are alive, we can hope that things will get better, because a dog that is alive is better than a dead lion. ₅Yes, people who live know that they will die, but people who are dead know nothing. They don't get a reward because no one thinks about them anymore. ₆After people have died, they can no longer love or hate or be jealous. They will never again do things with other people who make things happen in this world.

₇So go and eat your food, drink your wine and enjoy it because that is what God wants you to do. ₈You must always put on beautiful clothes and put perfume on your head. ₉You must enjoy life with the wife that you love. Enjoy every day of your life that is useless and not as it should be. It is God who gives you every day to live and to work hard in this world. ₁₀Do everything that you can do, do your best and do it well, because you are going to die and go to your grave and there you will not be able to work or think or know or have wisdom.

₁₁I have seen something else in this world: The fastest runner does not always win the race, and the strongest soldiers do not always win the war. Some people have wisdom, but they do not have food. Some people are clever, but they are not rich. Some people know a lot of things, but no one likes them.

The things that must happen to you will happen when the time is right. ₁₂We don't know when it is time for us to die, like a fish that swims but suddenly it is caught in a fishing net, or like a bird that is caught in a trap.

₁₃I also saw this: Some people in this world have wisdom and that is very important to me. ₁₄There was a little town and only a few people lived there. A king with a strong army came and he besieged the town but it had strong walls around it and the king tried to break down the walls of the town. ₁₅There was a poor man in the town. He was a wise man and he used his wisdom to save the town. But no one remembered what the poor man did. ₁₆Then I said: ‘It is better to have wisdom than to be strong.’ But people think that a poor man's wisdom is not important and they don't listen when he talks. ₁₇It is better to listen to wise men who speak calmly than to listen to a person who rules when he shouts to fools. ₁₈Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but a sinner can destroy a lot of good things.