a
time to speak.

3:8. A time of love, and a time of hatred. A time of war, and a time of
peace.

3:9. What hath man more of his labour?

3:10. I have seen the trouble, which God hath given the sons of men to
be exercised in it.

3:11. He hath made all things good in their time, and hath delivered the
world to their consideration, so that man cannot find out the work which
God hath made from the beginning to the end.

3:12. And I have known that there was no better thing than to rejoice,
and to do well in this life.

3:13. For every man that eateth and drinketh, and seeth good of his
labour, this is the gift of God.

3:14. I have learned that all the works which God hath made, continue
for ever: we cannot add any thing, nor take away from those things which
God hath made that he may be feared.

3:15. That which hath been made, the same continueth: the things that
shall be, have already been: and God restoreth that which is past.

3:16. I saw under the sun in the place of judgment wickedness, and in
the place of justice iniquity.

3:17. And I said in my heart: God shall judge both the just and the
wicked, and then shall be the time of every thing.

3:18. I said in my heart concerning the sons of men, that God would
prove them, and shew them to be like beasts.

3:19. Therefore the death of man, and of beasts is one, and the
condition of them both is equal: as man dieth, so they also die: all
things breathe alike, and man hath nothing more than beast: all things
are subject to vanity.

Man hath nothing more, etc... Viz., as to the life of the body.

3:20. And all things go to one place: of earth they were made, and into
earth they return together.

3:21. Who knoweth if the spirit of the children of Adam ascend upward,
and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward?

Who knoweth, etc... Viz., experimentally: since no one in this life can
see a spirit. But as to the spirit of the beasts, which is merely
animal, and become extinct by the death of the beast, who can tell the
manner it acts so as to give life and motion, and by death to descend
downward, that is, to be no more?

3:22. And I have found that nothing is better than for a man to rejoice
in his work, and that this is his portion. For who shall bring him to
know the things that shall be after him?

Ecclesiastes Chapter 4

Other instances of human miseries.

4:1. I turned myself to other things, and I saw the oppressions that are
done un