Ecclesiastes 6:4–8

¹³Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

¹MAN that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.

¹⁰Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.

¹¹Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

¹²Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

¹³For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

⁸As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away: like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

⁷For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.

⁸Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

⁹For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.

²⁰All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

²⁷And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

²³For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.

⁷Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

³¶ If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

²³And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:

²⁴And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.

⁵And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

²⁰There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed.

²²They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

⁶For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

²¹And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

⁷O remember that my life is wind: mine eye shall no more see good.

¹²What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good?

⁶There be many that say, Who will shew us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us.

⁷Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.

²⁷Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.

²⁶He that laboureth laboureth for himself; for his mouth craveth it of him.

⁶But godliness with contentment is great gain.

⁷For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

⁸And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.

²⁵Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

¹⁰He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.

³¶ If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

¹⁷And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

¹⁸Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

¹⁹In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

¹BETTER is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse in his lips, and is a fool.

¹⁴The wise man’s eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all.

¹⁵Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity.

¹⁶For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.

¹⁷Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;

¹¹When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?

¹AND when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.

⁶And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.

²I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.

⁹I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.