Ecclesiastes 9:12–15

³For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

³⁴¶ And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.

³⁵For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.

³⁶Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.

⁵Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man’s heart discerneth both time and judgment.

⁶¶ Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.

⁷For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be?

⁶In the transgression of an evil man there is a snare: but the righteous doth sing and rejoice.

¹⁵Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy.

²(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)

²⁶And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

⁸For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walketh upon a snare.

⁹The gin shall take him by the heel, and the robber shall prevail against him.

¹⁰The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way.

²⁰But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

²²He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks;

²³Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.

¹⁸Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.

¹⁹How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors.

²⁰As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image.

¹²But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;

¹⁴And makest men as the fishes of the sea, as the creeping things, that have no ruler over them?

¹⁵They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag: therefore they rejoice and are glad.

¹⁶Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag; because by them their portion is fat, and their meat plenteous.

¹⁷Shall they therefore empty their net, and not spare continually to slay the nations?

¹³Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant.

³⁹And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through.

²⁶And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.

²⁷They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

²⁸Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;

²⁹But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.

³⁰Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.

³¹In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.

⁴²Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.

⁴³For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side,

⁴⁴And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

⁶Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.

¹²Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.

¹¹Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

¹⁶¶ When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is that neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes:)

¹THERE is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men:

¹⁵All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.

¹¹¶ I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

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¹⁵And they came and besieged him in Abel of Beth-maachah, and they cast up a bank against the city, and it stood in the trench: and all the people that were with Joab battered the wall, to throw it down.

¹⁶¶ Then cried a wise woman out of the city, Hear, hear; say, I pray you, unto Joab, Come near hither, that I may speak with thee.

¹⁷And when he was come near unto her, the woman said, Art thou Joab? And he answered, I am he. Then she said unto him, Hear the words of thine handmaid. And he answered, I do hear.

¹⁸Then she spake, saying, They were wont to speak in old time, saying, They shall surely ask counsel at Abel: and so they ended the matter.

¹⁹I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in Israel: thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel: why wilt thou swallow up the inheritance of the Lord?

²⁰And Joab answered and said, Far be it, far be it from me, that I should swallow up or destroy.

²¹The matter is not so: but a man of mount Ephraim, Sheba the son of Bichri by name, hath lifted up his hand against the king, even against David: deliver him only, and I will depart from the city. And the woman said unto Joab, Behold, his head shall be thrown to thee over the wall.

²²Then the woman went unto all the people in her wisdom. And they cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri, and cast it out to Joab. And he blew a trumpet, and they retired from the city, every man to his tent. And Joab returned to Jerusalem unto the king.

¹³¶ Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.

²³Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.

²And it was found written, that Mordecai had told of Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s chamberlains, the keepers of the door, who sought to lay hand on the king Ahasuerus.

³And the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this? Then said the king’s servants that ministered unto him, There is nothing done for him.

²²Then the woman went unto all the people in her wisdom. And they cut off the head of Sheba the son of Bichri, and cast it out to Joab. And he blew a trumpet, and they retired from the city, every man to his tent. And Joab returned to Jerusalem unto the king.

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.