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If no one knows what will happen, who can tell him when it will happen? No man has the right and power to hold back the wind with the wind, or power over the day of his death. No man is free to leave in the time of war. And sin will not take the sinner out of trouble. All this I have seen while thinking about every work that has been done under the sun. There is a time when one man has power over another man and makes him suffer.

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Since no one knows the future,
    who can tell someone else what is to come?
As no one has power over the wind to contain it,
    so[a] no one has power over the time of their death.
As no one is discharged in time of war,
    so wickedness will not release those who practice it.

All this I saw, as I applied my mind to everything done under the sun. There is a time when a man lords it over others to his own[b] hurt.

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Footnotes

  1. Ecclesiastes 8:8 Or over the human spirit to retain it, / and so
  2. Ecclesiastes 8:9 Or to their