Ecclesiastes 8:7-10
Living Bible
6-7 Yes, there is a time and a way for everything, though man’s trouble lies heavy upon him; for how can he avoid what he doesn’t know is going to happen?
8 No one can hold back his spirit from departing; no one has the power to prevent his day of death, for there is no discharge from that obligation and that dark battle. Certainly a man’s wickedness is not going to help him then.
9-10 I have thought deeply about all that goes on here in the world, where people have the power of injuring each other. I have seen wicked men buried, and as their friends returned from the cemetery, having forgotten all the dead man’s evil deeds, these men were praised in the very city where they had committed their many crimes! How odd!
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Ecclesiastes 8:7-9
New International Version
7 Since no one knows the future,
who can tell someone else what is to come?
8 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.
9 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.
Footnotes
- Ecclesiastes 8:8 Or over the human spirit to retain it, / and so
- Ecclesiastes 8:9 Or to their
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