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Ecclesiastes / The Limits of Wisdom: Authority, Injustice, and Life’s Uncertainties
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The Limits of Wisdom: Authority, Injustice, and Life’s Uncertainties

Ecclesiastes 8:2-17

8
Chapter 8
2 I keep the mouth of the king of Israel—an oath upon the Word of God. 3 Do not hasten from his presence. Do not stand in an evil word, for he will do all that he desires. 4 Where the word of the king is authority, who will say to him, "What are you doing?" 5 A keeper of commandments will not know a thing of evil, and a wise heart knows the time and justice. 6 For every matter there is a time and a law, for the evil of humanity is great upon it. 7 For he does not know what will be, for who can tell him how it will be? 8 There is no man ruling in the spirit to restrain the spirit, and there is no authority in the day of death. There is no sending in war, and the wicked will not escape by his wickedness. 9 All this I have seen, and I have applied my heart to every deed that is done under the sun: a time when man rules over man to his harm. 10 And so I saw wicked ones at burial sites, and they came from a holy place. They walk and are forgotten in the city where they did so. This also is hebel. 11 Because a sentence is not done as a deed of evil quickly, on account of this the heart of the sons of humanity is filled in them to do evil. 12 Whoever sins does moral evil with my people and prolongs it to him, for even I know with skilled knowledge that it will be good to those who fear the LORD God who fear from his face. 13 And it will not be good for the wicked, and he will not prolong days like a shadow, which does not fear from before God. 14 There is a hebel that happens on the earth: righteous ones to whom it happens according to the deed of the wicked ones, and wicked ones to whom it happens according to the deed of the righteous ones. I said that this too is a hebel. 15 And I praised joy, for there is no good for humanity under the sun except to eat and to drink and to rejoice, and it will accompany him in his toil, the days of his life which God has given him under the sun. 16 When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done upon the land—for also by day and by night he does not sleep in his eyes, he does not see. 17 And I saw every deed of God, for man cannot find the deed that is done under the sun—because of which man labors to seek but does not find, and even if the wise man says to know, he cannot find.