What Lasts
Better a funeral than a party, since the living take death to heart. Rebuke beats flattery, patience beats pride, and extremes in either direction destroy a person. The Teacher searched for wisdom and admits it stayed beyond him: God made people upright; they invented schemes.
7 1A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death than the day of birth. 2It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of everyone, and the living should take it to heart. 3Sorrow is better than laughter, for a sad face is good for the heart. 4The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure. 5It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. 6For like the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool. This too is fleeting. 7Surely oppression turns a wise person into a fool, and a bribe corrupts the heart. 8The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and a patient spirit is better than a proud spirit. 9Do not be quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger settles in the lap of fools. 10Do not say, "Why were the former days better than these?" For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. 11Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. a a v11 'Those who see the sun' is a Hebrew expression for the living — those still alive. 12For wisdom is a shelter, just as money is, but the advantage of knowledge is this: wisdom preserves the life of the one who has it. 13Consider the work of God: who can straighten what he has made crooked? 14In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that no one can find out anything that will come after them.
15In my fleeting days I've seen it all: a righteous man dying in his righteousness, a wicked man living long in his evil. 16Do not be excessively righteous, and do not make yourself overly wise; why should you destroy yourself? 17Don't be too wicked, and don't be foolish—why die before your time? 18Good to grasp this, and not let go of that too, for whoever fears God comes through both. 19Wisdom makes the wise person stronger than ten rulers who are in a city. 20Surely there is no one righteous on earth who does good and never sins. 21Also, do not take to heart everything people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you, 22for your own heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others. 23I tested all this by wisdom. I said, "I am determined to be wise"—but it was beyond me. 24Whatever exists is far off and deep, very deep—who can discover it? 25I turned my heart to know, explore, and seek wisdom and the sum of things, and to know the evil of foolishness and the foolishness that is madness. 26I find the woman more bitter than death: her heart is snares and nets, her hands chains. One good before God escapes her; the sinner is caught by her.
27"See, this is what I found," says the Teacher, "adding one to another to find the sum, 28which my soul kept seeking but didn't find. One man in 1,000 I found, but a woman among all these I didn't find. 29Look, this alone I found: God made humanity upright, but they sought many schemes."
