King James Version · The united kingdom
Ecclesiastes 9
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For all this I considered in even to declare all this, that , and , and their works, are in the hand of : no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before them. All things come alike to all: there is one event to , and to ; to the good and to the clean, and to the ; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the ; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an . This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their while they live, and after that they go to . For to him that is joined to all the living there is : for a living dog is better than a lion. For the living know that they shall : but know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now ; neither have they any more a for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy with a merry ; for now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy , which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy : for that is thy in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor , in the , whither thou goest. 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 , nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. This have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me: There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: Now there was found in it a man, and he by his the city; yet no man remembered that same man. Then said I, is better than strength: nevertheless man’s is despised, and his words are not heard. The words of men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. is better than weapons of war: but one destroyeth much good.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
Christians read this chapter differently
- What happens to a person between death and the resurrection? · Ecclesiastes 9:5
Every view at its strongest, with who holds it and what it has to answer for.
The world at this moment · The united kingdom, 1050 BC to 931 BC ›
Saul, David, and Solomon. A rare window when both Egypt and Mesopotamia are weak, which is how a small kingdom in the corridor between them could briefly become a regional power.
- The power vacuum
- This is the whole political explanation for the united kingdom. Egypt is fragmented, Assyria is recovering but still local, the Hittites are gone, and nobody is in a position to object to a strong state in the corridor. It lasts about a century, and Israel's golden age fits exactly inside it.
- Phoenicia
- Tyre under Hiram is the commercial power of the coast, and supplies the cedar, the craftsmen, and the shipping for Solomon's building programme. The alliance is trade, not charity: Israel had grain and a land route, Tyre had timber and ships.
- Egypt
- Weak enough that a pharaoh gives a daughter in marriage to an Israelite king, which is the opposite of Egyptian practice in stronger centuries. Late in the era it recovers under a new house, and Shishak will invade within five years of Solomon's death.
- Further afield
- Greece is still in its dark age but beginning to recover, and will adopt the Phoenician alphabet within a century or two. Carthage is founded by settlers from Tyre by tradition in 814 BC. In the Americas the Olmec centre shifts to La Venta.