| 1. | There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. |
| 2. | A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant. |
| 3. | A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. |
| 4. | A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. |
| 5. | A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. |
| 6. | A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. |
| 7. | A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak. |
| 8. | A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. |
| 9. | What advantage has the worker from his toil? |
| 10. | I have considered the task which God has appointed for men to be busied about. |
| 11. | He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without men's ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done. |
| 12. | I recognized that there is nothing better than to be glad and to do well during life. |
| 13. | For every man, moreover, to eat and drink and enjoy the fruit of all his labor is a gift of God. |
| 14. | I recognized that whatever God does will endure forever; there is no adding to it, or taking from it. Thus has God done that he may be revered. |
| 15. | What now is has already been; what is to be, already is; and God restores what would otherwise be displaced. |
| 16. | And still under the sun in the judgment place I saw wickedness, and in the seat of justice, iniquity. |
| 17. | And I said to myself, both the just and the wicked God will judge, since there is a time for every affair and on every work a judgment. |
| 18. | I said to myself: As for the children of men, it is God's way of testing them and of showing that they are in themselves like beasts. |
| 19. | For the lot of man and of beast is one lot; the one dies as well as the other. Both have the same life-breath, and man has no advantage over the beast; but all is vanity. |
| 20. | Both go to the same place; both were made from the dust, and to the dust they both return. |
| 21. | Who knows if the life-breath of the children of men goes upward and the life-breath of beasts goes earthward? |
| 22. | And I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to rejoice in his work; for this is his lot. Who will let him see what is to come after him? |
