Study Desk

Trouble and anguish have come upon me, Yet Your commandments are my delight.

Many are my persecutors and my adversaries, Yet I do not turn aside from Your testimonies.

"Many times they have persecuted me from my youth up; Yet they have not prevailed against me.

For though the Lord is exalted, Yet He regards the lowly, But the haughty He knows from afar.

Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.

Though He scoffs at the scoffers, Yet He gives grace to the afflicted.

While He had not yet made the earth and the fields, Nor the first dust of the world.

There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more, And there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want.

Though you pound a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, Yet his foolishness will not depart from him.

There is a kind who is pure in his own eyes, Yet is not washed from his filthiness.

The shephanim are not mighty people, Yet they make their houses in the rocks;

The locusts have no king, Yet all of them go out in ranks;

The lizard you may grasp with the hands, Yet it is in kings' palaces.

All the rivers flow into the sea, Yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers flow, There they flow again.

The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one fate befalls them both.

And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun. This too is vanity.

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

There was a certain man without a dependent, having neither a son nor a brother, yet there was no end to all his labor. Indeed, his eyes were not satisfied with riches and he never asked, "And for whom am I laboring and depriving myself of pleasure?" This too is vanity and it is a grievous task.

A poor yet wise lad is better than an old and foolish king who no longer knows how to receive instruction.

a man to whom God has given riches and wealth and honor so that his soul lacks nothing of all that he desires; yet God has not empowered him to eat from them, for a foreigner enjoys them. This is vanity and a severe affliction.