Study Desk

Listen, Lemuel. Kings should not drink wine or have a craving for alcohol.

Alcohol is for people who are dying, for those who are in misery.

"Speak up for people who cannot speak for themselves. Protect the rights of all who are helpless.

Speak for them and be a righteous judge. Protect the rights of the poor and needy."

She gets up before daylight to prepare food for her family and to tell her servant women what to do.

Give her credit for all she does. She deserves the respect of everyone.

You spend your life working, laboring, and what do you have to show for it?

Everything leads to weariness—a weariness too great for words. Our eyes can never see enough to be satisfied; our ears can never hear enough.

Driven on by my desire for wisdom, I decided to cheer myself up with wine and have a good time. I thought that this might be the best way people can spend their short lives on earth.

Anything I wanted, I got. I did not deny myself any pleasure. I was proud of everything I had worked for, and all this was my reward.

The wise can see where they are going, and fools cannot." But I also know that the same fate is waiting for us all.

Nothing that I had worked for and earned meant a thing to me, because I knew that I would have to leave it to my successor,

and he might be wise, or he might be foolish—who knows? Yet he will own everything I have worked for, everything my wisdom has earned for me in this world. It is all useless.

You work for something with all your wisdom, knowledge, and skill, and then you have to leave it all to someone who hasn't had to work for it. It is useless, and it isn't right!

You work and worry your way through life, and what do you have to show for it?

He sets the time for birth and the time for death, the time for planting and the time for pulling up,

the time for killing and the time for healing, the time for tearing down and the time for building.

He sets the time for sorrow and the time for joy, the time for mourning and the time for dancing,

the time for making love and the time for not making love, the time for kissing and the time for not kissing.

He sets the time for finding and the time for losing, the time for saving and the time for throwing away,