Study Desk

For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.

A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.

What do people really get for all their hard work?

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.

And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.

I said to myself, "In due season God will judge everyone, both good and bad, for all their deeds."

For people and animals share the same fate—both breathe and both must die. So people have no real advantage over the animals. How meaningless!

For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down into the earth?

So I saw that there is nothing better for people than to be happy in their work. That is our lot in life. And no one can bring us back to see what happens after we die.

But most fortunate of all are those who are not yet born. For they have not seen all the evil that is done under the sun.

This is the case of a man who is all alone, without a child or a brother, yet who works hard to gain as much wealth as he can. But then he asks himself, "Who am I working for? Why am I giving up so much pleasure now?" It is all so meaningless and depressing.

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed.

A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.

When you make a promise to God, don't delay in following through, for God takes no pleasure in fools. Keep all the promises you make to him.

Don't be surprised if you see a poor person being oppressed by the powerful and if justice is being miscarried throughout the land. For every official is under orders from higher up, and matters of justice get lost in red tape and bureaucracy.

Even the king milks the land for his own profit!

And this, too, is a very serious problem. People leave this world no better off than when they came. All their hard work is for nothing—like working for the wind.

Even so, I have noticed one thing, at least, that is good. It is good for people to eat, drink, and enjoy their work under the sun during the short life God has given them, and to accept their lot in life.

A man might have a hundred children and live to be very old. But if he finds no satisfaction in life and doesn't even get a decent burial, it would have been better for him to be born dead.

All people spend their lives scratching for food, but they never seem to have enough.