Old Testament

New Testament

Ecclesiastes 8:6-14 New International Version Anglicized (NIVUK)

6. For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter,though a person may be weighed down by misery.

7. Since no one knows the future,who can tell someone else what is to come?

8. As no one has power over the wind to contain it,so no one has power over the time of their death.As no one is discharged in time of war,so wickedness will not release those who practise it.

9. All this I saw, as I applied my mind to everything done under the sun. There is a time when a man lords it over others to his own hurt.

10. Then too, I saw the wicked buried – those who used to come and go from the holy place and receive praise in the city where they did this. This too is meaningless.

11. When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong.

12. Although a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time, I know that it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him.

13. Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow.

14. There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.

Read complete chapter Ecclesiastes 8