8. Behold, we are yet this day in our captivity, where you have scattered us, for a reproach and a curse, and to be subject to penalty, according to all the iniquities of our fathers, which departed from the Lord our God.
9. Hear, O Israel, the commandments of life: give ear to understand wisdom.
10. How is it, O Israel, that you are in your enemies’ land, that you have become old in a strange country, that you are defiled with the dead,
11. that you are counted with them that go down into the grave?
12. You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom.
13. For if you had walked in the way of God, you should have dwelled in peace for ever.
14. Learn where is wisdom, where is strength, where is understanding; that you may know also where is length of days, and life, where is the light of the eyes, and peace.
15. Who has found out her place? and who has come into her treasuries?
16. Where are the princes of the heathen, and such as ruled the beasts that are upon the earth;
17. they that had their pastime with the fowls of the air, and they that hoarded up silver and gold, wherein men trust; and of whose getting there is no end?
18. For they that wrought in silver, and were so careful, and whose works are past finding out,
19. they are vanished and gone down to the grave, and others are come up in their steads.