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Eat, Drink, and Love.[a] Go forth, then. Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God long ago approved what you do. At all times dress in white garments and always anoint your head with oil.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love throughout all the days of your allotted span of life that have been given to you under the sun, because that is your lot while you live and labor here under the sun. 10 Whatever task your hand finds to do, expend all your efforts on it, for you will find no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom in the netherworld to which you are going.

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Footnotes

  1. Ecclesiastes 9:7 In the modest trilogy (eat, drink, and love) of happiness, love, which endures for a lifetime, replaces the joy of labor. Even if Qoheleth hasn’t the slightest presentiment of an eternal life, he has learned to accept the present as a gift of God.