16 When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see (A)the business that is done on earth, how neither (B)day nor night do one's eyes see sleep,

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23 For (A)all his days are full of sorrow, and his (B)work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.

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13 And I (A)applied my heart[a] to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy (B)business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.

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Footnotes

  1. Ecclesiastes 1:13 The Hebrew term denotes the center of one's inner life, including mind, will, and emotions

It is in vain that you rise up early
    and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious (A)toil;
    for he gives to his (B)beloved (C)sleep.

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(A)All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun, when man had power over man to his hurt.

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For he (A)does not know what is to be, for (B)who can tell him how it will be?

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25 (A)I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness.

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12 Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep.

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one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his (A)eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, (B)“For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy (C)business.

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40 There I was: by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes.

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