Ecclesiastes 8:7-13

The Voice

⁷ For no one knows what is going to happen, so who can warn him before it does? ⁸ No one can master the wind and contain it—it blows as it will. No one has power over the day of death—it comes as it will. No soldier is discharged in the heat of battle, and certainly wickedness will not release those entangled in it. ⁹ I have witnessed all of this as I have focused my attention on all that is done under the sun: whenever one person oppresses another to lift himself up, it only hurts him in the end.

¹⁰ I have witnessed the wicked buried with honor because during their lifetimes they would go in and out of the temple, and soon their crimes were forgotten in the very city where they committed them. This, too, is fleeting.^{[a] 11} When the penalty for a crime is not carried out quickly, then people start scheming to commit their own crimes. ¹² Although a wicked person commits a hundred sins and still lives a long life, I am confident it will go better for those who worship the one True God and stand in awe before Him, ¹³ and it will not go well for the wicked nor will their days grow long like evening shadows because they do not stand in awe of God.