³ This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all.^(A) The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live,^(B) and afterward they join the dead.^(C)

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

¹⁷ Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom,^(A) and also of madness and folly,^(B) but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

³ At one time^(A) we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.

²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,^{(A) 30} slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;^{(B) 31} they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love,^(C) no mercy.

¹⁶ But he was rebuked for his wrongdoing by a donkey—an animal without speech—who spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.^(A)

²⁴ At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind,^(A) Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning^(B) is driving you insane.”

²³ Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel^(A) of the Lord struck him down,^(B) and he was eaten by worms and died.

¹⁷ “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!