“I have heard many things like these before. What miserable comforters are you all!

When I tried to make sense of this, it was troubling to me.

What benefit can a worker gain from his toil?

because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb on me, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes!

Even as I have seen, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble reap the same.

For you will forget your trouble; you will remember it like water that has flowed away.

They conceive trouble and bring forth evil; their belly prepares deception.”

In the fullness of his sufficiency, distress overtakes him. the full force of misery will come upon him.

See the one who is pregnant with wickedness, who conceives destructive plans, and gives birth to harmful lies –

Cruel rulers are not your allies, those who make oppressive laws.

As for the heads of those who surround me – may the harm done by their lips overwhelm them!

A laborer’s appetite works on his behalf, for his hunger urges him to work.

All of man’s labor is for nothing more than to fill his stomach – yet his appetite is never satisfied!

Those who enact unjust policies are as good as dead, those who are always instituting unfair regulations,

For evil does not come up from the dust, nor does trouble spring up from the ground,

thus I have been made to inherit months of futility, and nights of sorrow have been appointed to me.

His mouth is full of curses and deceptive, harmful words; his tongue injures and destroys.

What does a man acquire from all his labor and from the anxiety that accompanies his toil on earth?

Better is one handful with some rest than two hands full of toil and chasing the wind.

The toil of a stupid fool wears him out, because he does not even know the way to the city.