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3:1  There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
3:2  a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3:3  a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
3:4  a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
3:5  a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
3:6  a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
3:7  a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
3:8  a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
3:9  What do workers gain from their toil?
3:10  I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.
3:11  He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
3:12  I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.
3:13  That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God.
3:14  I know that everything God does will endure for ever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
3:15  Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.
3:16  And I saw something else under the sun: in the place of judgment – wickedness was there, in the place of justice – wickedness was there.
3:17  I said to myself, ‘God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.’
3:18  I also said to myself, ‘As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals.
3:19  Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: as one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless.
3:20  All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.
3:21  Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?’
3:22  So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?