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8:1  Who is as the wise man? and who knows the interpretation of a thing? a man's wisdom makes his face to shine, and the hardness of his face is changed.
8:2  I counsel you to keep the king's commandment, and that for the sake of your oath to God.
8:3  Be not hasty to go out of his presence: stand not for an evil thing; for he does whatsoever pleases him.
8:4  Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What are you doing?
8:5  Whosoever keeps the commandment shall experience no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerns both time and judgment.
8:6  Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is heavy upon him.
8:7  For he knows not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be?
8:8  There is no man that has power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither has he power in the day of death: and there is no release from that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it.
8:9  All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: there is a time in which one man rules over another to his own hurt.
8:10  And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the holy place, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this is also vanity.
8:11  Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
8:12  Though a sinner does evil a hundred times, and his days are prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, who fear before him:
8:13  But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he fears not before God.
8:14  There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there are just men, unto whom it happens according to the work of the wicked; again, there are wicked men, to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity.
8:15  Then I commended mirth, because a man has no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him in his labor all the days of his life, which God gives him under the sun.
8:16  When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also there is one who neither day nor night sees sleep with his eyes:)
8:17  Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labors to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea moreover; though a wise man thinks to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.