Ecclesiastes 3:7-22

⁷There is a time to tear our old clothes, and there is a time to mend clothes. There is a time to say nothing, and there is a time when we should speak.

⁸There is a time when we should love things that people do, and there is a time when we should hate things that people do. There is a time for war, and there is a time for peace.

⁹◄What do people gain from all the work that they do?/It seems that people gain very little from all the work that they do RHQ►.

¹⁰I have seen the work that God has given people to do.

¹¹God has appointed a time that is right/correct for everything to happen. He has also caused people to realize that there are things that will endure forever. But in spite of that, no one can completely understand everything that God has done, from the time that he starts doing things until he finishes them.

¹²I know that the best LIT thing for us people to do is to rejoice and to do good things all during the time that we are alive.

¹³And I also know that everyone should eat and drink, and enjoy the work that they do. Those are things that God gives to us.

¹⁴I also know that what God does endures forever. No one can add to what God does, and no one can take away from the things that God does. God does those things in order that people would revere him.

¹⁵Things that exist now have already existed previously, and things that will happen in the future have already happened previously; God causes the same things to happen many times.

¹⁶Furthermore, I saw that on this earth MTY, even in the courts where we expect judges to make right decisions about what people had done, they did many wicked DOU things.

¹⁷So I said to myself SYN, “God will judge both righteous people and wicked people; there is a time for him to do that, because there is a time for him to do everything.”

¹⁸And regarding humans, I also said to myself, “God is testing us, to show us that in one way people are no different than animals,

¹⁹because what happens to people happens to animals. Animals die, and people die. We all must breathe to remain alive. With regard to that, people have no advantage over animals, so I have a difficult time understanding that.

²⁰People and animals all die and are buried. We are all made of soil, and when we die, our corpses become soil again.

²¹No one knows RHQ for sure that when we die, our souls/spirits go up to heaven and the souls/spirits of animals go down to the place where the dead are.”

²²So I concluded that the best thing for us people to do is to be happy about the work that we do, because that is what God has given to us. I say that because no one of us RHQ knows what happens to us after we die.