Ecclesiastes 7:16-29

¹⁶Do not be self-righteous, wise in your own eyes. Why should you destroy yourself?

¹⁷Do not be too wicked or foolish. Why should you die before your time?

¹⁸It is good that you should take hold of this wisdom, and that you should not let go of righteousness. For the person who fears God will meet all his obligations.

¹⁹Wisdom is powerful in the wise man, more than ten rulers in a city.

²⁰There is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

²¹Do not listen to every word that is spoken, because you might hear your servant curse you.

²²Similarly, you know yourself that in your own heart you have often cursed others.

²³All this have I proven by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise,” but it was more than I could be.

²⁴Wisdom is far off and very deep. Who can find it?

²⁵I turned my heart to learn and examine and seek wisdom and the explanations of reality, and to understand that evil is stupid and that folly is madness.

²⁶I found that more bitter than death is any woman whose heart is full of snares and nets, and whose hands are chains. Whoever pleases God will escape from her, but the sinner will be taken by her.

²⁷“Consider what I have discovered,” says the Teacher. “I have been adding one discovery to another in order to find an explanation of reality.

²⁸This is what I am still looking for, but I have not found it. I did find one righteous man among a thousand, but a woman among all those I did not find.

²⁹I have discovered only this: That God created humanity upright, but they have gone away looking for many difficulties.”