² Wherefore I praised the dead that have been long dead more than the living that are yet alive;

¹⁷ So I hated life, because the work that is wrought under the sun was grievous unto me; for all is vanity and a striving after wind.

¹¹ Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when my mother bare me?

¹² Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breast, that I should suck?

¹³ For now should I have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then had I been at rest,

¹⁴ With kings and counsellors of the earth, Who built up waste places for themselves;

¹⁵ Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver:

¹⁶ Or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, As infants that never saw light.

¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling; And there the weary are at rest.

¹⁸ There the prisoners are at ease together; They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

¹⁹ The small and the great are there: And the servant is free from his master.

²⁰ Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul;

²¹ Who long for death, but it cometh not, And dig for it more than for hid treasures;

²² Who rejoice exceedingly, And are glad, when they can find the grave?

²³ `Why is light given' to a man whose way is hid, And whom God hath hedged in?

²⁴ For my sighing cometh before I eat, And my groanings are poured out like water.

²⁵ For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.

²⁶ I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest; But trouble cometh.

⁴ For to him that is joined with all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

⁵ For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

⁶ As well their love, as their hatred and their envy, is perished long ago; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.