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Ecclesiastes 8:10-14
The Message
Ecclesiastes 8:10-14
The Message
One Fate for Everybody
10 One time I saw wicked men given a solemn burial in holy ground. When the people returned to the city, they delivered flowery eulogies—and in the very place where wicked acts were done by those very men! More smoke. Indeed.
11 Because the sentence against evil deeds is so long in coming, people in general think they can get by with murder.
12-13 Even though a person sins and gets by with it hundreds of times throughout a long life, I’m still convinced that the good life is reserved for the person who fears God, who lives reverently in his presence, and that the evil person will not experience a “good” life. No matter how many days he lives, they’ll all be as flat and colorless as a shadow—because he doesn’t fear God.
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14 Here’s something that happens all the time and makes no sense at all: Good people get what’s coming to the wicked, and bad people get what’s coming to the good. I tell you, this makes no sense. It’s smoke.
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Ecclesiastes 8:10-14
New International Version
Ecclesiastes 8:10-14
New International Version
10 Then too, I saw the wicked buried(A)—those who used to come and go from the holy place and receive praise[a] in the city where they did this. This too is meaningless.
11 When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong. 12 Although a wicked person who commits a hundred crimes may live a long time, I know that it will go better(B) with those who fear God,(C) who are reverent before him.(D) 13 Yet because the wicked do not fear God,(E) it will not go well with them, and their days(F) will not lengthen like a shadow.
14 There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve.(G) This too, I say, is meaningless.(H)
Footnotes
- Ecclesiastes 8:10 Some Hebrew manuscripts and Septuagint (Aquila); most Hebrew manuscripts and are forgotten
The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson
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