9. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your uncertain life which have been given to you under the sun, during all the time of your vanity. For this is your portion in life and in your labor, with which you labor under the sun.
10. Whatever your hand is able to do, do it earnestly. For neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom, nor knowledge will exist in death, toward which you are hurrying.
11. I turned myself toward another thing, and I saw that under the sun, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor wealth to the learned, nor grace to the skilful: but there is a time and an end for all these things.
12. Man does not know his own end. But, just as fish are caught with a hook, and birds are captured with a snare, so are men seized in the evil time, when it will suddenly overwhelm them.
13. This wisdom, likewise, I have seen under the sun, and I have examined it intensely.
14. There was a small city, with a few men in it. There came against it a great king, who surrounded it, and built fortifications all around it, and the blockade was completed.
15. And there was found within it, a poor and wise man, and he freed the city through his wisdom, and nothing was recorded afterward of that poor man.
16. And so, I declared that wisdom is better than strength. But how is it, then, that the wisdom of the poor man is treated with contempt, and his words are not heeded?
17. The words of the wise are heard in silence, more so than the outcry of a prince among the foolish.
18. Wisdom is better than weapons of war. And whoever offends in one thing, shall lose many good things.