17. Don’t be too wicked, and don’t be a fool. Why should you die before your time is up?
18. It’s good to hold on to the one and not let go of the other, because the one who fears God will be able to avoid both extremes.
19. Wisdom will help a wise person more than ten rulers can help a city.
20. Certainly, there is no one so righteous on earth that he always does what is good and never sins.
21. Don’t take everything that people say to heart, or you may hear your own servant cursing you.
22. Your conscience knows that you have cursed others many times.
23. I used wisdom to test all of this. I said, “I want to be wise, but it is out of my reach.”
24. Whatever wisdom may be, it is out of reach. It is deep, very deep. Who can find out what it is?
25. I turned my attention to study, to explore, and to seek out wisdom and the reason for things. I learned that wickedness is stupid and foolishness is madness.
26. I find that a woman whose thoughts are ⌊like⌋ traps and snares is more bitter than death itself. Even her hands are ⌊like⌋ chains. Whoever pleases God will escape her, but she will catch whoever continues to sin.
27. The spokesman said, “This is what I’ve found: I added one thing to another in order to find a reason for things.
28. I am still seeking a reason for things, but have not found any. I found one man out of a thousand who had it, but out of all these I didn’t find one woman.
29. I have found only this: God made people decent, but they looked for many ways ⌊to avoid being decent⌋.”