19. Wisdom makes the wise man strongerthan ten rulers of a city.
20. There is certainly no righteous man on the earthwho does good and never sins.
21. Don’t pay attention to everything people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you,
22. for you know that many times you yourself have cursed others.
23. I have tested all this by wisdom. I resolved, “I will be wise,” but it was beyond me.
24. What exists is beyond reach and very deep. Who can discover it?
25. I turned my thoughts to know, explore, and seek wisdom and an explanation for things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity and folly is madness.
26. And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a trap, her heart a net, and her hands chains. The one who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her.
27. “Look,” says the Teacher, “I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find out the explanation,
28. which my soul continually searches for but does not find: among a thousand people I have found one true man, but among all these I have not found a true woman.
29. Only see this: I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes.”