Enjoy Your Portion in This Life

7 Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already approved your works:

8 Let your garments always be white,

and never spare the oil for your head.

9 Enjoy life with your beloved wife all the days of the fleeting [fn] life that God has given you under the sun—all your fleeting days. For this is your portion in life and in your labor under the sun. 10 Whatever you find to do with your hands, do it with all your might, for in Sheol, where you are going, there is no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

11 I saw something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; neither is the bread to the wise, nor the wealth to the intelligent, nor the favor to the skillful. For time and chance happen to all. 12 For surely no man knows his time: Like fish caught in a cruel net or birds trapped in a snare, so men are ensnared in an evil time that suddenly falls upon them.