---
title: Ecclesiastes 8
slug: kjv/ecclesiastes-8
createdAt: 2024-08-21T02:23:52.633Z
---

**1 **Who *is* as the wise *man*? and who knoweth the interpretation of a thing? a man's wisdom maketh his face to shine, and the boldness of his face shall be changed.

**2 **I *counsel thee* to keep the king's commandment, and *that* in regard of the oath of God. **3 **Be not hasty to go out of his sight: stand not in an evil thing; for he doeth whatsoever pleaseth him. **4 **Where the word of a king *is, there is* power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou?

**5 **Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel no evil thing: and a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment. **6 **Because to every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man *is* great upon him. **7 **For he knoweth not that which shall be: for who can tell him when it shall be? **8 ***There is* no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither *hath he* power in the day of death: and *there is* no discharge in *that* war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it. **9 **All this have I seen, and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun: *there is* a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt.

**10 **And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this *is* also vanity. **11 **Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. **12 **Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his *days* be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him: **13 **But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong *his* days, *which are* as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.

**14 **There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just *men*, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked *men*, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also *is* vanity. **15 **Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.

**16 **When I applied mine heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done upon the earth: (for also *there is that* neither day nor night seeth sleep with his eyes:) **17 **Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek *it* out, yet he shall not find *it*; yea further; though a wise *man* think to know *it*, yet shall he not be able to find *it*.