15 In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing. ¹⁶Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself? ¹⁷Do not be too wicked, and do not be a fool; why should you die before your time? ¹⁸It is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other; for the one who fears God shall succeed with both.

19 Wisdom gives strength to the wise more than ten rulers that are in a city.

20 Surely there is no one on earth so righteous as to do good without ever sinning.

21 Do not give heed to everything that people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you; ²²your heart knows that many times you have yourself cursed others.

23 All this I have tested by wisdom; I said, ‘I will be wise’, but it was far from me. ²⁴That which is, is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? ²⁵I turned my mind to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the sum of things, and to know that wickedness is folly and that foolishness is madness. ²⁶I found more bitter than death the woman who is a trap, whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are fetters; one who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. ²⁷See, this is what I found, says the Teacher, adding one thing to another to find the sum, ²⁸which my mind has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. ²⁹See, this alone I found, that God made human beings straightforward, but they have devised many schemes.