For God gives wisdom, and knowledge, and joy to a man who is good in His sight. But to the sinner He gives labor, to collect and gather, that he may give to him who is good before God. This also is vanity and striving of spirit.

The hungry eat up his harvest, taking it even from the thorns, and a snare snatches their wealth.

He swallows down riches and vomits them up again; the Mighty God casts them out of his belly.

He shall not see the streams, the rivers of honey and curds.

For he has crushed and forsaken the poor, he has seized a house which he did not build.

No food is left for him; there is no travail after his well-being.

When he is about to fill his stomach, God will cast upon him the fury of His wrath, and shall rain it upon him while he is eating.

It has been drawn, and comes out the back; yea, the glittering point comes out of his gall. Terrors come upon him;

The heavens shall lay bare his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him.

This is the portion from God for a wicked man, the heritage promised to him by the Mighty God.

though he heaps up silver like dust, and provides clothing like clay;

he may provide it, but the just shall wear it, and the innocent shall divide up the silver.

Surely every man walks about like a shadow! Surely they are stirred up in vain. He heaps up the produce, and does not know who shall gather it.

Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away like an eagle into the heavens.

You looked for much, and, lo, it came to little. And when you brought it home, then I blew on it. Why? says Jehovah of Hosts. Because of My house that is in ruins, and you, each man, runs to his own house.

since those days, when one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw out fifty from the wine trough, there were but twenty.

I struck you with blight, and with mildew, and with hail, in all the labors of your hands; yet you did not turn to Me, says Jehovah.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves dig through and steal;

but lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not dig through and steal.

Jehovah kills and makes alive; He brings down to Sheol and brings up.

He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory. For the pillars of the earth are Jehovah's, and He set the world upon them.

And he took away the treasures of the house of Jehovah and the treasures of the king's house; he took away everything. He also took away all the gold shields which Solomon had made.

Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

Let the creditors snare all that he has, and let strangers plunder his labor.