Enjoy Your Portion in This Life

The Teacher tells the reader to eat bread with joy, drink wine with a cheerful heart, wear white garments, anoint the head, and enjoy life with the beloved wife God has given. Since this is one's portion in a fleeting life and Sheol ends earthly labor, all work presently at hand should be done with full strength while the opportunity remains.

G⁷o, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already approved your works: ⁸Let your garments always be white, ⁹Enjoy life with your beloved wife all the days of the fleeting 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. ¹⁰Whatever 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.

The Teacher has seen that the race is not always won by the swift or the battle by the strong, nor do wisdom, understanding, and skill guarantee bread, wealth, or favor. Because time and chance happen to all and no one knows his hour, human beings can be caught suddenly like fish in a net or birds in a trap.

¹¹I 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. ¹²For 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.